Help? BS7273 part 4 and system compliance

[westerner]

A hospital I've just started dealing with has just carried out a risk assesment review and BS7273 part 4 has come up. I've spent the last couple of days going through this standard and realise that you should comply with this standard to achieve BS5839 compliance. Why is no one talking about this, how important is it and can anyone point me in the right direction to finding a solution?

[colin todd]

Important. What direction would you follow other than comply.

[westerner]

That's my point, I want to help them but don't think I can with the incumbent equipment and the requirements for fault condition and fail safe operation - or am I reading in to this too much? can they afford to ignore this standard as it appears everyone else has or conveniently are not aware???

[jokar]

The standard is recommendation only but you will have a duty of care to ensure that the premises is safe and that mean complying with the standard.

[nearlythere]

The standard is recommendation only but you will have a duty of care to ensure that the premises is safe and that mean complying with the standard.

But most hospitals just do what they like anyway.

[Tom W]

Its all about BS7273-4 on firenet at the moment!

Jokar has hit the nail on the head already. The standard is for guidance, you will find you should be doing everything correctly already.

The standard was designed to provide installers of door hardware with more guidance for installation: designed to encourage a risk assessed basis for specification of hardware

Was there anything in particular you were worried about? 

[westerner]

I'm worried about quite a lot really as the fault conditions and protection of the critical signal path cannot be achived with the panel manufacturer and detector manufacturer they currently have. I am looking to reccomend a suitable replacement

[kurnal]

Would be interested to hear a little more Westerner. Is it a very old panel?

[David Rooney]

Doesn't have to be that old Mr K .... there are still as far as I'm aware only two or three manufacturers who claim to have "7273:4 compliant" loop interfaces capable of meeting the CAT A conditions.

Otherwise you need to run a separate cable from a "programmed" relay in your panel to all your door interfaces that changes state under most of the conditions except possibly the processor failure.

I still think it's still very difficult to know whether you have complied with the whole of this standard not only from the physical hardware operation but also from the whole detector layout perspective.

[westerner]

No, it's actually a relatively new system. I have been checking out various panel & detector manufacturers hoping that i could replace the panel but nothing out there complies. I feel a bit duped that I have been using these panels for some time without being informed that they don't comply with BS7273:4 and therefore exposing me to incorrectly signing off BS5839:1 certificates!

[David Rooney]

Who is the manufacturer W ?

Gent apparently have a loop interface they say meets the standard.....

[westerner]

Its an apollo based system, any ideas?

[AnthonyB]

The ADT/Tyco MZX and Gent Vigilon systems appear to claim compliance to Cat A.

Without visiting all the others can't say for sure, but they don't pop up on a relevant search so if they do they aren't making a sing and dance about it!