Construction sites need robust, proven fire protection systems tested to the new EU harmonised standard, EN 54, explains Paul Henson, marketing director at Ramtech Electronics.
Fires on construction sites are far more frequent than most people realise, with Zurich Insurance estimating that there are around 104,000 each year on site, costing around £400m.
Fortunately for site managers, construction sites are covered by a number of laws, guidelines and codes of practice around fire safety, all of which say that an appropriate fire alarm system should be used:
The relevant UK laws are:
- The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (2005)
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations
- HSE Fire Safety Guidelines for Construction Sites (HSG168)
- The Fire Protection Association Joint Code of Practice
- BS5839 – Fire detection and fire alarm systems for buildings. Code of practice for design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of systems in non-domestic premises
- The Structural Timber Association’s 16 Steps to Timber Frame Construction
Then there is the important EU-backed law, the Construction Products Regulation, which made it mandatory from July 2013 for manufacturers to apply CE marking to any of their products covered by a harmonised European standard or a European Technical Assessment.
Under the Construction Products Regulation, fire alarm products sold in the EU must be independently tested and certified against Europe-wide standards where these exist.
In the case of fire detection and fire alarm products, that harmonised standard is EN 54 Fire Detection and Fire Alarm Systems, which sets benchmarks for design, operation, production, testing and manufacture.
EN 54 does not make an exception for whether the site or building to be protected is temporary, for example, a construction site, and also clearly states that fire detection and alarm systems are for use in “buildings or other construction works” (EN 54 Part 1, Section 2.1).
Zurich Insurance estimates there are 104,000 fires on site each year
A responsible construction manager would want to be certain – and also able to satisfy his or her insurers – that the products used to protect the workforce and assets from fire are effective, reliable and compliant with the appropriate legislation.
If the fire alarm system you are thinking of specifying for a construction site has been tested by a notified body to the standards set out in EN 54, it will carry a four-digit test centre number after the CE mark.
To be absolutely sure, you can ask your supplier for their Declaration(s) of Performance (DoP). If the certificate you are presented simply covers, for example, an individual part within a larger unit, it does not follow that the whole unit meets EN 54 requirements.
To comply with EN 54, the complete unit – and every unit in the system including the base station, fire call point or smoke and heat detection unit – should have been tested in accordance with the relevant section(s) of the standard.
We are seeing more clients and their contractors take proactive steps to ensure their sites include a fire alarm system that is fully compliant with EN 54 requirements as at present many construction sites rely on a nominated fire officer sounding an alarm when a fire is detected.
The issue with this is that remote areas of a site may not hear the alarm, for example, the upper floors of a partially completed building, where the risk of a delayed evacuation can make all the difference. In the vital minutes before everyone became aware, the fire could have spread and seriously limited escape routes.
However, a properly planned, interlinked wireless fire alarm system overcomes this issue. A good system includes manual fire alarm call points installed on site in accordance with the project’s fire plan.
Because the call points are interlinked it creates a completely secure mesh network so that a single call point triggers all the other points across the site, which means everyone is alerted to evacuate at the same time.
At the same time, a base station allows fire officers to identify quickly which fire point or heat/smoke detection unit has been activated, allowing emergency services to be deployed to the exact source of the fire.
