Your Fire Contractor Is Not Responsible for Your Body Corporate’s Fire Compliance
A common assumption in apartment buildings is that if the fire contractor attends regularly, the building’s fire compliance is under control.
In practice, that is not always the case.
Fire contractors perform an important role. They inspect, test and maintain the systems they have been engaged to look after, such as extinguishers, hose reels, hydrants, fire alarms, sprinklers, emergency lighting and exit signs.
But servicing the equipment is only one part of a Body Corporate’s overall fire safety responsibilities.
The Body Corporate also needs to make sure the required documentation is current, maintenance records are complete and accessible, evacuation requirements have been addressed, defects have been followed up and the Occupier’s Statement has been completed when required.
What we regularly find during audits
Fire Matters carries out independent fire compliance audits for Body Corporates, and one of the most common findings is a gap between what people believe is being managed and what can actually be demonstrated from the records.
A typical example is a building where the fire contractor has been attending for years and the committee believes everything is compliant.
When the records are reviewed, however, we may find:
- only an attendance sheet is available onsite rather than the full service record;
- defects have been recorded but there is no evidence they were rectified;
- the Fire and Evacuation Plan has not been reviewed for some time;
- evacuation diagrams no longer reflect the building;
- annual evacuation requirements have been missed;
- the Occupier’s Statement has not been completed or cannot be located; or
- the maintenance records do not clearly match the equipment actually installed in the building.
None of these issues necessarily means the contractor has failed to do their job. In many cases, the contractor has simply carried out the work they were engaged to perform.
The problem is the assumption that their maintenance contract covers everything.
Electronic records are creating another gap
More service providers are moving their records online.
That is not necessarily a problem, but we increasingly see buildings where the only document left onsite is an attendance register.
An attendance record may confirm that someone visited the building, but it may not show exactly what was inspected, the results, any defects identified or the corrective work required.
The Body Corporate should know where the complete service records are stored and be able to access them when needed.
The Occupier’s Statement is another example
The fire contractor may provide information to assist with the Occupier’s Statement, but it should not be assumed that because the contractor attends the building, the statement has automatically been completed and submitted.
The same applies to the Fire and Evacuation Plan, training and evacuation exercises. These may sit outside the contractor’s normal maintenance agreement unless they have specifically been included.
A simple question for every committee
Instead of asking:
“Do we have a fire contractor?”
ask:
“Can we demonstrate that all of our fire safety obligations are being met?”
That means knowing where the records are, whether defects have been closed out, when the Fire and Evacuation Plan was last reviewed, whether evacuation requirements are current, and whether the Occupier’s Statement has been completed.
This becomes particularly important if Queensland Fire Department inspects the building or, more seriously, if there is a fire.
At that point, having a maintenance contract is only part of the picture.
The real question may be:
Was the building compliant immediately before the incident occurred, and can the Body Corporate prove it?
A good fire contractor is an essential part of the compliance process.
But they are not responsible for every aspect of your Body Corporate’s fire compliance.
An independent review from time to time can help identify the gaps that routine servicing alone may not pick up.
