Its also about being pragmatic in terms of the risks/consequences and potential for loss prevention management.

I do have some experience of working in the NHS - I would not describe a hospital as one of the 'most risky places in he UK'. Sure possibly lots of vulnerable people who may be immobile and need protecting etc.
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Ooh sorry must apologise obviously got my words wrong should have put a hospital is a large assembly area were the some of the persons assembling, are categorised into a number of groups one of the groups is Very high dependency patients. In departments with this type of assembly area such as operating theatres and critical care areas etc, any movement or evacuation of patients may be life-threatening; consequently, additional precautions are required to address the implications this makes the area high risk not for a fire but in the event of such an incident staff need warning about it, so that they can react effectively usually there is only 1 member of staff to 8 patients so on a ward you could have 24 patients 3 members of staff, which may not sound to bad until you realise its an orthopaedic ward they have just done operations on hips, knees and joints so 23 of the patients are bed ridden, its ok the 24th is an arsonist has not had his operation and sets fire to the ward.

A hospital is not a normal area of assembly preventing the alarm becoming defective through a lightning strike is not a Fix it at any cost/any level of liklihood this is a building were The function of fire alarms in premises accommodating dependent or very high dependency patients is to give warning to staff in the event of fire so that an early call to the fire and rescue service, first-aid fire-fighting and evacuation may be carried out. This Hospital has history of a lightning strike which has taken out 7 panals of the fire alarm system for the sake of 10k this can be put right and it will never happen again ensuring a fully working system, The UK is well overdue a large hospital fire
http://www.preventionweb...londonhospitalfires1.pdf
We had 3 accounts of arson, Last year each of the arsons were picked up early with a fully working alarm system and the areas where they happened were fully evacuated one was on the orthopeadic ward above. Hospitals dont even come under the normal fire stuff they have the firecode, a suite of documents to prevent incident and protect the vulnerable. On a serious scale for a hospital not to have a fully working (Has to be L1 Cat as per firecode) fire alarm system 24/7 is like a nuclear power station not to have a watchkeeper. Ie. if no one is watching someone could die. All i can say is it was a good thing that in the london 5 all of them had working fire alarm systems

Now, to throw a spanner in the works.
If the surge protection is fitted, at 10k, and we are hit by lightning again, it could blow all the suppression therefore 10 k wasted, and we would need to spend 10k again on replacement suppression, but the fire alarm would be OK, or if not fitted then several network cards could be blown at 10% cost of the suppression system but the fire alarm system is partly inoperative for a few days whilst cards are fitted.
We have opted for spare cards - for 25% of the system

What would you do?

SBH