Hi It is reasonable to ask for this. It is also not very expensive. Ian

Sounds like a reasonable recommendation to me and as others have mentioned, not too costly.

I was concerned about a fire starting and going unnoticed and therefore potentially getting larger. Maybe smoke or toxic fumes from the fire escape under the fire door and into the escape route? In the small room there is also a large electric floor cleaner and also the charger for the floor cleaner. A few wooden boards in the corner too. They all basically fill up the room as its a very small space. It is a protected room as in fire proof wals etc so this is whats puzzling me on the best recommendation to make. The HSE guidnace says any small rooms such as store rooms should ideally have auto detection.

Well it depends on the FRA and the decision of the assessor. How old is the property? Is the room more that a meter squared? What level of protection does the building currently have? Is the current alarm system designed for life or property detection? Do people sleep on the premises? Is there an alternative means of escape? Is there a sprinkler system employed? Are there vulnerable people in the premises? How many floors in the building? Is the switch gear room on the ground or top floor? What is the evacuation time for the 100 people? What other room/s that may need additional detection? Is the charger for the floor cleaner, charging a lead acid battery? Is the floor cleaner left on charge unattended? Etc… The level of automatic detection designed for the property is contained within BS 5839-1:2013. So… in effect your automatic detection should be compliant with the standard (sometimes this standard is requested by your insures) and generally not based on an ‘ad hock basis’. However: if you’re the assessor and thinks it’s a risk, then it seems to be a reasonable request to add in detection to this room and modify the FRA to suit. I’m not sure that the HSE are the best people to give Fire Safety advice IMHO. Out of interest: You state “I want to recommend…” May I ask, what is your responsibility in all of this that you want to make recommendations?

its a large 2 storey office. It has fire detection pretty much throughout. I dont know if it has been formally designated as an L1,2,3,4 or 5 system. The room with the distribution boards in it is on the ground floor. Its about 3 by 2 metres. The most recent test evac took about 4 mins to totally evacuate all staff. All escape routes are clear, it has emergency lighting, signage etc. The site has a good ERP plan, with training in evac procedures for staff, fire marshalls etc. We implement PEEPS for staff with additional needs. We fully control hot work and clsoley manage contractors. I am an EHS advisor for the company who run the office. We have many many sites. I was doing an audit and we were on the subject of fire safety. I noticed the room on the site walk around and noted it had no fire detection in there. As it has electrical dist boards in it I thought it would be sensible to add another detector into the room. Funnily enough there is another similar room on the ground floor and this does have a sensor My reason for this was I was concerned about an electrical fire starting and this going unnoticed due to the lack of a sensor and isolated nature of the room. I posted the question here just to gauge other professional opinions. I just wanted to see if people thought my request was reasonable.

Apologies stonecold, I guess I was not looking for the answers to the questions I posed. I was making some thought suggestions as to the things you may consider for you to make the decision on fitting the detector. It appears that this is a reasonable request, along with removing the stored items within. Your recommendation may get some attention from the person who has completed the FRA, there may be an argument that; you have all the good fire safety measures in place (as you have stated) and not had any previous fire events.

In my opinion it helps to know what system is in place. L- Protection of life P- Protection of property M-Manual Without this I think it is quite difficult to complete the risk assessment, I would think an office block would be P. L1 is the top and is normally reserved for residential homes, hotels etc were people are sleeping, I know I am teaching you to suck eggs, but there maybe some thinking what does he mean by L systems. I would always recommend detection in switch rooms, boiler houses etc as you need to know where the fire is so that you are not led down an escape route were there is no exit due to smoke or fire. Also the consideration is how many are in the building and how many would possibly use the route.