Hi, I am looking at purchasing some 2 way radios for our fire marshals and wondered if anyone can recommend any? I know places like Argos and Maplin Electronics do them, but thought i'd ask here before looking through the catalogue. Thanks

Well one possible answer - totally consistent with the Fire Marshal role - is that radio may be the quickest way to report someone unable to evacuate, e.g. because of injury or being taken ill, and arranging help for them. At my workplace all staff have flexible working arrangements and the only way to ensure there will be adequate fire warden cover (although we call them evacuation marshals to emphasise what their role really is) is to have far more than we technically need - then when the alarm goes off, all available wardens call in by radio and are allocated sweep areas. The conventional approach of having a warden and a couple of deputies in each zone simply didn't work for us as we'd have had to write a fresh rota every day depending who was in, who was out on a job etc. So there's another possible reason. I don't have a particular recommendation for radios, but from our experience I'd say that it's really noisy inside a building with the alarms going off, and also at outdoor evac assembly points - radios will be useless unless you get ones with fairly good quality earpieces.

my first response was one not of critisism but queery. Why would you want radios was the simple question. Is it possibly because the workplace is complicated and possibly harder to evacuate or even have some small areas that radios would help in raising the alarm. Using hand held radios does however have some drawbacks and could lead to delaying evacuations so thier use must be very carefully considered as they could well become distractions from the main role of ensuring prompt evacuation to the assembly point.

I should have known better than to think I would actually get a reply to the question ;)

We use Motorola on 446 and have found them to be excellent. We have replaced the rechargeable batteries with 'normal' ones and put spares in the fire marshals bag. We DON'T require the fire marshals to use the radios UNLESS there is a need for them to pass information quickly , as Paul alluded to.

As I guess these radio are going to be infrequently used you need to consider the type of battery, cheep Radios will be supplied with NI-Cd which are not the best, Li Ion are the best option but more expensive. But better than them failing when you really need them!! Also the type of radio will depend on the make up of you build and the size, I have lernt this the hard way. I have found the Motorolla Digitals to be the bost option for me, but are a bit on the expensive side. However they have been dropped, split tea on regularly used and my build is made up of many steel cages built into concrete and these radio just work. Our fire marshalls use radio, as the building is complicated and can have many member of the public spread around the place, so a FM can call for assistance in getting someone out if need Works for us!!

Great, thanks for feedback :)