The fire safety inspection register: what it has to prove

The levels of intervention are not the same thing

Fire equipment is serviced at different levels, and mixing them up is the mistake that makes half the register useless. In short:

• surveillance is the visual check that suitably informed in-house staff can carry out: the device is in place, accessible, the pressure gauge is in the correct zone, the seals are intact
• the periodic check is a more thorough technical intervention, reserved for qualified personnel
• the overhaul involves an internal inspection of the device and the replacement of the parts required
• the pressure test concerns the integrity of the cylinder and applies to pressurised containers

Each of these levels has its own interval, set by the applicable technical standards and the manufacturer's instructions, and varying with the type of equipment. It is not a single figure to memorise: it is a figure that belongs to each individual device and must be recalculated at every intervention.

What the register must be able to prove

Whatever the format, a useful register answers five questions about every single device:

• which device, identified uniquely and not as “the extinguisher in the corridor”
• where it is, precisely enough for someone who does not know the site to find it
• who carried out the work, and with which qualification
• when, and with what outcome
• when the next deadline is due, and whether it was met

Why the spreadsheet only goes so far

A spreadsheet records what you type, but it does not prove when you typed it. Anyone can open it and change last month's date without leaving a trace, and this is true even when nobody has done it: the mere possibility weakens the document as evidence.

The second limit is practical. With one site you can manage; with four sites, changing technicians and equipment that is moved, replaced or decommissioned, the spreadsheet stops matching reality long before anyone notices.

The problem nobody plans for: forecasting

The register tells the past. The question the person organising the work needs answered is a different one: how many interventions are waiting for me in the next three months, at which sites, and on what type of equipment?

Without that answer you always work in emergency mode — you find out in January that eighty devices across three sites are due in February, and you rush. With that answer, the same work is spread out, negotiated better with the service provider, and costs less.

The detail that makes registers fail an inspection

It is almost never a missed check. It is a device that is not in the register: replaced and never recorded, moved to another site, added after a layout change and left off the list.

A perfect register of eighty devices, when eighty-three are installed, is a register that proves the opposite of what it is meant to prove.