Although I started as a commercial electrician 10 years ago I have never had anything to do with fire alarm. The company I worked for over the last decade subbed all fire and security work out. I'm now venturing out into the big wide world of self employment and this is something I would like to be able to add to my repertoire.
Does anyone know where is good for a fire alarm course, and what the exact name of the course I should be looking for is as there seems to be a lot of different elements that are sold in separate courses.
All help is much appreciated
I am just looking into this as we are about to start some work for a fire safety consultant. There are several parts to the design, installation and commissioning of a fire alarm system, it depends which bits you want to do yourself versus having someone else responsible for.
from what I understand the Fia courses cover doing the whole thing, risk assessment, design, install, commissioning and then maintenance
NICEIC and ELECSA recently did a pitch at tech talk on fire alarm systems and how easy they are to risk assess, install etc but happened to gloss over the implications that come with taking on certain elements of the process - for instance you will probably need Profesional indemnity insurance if you are going to design systems ( and will need to maintain it for 7 years after you cease trading I believe) which if you don't have a background in fire safety won't be cheap.
My father is a 30yearplus veteran fire officer who went into the fire consultancy business when he retired and his PI ran into thousands a year because of the type of work they were doing.
the big guys like Gent, taco etc have free courses but their kit ain't cheap. The cheaper end of the market like Fike and ESP seem to charge a couple of hundred quid for a very specific installers course, again it depends on where you are targeting.
For new install work I plan to use the fire consultant ( unfortunately my father has retired again!) to produce the risk assessment and a third party (most likely the manufacturer) to do the design, with me doing the install and commission to their specifications as this will be a bolt on to other work I do and not something I specialise in full time.
The maintainance side will evolve beyond the systems we install dependent on the level of work coming from the new business relationship.
just my thoughts and I am sure others will have a different angle
cheers
Paul
