The LWF Blog

Fire Safety for Facilities Management Personnel – Human Behaviour – Part 279

November 18, 2024 12:14 pm

Lawrence Webster Forrest (LWF) is a specialist fire engineering and fire risk management consultancy whose aim is to give information on best practice in fire safety for facilities management personnel through this blog series. In part 278, LWF gave more detail about the processes that should be followed in order to ensure building occupants evacuate the building promptly when the fire alarm sounds. In part 279, we discuss the weekly fire alarm testing regime and instructions to building occupants via the public address system.

Weekly fire alarm tests should be carried out during normal working hours. It is an opportunity to demonstrate the fire alarm signals to the building occupants. Some buildings have two stage alarms, the first to alert, the second to evacuate. In such cases, both should be operated on each test, so people are familiar with each.

Where buildings are provided with a public address system, whether it is normally used in a fire situation to give fire warnings or not, the meaning of each type of alarm can be explained through this medium.

Confusion can arise when only one signal is heard during the weekly fire alarm tests. Occupants may think that the one alarm they hear is the test signal and the other (unheard) alarm is the signal to evacuate.

The total time of the fire alarm sound tests should be no more than 60 seconds. Over exposure to the alarm signals, either in terms of the number of times per week it is heard, or the duration of the alarm signal in seconds, has been shown to contribute towards complacency in those people hearing it.

False alarms can play a part in complacency in building occupants too. Repeated false alarms can de-sensitise people to the potential for a real fire situation and often, this can be based on the amount of time since the last false alarm. E.g. if there were several false alarms the previous week, people are more likely to think the evacuate signal is another false alarm than if the false alarms took place six months ago.

The cause of false alarms should be identified and addressed as promptly as possible and information disseminated about the fix, especially if it is traced to illicit employee activities such as smoking in unused areas.

In part 280 of this series, LWF will continue to look at human behaviour and fire alarm signals. In the meantime, if you have any queries about your own facilities or wish to discuss this blog series, please contact LWF on freephone 0800 410 1130.

Lawrence Webster Forrest is a fire engineering consultancy based in Surrey with over 35 years’ experience, which provides a wide range of consultancy services to professionals involved in the design, development and construction and operation of buildings.

 

While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information