3 ISSUE 15 • 2010 • WWW.FIA.UK.COM


FALSE ALARMS CASE STUDY King’s College, London Part 2


n a previous article, we looked at King’s College, London where work led by Senior Fire Safety Offi cer Suzanne Whitehead and involving service providers Drax and Honeywell yielded signifi cantly reduced false fi re alarms across 80 plus College buildings in 2008 relative to the previous year. Having examined the initial


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work undertaken in 2008, and indeed the results achieved in reducing false alarms up to that time, we can now update the progress made and look in detail at how some specifi c measures continue to contribute to the improving fi gures. By the end of 2008, there had been an annual reduction in false alarms of 13% relative to the previous year and that trend continues with 2009 fi gures showing a further 10% reduction. The stringent reporting procedures that were implemented enable specifi c data to be examined in detail, revealing where the successes have been achieved, what measures have proved more effective than others and, very importantly, where more needs to be done to continue to bring false alarm levels down. The estate comprises a wide


range of building types although they fall into two primary categories, those of academic buildings and residences and there is a roughly even split of false alarms among the two designations. Many College buildings continue to have no activations at all and therefore the focus remains on the 30% or so that do.


The halls of residence have


enjoyed a 25% reduction in false alarms over the last two years with notable improvements in 2009 over 2008 except for one hall which seems impervious


to the several measures implemented. These densely- populated accommodation premises are a challenge to academic institutions across the country and the overall reductions noted are a signifi cant achievement for Suzanne and her team. A safety procedure has been issued which advises on the proper use of cooking equipment within College buildings and this has been extended to include embedded spaces within other Trust buildings. There has also been a partial upgrade of FD&A systems in two of the halls and it is planned to install extract fans in a number of residential kitchens as these have proved successful in other estate kitchens and none that have these fans fi tted have given any false alarms to date. As an attractive incentive to students, the College has launched a ‘Residence 10:10’ competition which rewards achievements by students and is based in part on reducing unwanted fi re alarm activations. As might be expected in premises of this type, there are a number of malicious activations from manual call points and these are being fi tted out with plastic covers to dissuade would-be offenders from causing this nuisance. The largest hall at Great


Dover Street continues to give the most unwanted alarms although fi gures for 2009 are down by a third over those recorded two years ago. A monitoring station has been provided which enables more accurate data to be collected on activations and which, since its installation in September last year, has reduced the number of alarms assigned to the unhelpful ‘unknown’ status.


With multisensors now installed and ventilation about to be provided in the kitchen areas, hopes are high for accelerated improvements in false alarms in this Hall.


The academic buildings present more of a mixed picture. The four worst offenders in 2007 were then responsible for 103 false activations which fell by 37% to just 66 such events in 2009. For the remainder, admittedly the less troublesome locations, unwanted alarms have stayed fairly constant over the same period. Clearly, however, the strategy of initially targeting those teaching buildings with the highest rate of false alarms has proved very successful.


Data is collected and analysed not only in relation to buildings but is also classifi ed according to what caused the unwanted activation. Recognising that the main causes back in 2007 were related to the equipment, building works and cooking, measures have been put in place to upgrade a number


of FD&A systems, to maintain a ‘permit to work’ procedure and, as we have already seen, alleviate cooking problems with both procedural and technical initiatives. This targeting has again delivered substantial results, with false alarms from these three categories of causes being reduced by over 50% over the last two years. In particular, equipment causes have plummeted to a third of their incidence in 2007 and those caused by cooking dropped hugely in 2009 after an unfortunate peak in 2008 before the new cooking procedures were issued. There are not improvements across the board, however, with disappointing increases in some causes such as [non-cooking] steam, dust, aerosols and water leaks. These tend to be due to a small number of specifi c situations which are not in the direct control of Suzanne and her team.


In addition to the measures already indicated, a process of investigating alarm activations Continued on page 4


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