Office block sprinkler systems
A fit-out, a new lease, a managing agent taking the building on, or a fire risk assessment that asked who maintains what.
- ISO 9001 and LPCB approved, the certification insurers look for
- BS EN 12845 · BS 9990
- Free survey, fixed price in writing, no travel charge
What is different about offices
An office is one of the gentler things a sprinkler system can be asked to protect. Annex A of BS EN 12845 puts offices at Light Hazard in certain areas and Ordinary Hazard Group 1 otherwise, which is the bottom of the range. The difficulty in an office block is almost never the fire engineering. It is that the building is let in pieces, and a system that runs through all of them has to be maintained by somebody.
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The demise line is the whole problem
The landlord holds the common parts, the riser and usually the plant. The tenant holds what is inside their demise, including whatever the last fit-out did to the head layout above their ceiling. Neither half works on its own, and the gap between them is where an annual goes unbooked for three years. Get the boundary written down before you need it, not during a claim.
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Fit-outs move heads, and nobody tells the system
A new ceiling grid, a partition through an open floor, a server room carved out of a corner. Each of those changes where water lands, and each is done by a fit-out contractor to a drawing that does not include the sprinkler design. The commonest defect we find in offices is a head sitting the wrong side of a partition that went up two tenants ago.
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Water and server rooms
Annex A lists a computer room as Ordinary Hazard Group 1 but excludes tape storage, and in practice comms rooms are where people most want protection and least want water. That is a design conversation about what protects the room and what protects the floor around it, and it is worth having before the fit-out rather than after.
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Tall offices owe a riser as well
Above the height thresholds in Approved Document B the building owes a dry or wet riser under BS 9990, on its own testing interval, usually held by a different contractor. Sprinklers and risers falling out of step is the single most common finding on a multi-let office, because each supplier assumes the other has it.
What we do for these buildings
- BS EN 12845 Sprinkler servicing The full BS EN 12845 routine, from the weekly gauge and alarm check to the annual service. Fire sprinkler servicing and maintenance
- BS 9990 Dry risers Six-monthly inspection and the annual pressure test, with the certificate your fire risk assessment asks for. Dry riser testing and servicing
- BS 9990 Wet risers Charged risers, their pumps and their tanks, tested together because they only work together. Wet riser servicing, testing and pump maintenance
- BS EN 12845 and BS 9251 Design and installation New systems, extensions and upgrades, designed, installed and commissioned. Fire sprinkler system design and installation
Offices: questions
We are the tenant. Is the sprinkler system our responsibility?
It depends entirely on the lease, and the honest answer is that most leases are vaguer about it than either side assumes. The usual split is that the landlord maintains the installation and recovers it through the service charge, while anything the tenant altered inside their demise is the tenant's. What matters more than the split is that somebody holds a complete record for the whole system, because a fire risk assessor will ask for one document, not two halves.
Our floor has just been fitted out. Does the system need looking at?
Yes, and it is much cheaper to look now than at the next annual. A fit-out changes ceilings, partitions and sometimes the use of a space, and all three affect whether heads still cover what they were designed to cover. It is a short survey: what is installed, what moved, and whether the layout still matches the design. Anything found gets priced separately from the servicing.
Can the annual be done without emptying the building?
Normally yes. The weekly and monthly checks are non-intrusive and can happen in working hours. The work that needs the system isolated is the annual, and on a building with zone valves that can be taken a floor or a section at a time, out of hours, so the offices keep trading. BS EN 12845 is explicit that only one zone should be down at a time and for the shortest time the work genuinely takes.
We are taking the building over as managing agent. Where do we start?
With the file, not the system. Ask the outgoing agent for the commissioning documentation, the as-fitted drawings, the last annual certificate and the defect list. Then a survey to check the building against the paperwork, because on a multi-let office those two have usually drifted apart. What you want at the end is one record for the whole installation with your name on it.
Worth reading first
- Sprinklers Sprinkler servicing intervals under BS EN 12845 BS EN 12845 sets a weekly check the site can do itself, a quarterly flow switch and alarm test, and an annual service that includes the pump run under flow.
- Compliance What your insurer actually wants from a sprinkler system Insurers price a sprinkler system as risk mitigation only if they can trust it. LPCB approval of the contractor and an unbroken maintenance record are the two things that make it count.
- Risers Wet riser or dry riser: which one is in your building? A dry riser is an empty pipe charged by the fire brigade on arrival. A wet riser is permanently full of water, kept at pressure by its own pump set, and is used in taller buildings where the brigade cannot pump high enough from the ground.
The published documents behind this page
Every interval and threshold on this page comes from one of these. Links go to the publisher, not to a copy of the document.
- BS EN 12845Fixed firefighting systems. Automatic sprinkler systems. Design, installation and maintenance
The standard commercial and industrial sprinkler systems are designed, installed and maintained to. It sets the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual routines.
BSI
- BS 9990Non-automatic fire-fighting systems in buildings. Code of practice
Dry and wet risers, and private fire mains. The source of the six-monthly inspection and the annual pressure test.
BSI
British Standards are copyright documents and most are bought rather than read free. We hold the ones we work to. If you need to know what one of them says about your building, ask us rather than buying it.
Approved, and audited on a schedule.
Two certifications, and the first one is the reason we could apply for the second. ISO 9001 is a precondition for LPCB approval, so this is a sequence rather than a collection.
ISO 9001:2015
Certified by BRE Global, accredited by UKAS
An audited quality management system. It means the way a job is planned, recorded and signed off is itself inspected by somebody independent, on a schedule.
LPCB approved
Loss Prevention Certification Board
The approval UK insurers look for on sprinkler work. A system installed by an LPCB approved contractor counts as genuine risk mitigation on your policy; one installed by anybody else may not.
Working to BS EN 12845, BS 9251 and BS 9990. If your insurer or fire risk assessor wants the certificates themselves, ring us and we will send them over.
Tell us the building. We will tell you what it is due.
No survey fee to find out where you stand. Describe the site and we will tell you which intervals apply and what the visit involves.