Can you have several fire alarm panels at the same time?

[Guest darrenau]

I hope you can help, I am a security and safety manager for a large company and we recently started a major refurb of the office. We are about 20% through the works but they have now been cancelled due to finances. A second newer fire alarm panel has been fitted where the refurbed areas were supposed to be and the old panel servicing the non-refurbed areas. As the works have been stopped, it is being proposed that we have both fire alarm panels in place rather than moving all devices over to one of the panels...I do not like this idea due to different operating procedures for the different panels !....my question is...is it OK to do this ???...hope you can help

[Tom Sutton]

The correct system should be one control indicating equipment (CIE) AKA a fire panel which should work with the fire plan/procedure, alerting those occupants that need to be alerted and properly zoned. However if there are two CIE’s interlinked achieving the same aims without confusion then it is possible it could be acceptable, but this would be a matter for the fire alarm engineers/designer. I would suggest if you can convince the powers to be to accept one CIE then that would be the best option because these temporary arrangements can last for a long time, years in some cases.