Commissioning

[Meady]

Please can I has some advice...client has purchased 50 x Water and 50 x CO2 extinguishers from the internet.  All are BS EN 3 labeled.  But, he has hung them himself without professional commissioning.

Now, he has called his regular FRA man who is ex-Fire Service who has advised (in writing) that whilst BS5306 Part 8 says that they should be commissioned first, it doesn't say they must and they will be acceptable for the first year without needing to be professionally checked and certificated??  

Has anyone ever heard of this before?  The client is now thinking the other FR Assessor is the best thing ever because he's saving him £'s by not having to commission all these extinguishers!!

Any help / back-up to justify why they should be inspected would be much appreciated.  

[Safelincs]

Hi Meady, if you cannot explain why it is important to commission extinguishers, you cannot expect the customer to follow your recommendations. The FRA man is correct, it is only regarded as best practice to commission extinguishers.

Harry

[AnthonyB]

But  uncommissioned extinguishers are often incorrectly assembled, damaged and not serviced for over a year (no installation date) so it would be prudent to have them commissioned.

The client is taking the full liability for failure to perform and having an adequate system of maintenance by not doing so. 

[Meady]

Thank you both so far for your comments...

My thoughts as a novice are why would you not want to commission the fire extinguishers to help evidence compliance with the FSO 2005?  I'm looking at articles 17 & 18 in particular, but can probably drag in a few more if needed...

If the Fire Alarm and Emergency Lighting systems (as well as others) need to be commissioned, then surely the extinguishers do too?  Or am I looking at this from the wrong angle?

Also, most clients will never remember to make sure the extinguishers are checked each year if there are no labels to remind them...

[AnthonyB]

Exactly my point. Technically very little is actually required in law, the FSO just sets broad functional requirements giving flexibility in how you comply and it's possible to safely and legitimately depart from the benchmarks such as those in British Standards, but it has to be justified and provide an adequate level of safety, so the default is to follow them - and I've seen to much wrong with uncommissioned equipment (and also those where they haven't been commissioned properly by a supposed competent firm) to justify not doing it.

With no commissioning you can't tell if the unit is below weight on first service so will never be 100% sure of functionality (especially with CO2 where weight is the main way of telling if it's OK)

[Meady]

Thank you AnthonyB & Harry for your thoughts - I will stand by my original thoughts and tell them it is in their best interest to have them commissioned (by a competent person)...