BAFE Quality Standard GOLD
Certificates for Fire Alarms and
Fire Extinguishers
Hampshire Fire Service's Alan Harding, Group Manager, Technical Fire Safety Group (East), presented Barrie Christie, Chairman of CIA Ltd, with the recently awarded NSI BAFE Quality Standard GOLD Certificates for Fire Alarms and Fire Extinguishers.
The presentation took place at CIA's headquarters at Waterlooville In the presence of the Mayor of Havant, Richard Brown.
CIA has scooped this unique double honour by successfully achieving third party accreditation for both Fire Alarms and Fire Extinguishers which is the important, of course, with the imminent changes to legislation, but is exceptional because:
- We are the first company ever to receive the NSI BAFE SP101 accreditation for Fire Extinguishers.
- We are the only company who has simultaneously achieved this double Gold award.
- The Standard for Fire Alarms (SP203) is split into 4 modules (design, installation, commission and maintenance) which are usually audited one at a time, but we chose to be audited for all 4 at the same time.
- We also chose to be audited for both Fire Alarms and Fire Extinguishers concurrently.
CIA's General Manager, Colin Langdown, welcomed the Lord Mayor and Alan Harding and
gave a short address outlining the background to this achievement and the reasons for
making it.
He said, "CIA has always been proactive in promoting fire safety and has always worked to the highest of standards but until recently, there has been no independent third party certification to prove our competence. Now there is, so it was a logical step for us to seek accreditation."
Having been advised that it has taken the company 2 years to prepare for the audit, Alan Harding praised CIA.
He said "When I was asked to present the Gold Certificate, I was told that it had taken 2 years to prepare for it. But when I thought about this I had to disagree.
"You can't build a skilled workforce, a satisfied customer base and a reputation as one of the best in your industry in just 2 years. These and many other factors have contributed to the success of the company and that takes much longer than 2 years to achieve."
Alan Harding went on that in Hampshire alone, the Fire Service was called out to approximately 6.5K false alarms each year, at an estimated cost of £1.6M.
Believing that false alarms are due, in part to systems which have been poorly installed by suppliers who lack competence, the Chief Fire Officers Association and the fire alarm industry have developed a registration scheme for premises which have monitored fire alarm systems.
So this independent third party accreditation is particularly important with the change in legislation which comes into force on 1 October 2006. It will then be compulsory for all employers to produce a fire risk assessment and part of this risk assessment is to ensure that fire fighting equipment is provided and maintained by competent suppliers.
The fact that CIA has been successfully audited for both fire alarms and fire extinguishers proves that they are competent.
Accepting the award, Barrie Christie thanked Alan Harding, and thanked the whole team who worked so hard to get make it possible. He said "We are proud to be the first company to get the NSI BAFE SP101 accreditation, and to have been audited for SP203 at the same time. Being an industry leader is not new to us. We were the first company to get the NSI NACOSS Gold Accreditation, we have won many awards both for our ARC building and for industry training, and are currently working with Chichester College to develop a course dedicated to training security system engineers.
"This award endorses the company ethos of quality, standards and professionalism."
Our guests were given a tour of our Alarm Receiving Centre before enjoying a light buffet lunch.
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