Choosing a supplier
What makes a great fire protection company?
When lives, property and legal compliance are at stake, picking a contractor is not a box-ticking exercise. Here are the questions worth asking before you sign a maintenance contract.
Pro-Active Fire Safety · 4 min read
Almost anyone can service an extinguisher and hand you a sticker. Far fewer can tell you which extinguisher should be there, prove they were competent to say so, and produce the paperwork two years later when an insurer asks.
Use these six as a checklist. A good contractor will answer all of them without hesitating.
1. Are they third-party certificated — and can you check it?
Anyone can say they are “approved”. Ask for the scheme and the registration number, then look it up. BAFE SP203 covers fire alarm design, installation, commissioning and maintenance; SP101 covers portable extinguishers. ISO 9001 shows the business behind it is audited too.
We are BAFE registered under ID 303649, hold the BSI Kitemark for fire system installations and are ISO 9001 certified. All independently audited, all checkable.
2. Do they name the standard they work to?
A quote that says “annual service” tells you nothing. One that says BS 5839-1 for the alarm, BS 5306-3 for extinguishers and BS 5266-1 for emergency lighting tells you what you are actually buying — and lets you compare two quotes properly.
3. What paperwork do you get afterwards?
Certificates, a service report and an asset register. If the answer is a handwritten sheet, walk away. This is the evidence that satisfies your insurer, your fire risk assessment and an enforcing authority.
Every visit is documented and certified, and you get an asset register you can audit.
4. Who actually turns up?
Ask whether the engineer is employed or subcontracted, and whether it is the same person each time. Continuity matters — someone who already knows your building spots what has changed.
Twelve of us, all our own engineers, living locally. You get the same faces.
5. Do they tell you what they cannot do?
This one is underrated. A contractor who quotes for everything — active systems, fire doors, compartmentation, the lot — is either very large or overreaching. Specialists are usually better at the thing they specialise in.
We do active fire protection only. If your building needs passive works, we say so and point you at a specialist rather than quoting for it.
6. What happens when something goes wrong at 2am?
A panel in fault is a compliance problem as well as a safety one, and it rarely happens during office hours. Find out whether there is a genuine out-of-hours response or just an answerphone.
24/7 emergency callout across Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, answered by the people who look after your system.
Trust is the product. Everything else is just equipment.
One last thing worth checking
Ask for a client you can actually ring — ideally one with a building like yours. A contractor confident in their work will give you a name. It is a five-minute call that tells you more than any brochure.
Happy to be asked all six
Bring us your current contract and we will tell you plainly whether we can better it. No obligation.
