#51557
Austman
Flatchatter

    It’s very good that this topic is being discussed on Flatchat.  It seems to be an issue for many OC/BCs Australia wide.   For many OC/BCs the maintenance of the fire safety systems in their buildings is a major annual expense.  For the OC that I chair it is our second largest annual expense after compulsory insurance.

    A  characteristic of the fire safety industry is the partly interpretive nature of it. There are laws and standards that can be very precise in some areas but can be interpretive in others.  In Victoria, the fire safety engineering design of a new building needs to be proposed by a qualified fire safety engineer and then peer reviewed by another. If you have any doubts about the interpretive nature of some parts of fire safety design, simply read a fire safety engineering peer review.  The registered building surveyor decides the final fire safety engineering design and sets the maintenance requirements of that design in the building’s Occupancy Permit, in a schedule titled “Essential Service Requirements”.  That’s where the term “Essential Services” comes from.  The Essential Service maintenance requirements, most of which are inspections and testing, are ongoing legal obligations for the OC.

    The partly interpretive nature of the fire safety industry carries over into maintenance.  So you sometimes get Essential Services maintenance vendors disagreeing with other vendors about the standards.   And you get frustrated OCs wondering how come their building passed inspections for years then suddenly failed due to something that existed when it was first certified and occupied.  I’ve actually had our original registered building surveyor back on site to explain a couple of those to me.   And to their credit, they did.  So that’s an option for an OC/BC.

    The way I originally dealt with the issue, as an OC chair, was to learn what our Essential Services maintenance obligations actually were.  That’s was time consuming.  But it did at least allow me to converse with our Essential Services vendors in a much better way.

    I can say too that there are some good Essential Services vendors out there.  And that an OC is not obliged to use an inspection and testing vendor to carry out any repairs and replacements.  We often seek other quotes for the repairs and replacements part elsewhere.  But that’s more work for the OC.

    And I wrote a document, some of which is below, mostly for my own and the committee’s benefit.  It’s my opinion/experience only and sorry if it’s too long or too Victoria specific:

    Essential Services in Our Buildings

    General
    Owners (including Owners Corporations) are required by law to inspect, test, maintain and monitor the
    Essential Services that are listed on their Occupancy Permit according to the schedule stated on the permit. Owners are also required by law to produce an Annual Essential Safety Measures Report (AESMR).

    Legal Aspects
    The law does not specify who, apart from the owner, must inspect, test, maintain and monitor the Essential Services or produce the AESMR. The main requirements are that inspections and tests are done by a competent person at the required intervals, are properly logged for any future inspection and that monitoring should be continuous with a certain level of redundancy. If any faults are found due to the inspections and testing, the repair of any equipment must be done by licensed trades persons.
    That an Owners Corporation employs anyone to inspect, test, maintain and report on Essential Services is completely optional. There are no legal requirements for an OC to do so. That an Owners Corporation
    employs someone to continuously monitor an Essential Service is probably the only realistic option.
    Although the law allows an Owners Corporation to delegate the Essential Services duties to “specialist
    maintenance contractors”, an Owners Corporation is not compelled to employ anyone if they believe they have the competence to do the work themselves.

    Specialist Maintenance Contractors in Victoria
    Contractors who perform Essential Services “specialist maintenance” in Victoria need not be licensed nor must they have any formal qualifications. They must however be competent. The industry is, in effect, unregulated.

    Owners Corporations Options
    Because Essential Service inspections, testing, maintenance and monitoring are vital to the safety of all
    occupants of the building, it is probably wise for an Owners Corporation to employ Essential Services
    “specialist maintenance contractors”.

    What Exactly do the “Specialist Maintenance Contractors” do?
    Most of the routine inspection and testing of Essential Services is not complex and takes just minutes to
    perform. Some inspections and tests take longer but they are done at yearly or half yearly intervals. All
    inspections and tests however require on-site visits. Continuous Fire Alarm Monitoring, one of the most expensive items in Essential Services, is effectively a duopoly in Victoria. The two companies that offer the service use specialised radio equipment that remotely detects an alarm from our Fire Indicator Panel and automatically calls the fire brigade. The actual work that “specialist maintenance contractors” do seems poor value for money. The inspections often take just a short time each week (or month or quarter) yet cost thousands of dollars annually. At an hourly rate, the cost of the tests and inspections approaches $400/hour. If any repairs are required, they are charged separately.

    Our current vendor costs are however typical of the industry.

    We did later change vendors for a considerable savings.   The industry seems to be becoming more competitive.