Fire Safety Order

Our strata of 40 units (in a 5-story building) has just been issued with
Council's intention to issue a Fire Safety Order. The building is only about 20 years old – built in 1990 as hotel/motel converted to Strata in 2002. When the building was approved for occupancy by the council it was obviously deemed to meet of the fire safety regulations/legislation. Also we’ve consistently had an annual fire safety inspection & certificate completed by an independent contractor. The list of items on the order is quite extensive but the major works include:

• Installing fire dampers/collars in wall/ceiling penetration
  areas (e.g. servicing ducts)
• Installing an automatic fire detection & alarm system throughout the building with a fire indicator panel to be managed by the occupants of the building (the majority of occupants are tenants and currently there are only smoke alarms in each unit)
• Installing sprinklers, fire windows/shutters or thermal alarms on/near bathroom windows

Has anyone ever had any experience/success with challenging aspects of a council order such as this? I am very conscious of the need to provide a safe living environment (especially re. multiple dwellings) but is some of this going overboard? Council appears to be working their way through inspecting every Strata and applying fire safety standards retrospectively?

Tamara