Protect your business with a sprinkler

Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service supported the recent National Sprinkler Week campaign to raises awareness of the benefits of sprinkler systems in keeping businesses, buildings and people safe from fire.

The installation of a sprinkler system is a reliable and cost-effective way to protect your business and the people within it.

It often lowers your insurance premium and, in the event of a fire, the damage will be minimal, enabling business to carry on as usual without incurring any loss of income due to closure.

The provision of sprinkler systems is becoming increasingly incorporated into fire safety regulation. It is required in certain types of new-build premises, such as warehouses larger than 20,000m2 , and in other premises it is widely accepted as a compensatory feature.

It may not always be feasible to make structural alterations to an existing building to comply with the Fire Safety Order. However, because sprinklers reduce the growth rate of a fire and can sometimes extinguish it completely, Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Service, as the enforcing authority, will often accept the installation of sprinklers as compensatory measure. By limiting fire spread with sprinklers, less structural fire protection is required.

Controlled the fire in the early stages means occupants have more time to evacuate or, in some cases, avoids the need for evacuation. As a result, people on your premises are safer, as are the firefighters responding to any incident.

The benefits of sprinklers are not limited to life safety, but have an equally positive impact on property protection and business continuity. Research indicates that sprinkler systems operate on 94% of occasions and extinguish or contain fires on 99% of those occasions. This mean sprinklers reduce injuries by at least 80%, reduce property damage by 90% and substantially reduce damage to the environment from fire. It should be noted, too, that only sprinkler heads in the immediate vicinity of the fire will be activated – they will not flood the entire building.

For more information on sprinkler systems, please visit the British Automatic Fire Sprinkler Association’s website: https://www.bafsa.org.uk/