No matter how much planning you do, there are some eventualities you just can’t predict.
Take Carnival Corp’s Costa Concordia Cruise ship as an example. Despite the extensive procedures in place to ensure safe practice at all times, a few poor decisions can lead to catastrophic knock-on events.
The same can be said for fire stopping. Fire systems and their associated sensors are essential tools when protecting buildings from potentially disastrous accidents and sometimes, there’s just no accounting for what can happen.
As you may probably already know, smoke and/or heat sensors are placed all over buildings to trigger fire alarm activation, building evacuation and subsequent crisis management. These can be tripped accidentally and human error is undoubtedly the largest contributor. How many times has a sensor been tripped by burnt toast?
We recently completed some work for a major London client at a prestigious blue chip address. The type of work involved required the isolation of smoke headers to allow soldered joints to be fitted. Once the hot works were completed, all isolation was suspended.
Remember the part about eventualities you can’t predict?
Upon testing the pipework, a small leak was discovered which needed further repair. The test had to be completed under pressure and subsequently, water entered a smoke sensor.
Result: The fire alarm system was activated and the building evacuated. In future we will not remove isolation before testing.
Accidents are inevitability in our industry. They key is doing all you can to prevent them and managing them correctly as and when they occur.
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