For a step by step guide to setting up your site please see the link to the Marshal Eye user guide.

We often say the fire alarm is the beating heart of your fire strategy. The person looking at the fire panel must be able to understand it and interpret what it is saying. There are many examples in the past where lives or buildings have been lost due to misinterpretation of the fire panel, famously Notre Dame in Paris lost a huge section of its roof in 2019, after the security team didn’t understand the panel and checked the wrong area of the premises. Fire loves time, your job is to rob the fire of time by early detection and discovery. We recommend that you include the PIN number to reset the panel, or the location of the key for key operated systems for the person who claims the role of fire alarm investigator.

Formal training on the use of fire, extinguishers will empower the staff to make a decision as to whether they want to deal with a fire. It is important to note that the person that discovers a fire retains the right to decide. Importantly whether they find a fire or not, they should always close the door to ensure residual smoke doesn’t move around the premises. Interestingly, fire alarms are very sensitive and often come on before Fire starts, because they pick up on the pyrolytic gases that are released when something is overheating or even if toast is beginning to burn. In many cases, the fire marshal will find a problem and simply isolate, the appliance or pop the toast up which means a fire never happened. this is one of the true benefits of carrying out a sweep. It may be the Marshal or the Fire Alarm investigator that discover the problem. If a fire is discovered you can consider tackling it if it is around the size of a bin, producing very little smoke, you know what class of fire it is and you’ve had some formal fire extinguisher training.

Roll calls are a good thing to do, but often can take time, the important thing to get right is the sweep/search of the building. We say the Roll Call is the ‘icing on the cake’, but it is important to get the cake right first! If somebody is identified as missing on a roll call, you may have missed your opportunity to get that person out. A sweep will ensure the building is completely clear, it will also allow you to fully lock down the building to restrict the spread of fire and smoke. Crucially one of the staff will discover the problem and potentially deal with it in the very early stages. In summary a sweep is critically important and a Roll Call is a ‘nice to have’. In some buildings it is impossible to know how many people or who is in there, think of shops or other places where public have access. Sweeps are bomb proof as long as all areas are covered. The Marshal Eye has the facility for you to load up a plan that is viewable the person that claims that sweep area.

By law, you should be carrying out evacuation drills once a year, if you have a high turnover of staff, then you may need to do more drills, also, if you have shift workers, you should expose each shift to a drill. You also need to evidence this. The Marshal Eye will produce a perfect report for you, it can be printed as evidence for audits. It will allow you monitor how efficient the building response was including the speed of role adoption and completion all tasks which will be recorded. This will assist you and allow you to review your provision.

There are four benefits to having people undertake sweeps, firstly, everybody gets a prompt to evacuate, we know fire alarms are often ignored certainly by contractors and visitors to sites, these would be your responsibility. This is down to something called ‘confirmation bias’, people assume it will be false and wait for secondary signals before they start to respond. Doors are often left open, but marshals can close them as they proceed around their claimed area compartmentalising the building. Critically one of the marshals will find the fire and potentially be able to deal with it in the very early stages. Finally they can carry out area specific actions isolating equipment or picking up a roll calls etc.