Waking watch: when it earns its cost, and when it does not

Few things in building safety cause as much frustration as a waking watch. It is expensive, it is disruptive, and for many buildings it has quietly become permanent. So it is worth being clear about what a waking watch is actually for, when it is the right call, and how to make sure it does not become a standing charge with no end date.

What a waking watch is

A waking watch is a team of trained people who patrol a building continuously to detect a fire early and raise the alarm, so residents can be evacuated. It is an interim measure. It exists to buy time when the building's own fire safety arrangements cannot yet be relied on to keep people safe under the normal strategy, usually because a serious defect has been found, often in the external wall or in compartmentation.

The key word is interim. A waking watch is a bridge, not a destination. It is meant to hold the line while a permanent fix is designed and delivered, or while a proper common alarm system is installed.

When it earns its cost

There are situations where a waking watch is exactly right. If an assessment finds that the "stay put" strategy can no longer be justified, and there is no common fire alarm that would allow a move to simultaneous evacuation, then something has to cover that gap immediately. A waking watch does that. For a short, defined period, while an alarm is installed or an urgent defect is made safe, it is proportionate and sometimes unavoidable.

When it stops earning its cost

The problem is the waking watch that never ends. National guidance has been clear for some time that in most cases a common fire alarm system is a more reliable and far more cost-effective way of achieving the same early warning, and that a waking watch should generally be replaced by an alarm within weeks, not left running for years. When a watch runs on month after month, the cost falls on leaseholders, and the sums are eye-watering compared with the one-off cost of installing an alarm.

If your building has had a waking watch in place for more than a short period, the questions to ask are simple. Why is it still here? What is it bridging to, and when does that arrive? Would a common alarm let us stand it down? Has anyone actually costed the alarm against the ongoing watch?

The independence point

This is a good example of where independent advice pays for itself. A firm that supplies waking watch staff has little reason to tell you the watch could be stood down. A firm that installs alarms has every reason to tell you it should. An adviser who sells neither can look at your building and tell you which is genuinely right, and when.

That is the seat OmniFire sits in. We do not supply waking watch teams and we do not install alarms. So when we say a watch is justified, or that it is long past time to replace it with an alarm, that advice is about your building and your leaseholders' money, not about our next invoice.

If you have a waking watch running and you are not sure it still needs to be, that is worth a conversation. Email s.coogan@omnifire.co.uk.