What Should Your Fire Safety Contractor Be Doing?

Your building has a fire safety contractor. They attend regularly, service the equipment, and send through a report confirming everything is in order. That report forms part of the basis for your Annual Essential Safety Measures Report. Most Owners Corporations accept it at face value.

The question worth asking is: do you actually know what they are supposed to be doing, and how would you know if something was being missed?

What a fire safety contractor is responsible for

In Victoria, buildings classified as Class 2 and above are required under the Building Act 1993 and associated regulations to maintain their essential safety measures in a functional condition at all times. The responsibility for carrying out that maintenance sits with whoever holds the relevant service contracts, in most cases, one or more specialist fire safety contractors.

Their core obligation is straightforward in principle: service each essential safety measure in accordance with the maintenance standard specified for it, record what was done, record any defects found, and provide documentation that can be used to substantiate the building's compliance position at year end.

In practice, that covers a wide range of equipment and routines, depending on what is installed in the building.

What they are actually servicing

Essential safety measures vary significantly between buildings depending on when the building was constructed, what the occupancy permit specifies, and what systems have been installed. Common ESM items include fire extinguishers, hose reels, fire hydrants, sprinkler systems, fire indicator panels, emergency lighting, exit signage, smoke detection systems, mechanical ventilation, stairwell pressurisation systems, and paths of travel.

Each of these has a maintenance standard mostly governed by Australian Standard AS 1851, that specifies what routines need to be performed, at what frequency, and what constitutes a satisfactory outcome. Monthly routines, quarterly routines, six-monthly routines, and annual routines are all common. A building with a sprinkler system and a fire indicator panel will have significantly more service requirements than a building with only extinguishers and emergency lighting.

The contractor's job is not simply to turn up and tick a box. It is to perform each required routine at the correct frequency, to the correct standard, and to document the outcome in a way that is traceable.

Where things commonly go wrong

The most common failures in fire safety contractor performance are not dramatic. They tend to be quiet and gradual, and they often go unnoticed until an annual audit or an insurance review surfaces them.

Incomplete service schedules. A contractor may attend monthly for a sprinkler check and do so reliably. But the six-monthly and annual routines, which are more involved and more expensive to deliver, quietly do not happen. From the outside, someone is attending every month, so everything looks fine. The records tell a different story.

Scope gaps against the occupancy permit. The occupancy permit for a building specifies what essential safety measures are present and what standard they must be maintained to. Contractors tend to service what they have been contracted to service, which is not always everything the occupancy permit requires. Items outside their standard scope, passive fire systems, certain mechanical services, older or non-standard equipment, can fall through the gap.

Defects recorded but not followed up. A contractor identifies a defect and records it correctly. That defect then sits open for months, sometimes years, with no active follow-up from anyone. The contractor is not always responsible for driving rectification but the defect is not being resolved either.

Documentation that is incomplete or inconsistent. Service records that do not clearly identify which routines were performed, which ESM items were covered, or what the outcome of each check was. Records that make it difficult to verify whether a required routine actually happened.

None of these necessarily reflect dishonesty. They reflect the practical reality that contractors are running businesses, managing multiple buildings and crews, and operating in an environment where no one is independently checking their output on a regular basis.

What the records should show

A well-documented service record from a fire safety contractor should allow a reader to understand, for each visit: which ESM items were inspected or serviced, what routine was performed, what the outcome was, whether any defects were identified, and what action was taken or recommended.

For a building with multiple contractors; one for fire systems, one for mechanical services, one for emergency lighting,  there should be records from each contractor that together cover the full scope of ESM items on the occupancy permit. If there are gaps in that coverage, the AESMR that eventually gets produced cannot accurately attest to the building's full compliance position.

What the AESMR relies on

The Annual Essential Safety Measures Report is a statutory document, a formal attestation that the essential safety measures in your building have been maintained and are functioning as required. The person who signs it is taking professional responsibility for that statement.

That statement is only as good as the records it is based on. If the contractor's service records are incomplete, if routines have been missed, or if defects have been left open, the AESMR may not accurately reflect the building's actual compliance position, even if it is signed and filed.

This is why the identity of the AESMR signatory matters. A contractor who prepares and signs the AESMR based on their own service records has no independent check on whether those records are complete or accurate. There is no one reviewing whether the routines were actually performed as required, whether the scope covered everything the occupancy permit requires, or whether the defect record is honest.

The question worth asking

Most strata managers and OC committees have a general sense of whether their contractor is reliable. What is much harder to answer without independent oversight, is whether the records support the compliance position that the AESMR asserts.

The practical questions are these: Does your contractor's service scope cover every ESM item listed on your occupancy permit? Are all required routines being performed at the correct frequency, including the six-monthly and annual ones? Are defects being recorded accurately and followed up? And when the AESMR is signed at the end of the year, is it being signed by someone who has independently verified the answers to those questions or by the same contractor who performed the work?

If you are not certain of the answers, that uncertainty is worth addressing. Independent quarterly review of contractor records is the most practical way to do it, and the point at which most gaps surface is well before annual certification, when there is still time to act.