Fire Protection maintenance regulations in Spain, UNE 23580
The Regulations for maintenance of Fire Protection Installations in Spain UNE 23580, in its different parts, establishes the minimums that a maintenance certificate must contain for each of the protection systems against fires, indicating some verification points that must be reflected in them, with their corresponding periodicity.
In this sense, it should be noted that despite the fact that RIPCI (RD 513/2017) indicates that the operations contained in table I and III thereof; that is to say, the quarterly, semi-annual and annual luminescent signage must always be recorded in a maintenance record, when these are carried out by personnel of the owner or user of the installation, they must not necessarily comply with UNE 23580, but they must contain some minimums, which are:
- Type of product or system, brand and model.
- Univocal identification of the product or system (eg: by identifying the serial number, location,…).
- Maintenance operations carried out and result.
- In case of incidents, proposed actions.
Who must sign the FP maintenance records
The certificates of maintenance of fire-fighting installations must be signed by the person(s) responsible for carrying out the maintenance and the representative of the property owner of the installation.
PCI maintenance records must be kept for at least five years.
They must also be provided to the company authorized as maintenance of fire protection facilities with which they have signed a maintenance contract, when it is going to carry out the annual review, as well as to the competent authority at its request.
Contract for the maintenance of fire protection installations
Regarding the maintenance contract, it is also important to know that RD 513/2017 indicates that a maintenance contract must be signed with a duly authorized maintenance company that covers, at least, the maintenance of equipment and systems according to table II of RD 513/2017.
Exceptionally, it may be exempted from having it if the owner of the installation is authorized as a maintainer and has the minimum means to carry out the necessary operations, assuming the execution and responsibility of maintenance.
Should FP maintenance always be carried out in compliance with regulations?
An interesting topic to discuss is the following. Although the RIPCI speaks of maintenance with a periodicity greater than three months, there are certain operations marked in the different UNE standards of each of the systems with a lower periodicity that must be carried out.
For example, the UNE 12845 standard for automatic sprinklers establishes a series of operations to be carried out weekly in the water supply system (pump room).
Among another series of checks, the most striking thing is that it indicates that the diesel engine must be started for at least 20 minutes, in addition to another series of checks such as the manual and automatic start of each of the bombs.
Therefore, in the case of water supply, these operations must be taken into account and carried out when a facility has sprinklers, in addition to those contemplated in its own standard.
