Sprinkler Impairment Management
Impairment management ensures that planned or unplanned outages of sprinkler and fire suppression systems are controlled, compensated and ended as quickly as possible.
Why it is critical
A significant share of major fire losses in sprinklered facilities occurs while the system is fully or partially shut off – during alterations, maintenance or after freeze damage. The protective value of the system is only as good as the management of its downtime.
Core elements
A formal authorisation and tag system (impairment tags), notification of plant security, fire brigade and the property insurer before planned impairments, compensating measures (no-smoking enforcement, suspension of hot work, additional patrol rounds, charged hose lines) and prioritised restoration – impairments as short as possible and never unattended overnight or over weekends.
Insurance relevance
Leading property insurers require notification of longer impairments. A documented impairment programme improves the risk assessment and avoids coverage discussions after an event.