Fire alarm due a service, or nobody answering? Call 029 2068 9339
Service 03 / 06 Fire & security systems
Fire detection and alarm systems designed to BS 5839, installed, commissioned and serviced by our own engineers — and we will take on a system somebody else fitted. Emergency lighting, CCTV, access control and door entry alongside it. BAFE registered for all four fire alarm disciplines, not just one.
Working to
01 Scope
Two related jobs under one roof. Fire detection, alarm systems and emergency lighting on the life-safety side; cameras, access control and door entry on the other. Same engineers, same certificates, one number to ring.
Life safety · BS 5839 · BS 5266
01
Every system starts with a design to BS 5839: what is being protected, the category that follows from it, where the detection goes and what happens when a device operates. Written down before anything is ordered.
BS 5839 · BAFE SP203-1 design
02
Panels, detection, call points, sounders and beacons installed by our own engineers — cable and containment included, phased around people still using the building where it has to be.
BAFE SP203-1 installation
03
Every device proved, the panel programmed, the cause and effect demonstrated rather than assumed, and whoever runs the building shown how to use it. Then the certificate and the drawings.
BAFE SP203-1 commissioning & handover
04
Planned service visits through the year, the devices worked through in turn, faults reported in plain English, and every visit recorded. Your weekly test goes in the same record.
BAFE SP203-1 maintenance
05
Lighting that comes on when the normal supply fails, designed to BS 5266: escape routes, stairs, open areas and the fittings above the doors people are meant to use. Testing and certification is covered on the maintenance page.
BS 5266 · Design & installation
06
Houses, flats, HMOs and rented property. Interlinked detection fitted to suit the layout and the way the property is let, tested and certified when it is finished. Same engineers as the commercial work.
Landlords · HMOs · Homeowners
Commercial · Social housing · Domestic
01
Camera systems for commercial premises, communal areas and homes. We survey the coverage first, so the cameras end up looking at the parts of the site you actually care about rather than the ones easiest to reach.
CCTV installation · Coverage surveyed
02
Set up so you can look at your own cameras from a phone, a tablet or a computer, wherever you are. The system is yours and the footage stays with you — we do not watch it for you.
Remote viewing · Your footage, your system
03
Deciding who gets through which door, and having a record of it. Readers, door controllers and the cabling behind them, on anything from one front door to a site with a hundred.
Access control installers · South Wales
04
Fobs and cards issued, lost ones cancelled the same day, and the door hardware — maglocks, strikes, break-glass release and the green emergency exit button — wired so the door still lets people out.
Fobs & cards · Safe egress
05
Speak to whoever is at the door and, if you want it, see them. Handsets indoors, or calls put through to a phone so a caretaker covering four buildings is not tied to one panel in one lobby.
Audio & video intercoms
06
Door entry systems for blocks and communal buildings, including wireless systems such as Intratone that avoid a cable run into every flat, and CAME Entrotec door entry. We fit what suits the block.
Door entry systems · Cardiff & South Wales
02 Who it's for
Responsible persons, facilities managers and housing officers most of the time — and landlords and homeowners who want detection fitted properly. The duty is the same shape whether you look after one building or four hundred.
01
Social landlords and managing agents: communal fire detection, emergency lighting in stairwells and corridors, and door entry to blocks — including wireless systems that avoid pulling cable through every flat. We already work for housing associations across South Wales.
02
Several buildings, one schedule and one person to ring. Service dates planned round your year, and the certificates and next due dates in one place instead of four filing cabinets.
03
Buildings that are occupied every hour of every day. Work planned so residents are disturbed as little as possible, DBS-checked engineers, and testing timed to suit the people living there rather than us.
04
Installation and replacement worked round term dates and exam weeks — we have carried out major refurbishment projects for WJEC / CBAC — with servicing booked in the holidays where it makes sense.
05
New systems on a fit-out, replacements for panels that have come to the end of their life, cameras and access control on the same visit, and out-of-hours working so trading is not interrupted.
06
Interlinked detection in a house, an HMO or a rented property, fitted to suit the layout and certified when it is done. Not a sideline — the same engineers do it.
Third-party certified
Design, installation, commissioning and handover, and maintenance. Registered organisation 302846.
As standard
Risk assessments and method statements are produced as standard on commercial work, and issued to you before the first visit.
As standard
Our engineers are DBS checked, which matters when the work is in someone's home, a school, a care setting or an occupied block.
In-house
Our own directly employed engineers do the electrical work. Non-electrical trades such as scaffold or roofing may be brought in where a job needs them.
Account
One person who knows your buildings, your service dates and what is installed in them. No call centre, no ticket number, no repeating yourself.
03 How it works
Five stages, and the first one costs you nothing. The design is agreed in writing before anything is ordered, and you finish with a certificate, a logbook and a set of dates rather than a box on the wall and a shrug.
01
We come out, walk the building and talk about how it is used, who is in it and how they would get out. Then you get a written quote setting out what is included and what is not. Both are free, whether it is a new system, a replacement, a takeover or a couple of cameras.
02
We write down what the system is there to protect and the category that follows from it, because that is what decides where every detector goes. Zones, device schedule, panel location and the cause and effect — what should happen when a device operates — all agreed before an order is placed.
03
Containment and cable first, then the panel, the detection, the call points and the sounders. In an occupied block or a care setting the work is phased so people are not left without detection overnight, and we tell residents what is happening before we knock on the door.
04
Every device is operated and proved, the panel is programmed and the cause and effect is demonstrated rather than assumed. Then a walk round with whoever runs the building — how to silence it, how to reset it, where the zone chart is — and the certificate and drawings for the file.
05
Planned service visits from there on, with the devices worked through in turn over the year. Your own weekly test is recorded in the same place. On a maintenance contract that record is the digital fire alarm logbook in the CJS client portal, so it cannot be left on a windowsill and lost.
If your system is on a contract with us
Maintenance-contract clients get same-day attendance, and we work to a four-hour target for emergencies. That is the point of the contract: an agreed response you can put in front of an auditor, not a hope.
If it is not on a contract yet
We will always try. Out-of-hours and 24-hour call-outs are available at our discretion — call 029 2068 9339 and we will do our best. We would rather say that honestly than promise a response we cannot always keep.
04 Takeover
A fire alarm does not stop being your responsibility because the firm that fitted it has gone quiet, put its prices up or stopped turning up. We take over the servicing and maintenance of systems we did not install — open protocol only, which is the one thing we will not budge on.
01
We come out and look at the panel, the detection and what the system is set to do, then tell you in writing what condition it is in and what it would cost to maintain. If we are not the right firm for it, we will say so.
Free survey · Written findings
02
Missing certificates, no logbook, no zone chart, nobody left who knows what the panel does. We record what is installed, where the zones are and what happens when a device operates, so there is something to hand an inspector.
Zone chart · Records · Logbook
03
If the system falls short of what it should have been built to, we tell you what it would take to put right and what that costs. Then you decide: do it, phase it or leave it. The takeover does not depend on you buying the remedial work.
No bundling · Your decision
04
Service dates set, your weekly test recorded in the digital logbook, and the next due dates visible in the client portal. From that point it is looked after, and you stop being the person who has to remember.
Planned visits · Next dates visible
Takeovers usually arrive as part of a wider maintenance conversation — fixed wire testing, emergency lighting, portable appliance testing and the rest of the year's compliance work. That side of things is set out properly on the maintenance page. Maintenance & compliance
05 Plain English
Fire safety comes wrapped in law, standards and abbreviations, and most of it is written for people who already know. Here is the same thing in the words we would use if we were standing in your corridor.
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, every non-domestic building in England and Wales has a responsible person. Usually that is the employer, the owner, or whoever else has control of the premises. For a block of flats it is whoever is responsible for the common parts — the landlord, the freeholder or the managing agent.
Among other things, the fire safety equipment in the building has to be kept in efficient working order and in good repair, and you have to be able to show that it is. We cannot take that duty off you, and neither can anybody else. What we can do is design the system properly, install it properly, service it on time and hand you the record that shows the duty is being met.
A fire alarm service is
A planned inspection and test by a competent engineer: the panel, the detection, the sounders and the cause and effect, worked through on a schedule, faults reported and the visit certificated.
A fire alarm service is not
The weekly test somebody in the building does at a call point. That one is yours to carry out and to record. Both are needed, and neither replaces the other — the missing weekly record is what auditors notice first.
BS 5839 sorts fire alarm systems by what they are there to protect. A category M system is manual only: call points and sounders, no automatic detection, so somebody has to raise it. Categories beginning with L protect life, and the number after the L says how much of the building gets automatic detection — from escape routes only, up to detection throughout. Categories beginning with P protect property, which is usually the insurer's interest rather than yours.
The category is a design decision and it should be written down. If nobody can tell you what category your system was designed to, establishing that is the first useful thing anybody can do for you — and it is where our survey starts.
We design and install emergency lighting to BS 5266: escape routes, stairs, changes of level, open areas and the fittings above the doors people are actually meant to use. It is life-safety work and it belongs next to the fire alarm, which is why it sits on this page.
The ongoing side — the monthly function test, the annual full-duration test and the certificates that go with them — is maintenance work, and it is set out properly on our maintenance and compliance page rather than repeated here. Most clients have us do both.
The paper logbook by the panel is a good idea that fails in practice: it goes missing, it gets filled in three weeks late, and the one time somebody asks to see it, nobody knows where it is. Maintenance-contract clients get a digital fire alarm logbook in the CJS client portal instead. The weekly test is recorded there, along with our service visits, the certificates and the next due dates. When someone asks for evidence, it is a login away rather than a phone call to us.
The portal is available with maintenance contracts — it is in use with some of our clients today and we are rolling it out more widely. There is more about it on the maintenance and compliance page.
We are not tied to one make. These are the door entry systems you are most likely to see on our jobs, and we specify what suits the building or what your specification calls for.
Fire alarm work is certificated: a design certificate, an installation certificate and a commissioning certificate, depending on which parts of the job we carried out for you. With them come the zone chart, the cause and effect and the operating information for the panel. Emergency lighting gets its own completion certificate. Keep all of it — it is what an inspector, an insurer or the next contractor will ask to see. The electrical installation behind it is certified separately, and that side is covered on our electrical and data installations page.
06 Why CJS
A fire alarm is the one system in a building nobody looks at until the day it matters. It is worth knowing who is standing behind it, and what they are assessed on.
Accreditation
Registered organisation 302846. Design, installation, commissioning and handover, and maintenance — third-party certified for all four, not one.
Accreditation
The electrical work behind the system is assessed against BS 7671, the UK wiring regulations, by the leading certification body for the industry.
Sign-off
Inspection and testing is signed off by a Qualified Supervisor. Your certificates carry a named, accountable signature.
Insurance
Cover of £10m public liability and £10m employer's liability. Certificates are available on request.
Track record
Over 38 years working across Wales — commercial, industrial, education, social housing and domestic, from one detector to a whole block.
Labour
Our own directly employed engineers do the electrical work. The same faces come back for the service visits, and they already know your building.
07 Questions
Yes. CJS is a BAFE registered organisation, ID 302846, under scheme SP203-1 — the third-party certification scheme for fire detection and alarm systems. We hold all four modules: design, installation, commissioning and handover, and maintenance. That matters because the certification then covers the whole life of the system rather than one slice of it, so the firm that designed it can install it, commission it and keep it serviced without you having to join three companies together. We are also a NICEIC Approved Contractor for the electrical work behind it.
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. If the firm that fitted your system has stopped answering the phone, put its prices somewhere unreasonable or simply stopped turning up, we will come out and survey what is actually installed, tell you in writing what condition it is in, and take it onto a service schedule from the next visit. Where the paperwork has gone missing we rebuild it: what is installed, where the zones are and what the panel is set to do. Anything the system falls short on is priced separately, so you can put it right, phase it or leave it — the takeover does not depend on you buying the remedial work. The one thing we will not take on is a closed protocol system, where the panel only accepts devices from a single manufacturer and only that manufacturer's approved firms can service it. That is the trap: it locks you to one supplier at their price. Everything we install is open protocol, so whoever you use next is your choice, not the panel's.
The usual arrangement is two service visits a year, about six months apart, with each visit working through a share of the devices so that everything has been tested over the course of the year. On top of that, somebody in the building tests one call point a week and records it — a different one each week. That part is yours to do rather than ours, and it is the first thing an inspector asks to see. Larger or higher-risk buildings sometimes need visits more often; we will tell you what yours needs when we survey it, rather than selling everyone the same contract.
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, every non-domestic building in England and Wales has a responsible person: usually the employer, the owner, or whoever else has control of the premises. For a block of flats it is whoever is responsible for the common parts. Among other things, the fire safety equipment has to be kept in efficient working order and in good repair, and you need to be able to show that it is. Nobody can take that duty off you. What we can do is design and install the system properly, service it on time, and hand you the records that show the duty is being met.
We design and install emergency lighting to BS 5266 — escape routes, stairs, changes of level, open areas and the fittings above the doors people are meant to use when the normal lighting fails. The ongoing testing side, which is the monthly function test and the annual full-duration test with the certificates that go with them, is maintenance work: it is set out in detail on our maintenance and compliance page rather than repeated here. Most clients have us do both, and it is the same engineers either way.
Yes. We install camera systems for commercial premises, communal areas and homes, and they are set up so you can view your own cameras remotely from a phone, a tablet or a computer. We survey the coverage before deciding where cameras go, so they end up pointed at what you care about. To be clear about what we are not: we do not watch your cameras for you and we do not offer a key-holding or guarding service. The system is yours, and the footage stays with you.
Yes. Wireless door entry systems such as Intratone are built for exactly that situation: the panel at the entrance reaches the flats without a cable run into each one, which matters in an occupied block where getting into every home is the expensive and disruptive part of the job. We also install CAME Entrotec door entry, audio and video intercoms, and access control on fobs or cards, with calls put through to a phone where a caretaker covers several buildings. We are not tied to any one make and will tell you what suits the block.
Yes, and it is the same engineers and the same standards as the commercial work. What a property needs depends on the layout and on how it is let: an HMO is a different job from a single family home, and a flat in a block is different again because the communal system matters too. We will tell you what the property actually needs and fit interlinked detection to suit it, rather than putting up the cheapest thing that gets past. The visit and the written quote are free, and you get a certificate when the work is done.
08 Free quote
Tell us what is in the building now — or what is not — and we will reply within one working day. The survey and the written quote cost you nothing, whether it is a new system, a takeover or a couple of cameras.
We have your details and will reply within one working day to arrange the visit. If it is urgent, call the office on 029 2068 9339.