How often should an intruder alarm be serviced?
Visit frequency, what a maintenance visit covers, and how to keep a growing maintenance list on schedule.
Ask most alarm customers when their system was last serviced and you’ll get a shrug. Ask their insurer and you’ll get a very different answer. Maintenance is what keeps an intruder alarm working, keeps police response in place and keeps the installer’s certification body happy, so it pays to be clear about how often it has to happen and what a visit should cover.
The short answer
For installers working to the codes of practice used by NSI and SSAIB, the usual minimums are:
| Type of system | Preventive maintenance visits |
|---|---|
| Remote signalling (monitored by an alarm receiving centre) | At least two a year |
| Audible only (bells only), with mains power and a rechargeable standby battery | At least one a year |
The current British Standard for commissioning and maintenance is BS 9263, and NSI and SSAIB each publish their own codes on top of it. Some arrangements allow one of the two visits on a monitored system to be carried out as remote maintenance where the equipment supports it. The detail changes from time to time, so check the current wording with your certification body rather than relying on what you were taught when you started.
Why it matters to your customer
Customers often see the maintenance visit as an optional extra. It isn’t, for three reasons worth explaining at the point of sale.
Police response depends on it. A monitored system with police response has to be installed and maintained by a company certified by a UKAS accredited body such as NSI or SSAIB. If maintenance lapses, response can be withdrawn, and getting it back is slow.
Insurance often depends on it. Commercial policies in particular can make a maintained alarm a condition of cover. A claim after a break in is a bad time for the customer to discover the system hasn’t been serviced for two years.
Batteries and detectors don’t last for ever. Standby batteries lose capacity, detectors get knocked or painted over, and wireless devices run their own batteries down. A visit finds these problems before a false alarm or a missed activation does.
What a maintenance visit should cover
Every company has its own checklist, but a good preventive visit usually includes:
- Reading the panel’s event log for faults, tampers and false alarms since the last visit
- Testing the standby battery under load, and replacing it if it’s near the end of its life
- Walk testing every detector and checking it still covers the area it was fitted for
- Checking tamper circuits, fixings, cabling and any wireless signal strengths
- Testing the sounder, strobe and any internal sounders
- Testing every signalling path to the alarm receiving centre, with the ARC told first
- Reviewing user codes, fobs and keyholder details with the customer
- Recording what was found and done, and leaving the customer a copy
That last point is the one most often skipped. A signed record of each visit protects you if there’s ever a dispute, and it’s what your auditor will ask to see.
Keeping the maintenance round on time
The hard part isn’t doing the visits. It’s making sure none are missed as the customer list grows. A few habits make a big difference.
Know who is due before they are overdue
Work from the date of the last visit, not from memory. A list of customers due in the next month, refreshed every week, is enough for most companies.
Let customers pick the time
Phoning round to arrange visits eats hours. Sending each customer a link to book a slot that suits them, early in the morning when they’re most likely to read it, fills the diary with far less back and forth.
Group visits by area
When a customer books, look at who else nearby is due. Two visits on the same street are a lot cheaper to deliver than two visits on opposite sides of the county.
Collect the money monthly
Maintenance paid by monthly Direct Debit renews itself. The risk is a payment quietly failing and nobody noticing until the next visit is due, so keep an eye on failed collections and follow them up quickly.
How CRM Ground helps
CRM Ground was built alongside a working security installer, so the maintenance round is at the centre of it. You can send service invites with a booking link at 8am on the day you choose, see other booked visits within 10 miles when planning, complete your own maintenance checklist on the engineer’s phone with photos and a signature, and see every customer’s GoCardless plan with failed collections flagged. See how it works for alarm installers.
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