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It isn't a pay us or die ethic, Lenny.
I grant that it is a case of pay for the commissioning or do without.
But that was, or should have been, a consideration for both the designer and the owner at the the time of design of the system, when that particular protocol was established.
If you use them that regularly, why not explore the option of becoming approved by them, and reducing cost that way? I don't know which company you're moaning about of course.
When they sign off on the commissioning of the devices added, they ARE taking responsibility for the design of the system - it is NOT retrospective in any way. And trust me, it will be them in court, should the system fail at any point after those changes, and should it result in criminal damage or loss of life. The owner's insurance company will make pretty damn sure of that.
The point is, that protocol was designed into the system for a reason, we presume. That's part of the cost overall of using that protocol in that system, and from a purely commercial point of view is why folks need to understand "cost of ownership" as a terminology, rather than "how much to get the fire officer off my back and stop the place getting closed down".
Thing is, who are you going to come after if your customer phones you to say he's just lost his business premises, all his business records, and thirty people got burned to death because the fire alarm didn't work? On an open or unlicenced protocol system, there's only one place to go - the person with responsibility for the system - you, if you were the last person working on that system. Then your insurer is going to start looking closely with the customer's insurer, at how you did the work, how you tested it, how you designed it, what care you took to ensure the system worked at the time, why it didn't work when it needed to and so on. They'll look at you, and your qualifications, expertise, competence, and when they decide that you were "only an electrician" (sad, but true), they'll throw the proverbial book at you.
That's the risk any company involved in fire alarm systems takes every day. While it seems extreme, it is all fact, and evidence exists everywhere to bear out what I say.
The key difference between an electrical installation, and a fire alarm system, generally, is that an electrical system whilst a potential risk to life, has so many levels of in built protection to ensure that risk is mitigated as far as possible. A fire detection system, by nature cannot have that. It relies 100% on knowledge - of design principally, to do what it needs to in the event of fire. It can't shut the fire down on its own, but by all accounts it absolutely must provide the earliest possible warning that fire has broken out.
No, that's not true.
Look - I didn't want this to descend into some sort of one "trade" is better than another - but I did want it understood that, certainly in the case of fire, a specialism really is a specialism, and not just a way of making money.
The truth is, while our commissioning rates are roughly twice what our general labour rates are, the margin on commissioning is no greater - we "make" exactly the same amount per hour on commissioning as we do on cable pulling. But for my commissioning guys, I have extra layers of cost that my cable pulling guys don't attract - training and education, extra kit and tools, market forces (I want the best guys, not just guys who know how to use a laptop), and so on.
Manufacturers are the same - they need to pay for protection of their protocol, development of it, development of the detection that works with it, development of the control panels that work with it, knowledge of the standards and requirements at all levels to ensure their kit will comply when installed, and will continue to do so as changes take place, as well as all the stuff I have to pay my commissioners for.
It all comes back to the original point - DESIGN.
There was (probably) a reason that licenced protocol system was used over and above anything available off the shelf - why was that? Particular C&E requirements, size of system, other reason?
That's why, today, you're paying £120 an hour for use of the protocol, and continued design protection - as I say, the design is not retrospective - it applies at the point of commission, and as such, that bod with his plug in lappy, is your man when the barbeque starts, whether he likes it or not.
