Below, the full version of an article in the September print issue of Professional Security
Stewart Taylor of Cooper Security offers some thoughts on the new European alarm standards. He is the alarm product manufacturer’s Technical Director, and Chairman of the BSIA TC/1 manufacturers’ technical committee.
At the end of October 2005 some parts of BS4737, the alarm standard that has served us well, will be consigned to the dustbin of history and replaced by PD6662:2004, a new version of DD243 and some parts of the European alarm standard EN50131. Just how we got into this situation is a story in itself – a mini-saga driven in Europe by a variety of vested interests and taken up in the UK by people who perhaps didn’t quite realise what they were getting into. One day, perhaps, someone will tell this story. In the meantime the UK industry has to figure out how to operate in the new environment.
Over the past couple of years I have been watching with some amusement as various articles about EN50131 have appeared in the security press. These have followed a broadly similar pattern. Firstly they have trotted out parts of the EN50131-1 systems standard pretty much word-for-word, presumably in the hope that nobody would say: "Excuse me, what exactly does that really mean?" Then they have gone on to highlight a few issues like ‘bigger batteries’, ‘risk assessment’ etc. concluding with something along the lines of: ‘it’s all going to be perfectly straightforward, trust us we know what we’re doing’. Those who penned these reassuring articles believed that compliance with EN50131 was going to be largely a matter of the equipment manufacturers producing suitable equipment for installers to pick off the shelf. I have noticed that we don’t seem to see so many of these articles of late and perhaps we can guess why. Maybe it has dawned that it’s actually not going to be quite that simple after all.
The BSIA technical committees, at first horrified by the folly of a reckless commitment to introduce an incomplete and very imperfect standard by October 2004, opted to face up to the challenge and set about considering how to make it work. There are three reasons why this was necessary. Firstly the standards conflicted with each other. This arose partly because the system standard (EN50131-1) contains far too much detail about matters that should be (and often are) in the relevant component standards. For instance, EN50131-1 contains statements about how control panels should function that conflict with statements about the same functions in EN50131-3. Secondly, the dates of the few standards that have made it to publication are out of synchronisation, so one section of the standard might call up a reference to another section that is soon to be rendered obsolete. It’s a mess. Lastly, many of the standards are written in ambiguous terms and it is not always obvious what they mean.
We slogged away for days in the various sub-committees working out what we thought was in the minds of the standards writers and the end result is a series of guidelines published by BSIA. These provide an agreed framework within which manufacturers can design equipment to a commonly agreed UK interpretation. The Guidelines documents have no ‘official’ status but they have been agreed between the UK manufacturers and (we hope) the inspectorates and should go some way towards resolving situations where there is doubt about whether a certain equipment feature is deemed to comply with the standard or not. The fact that these guidelines run to a total of some xx pages bears witness to the scale of the ambiguities in the EN50131 standards.
We can take some pride in this work. The rest of Europe has just ignored the Cenelec edict to withdraw national standards by March 2004 on the basis that it was considered ridiculous. In the UK we have tried to make the best of a bad job and our guidelines have been well received by our European counterparts.
What are conscientious installers supposed to do to equip themselves for the new era? A copy of the following documents is essential:
PD6662:2004. This is the document that says how it’s going to work in the UK. It is primarily a list of the relevant standards, of which there are rather fewer than you might imagine. This is because some of the standards weren’t published when PD6662 was released, or because they simply don’t exist yet, or because there are gaps in the European standard. So bits and pieces have been incorporated from BS4737: tests for sounders and specifications for the materials of which enclosures are made, to name but two. Also included are some rather hazy references to remote maintenance (associated by some with EN50131 but actually not mentioned in that standard).
EN50131-7 is the Installation Guidelines standard. Frankly this is rather vague and it’s not going to tell you everything you need to know about how to design a system. But you’d better have a copy and read it. Don’t expect to be very impressed.
DD243: 2004. This is not so very different to the DD243 we already know and love, but clears up various potential conflicts that would have arisen with EN50131. Of course DD243 introduces a raft of new requirements that have nothing to do with EN50131 (e.g. confirmed alarms) and many EN50131-compliant panels from Europe will not comply with it. This rather flies in the face of the principle of one standard across Europe but many of the other European countries are just as naughty, with additional national requirements such as TO14 in Belgium or NFA in France.
Lastly, some manufacturers (Cooper Security included) have produced guides that explain how to configure and use their equipment under the new regime.
WHAT’S MISSING?
DD245: ‘The Management of False Alarms’ is not included by PD 6662 making it effectively defunct. This is the document that makes managed resets a requirement. APCO will not be very happy about this and presumably some means will have to be found to cobble it into PD6662. If you’ve already bought PD6662:2004 then I expect someone will be happy to take your money for an addendum at some stage.
DD244: the ‘Class 6 wireless’ standard. As things currently stand, any old cheap and nasty radio system will be acceptable for a police response system after October, whether it works or not. We’ve tried to agree some sort of statement on this in the BSIA but have been unable to find a form of words that is acceptable to everyone. My advice: don’t use a cheap and nasty system because you will regret it later.
Things to think about
Grades
One of funniest things about the various articles on EN50131 has been the way they have solemnly trotted out the completely useless definitions of what the various security grades mean in terms of risk. The concept that a burglar will have ‘a comprehensive range of tools and equipment’ on hand to electronically bamboozle the alarm system is ludicrous. A sledgehammer would be more likely. These grade definitions have become such an embarrassment that in the latest version of the EN50131-1 they have been shunted into a note in very small print at the bottom of the page. Effectively there is no precise definition of what the grades mean in terms of risk and we shall all have to muddle along with some kind of mutual understanding between installers, inspectorates and insurers. In the loosest terms, grade one will be do-it-yourself, grade two a good-quality basic communicating system, grade three mainstream commercial systems and grade four bullion stores and West End jewellers. But don’t hold me to these! In addition, PD6662 has invented an additional Grade 2X, which is a grade two bells-only system.
So what happens if you decide that a premises needs a grade three system and your competitor undercuts you by quoting a grade two system? And then what happens if the insurance company tells him that it should have been a grade three system after all and he has to rip it all out and replace it at his expense? We shall see how this is all going to work in practice. Excellent collaboration between insurers and installers is certainly going to be essential.
Power Supplies
The power supply standard, EN50131-6, is a can of worms. We spent days in the BSIA working group trying to work out what it meant. There are all sorts of interesting challenges here for manufacturers. Those who are accustomed to producing equipment for Europe will be familiar with many of the requirements but the key issues are:
Power fail alarms. Mains failure, battery failure and battery low voltage must all be communicated back to the panel. The panel will communicate this back to the ARC. What will the ARC do with the information? I don’t think anybody knows.
The battery stand-by time. EN50131 requires a standby capacity of 60 hours for a Grade 3 system, reduced by 50 per cent if the panel communicates mains failure to the ARC (what will they do with this information?). PD6662:2004 reduces this to 24hrs/12hrs. It’s still going to mean a bigger battery than we’re used to. 17Ah batteries will become common and these are sufficiently heavy to pose a health and safety issue in some circumstances e.g. panels mounted high on walls. Please don’t connect two smaller batteries in parallel – this is a very bad idea for a number of reasons.
The standard requires that the panel (or any of its additional power supplies) must test periodically for storage device failure. To do this it must draw a substantial current through a beefy resistor and check that the battery voltage holds up. This will be a new requirement for some panel manufacturers – you can’t check the condition of a battery by measuring its voltage alone.
There are various other requirements on EN50131 power supplies. These have made the designs more complicated (and expensive).
Menus
The first thing you will notice about a PD6662:2004 panel is that it will not tell you very much unless you have entered a user code. There are different levels of users who allowed to see/do different things. This part of the standard is surrounded in confusion and mystery. Don’t expect to work it out by reading the standard – just ask your inspectorate if they’re happy with the way your proposed panel works. Manufacturers have devised various ways to make a silk purse out of this particular sow’s ear.
Whatever the detail of the implementation, your keypads aren’t going to be offering much by way of pretty lights or helpful fault messages to the passer-by. The panel will want to know who they are before it spills the beans about potential problems.
Communications
The standard introduces the concept of the Alarm Transmission System. This is a posh name for the whole communications chain between the alarm panel and the ARC monitoring system. It’s a new concept in the sense that the installer is, theoretically, responsible for ensuring that all of it meets the requirements of the security grade. But the installer is not really in a position to do this; how does he know, for instance, whether the ARC has compliant receivers and monitoring systems? It is likely that there will be many open questions in this area and there will be a period of some uncertainty until they are answered.
The other interesting area is what the ARCs are planning to do with all the new signals that the alarm panels will be sending them. I don’t think anybody knows yet. To give just one example as an illustration, if an ARC receives a Grade 3 tamper signal it needs to know whether the system is set or unset in order to know what to do with it; this information may not be available and, even if it is, will the monitoring software know how to make the connection? There are many other such issues.
Compliance
There is a huge amount of confusion in the UK marketplace about what constitutes compliant equipment. A claim that equipment complies with EN50131 is, in itself, completely irrelevant, yet many manufacturers are offering this as evidence of UK compliance. This is not helpful and creates further confusion. What is important is the statement that the equipment is suitable for use in a PD6662:2004 installation: everything else follows from that. I have also seen equipment that claims compliance with PD6662:2002; this is also irrelevant and confusing, as are claims that equipment is approved to EN50131 in Ireland. Just remember that PD6662:2004 is the only thing that matters. The truth is that very few, if any, manufactures have had any genuinely compliant panels until very recently and there is still some water to run under the bridge while installers, inspectors and insurers reach a mutual understanding of how compliant panels will actually work in practice.
To make matters worse, what complies this year may not comply in eighteen months’ time. At the moment PD6662:2004 does not include many of the component standards. So, for instance, PIRs are not currently subject to EN50131-2-2 (and that’s another very difficult standard to understand anyway). In practice this means that cheap anti-masking detectors that don’t meet the requirements of EN50131-2-2 are acceptable at present even though there are some types of masking that they don’t detect.. They won’t be acceptable any more when the PIR standard is added to the scope of PD6662 (likely to be autumn 2006).
Conclusions
We live, as the Chinese would say, in interesting times. Is it all bad news? No, it is not. Painful as the period we’re about to enter will be, the pro-active approach that the UK has taken has put us well ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of EN50131 compliance – and that is mandatory for all countries whether they choose to recognise it yet or not. Our BSIA guidelines are a comprehensive critique of the standards as they exist and an excellent basis on which to improve them – a fact that is openly recognised in the rest of Europe. The work we have done in the UK has forged stronger links between our manufacturers, installers and insurers and should encourage much-needed improvements in communications between the various sections of the alarm industry. But don’t let anyone tell you that it’s all going to be easy, because it isn’t. And take a very careful look at those claims of compliance – they may not be what they seem.
