Learners attending the FIA’s Advanced Installer beta course, ahead of the first ‘official’ course on 26^th June, have been awarded their certificates making them the first candidates to achieve a qualification in Fire Detection and Alarm Installation from the FIA.  

In order to achieve the qualification, learners took and passed the necessary four modules of the qualification pathway starting with the Foundation, Health & Safety at Work, Environmental units and then progressing onto the Advanced Installer unit. Together all four of these units make up the qualification. 

Some learners have taken and passed all four units, whilst others had used their prior achievements to demonstrate ‘recognised prior learning’, demonstrating two ways of obtaining the full qualification.  ‘Recognised prior learning’ only applies to the Health & Safety and Environmental units, where a valid Health & Safety assessment may be a suitable replacement for taking the Health & Safety unit.  

“These delegates have come here today and shown that they have the knowledge, following the course, to become qualified at this high level,” said Ian Moore, CEO of the FIA.  “It’s great to see such a range of individuals, some having recognized prior learning and some not, achieving our first qualification as a fire detection and alarm advanced installer.”

The FIA holds a long history of providing training to the sector; last year training nearly 5,000 delegates but had never offered nationally recognised qualifications.  The certificates awarded to learners on the beta course represent a huge leap forward for the FIA and the professionalism of the industry as a whole. It is the culmination of 8 years of hard work by the FIA team with a significant investment and we believe will be recognised as the benchmark of performance for the fire industry.

“Competence is a much-banded word in recent times. Due to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 – key legislation for fire safety in England and Wales – ‘competence’ is required by law. More recently, competence at every stage is a strong theme within Dame Judith Hackitt’s review and recommendations of change following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It has always been the FIA’s view that competence is achieved through professional training and experience; the problem however has been defining competence and these new qualifications do exactly that in this particular field of fire detection and alarm,” commented Ian Moore, CEO of the FIA.

In addition, the European Standard EN 16763, ‘Services for Fire Safety and Security Systems’ introduced in 2017, specifies the minimum level of engineering education for those working on fire detection and alarm systems as a Level 3 on the Qualifications Curriculum Framework (QCF) or Level 4 on the European Qualifications Framework (EQF).  The idea for the Standard was to ensure that those working on the systems had a good level of knowledge and understanding of the systems they were working on; this is mandated in many European countries.

Ian Moore continues, “I truly believe that this is a major step forward in showing our industry as professionals and also that we are proactive in servicing industry needs. The timing could not be any better following reviews and recommendations about 'raising the bar'. 

"We are doing our bit following companies some 8 years ago asking the FIA for qualifications for fire detection and alarm engineers; they wanted a robust and formalised education system for their technicians to offer the highest skilled technicians in the marketplace and we hope that all other sectors within the fire safety world do the same.

"Congratulations to our first successful candidates!”

The qualification courses in Installation and Maintenance are available to book now.

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Pictured above in the banner image: FIA Trainer and Technical Manager Will Lloyd, AO Manager Ian Gurling, and General Manager Martin Duggan with Awarding Organisation exam question writers celebrate the successful completion of the Install beta course.  Two of the six learners have now achieved a full qualification; the others are to sit and pass the other modules shortly.