What is a waking watch?
A waking watch is a temporary measure in which trained people patrol a building continuously to detect a fire and raise the alarm, used where a building's fire safety measures are not adequate on their own.
It is an interim measure, not a solution. It exists to hold a position while the underlying defect — usually a compartmentation or external wall problem — is put right, and its cost is one of the reasons the underlying work matters.
Its effectiveness depends on the patrol actually covering the building at a frequency that would find a fire early, and on the people doing it knowing what they are looking for and what to do.
Installing a common alarm system generally allows a waking watch to be reduced or removed, which is usually both safer and cheaper over any meaningful period.
In practice
A watch that has been in place for two years.
It is costly, it is funded by residents, and it was always meant to be temporary while the alarm was installed.
A waking watch is an interim measure pending a permanent one, and the question that should be asked monthly is what is happening to end it.
Watches that become permanent are a sign that the remediation programme has stalled.
What goes wrong in practice
- Treated as the remedy rather than as cover while the remedy is arranged.
- Patrol routes and frequencies not recorded, so nobody can show the building was covered.
- Continued at full cost after an alarm system that would allow it to be reduced was installed.