Plumbing Industry Commission

A while ago, I wrote about the requirements for people who carry out plumbing work (including a range of fire protection activities) need to be licensed and/or registered.

Unfortunately, I am still hearing about practitioners who are not either licensed or registered to carry out fire protection work. This also means that they are not issuing the statutory Compliance Certificate for plumbing work over $750.00.

Reported in the Herald Sun on Monday October 13, 2008, the Fire Protection Industry received its first shot across the bow from the main stream media.

For a number of years now, the fire industry has known about the excessive waste of fresh drinking water used as part of a fire sprinkler test. This water consumption comes from testing of fire sprinklers, fire pump-sets and fire hydrant systems.

There are now an array of solutions that will enablus to drop this consumption significantly but there is resistance from almost all parts of the building industry.

Simply put, the capital cost to reduce consumption is far greater than the cost of the water.

Perhaps this shot by the media might be the catalyst for social change...

On November 28, the Building and Plumbing Industry Commission issued a Media Release (below) that The Building and Plumbing Industry Commissions, water authorities and fire protection industry are taking action to reduce the large volume of water used for testing fire sprinkler systems.

Maintenance Essentials continues to take a lead role in the efficient use of water use in fire protection by supporting South East Water, The Building Commission and customers to carry out a pilot program and implement water saving initiatives which may be used industry wide.