CASE STUDY
How FSP Kept a Fire Alarm Installation from Derailing a Construction Project
The Problem
A commercial electrical contractor in Ontario was managing a construction project that included a fire alarm system in scope. Electrical work was their core trade. Fire alarm design is a separate discipline that requires NFPA and CAN-ULC code knowledge and a design built to pass AHJ inspection, not just look correct on the drawing. Without a specialist, the risks were predictable: a design the inspector would reject, field corrections mid-install while both crews waited, and a project timeline that kept slipping from the reinspection backlog.
What FSP Did
FSP came in at the consult stage, pre-installation. Within a week of the initial inquiry, FSP had a quote in front of the team. The first meeting included FSP’s lead tech, not a sales rep, because the scope questions that matter on a fire alarm job are technical: whether the design accounts for building occupancy, how the system ties into the electrical sequencing, and what the local AHJ typically flags on inspection. FSP produced the full fire alarm design and reconfigured the install sequence to align with how the electrical crew was already staging their scope. Getting that alignment done before installation starts prevents both teams from stalling at the same choke points.
The Result
Based on the pre-install design work FSP completed, the contractor is projected to recover ~24 hours of verification and inspection time that would otherwise have been spent on field corrections after the AHJ flagged issues. On a construction project, those 24 hours represent schedule slippage, subcontractor coordination costs, and a reinspection fee. FSP’s design was built to prevent all of it before anyone touched a panel.
