Sprinklers, Training, Visits, And News

This Week

​This week we’re sharing another round of news and updates from the past fortnight. Looking back, it’s been another busy couple of weeks, with plenty happening across the business. Here are some of the highlights.

Sprinkler & Gas Flood System Training

​Last week, several members of our team visited Fire Security Services in Hamilton for training on sprinkler and gas flood systems.

While we’ve been monitoring these systems for the past 20 years and are well versed in connecting them for monitoring, our understanding of how the systems themselves operate, how they’re constructed, and the differences between the various sprinkler system types hasn’t been quite as strong.

With our new CTU able to monitor and report on a much wider range of information, including things such as sprinkler pressures and ambient temperature, having a better understanding of these systems is increasingly important for us.

Thanks to Sheldon and Brendan for organising and putting our team through the training, and to Adam for arranging it. It was an excellent session that gave us a really useful overview of the different systems, as well as a few ideas for new features and services we may be able to make available to the industry.

The Fire Security Services dedicated training room is also very impressive, with examples of different sprinkler types, gas flood systems, fire panels and other fire detection and protection equipment. You can see some photos from the facility below.

Bensan Visit

Last week we also had the opportunity to meet with the team at Bensan.

We already monitor the wide range of panels that Bensan sells, both for conventional and IoT detector-level information. If you look at our Compatibility Guide here you’ll see which panels are supported and what’s required to monitor IoT detector-level information where the panel supports it.

The purpose of our conversation with Bensan was to explore what additional information we might be able to make available to fire alarm service agents remotely through our monitoring platform.

It’s early days, but the initial conversation was promising and suggests there may be some interesting opportunities in this area.

It was great to meet the team and we’re looking forward to seeing what we might be able to achieve together.

New CTU Monitored System Limits

We’ve mentioned in previous newsletters some of the many benefits the new CTU, which is currently in development, will bring when it launches.

One thing we haven’t mentioned is that the new CTU will also be able to support more SGDs per loop than the current CTU.

For new installations, we generally don’t recommend monitoring a large number of PFAs from a single monitoring device. The main reasons are the additional cabling required, often run over long distances with long term maintenance implications, and the risk that an issue or outage affecting the monitoring device could result in a large number of systems becoming unmonitored.

Transfers are a different story. It’s not unusual for us to inherit a ‘legacy’ monitoring architecture from another provider, particularly when there is an ASE16 involved.

When we encounter this situation, we’ll generally transfer the site ‘as is’ and then work with the building owner and fire alarm service agent to design a more modern and resilient monitoring architecture. This can also unlock IoT detector-level information where it’s available.

We have a defined process for doing this, and it works well.

If you have a site with a large number of secondary systems, or one where legacy wiring is causing reliability issues, get in touch and we can talk you through the options including migrating the monitoring to us at no cost.

Auckland Office News

Thanks to the great work of our Auckland team, they’ve already outgrown their current office.

We’ve secured another office and, in what may be one of the shortest office moves in history, the team will be moving into the office directly next door — in the same building and on the same floor — over the next couple of weeks.

We’ve also started recruiting for a new Auckland-based role to add further capability to the Auckland team and the company as a whole. We’ll share more details about the role soon.

Facility Management Summit Aotearoa 2026

​Rebecka Andersson and Kieron Telford from our team will be attending the Facility Management Summit Aotearoa 2026 conference in Auckland on Tuesday 20 October.

If you’re also attending and would like to catch up, let us know.

Analogue Addressable vs Conventional Stats

A few months ago, we were asked about the split between conventional and analogue addressable panels that we monitor.

As a reminder, conventional panels aren’t capable of providing IoT detector-level information, whereas analogue addressable panels can.

Across all of the fire alarm panels we currently monitor, 26% are analogue addressable. Looking only at the panels we’ve started monitoring since the beginning of last year, that figure increases to 38%.

This suggests that the proportion of new panels being installed that are analogue addressable is increasing.

From a building owner, manager, and fire alarm service agent perspective, this is a positive development. Having access to IoT detector-level information remotely through our portals, floor plans and apps provides significantly greater visibility into what’s happening within a fire alarm system.

Out & About

​We’ve been travelling a lot over the past couple of weeks, with members of the team visiting Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton, Cambridge, Wellington, and Tauranga.

Anastasia and Rebecka put together the short video below during the couple of days they spent in the Bay of Plenty.

​Over the next fortnight, members of the AFAM team will be in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.

If you’d like to arrange a meeting, grab a coffee, book a demonstration, or talk about how AFAM can provide greater visibility across your fire alarm portfolio, we’d love to catch up.