This British Standard gives recommendations for protecting electronic equipment (such as computers, mission-critical servers, internet hosting centres, and systems for communication, design, manufacturing and distribution) against fire.
This revised standard takes major changes into account, including:
- an expanded section on risk assessment and its application to the design and protection of electronic equipment installations
- widening of the scope to cover all electronic equipment, including PCs within an office environment
- revised advice on the selection of fire protection and detection measures
- additional advice on contingency and recovery planning.
Earlier versions of this standard focussed largely on the data processing centre to be found at the heart of a modern industrial or commercial company. At that time, mainframe computers were still the nerve centre of many operations, with high value equipment and potentially significant business interruption implications if the systems were taken out of service for an extended period.
Since then, networked systems have become common, based around industry standard equipment that can be replaced easily in days or hours in some cases. However, centralized computer rooms and communications centres can still be found in many industrial and commercial operations, with similar hazards and risks to those found in their predecessors.
Most electronic equipment has an inherently low fire risk due to the way in which it is designed and operates. It is, however, inherently sensitive to thermal damage (i.e. direct consequences of fire) and non-thermal damage from smoke, corrosive fumes and liquids. This British Standard is complementary to BS 7974 which gives a structured method for determining the most appropriate fire protection strategy for a building as a whole.
Contents include:
- Risk assessment
- Location and construction of dedicated electronic equipment areas
- Building engineering services for dedicated electronic equipment areas
- Fire detection and alarm in dedicated electronic equipment areas
- Fire suppression
- Choosing the appropriate fire detection and disaster recovery strategy
- General precautions for dedicated electronic equipment areas
- Protection of information, contingency and recovery measures
- Business-critical ancillary facilities.
This standard supersedes BS 6266:1992 which is withdrawn.
Guidance on the design of electronic equipment is given in BS EN 60950 and guidance on the design of the physical environment including the air-conditioning and lighting is given in BS 7083. The standard is applicable to new installations; however the recommendations may be used with an existing installations and when alterations are made to an existing area housing electronic equipment.