What Is Your Customer Not Detecting?

What Is Your Customer Not Detecting?  

There’s a smoke detector there. We’re covered.

Are you?

Someone is vaping in the stairwell.

A lithium-ion battery is charging in the back room.

Someone enters the property after hours.

Which of those is your smoke detector actually there to detect?

A smoke detector can be very good at doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The problem starts when we assume it was designed to do more.

A Smoke Detector Is Not an Everything Detector  

For most people, a smoke detector represents safety. They see one on the ceiling and understandably assume that if something dangerous is happening nearby, they'll know about it.

But that's a much bigger job than a smoke detector was designed to perform.

A life-safety smoke detector is designed and installed for a specific purpose. It isn't automatically a purpose-built vaping detector. It isn't a smoking detection system. It isn't necessarily looking for the earliest visible signs of flame. And it certainly isn't watching what's happening outside the building.

That doesn't mean the smoke detector isn't doing its job.

It means we may be asking it to do a job it was never designed to do.

And that's where a better customer conversation can begin.

“People Keep Vaping in the Stairwell.”  

It's not a difficult scenario to imagine.

Residents are complaining about vaping in a stairwell. Staff know it's happening. Maybe it's a washroom, common area, change room or another space where people think they won't be noticed.

There's already a smoke detector on the ceiling.

So we're covered, right?

Not necessarily.

A conventional life-safety smoke detector and a purpose-built vaping or smoking detection system are solving different problems.

Could cigarette smoke or vaping aerosol cause some smoke detectors to respond under certain conditions? Sure. But that's very different from having a system specifically designed to identify the activity your customer is concerned about.

And cigarette smoking deserves to be part of this conversation too.

“Smoke detector” sounds like it should mean “detects someone smoking.”

That's an easy assumption to make.

It's just not the question the device was necessarily designed to answer.

If smoking or vaping is the customer's actual concern, start there.

What's Charging in the Back Room?  

Now walk a little farther through the building.

Look around a maintenance room, contractor's shop, warehouse, garage or back room.

What's plugged in?

Power-tool batteries. Rechargeable equipment. E-bikes or scooters. Cameras. Portable electronics. Lithium-ion batteries are becoming part of virtually every environment we work in.

Your customer may already have smoke detection in that space.

Good.

But here's the next question:

Is smoke the only condition they'd want to know about?

Purpose-built flame detection can add another layer by looking for characteristics associated with flame rather than simply waiting for smoke to reach a detector.

That doesn't make one technology “better” than another.

They're answering different questions.

And sometimes that's the whole point.

Now Look Outside  

Once you start thinking this way, the conversation gets bigger.

Your customer may want to know when somebody enters a yard, approaches equipment, crosses a property line or reaches an area around the building after hours.

There's nothing wrong with the smoke detectors inside.

They simply have nothing to do with this problem.

Outdoor PIR sensors, active infrared beams and other purpose-built perimeter technologies can detect activity long before someone reaches the door.

Suddenly, we're not really talking about smoke detection anymore.

We're talking about what the customer wants to know — and when they want to know it.

This Isn't About Replacing Life-Safety Detection  

This distinction matters.

Required life-safety detection is still required life-safety detection.

We're not talking about replacing smoke detectors, heat detectors or other required devices with something else.

We're talking about recognizing the things those devices were never designed to tell you.

At Aartech, we spend a lot of time talking with installers about products and applications. But sometimes the better conversation happens before choosing the product.

What problem is the customer actually trying to solve?

Once you know that, you can start deciding what should be detecting it.

BONUS: Four Questions Worth Asking on Your Next Site Walk  

You don't need to turn every walkthrough into a detection audit.

Just start asking a few different questions.

1. Are there areas where smoking or vaping is a concern?

Don't assume the smoke detectors already installed are answering that question.

2. Where are lithium-ion batteries routinely being charged?

Maintenance rooms, tool areas, garages, warehouses and back rooms are good places to start looking.

3. Are there outdoor areas you'd want to know about before someone reaches the building?

Think beyond the door. Yards, equipment, rooftops, pathways and perimeter areas may tell a different story.

4. What would you want to know about sooner?

This might be the most important question of all.

Let the customer answer before you decide what the solution should be.

What Are You Walking Past?  

The next time you walk a customer's property, don't just look at what's already installed.

Listen to what they're complaining about.

Look at what's charging.

Look at the spaces nobody is watching.

And don't just ask what they're already detecting.

Ask what they're not.

Because sometimes the opportunity isn't another version of something already on the wall.

It's solving a problem your customer didn't realize could be detected.

What is your customer not detecting?

What are you walking past?

Want to explore some of the purpose-built detection technologies behind these applications? Start with the TAKEX Starting Point Library.

Explore the TAKEX Starting Point Library 

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