Fire Protection Charitable Trust The complexity of self-funding the industry share of standards development has long been a fire protection industry bugbear. Historically there has been somewhat of an ad hoc approach to funding, with sprinklers having their own levy system administered by a single sprinkler system certifier (SSC), but the alarm sector not having any formal mechanism in place to collect funding. Those in the industry have long been aware that some form of consistent funding model was needed, but commercial sensitivities prevented the collection of a levy for fire alarms as well. Instead, industry needed to “pass the hat around” every time a revision of the alarm standard came due. Several different formulae were used over the years, but fairness and transparency were ongoing issues. The obvious solution was the formation of an independent body to oversee the levy collection process for both sprinkler systems and fire alarms. There also needed to be the guarantee of complete transparency and an assurance that the funds collected were ringfenced so they weren’t diverted from their original purpose.
Scott Lawso, CEO of FPANZ
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Issue 18
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September 2019
Enter Scott Lawson. The CEO of Fire Protection Association New Zealand (FPANZ) was ideally placed to spearhead the development of a trust that would exist for the primary purpose of ensuring levies were collected and held until they were needed at Standard review time. He began discussions with CEOs and industry leaders around the usefulness of such an organisation at the end of 2016, “but it took some time to get everyone singing from the same song sheet.” “There was a fair bit of corralling needed to get everybody on board,” admits Lawson. As the Standards
should ideally be reviewed every five years, some were worried that the money collected wouldn’t end up being used for the correct purpose if the management of FPANZ changed. “There was some concern, particularly from those in the fire alarm industry, that the money collected would just sit in a bank and end up being diverted from its original purpose if there were leadership changes within management of FPANZ.” Concurrently, Lawson started discussions with Standards NZ, and it became apparent that the best way to move forward was to
