Emergency sound guides
Plain-English guides to emergency sound standards in UK buildings
Voice alarm, evacuation alert, refuge and fire telephone systems, speech intelligibility and hearing loops: what each British Standard recommends, who it applies to, and what to check, explained by people who test these systems for a living.
Start here: Which emergency sound standard applies to my building?
Latest guides
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Voice alarm servicing: what each visit should cover
What BS 5839-8:2023 recommends for weekly tests, six-monthly and annual servicing of a voice alarm system, and how to tell whether your service visits are doing the job.
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Evacuation alert systems (BS 8629): who needs one and what is involved
What an evacuation alert system is, which blocks of flats are expected to have one, how it works, and what BS 8629 recommends for sound levels, standby power and maintenance.
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Emergency sound glossary: PAVA, VACIE, EVCS, EAS and the rest
Short, plain definitions of the abbreviations and terms used in voice alarm, evacuation alert, emergency voice communication and hearing loop work.
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Who is responsible for your voice alarm system?
Why hiring a maintenance contractor does not hand over the building's legal fire safety duty, what the contractor takes on in its own right, and what to put in a voice alarm maintenance contract.
Who these guides are for
Fire risk assessors, building safety managers, facilities teams, specifiers and fire alarm engineers who need to know what a standard actually recommends, without buying and reading the whole document first. Every guide cites the clause numbers it relies on so you can check the source.
Who runs PAVA Central
PAVA Central is run by ProAudium, an emergency sound specialist based in Newhaven, East Sussex. Guides are drafted with AI assistance and every one is checked against the current standard by a ProAudium director before it is published. How the guides are written.