Most fire protection businesses don’t lose money on the big projects they quote carefully. They lose it on the maintenance contracts they price from a rate card, renew on autopilot and never look at again. A contract that looked fine on paper turns out to need twice the hours, a five-yearly test nobody allowed for lands in year three, and the margin quietly goes to travel, reporting and return visits.
Maintenance work should be the steadiest, most predictable revenue in a fire business. It only is if the price reflects what the contract actually takes to deliver. This guide walks through a method for pricing an AS 1851 maintenance contract properly, from the asset schedule to the contract terms, with a worked example you can adapt.
Why maintenance contracts are so easy to underprice
- The intervals stack up. AS 1851-2012 sets routine service frequencies of monthly, three-monthly, six-monthly and yearly, and then every 2, 5, 10, 25 and 30 years, with the activities for each detailed system by system. A single building can carry a surprising number of distinct service events.
- You owe every interval. AS 1851 sets tolerances either side of each scheduled date. As Building Commission NSW’s guide puts it, those tolerances stop an owner receiving only 11 monthly activities in a year. Miss the window and it’s recorded as an out of tolerance non-conformance. You can’t quietly skip a month to catch up on margin.
- The long intervals spike. Five-yearly and ten-yearly activities are much heavier than routine visits, and they land in a single year of a multi-year contract.
- Getting there costs money. Travel, parking, access arrangements, induction and waiting for a building manager all come out of the same fee.
- The paperwork is real work. Logbooks, tags and labels, summary records, defect notices within 24 hours or a week, and a yearly condition report all take time, and in NSW they sit behind the owner’s legal compliance.
- Things go wrong. Failed tests mean retests, and access problems mean return visits.
Start with a proper asset schedule
You can’t price what you haven’t counted. Before you quote, build an asset schedule for the site: every system and every serviceable asset, by type and quantity, and which AS 1851 section and intervals apply to each.
Building Commission NSW recommends exactly this. Its good practice guide describes a model routine services program and asset schedule that documents the type and quantity of each fire safety measure, lays out the full annual cycle of routine service activities at the AS 1851 intervals, and “includes realistic time allowances for each activity”, and notes that a sample schedule is available on the Fire Protection Association Australia website.
- Walk the site if you’ve never serviced it. Counting extinguishers from an old report is how you end up servicing 30 more than you priced.
- Record access constraints as you go: after-hours only, locked risers, induction requirements, lift access, parking.
- Note what’s missing: block plans, baseline data, logbooks. Each is a non-conformance and a separate quote.
- For a large or unfamiliar site, charge for the survey itself. It’s real work, and it protects both sides.
Price against the fire safety schedule
In NSW, the building’s fire safety schedule lists every essential fire safety measure and its standard of performance, and the Annual Fire Safety Statement confirms each one every year. Your scope should line up with it measure by measure. In Victoria, the equivalent documents are the occupancy permit or maintenance determination and the building’s maintenance schedules.
- Price every measure on the schedule that’s in your scope, and say clearly which ones aren’t.
- Watch for measures AS 1851 doesn’t cover. Building Commission NSW gives emergency exit lighting as an example (it’s maintained to AS/NZS 2293.2), so price it as its own line.
- If the schedule is missing or wrong, say so. Contractors are often the first to notice; you can identify the measures you observe on site, but a fire safety contractor shouldn’t draft the schedule unless they’re also a certifier or fire safety engineer.
- Where a performance solution sets its own maintenance requirements, price those too. ACT Fire & Rescue, for one, says such items are maintained to the requirements of the performance solution or special hazard report.
Cost it bottom-up
With the schedule in hand, cost the contract from the ground up rather than from a per-visit rate.
Labour
For each activity, estimate the time per asset or per system, multiply by the quantity and by the number of times it happens in a year, and add a sensible allowance for set-up, isolations and reinstatement. Price it at your fully loaded labour cost (wages plus super, leave, workers compensation, vehicle, phone, tools and non-productive time), not the technician’s hourly rate.
Travel and access
Add travel time for every visit, not just the long ones. Include parking, tolls and any time lost to access arrangements. Clustering sites geographically is one of the biggest margin levers in this industry; pricing that assumes perfect routing won’t survive a real week.
Consumables and materials
Tags, labels, logbooks, seals, lubricants and small parts are easy to forget and add up across a portfolio. Decide which are included and which are charged as used.
Reporting and administration
Allow office and technician time for logbooks, summary records, defect notices and the yearly condition report. If your system generates reports from field data this is small; if someone retypes forms, it isn’t.
Subcontracted disciplines
If you subcontract part of the scope, such as a special hazard system, mechanical smoke control or emergency lighting, include their price plus your coordination margin.
Overhead, contingency and margin
Add your overhead recovery, a contingency for the unknowns (older buildings deserve more), and then your target margin. Margin is what’s left for the business after every cost. It isn’t the overhead.
A worked example
The figures below are illustrative only, not market rates. Use your own times, costs and margin. The point is the method.
| Line | Basis | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly services | 12 visits × 3.0 hours | 36 hours |
| Six-monthly services | 2 visits × 6.0 extra hours | 12 hours |
| Yearly service and condition report | 1 visit × 16 hours | 16 hours |
| Travel | 15 site attendances × 1.0 hour | 15 hours |
| Reporting and admin | Allowance | 8 hours |
| Total labour | 87 hours × $95 fully loaded (example) | $8,265 |
| Consumables | Allowance | $450 |
| Five-yearly work, smoothed | $4,000 every five years ÷ 5 | $800 |
| Direct cost | $9,515 | |
| Overhead recovery | 15% of direct cost | $1,427 |
| Contingency | 5% of direct cost | $476 |
| Cost before margin | $11,418 | |
| Price at 25% margin | Cost ÷ 0.75 | $15,224 a year (about $1,269 a month) |
Notice what the example does: every interval is counted, travel is explicit, the five-yearly work is either smoothed in or deliberately carved out, and the margin is applied to the full cost, not to labour alone.
Pricing models compared
| Model | How it works | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed annual fee | One price for the year, billed monthly or quarterly | Stable sites where the asset schedule is well known | Asset counts creeping up with no variation clause |
| Per visit | A price for each service visit, by interval | Simple sites and clients who want to see what they pay for | Heavy yearly and five-yearly visits priced like routine ones |
| Per asset | A rate per extinguisher, detector, hydrant and so on | Large portfolios with many similar assets | Travel, access and reporting falling through the gaps |
| Per system | A price per system (sprinklers, detection, EWIS) per interval | Complex buildings with several systems | Systems that grow over time |
| Hybrid | A fixed routine fee plus scheduled long-interval work and agreed rates for extras | Most mid-sized commercial contracts | Needs a clear schedule so the client understands it |
Different buildings, different costs
Two buildings with the same asset count can cost very different amounts to service. Adjust for what drives time on site:
| Building type | What drives cost | How to allow for it |
|---|---|---|
| Residential strata | Access to common areas and sometimes apartments, resident notices, committee approvals | Allow for notice periods, access coordination and return visits |
| Commercial offices | After-hours testing to avoid disrupting tenants, building manager availability, tenancy fit-outs | Price after-hours time at the right rate, and recount assets when tenancies change |
| Industrial and warehousing | Large sprinkler systems, pumpsets and tanks, heavy flow testing, work at height | Allow for access equipment, water management and longer annual tests |
| Healthcare and aged care | Systems that can’t simply be isolated, staged testing, infection control, 24/7 occupancy | Allow for shorter testing windows, more coordination and more visits |
| Retail and shopping centres | Trading hours, multiple tenancies, centre management procedures | Allow for night work and tenancy access |
Handling the five- and ten-yearly spikes
Long-interval activities are where contracts go wrong, because they’re easy to forget when quoting a one- or three-year term. You have three honest options:
- Smooth them in: spread the cost evenly across the years, as in the example. Predictable for the client; make sure the contract term and exit terms protect you if they leave before the spike.
- Bill them when due: quote them separately in the contract schedule, with the year they fall due. Transparent, and the cleanest option for shorter terms.
- Mix the two: smooth the moderate items and quote the big ones separately.
Whichever you choose, put the long-interval schedule in writing at the start, so nobody is surprised in year five.
What to exclude and quote separately
- Defect rectification and replacement parts.
- Callouts and after-hours attendance, at agreed rates.
- Baseline data recovery, block plan redraws and engraved plates.
- Access equipment (elevated work platforms, scaffolding) and specialist access.
- Work on systems outside the agreed asset schedule.
- Return visits caused by denied or cancelled access.
The margin is in the remedial work
Routine maintenance is often priced tightly because clients compare it line by line. Remedial work (fixing the defects your routine service finds) is usually where the better margin is, and it evaporates if defects sit in reports unquoted. A contract priced to cover its costs and win the work, backed by a disciplined defect-to-quote process, is worth more than a routine fee squeezed a few percent higher.
Track your defect conversion rate: the share of defects you find that become approved, paid rectification work. It tells you more about a contract’s real value than the routine fee does.
Tendering without buying the job
Building Commission NSW advises owners to obtain multiple quotes through a competitive tender and to compare scopes of works between contractors so the prices are comparable. That’s good news for a contractor with a clear, complete price, and bad news for one hoping a low headline number will survive scrutiny.
- Submit your scope schedule with the price: every system, asset count, AS 1851 section and interval.
- State your assumptions: access hours, asset counts, and what’s excluded.
- Show the long-interval work and the year it falls due.
- If a competitor is cheaper, compare scopes before you compare prices. A lower price for a smaller scope isn’t a lower price.
- Resist matching a number you know doesn’t cover the work. An underpriced contract costs you every month of its term.
Signs a contract is underpriced
- Technicians regularly run over the hours the contract allows.
- Services drift toward the edge of their tolerance because there isn’t time to do them on schedule.
- Reports go out late because nobody has time to write them.
- The long-interval work arrives with no money set aside for it.
- Remedial quotes are rarely raised because the team is too busy to write them.
- The contract only looks profitable when you leave travel out.
Contract terms that protect your margin
- A scope schedule tied to the asset register, listing every system, asset quantity, AS 1851 section and interval.
- A variation clause for changes in asset numbers or systems, with the rates that apply.
- Annual price review (by an index or a fixed percentage) so costs don’t outrun a multi-year fee.
- Access obligations: who provides access, notice periods, and what happens if access is refused or cancelled, including responsibility for an out of tolerance service if the building won’t let you in.
- Payment terms that match your costs.
- Clear exclusions, and the rates for work outside scope.
- The contract term, renewal and exit terms, especially if long-interval work is smoothed across the years.
- Indemnities and insurance: Building Commission NSW notes that testing can place some components of a fire safety system under stress, that owners may be asked to sign an indemnity, and that some contractors carry insurance covering consequential damage. Be clear about your position before the first test, not after something fails.
In NSW, Building Commission NSW’s guidance to owners points out that under the Home Building Act a written contract is required where works exceed $5,000 including GST. It also tells owners to compare scopes of works between contractors so prices are comparable, and to ask for recommendations in writing that cite the relevant clause or standard. Expect well-advised clients to compare you on scope, not just price, which favours the contractor with the clearest schedule.
Review every contract every year
- Compare actual hours with the hours you priced, contract by contract.
- Check travel and return visits against the allowance.
- Look at the defect conversion rate and the remedial revenue each contract generated.
- Re-count the assets before renewal.
- Reprice, or walk away from, contracts that don’t pay.
Frequently asked questions
Should I price per asset or per visit?
Per-asset pricing scales well across large portfolios of similar assets; per-visit pricing is easy for clients to follow. Most mid-sized contracts work best as a fixed routine fee with long-interval work scheduled separately and agreed rates for extras.
How do I stop five-yearly work eating the margin?
List every long-interval activity and the year it falls due in the contract schedule, then either smooth the cost across the term or bill it when it’s due.
Should defect repairs be included?
Generally no. Price routine service to cover its costs, and quote defects separately as they’re found. That’s where much of the margin in maintenance work sits.
How often should I review contract pricing?
At least every year, and always before renewal: compare actual hours, travel and return visits with the allowances, and recount the assets.
Should the yearly condition report be priced in?
Yes. The yearly condition report is part of the records AS 1851-2012 requires, so it belongs in the routine price. Allow the time it actually takes to produce.
Is emergency lighting part of an AS 1851 contract?
Emergency and exit lighting isn’t covered by AS 1851-2012. It’s maintained to AS/NZS 2293.2. Many contractors service it alongside the fire systems; price and schedule it as its own line.
Sources and further reading
- Good practice guide for the inspection, testing, maintenance and repair of fire protection systems in NSW buildings, Building Commission NSW (January 2026)
- Responsibilities of building owners under AS 1851-2012, Building Commission NSW