UL Covid-19 Statement on Certifications to the Canadian Alarm Monitoring Industry

March 16, 2020

UL Statement on Certifications to the Canadian Alarm Monitoring Industry

As developments around the corona virus COVID-19 continue to evolve, ULC has been asked how health risk mitigation techniques might impact Alarm Service Certifications, especially those that involve quarantine, social distancing, work from home, and similar.

At UL, our driving mission is to help create safe living and working conditions for all of our constituencies. This value shapes our Standards and program policies. The emergence of the COVID-19 virus presents a new challenge, but by working together, we can find ways forward.

As in the past after natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina, superstorm Sandy and others, actions taken to maintain monitoring operations may temporarily be out of sync with the current language of CAN/ULC-S301 and CAN/ULC-S561, Standards for Signal Receiving Centres. In emergency situations like these, know that UL’s primary concern is for the health and safety of your staff and customers. If circumstances prevent you from complying with the written requirements of the Standard for staffing a station, we simply ask that for now, you document your station’s alternate procedure and when it went into/out of practice.

UL is working with industry to develop reasonable guidelines and alternative operating methods for scenarios such as the current COVID-19 outbreak. An initial draft is attached to this statement and will be updated as improvements are identified. These guidelines will eventually form the basis of revisions to CAN/ULC-S301 and CAN/ULC-S561 to better address pandemic-type scenarios.

At this time, we encourage monitoring stations to make contingency plans for operating in environments where operators are not able to physically come together to monitor signals in a central station operating room. There is meaningful risk that the rapid spread of COVID-19 could trigger governmental movement and assemble recommendations/controls that would preclude normal station operation.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Alan Cavers, Alan.n.cavers@ul.com, 416-288-2207