About PAVA Central

PAVA Central publishes plain-English guides to the British Standards that cover emergency sound in UK buildings: voice alarm systems, evacuation alert systems in blocks of flats, emergency voice communication for refuges and firefighters, speech intelligibility and hearing loops. (PAVA stands for Public Address Voice Alarm: one system that makes everyday announcements and also broadcasts the evacuation message in a fire.)

Who runs it

The site is run by ProAudium, an emergency sound specialist based in Newhaven, East Sussex. ProAudium maintains, tests and advises on Public Address Voice Alarm (PAVA), Emergency Voice Communication System (EVCS) and hearing loop installations in airports, stadia, exhibition centres, offices and public buildings across London and the South East. It holds ISO 9001:2015 certification and is a member of the Institute of Sound, Communications and Visual Engineers (ISCVE).

That means we have a commercial interest: some readers will need a service visit, a test or a second opinion, and we would like them to call us. Each guide ends with one short note saying what ProAudium can do on that topic. The guides themselves are written to be useful whether or not you ever contact us.

How the guides are written

1. A first draft is prepared with AI assistance from ProAudium's own working notes on each standard, which record what each clause recommends in our words, with its clause number.
2. Nigel Williams, a director of ProAudium, checks the draft against the current edition of the standard, corrects it and adds what only experience on site can add.
3. Each guide shows the date it was last reviewed. We review every guide when the standard it covers is amended or replaced, and at least once a year.

We do not publish pages that have not been through that check, and we add new guides a few at a time rather than in bulk.

What the guides are, and are not

• They summarise what a standard recommends, in our own words, with clause references so you can check the source. They do not reproduce the text, tables or figures of any British Standard. Standards are available from BSI.
• Most of these standards are codes of practice: they recommend ("should") rather than require. A recommendation becomes an obligation when something else calls it up, such as a fire strategy, a specification, a contract or a safety certificate. The guides say which is which.
• They are general guidance, not a design, a compliance assessment or legal advice for any particular building. For that you need a competent person who has seen the building and its documents.

Corrections

If you think something on this site is wrong or out of date, email contactus@proaudium.com with the page and the point. We correct errors promptly and update the review date when we do.