19.1 Maintenance Programs and Contracts

The 81-hour New York Department of State (DOS) Security or Fire Alarm Installer qualifying course ends in Module 5, Service and Maintenance of Alarm Systems (21 classroom hours). 19 NYCRR 196.8 gives subject V of that module 3 hours titled Maintenance, Inspection and False Alarm Reporting. Independent OpenExamPrep teaching in this chapter is those three hours. Chapter 17 already covered inspection frequencies and the inspection, testing, and maintenance (ITM) report. Chapter 18 covered troubleshooting a failure. This section is the program under those visits: a written agreement, a calendar of scheduled work, spare parts, battery replacement, communicator test-timer checks, and the records that prove the work happened.

A green panel with no contract is not a maintenance program. A monthly invoice that never names the services is not 19 NYCRR 195.10(e) either. This statewide sitting is not a Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) Certificate of Fitness exam. General Business Law (GBL) §69-z still lets local law govern fire-alarm inspection by a fire marshal; a DOS license does not replace that inspection and does not turn a handshake into a written statement of charges.

Written statement of services and charges — 19 NYCRR 195.10(e)

195.10(e) requires each licensee to prepare and retain a statement of services and charges agreed between the licensee and the consumer, and to present a copy to the consumer. The consumer must receive a copy of any document signed by the licensee and the consumer. Any agreement a representative of the licensee and the consumer signed for services to be performed must be retained in the firm's business records.

That is the exam sentence for a maintenance contract. A handshake, a text that says "we'll take care of it," or an auto-pay that never lists what is included does not satisfy 195.10(e). The statement is both a consumer-protection document and a transaction record under 195.10(a).

A usable maintenance agreement, taught here as Independent OpenExamPrep practice and not as a DOS form, names:

• The premises and the system (fire, security, or combination)
• Whether the visit is scheduled ITM under commonly taught NFPA 72 Chapter 14 practice, demand service after a failure, or both
• What is included (listed tests, detector cleaning on schedule, battery replacement on age, communicator test-timer verification) and what is extra (after-hours emergency, authority-having-jurisdiction (AHJ) witness fees, device replacement beyond the spare kit)
• Who monitors the account and who owns a failure-to-test
• How impairments and false-alarm reports are handled (Section 19.2)
• That programming of access codes, protocol, bypass, and hours of operation remains licensed work (Section 19.3)

195.10(f) requires the licensee, in conjunction with any transaction, to identify any and all employees who work on the installation, service, or maintenance. The contract crew cannot be "our guys." Sequential employment identification numbers from Chapter 3 belong on the job record.

Scheduled ITM versus demand service

19 NYCRR 195.1(d) defines maintaining as inspection and testing to detect and prevent problems and to establish proper operating conditions, including preventive programming of access codes, protocol, bypass, and hours of operation. 195.1(e) defines servicing as repair, troubleshooting, or replacement of malfunctioning, failed, or damaged equipment, including associated programming.

Those two words are the difference between a scheduled maintenance program and a demand (time-and-materials) service call.

A contract that only promises "we will come if it breaks" is demand servicing. It is still licensed work under 19 NYCRR 195.2. It is not a complete fire-alarm ITM program under commonly taught NFPA 72 Chapter 14 practice. The building owner (or the owner's designated representative) remains responsible for seeing that inspection and testing happen. The licensed firm is how the owner hires that work. Selling "annual inspection" that never includes the semiannual waterflow functional test taught in Chapter 17 is an incomplete program, not a cheaper product.

Spare-parts and battery replacement programs

A spare-parts clause is how you keep a listed system listed. Stock compatible listed replacements the control unit's documentation accepts — the same detector family, the same notification-appliance listing, the same communicator model the AHJ accepted. A hardware-store smoke that is not listed for that fire alarm control unit (FACU) is not a spare. 19 NYCRR 195.4 requires fire-alarm installation, maintenance, and servicing in accordance with prevailing industry standards; swapping in an unlisted head to "get the trouble lamp off" is not that standard.

Batteries are named equipment under 195.1. Installation includes placing them. Maintaining includes inspecting them. Servicing includes replacing failed units. Chapter 7 taught sealed valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) banks and float charging. Chapter 17 taught that sealed lead-acid replacement is typically a manufacturer 3-to-5-year schedule in addition to NFPA 72 charger and load-related tests. A battery program on a maintenance contract therefore has two clocks:

1. Age / date-code replacement before the cells collapse under alarm load
2. NFPA 72 testing (visual, charger, load or discharge as the adopted table requires)

Passing a visual look does not prove capacity. Replacing on age does not excuse skipped load tests. Record date codes on the 195.10 job file and on the ITM report. Replace a 24 V pair as a matched set. Mixing a new 18 Ah block with a five-year-old 7 Ah block is the Chapter 7 trap wearing a contract number.

Central-station test timers as a maintenance check

Chapter 10 taught communicator supervision intervals as commonly taught NFPA 72 figures (single-path fire often 60 minutes in 2016-and-later teaching, including NFPA 72-22 as referenced by the 2025 Uniform Code; multiple paths often 6 hours; many burglary tests still 24 hours). This section does not invent a New York-only minute. The maintenance point is: the scheduled visit proves the timer is still running and the supervising station is still receiving it.

A technician who never asks the central station whether last night's automatic test arrived has not maintained the communications path. A missed check-in is a communications trouble (failure-to-test). Stretching a fire single-path timer to a burglary 24-hour interval "to stop the tickets" is not a customer courtesy; it is taking the path off the supervision the AHJ accepted. Programming or reprogramming that timer is 195.1 work — maintaining when you do it to prevent problems, servicing when you do it after the communicator failed.

Put the test-timer check on the contract checklist next to detector cleaning: account number, path type, last successful test, and who at the central station confirmed it.

Two retention clocks — 195.10 and commonly taught NFPA 72

Chapter 17.3 already split system ITM documents from New York business records. Apply that split to the maintenance program without treating either clock as optional:

• 19 NYCRR 195.10(a): keep records of all transactions for three years. The maintenance agreement, each scheduled visit, each demand call, and each battery swap are transactions.
• 195.10(b): employee records until three full years after employment ends.
• 195.10(c): keep longer during litigation or a Department of State investigation or administrative action.
• 195.10(d): store those New York business and employee records at a central location in New York State.
• Commonly taught NFPA 72 14.6 practice: keep original system documentation (Record of Completion, as-builts) for the life of the system; keep periodic inspection and testing records until the next test of that type and for one year thereafter (multi-year cycles: the cycle plus one year). Paper or electronic media are commonly taught as permitted if they survive the retention period. Supervising-station records of signals that result from maintenance, inspection, and testing are commonly taught as retained not less than 12 months.

Do not tell an owner that the three-year 195.10 file replaces the NFPA 72 ITM report, or that once the next annual form is filed you may shred the contract. The agreement itself is a 195.10(e) document. The ITM report is the system record. Both apply.

In practice

A school board signs a one-page "service plan" that lists only a monthly price. No statement of services, no employee names, no battery program, no test-timer check. In year two a communicator fails silently for a week, a dirty smoke unwanted-alarms the fire department, and the fire marshal asks for the last ITM report and the contract. The exam answer is: 195.10 required a written statement of services and charges, named employees, three-year transaction records in New York, and the ITM layer still needed a real inspection and testing report. A price without a program is not Module 5.V maintenance.

On the exam

Wrong answers treat verbal monthly billing as 195.10(e), collapse scheduled ITM into "we'll come if it breaks," skip battery date codes because the jars look fine, paste a burglary 24-hour test onto a fire single-path communicator, or dump records at 90 days. Right answers name a written statement of services and charges, scheduled maintaining versus demand servicing, a listed spare and battery program, a live test-timer check, three-year 195.10 files in New York, and NFPA 72 ITM retention as a separate clock.