Authorised maintenance company

What the regulations say

There is no single law on maintenance companies: each installation regulation defines its own. For fire protection, RIPCI, the Spanish fire protection installations regulation (Royal Decree 513/2017), defines it as the entity that carries out maintenance on active fire protection equipment and systems (Article 2(g)) and requires it to be duly authorised by the competent body of the autonomous community (Article 14(1)), through a declaration of compliance known as a declaración responsable (Article 16). For thermal installations, RITE, the Spanish regulation on thermal installations in buildings (Royal Decree 1027/2007), requires maintenance to be done by authorised maintenance companies (Article 26(1)). For lifts, the equivalent is called an empresa conservadora (ITC AEM 1, Royal Decree 355/2024, Article 4).

A restaurant with fire extinguishers, detection in the kitchen and air conditioning of more than 70 kW needs a company authorised for fire protection and another (or the same one, if it holds both authorisations) for the air conditioning, and with the latter a maintenance contract, because RITE requires one above that output (Article 26(6)(b)). Some quarterly and six-monthly fire protection checks can be done by the business's own staff (RIPCI, Annex II, Table I); the annual and five-yearly ones cannot (Table II). And anyone with the means can become authorised to maintain their own installations (RIPCI, Article 14(2); RITE, Article 26(8)).