Fire roll call system FAQs
What responsible persons and safety managers ask before choosing a system. If yours is not here, call the Leeds team on 0113 350 9043.
Is a digital fire roll call system legally acceptable in the UK?▼
Yes. The
Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 does not specify how you account for people, only that your evacuation procedures must be effective. Nothing requires a paper list. What matters is that your fire risk assessment sets out the method, that your marshals are trained in it, and that you can show what happened afterwards. A digital system usually makes the last part easier, because the record is created automatically rather than depending on someone filing a sheet.
Is a fire roll call the same as a fire muster?▼
Yes. Fire roll call, fire muster and emergency mustering all describe the same thing: gathering everyone at an assembly point after an evacuation and checking each person is out. Offshore and process industries tend to say muster, and most other UK workplaces say roll call. A fire muster app or muster software does the same job as a digital fire roll call system.
Is there an app for fire roll call?▼
Yes. Syncro Connect and Edu Connect customers use Fire Connect, a free download for iPhone and Android, listed as Fire Connect in the App Store and Google Play. Realtime customers use the Computime Muster App. Either app comes with the £395 a year roll call module, and each marshal signs in with their own details. The
Fire Connect guide shows every screen.
What happens if there is no phone signal at the assembly point?▼
Marshals can keep working from the list, but a person is only marked safe once that tap is saved. In Fire Connect the list stays on screen with the time it was last updated, a Safe tap that cannot be saved is undone with a message, and the list catches up as soon as the signal returns, so nobody is ever shown as safe who was not recorded. The Computime Muster App used with Realtime works offline and syncs later. Whichever you use, stand at your assembly point and test the signal during a drill before you rely on it.
What if someone leaves site without clocking out?▼
They will show as unaccounted for, and that is the correct behaviour: the system should err towards someone being in the building rather than assuming they left. The difference a digital system makes is what happens next. Instead of sending a marshal back inside to look, you call that person from the app and rule them out in seconds. No roll call system, digital or paper, can know about someone who slipped out of a side door, so the honest answer is that the process handles it rather than the technology preventing it.
Does it include visitors and contractors?▼
Yes, if they signed in through
visitor management. They appear on the same roll call list as staff, tagged with who they are visiting, which matters because visitors and contractors are the people least likely to know where the assembly point is. If a visitor signed in yesterday and never signed out, the app flags them to check in person, with the reason, so marshals look for them rather than assume either way. If you take visitors and do not have a sign-in system, that is the gap worth closing first.
How much does a fire roll call system cost?▼
£395 a year excl. VAT, flat, whatever your headcount and however many marshals you name. A site with 500 people pays the same as a site with 40. It is an add-on to
Syncro Connect or
Realtime, because the roll call is built from your clocking data, so you need one of those in place for it to work. If you only want the roll call, Fire Connect can run on Syncro Connect without the time and attendance software, so the £395 a year is the only software cost. You still need clocking terminals, because that is how the list knows who is in.
Can more than one fire marshal run the roll call at the same time?▼
Yes, and on a larger site you should. One marshal starts the roll call and every other marshal sees it on their own phone. Each can filter to their own assembly point, department or site, while the counts always cover the whole roll call, so a 300 person roll call is not queueing behind one person with one phone. It also means the count continues if the person who normally does it is away, off site, or the one who is unaccounted for.
Do we still need to run fire drills?▼
Yes. Most workplaces should run at least one a year, and your fire risk assessment may call for more depending on the premises and the people in them. A digital system does not replace drills, it makes them worth more: each one is logged with the time taken and an accuracy percentage, so you can see whether things are improving and spot the practical problems, like a marshal whose phone was in a locker, while it is still only a drill. Our guide to
how often fire drills should be carried out covers frequency and what to record.
Can we export the roll call records?▼
Yes. Every roll call is kept in Syncro Connect with when it started, who started and ended it, how long it took, its accuracy percentage, and how many people were safe or outstanding. The roll call report goes person by person, showing who marked each person safe and when, and can be exported as a PDF or CSV for your fire records or an insurer. A roll call left open closes itself after twelve hours and is recorded as incomplete, so it is never lost.
How is roll call data handled under UK GDPR?▼
A roll call list is personal data, since it shows who was on site and when, but it is ordinary personal data rather than special category, unlike sickness records. Most employers rely on legal obligation or legitimate interests as the lawful basis, given the duty to account for people in an emergency. Records are held in UK data centres with access logged and restricted to named users, and a manager can delete a roll call that was started by accident. Our
data security page sets out how it is stored.
Where should the roll call be taken?▼
At your assembly point, which should be a safe distance from the building, upwind where possible, and clear of traffic and the routes the fire service will use. There is no fixed legal distance; it is set by your fire risk assessment. Each marshal can filter the list to their own assembly point, which matters on sites where different groups muster in different places. We cover this in more detail in
where should fire roll call be carried out.
How long does it take to set up?▼
Not long, because there is nothing to build. If you already have Syncro Connect, we switch the module on, you tick which people are fire marshals, and they install the app and sign in with their usual details. If you use more than one assembly point, each person’s assembly point is set on their record so marshals can filter by it. The real decisions, who your marshals are and who musters where, are usually in your fire risk assessment already.
Can we try it before committing?▼
Yes. Start a
free trial of Syncro Connect with no card required, or
book a demo and we will show the roll call running against a list like yours. If you are replacing an existing system, tell us what it does now and we will be straight with you about whether this is an improvement.
