28 TAC § 34.618 requires three inspections during an installation, and it says why: they are performed by the licensed firm IN ORDER TO ASSURE PROPER INSTALLATION TECHNIQUES ARE FOLLOWED. Each one sits at a point where the next stage of work will hide what came before. The first is at the completion of the device back-box installation but PRIOR TO the start of cable installation. The second is at the completion of cable installation but PRIOR TO the start of device installation. The third is at the completion of device installation but PRIOR TO activating the fire alarm system. Read them as a sequence and the logic is obvious — each stage covers the one before it, and once covered it cannot be inspected without being uncovered.

Two conditions attach to all three. They must be performed by A LICENSED FIRE ALARM TECHNICIAN OR PLANNER — so this is not a task a firm can leave to an unlicensed crew member however routine it looks — and they must be DOCUMENTED ON THE INSPECTION FORM. The inspection is not complete when someone has looked; it is complete when the form records that someone licensed looked, at the right stage.

The rule then adds an escalation that turns the inspections into something with teeth. The registered firm SHALL NOTIFY THE AUTHORITY HAVING JURISDICTION IF INITIATION OF CORRECTIVE ACTION DOES NOT TAKE PLACE WITHIN TEN CALENDAR DAYS. Note what triggers it: not the failure to complete a correction, but the failure to INITIATE one within ten calendar days. And note who owes the notice — the registered firm, about work on its own job, to the local authority. A firm that finds a defect at the back-box stage and cannot get the electrical contractor to start putting it right has ten calendar days before its own obligation shifts from fixing to reporting.