After the completion of the installation, modification, or addition of a system or single station detector unit — EXCEPT FOR A ONE- OR TWO-FAMILY RESIDENCE — 28 TAC § 34.617 requires the licensee to complete an INSTALLATION CERTIFICATE in the format provided by the state fire marshal, in lieu of the installation form the adopted standard requires, unless the local AHJ requires otherwise. Three things in one sentence are worth separating. The trigger is completion of an installation, a modification, OR an addition, so the certificate is not a new-systems-only document. The residential carve-out is a genuine exclusion rather than a lighter version. And the state’s format displaces the standard’s form, which is a rare case of Texas substituting its own paperwork for the adopted standard’s — the format itself is provided by the State Fire Marshal’s Office on request.

What the certificate must do is stated precisely: it SHALL IDENTIFY THE STANDARDS APPLICABLE to the installation and CERTIFY COMPLIANCE with those standards — unless a variance is permitted under 28 TAC § 34.616, in which event the specific variance and the authority for it must be identified. That is the adoption machinery from Chapter 7 arriving on a single sheet of paper. The certificate does not describe what the standards require; it names which ones applied and states that the work meets them, and where the job ran to a different edition under the allowance § 7.4 covered, it says so and says on whose authority.

Then the certificate has to reach people, and the distribution is three ways with two different clocks. The ORIGINAL stays at the site of installation after completion. ONE COPY is retained by the certifying company FOR THE LIFE OF THE SYSTEM OR TEN YEARS, WHICHEVER OCCURS FIRST, for access by the State Fire Marshal’s Office. And ONE COPY is sent WITHIN 10 DAYS after completion of the installation to the local AHJ. The rule also requires the certificate to be presented to the owner or the owner’s representative, or posted near the main control panel — the firm chooses which of the two, not whether. So the site copy has a place to be, and the firm’s copy has a shelf life measured against the system rather than the calendar.