28 TAC § 34.624 turns on three conditions rather than one. If, after any service, inspection or test, a system OR ANY PART OF IT is INOPERABLE, has a FAULT CONDITION, or is IMPAIRED FROM NORMAL OPERATION — excluding areas of a building under construction — a completed red label must be attached to the outside of the control panel cover, or in a permanent location where there is no panel, to indicate that corrective action is necessary. Two details in that sentence decide cases. The trigger reaches any PART of a system, so a single dead circuit is enough. And the construction exclusion is the rule acknowledging that a building mid-works is not a system in service.

The label itself must record WHICH of the three it is: among its required contents is the STATUS OF THE SYSTEM TO BE MARKED, INOPERABLE OR IMPAIRED OR FAULT, alongside a list of the conditions resulting in the red label, the firm’s name, address, telephone number and certificate of registration number, and the date, the licensee’s unstamped signature and license number. As with the yellow label, the signature certifies that the CONDITIONS LISTED have caused the system to be inoperable, to have a fault condition, or to be impaired — a certification about specific findings, not a general verdict.

The notification is where the red label departs from everything else in this subchapter, because it runs at two speeds depending on which of the three conditions applies. IF THE SYSTEM IS INOPERABLE, immediately after attaching the red label the licensee or the registered firm must ORALLY NOTIFY the property owner, the occupant or their representative, and the local AHJ where available, of all impairments — and provide written notification, emailed, faxed or hand delivered, WITHIN THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY. If the system has a fault condition or is impaired from normal operation, the notice is written only, indicating the conditions, postmarked, emailed, faxed or hand delivered WITHIN THREE BUSINESS DAYS. Nowhere else in these rules is an oral notice required, and it is required here because a building with an inoperable fire alarm system cannot wait for the post.