A marina is a workplace, a public place and a fuel-storage environment sitting on a combustible structure over water, frequently with people sleeping aboard. Every Australian jurisdiction imposes duties on the person conducting the business or undertaking to eliminate or minimise risk so far as is reasonably practicable, and fire is the risk with the shortest distance between a lapse and a catastrophe. The equipment side is usually handled. The evidence side almost never is, and evidence is what an insurer, a regulator or a lease auditor actually assesses.
The asset register comes first
Before any schedule means anything, you need a complete register of every fire asset on the facility: extinguishers by type and rating, hose reels, hydrants and boosters, fire blankets, life rings and throw lines, emergency isolation points for power and fuel, spill kits, and the location of each one against the marina plan.
The register should record asset type, location, serial or asset number, install date, last service, next service due and current condition. If that register lives in a filing cabinet or a single person's memory, it does not exist for compliance purposes.
Service and inspection intervals
Routine servicing of fire protection equipment in Australia follows AS 1851, and marine environments accelerate corrosion, so the minimum interval is a floor, not a target. A practical marina regime looks like this.
- Portable extinguishers: six-monthly inspection and service, with pressure test and refill at the interval specified for the extinguisher type.
- Fire hose reels: six-monthly inspection, annual flow and operation test, with nozzle and hose condition checked for UV degradation.
- Hydrants and boosters: annual flow testing, with clear and unobstructed access verified at every dock walk.
- Fire blankets, life rings, throw lines: visual inspection at each dock walk, replacement on any sign of UV or salt degradation.
- Emergency isolation: quarterly verification that power and fuel isolation points are labelled, accessible and operable.
- Fuel systems: inspection and testing to the requirements applying to the installation, with spill response equipment checked monthly.
Dock walks are the compliance engine
The formal service schedule catches the equipment. The dock walk catches everything else: a shore lead in the water, an extension cord run from a pedestal, a gas bottle stored in a cockpit locker, a blocked hydrant, a missing life ring, a hot-work contractor with no permit.
Two walks a day, morning and afternoon, with a fixed zone-by-zone route, photographs of anything defective, a timestamp and the walker's name. Done on paper it becomes a drawer of forms nobody reads. Done on a tablet with photographs and GPS-stamped entries it becomes a defensible record and, in our experience, a measurable reduction in insurance friction at renewal.
Emergency planning and the siren
Every marina should hold a written emergency plan covering fire aboard a vessel, fire ashore, fuel spill, severe weather, medical emergency and person in the water, with roles assigned by position rather than by name. Berth holders and casual visitors need to know two things without thinking: what the alarm sounds like, and where to assemble.
Publish the siren signals plainly — a continuous tone for evacuate, intermittent for alert and stand by, and a distinct signal for all clear — and put the emergency contact card in the berthing terms, on the arm gates and in the amenities. Run an annual exercise and record it. An untested plan is a document, not a control.
Contractors are the highest-risk hour of your week
Hot works, battery installations, fuel system work, gas fitting and antifoul stripping are where marina fires start. A contractor should not be on your arms without current public liability, workers compensation, licences relevant to the work, a safe work method statement and a site induction on file, and hot works should require a specific permit with a fire watch period after the work stops.
Collect that documentation before the contractor arrives rather than at the gate. An emailed invite that captures insurances, SWMS and induction ahead of the visit takes minutes and removes the awkward conversation on the jetty entirely.
Could you produce the evidence today?
Here is the test we apply on every compliance review. Ask for the last six months of dock walk records, the current service status of every fire asset, the induction and insurance file for the contractor who worked on B arm last month, and the record of the most recent evacuation exercise. If it takes more than ten minutes to produce all four, the facility has a compliance risk regardless of how well maintained it is.
We audit marina fire and WHS compliance across Australia and set up the record-keeping that survives an audit. Ask for a compliance review and we will tell you exactly what is missing.
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