Alarm Notification & Escalation
A critical alarm needs to reach a person, not just appear on an unattended screen.
Critical alarms should trigger direct notification (text, phone call, page) to on-call staff, not rely solely on a control room screen that may not be actively watched at all hours.
Escalation logic (notify a second person if the first doesn't acknowledge within a set time) protects against a single missed notification leaving a critical condition unaddressed.
Notification system testing on a regular schedule confirms the actual delivery path (cellular carrier, paging service) is still functioning, since carrier and service changes can silently break a previously working notification path.
A logged history of every alarm and its acknowledgment time is valuable both for operational review and for demonstrating a documented response during a permit compliance investigation.
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