Above the sprinkler line: the insurer's audit, one day a year versus every day
The property insurer audits four states your cameras see all the time: fire aisle, storage height, charging area, emergency exit. It sees them one day a year. You can see them every day.
A sprinkler system is designed for a storage height. Above that height, the water no longer reaches the fire early enough, or does not reach the right place. That is why the clearance between the top of the pallets and the sprinkler heads appears in the ICPE requirements, in the inspectorate’s checks, and in the property insurer’s annual audit.1
And that is why it is one of the easiest non-conformities to create without meaning to. A peak in activity, a full rack, a forklift driver who puts a pallet on the top level “just for the day”, and the line is crossed. Nothing rings. Nothing stops. The site is outside its requirements for a few hours, sometimes a few weeks, without anyone having decided it.
What the insurer audits, and what the camera sees
The states the insurer’s surveyor reviews are known, and there are few of them:
- the fire aisle clear over its full width;
- the storage height below the sprinkler clearance;
- combustibles kept away from the battery charging area;
- the emergency exits free.2
These are precisely states: visible on a single image, persistent, appearing and disappearing. In other words, exactly what a ceiling or aisle camera sees all day, and what periodic checks can track without recognising anyone.
| Audited state | What is needed to observe it | What Camly produces |
|---|---|---|
| Storage height | A camera that sees the rack’s top level and the marking | “Storage above the marking” episodes, per aisle, with duration |
| Fire aisle | An aisle camera | Obstruction episodes, by hour of the day |
| Charging area | The camera covering the chargers | “Combustibles in the zone” episodes, with image |
| Emergency exit | The door camera | Obstruction episodes, recurrence per week |
One day a year
The audit takes place one day a year, announced. The site prepares: aisles are cleared, pallets are brought down, markings are repainted. The surveyor sees a compliant warehouse and records it. The other 364 days remain unknown, to the surveyor and to the site manager alike.
That is not a criticism of the audit. It is the limit of a sampling method. The problem is that a fire does not choose the day of the audit.
What the risk costs
The BARPI’s ARIA database records 207 events involving warehouses of combustible materials between 2009 and 2016, about 25 a year, with fire present in 82% of cases; the BARPI states that this count is not exhaustive.3 Against the 4,432 warehouses over 5,000 m² of the time, our market study derives a probability of at least 0.57% per site and per year.2
With an average warehouse fire cost estimated at about €1.5 million, the expected annual loss, including business interruption, comes to around €17,000 for a platform and €8,500 for a mid-size site.2 These figures are estimates of the study, to be validated in pilots. They do not say that a warehouse burns every year. They say that a site which keeps its four states compliant over time reduces a risk whose unit cost far exceeds what it spends on prevention.
What to show the insurer
A photo of the aisle taken the day before the audit proves the state of the day before. An episode history proves something else: the compliance of the fire zones over time, the trends from one quarter to the next, and the closure rate of corrective actions.2
In practice, the report Camly generates over the chosen period contains, for the insurer, the indicators per fire zone, the change in the number and duration of episodes, and the follow-up of actions. It is a document the HSE manager can hand over without rebuilding it by hand, and that the surveyor can read in ten minutes.
What Camly does not do
Camly is not a fire detection system and does not replace the fire safety system, the sprinklers or the calculation of their design. It does not act in real time: it observes states that last, and documents them. It does not measure height to the centimetre: it checks, on the image, whether storage exceeds the reference you defined. It does not watch forklift drivers: findings are about an aisle and a state, and people are blurred on the stored images.
Where to start
Take your insurer’s last audit report. The remarks almost always concern one of the four states above. Pick the one that keeps coming back, find the camera that sees it, and follow it for thirty days. At the next audit, you will have something other than a photo.
Sources
- Prefecture of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, “Prévention des risques industriels : l’État mène une vaste opération coup de poing sur le risque d’incendie dans les entrepôts”, updated 16 September 2025: points checked, including storage height relative to sprinklers. prefectures-regions.gouv.fr
- Camly AI, market-fit study, French warehouses, October 2026: section “Fire and property insurance” (probability per site, average cost, expected annual loss, states audited by the insurer); estimates of the study, to be validated in pilots.
- BARPI / ARIA, accidentology of warehouses of combustible materials 2009–2016. aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr