Had an inspector in a county south of Atlanta hand a Record of Completion back to me last winter with one line circled in red pen. Block 12, secondary power calculations. Blank. Everything else on the job passed. Walk test was clean, rough in redlines were closed out, panel programming matched the matrix. System sat on his desk for nine days anyway because a form nobody looks at until the very end had a hole in it.
That's the thing about the ROC. It's the last page anybody fills out and the first one an AHJ actually reads front to back, because it's supposed to be the whole story of the system in one document. Most of us treat it like a formality after the real work's done. It isn't.
what the form is actually for
NFPA 72 (7.8.2 in the 2022 edition, check your adopted year since some jurisdictions are still running 2019) requires a completed Record of Completion before the system goes into service. Not before final inspection, before service. The idea is that whoever inspects, maintains, or troubleshoots this panel five years from now shouldn't have to guess what's behind the door. Batteries, circuit types, device counts, who tested what. It's a snapshot, and it's supposed to survive personnel turnover on both sides, yours and the building's.
In practice it gets filled out fast, at the end of a long day, by whoever's closest to the laptop. That's how blocks go blank.
section by section, the parts that actually get checked
| ROC section | what belongs there | where it usually breaks |
|---|---|---|
| System description | panel make/model, protected premises name, alarm company info | fine, this one's easy, rarely wrong |
| Installation wiring | circuit type (Class A/B), conductor type, supervision | tech writes Class B on a job that's actually Class A because that's what the last job was |
| Secondary power | battery calc, standby hours, alarm minutes | left blank entirely, or copied from a different job |
| Circuits and zones | device count per circuit, current draw | matrix and ROC disagree because the matrix got revised after the ROC was drafted |
| Testing | which NFPA 72 test was performed, results | tester signs but doesn't note the actual test method used |
| Signatures | installer, tester, owner or owner's rep | owner's rep line blank, nobody chased it down |
That secondary power block is the one that bites people most, in my experience. It's not that techs don't know the number, it's that they ran the calc on paper or in a spreadsheet three weeks earlier and never transferred it to the actual form.
the battery block, worked example
Anonymized numbers off a small retrofit, eight initiating devices, four notification circuits, Fire-Lite panel. Not a universal figure, run your own, but here's the shape of it.
| load | current (A) | hours | Ah |
|---|---|---|---|
| standby (supervisory) | 0.185 | 24 | 4.44 |
| alarm | 1.62 | 5 min (0.083 hr) | 0.135 |
| subtotal | 4.58 | ||
| x 1.2 safety factor | 5.49 |
Round up to the next standard battery size your manufacturer stocks, usually a 7Ah on a job this small. That final number, the one after the safety factor, is what goes in the ROC. Not the subtotal, not the panel's rated capacity, the actual sized battery. I've seen ROCs with the panel's max supported Ah written in that block instead of what was calculated for the job. Technically not a lie, just not the answer to the question the form's asking.
If you want the full walkthrough on sizing by panel brand, we've got one here. Worth bookmarking, the derating assumptions differ enough between manufacturers that it's not a copy paste job.
signatures, and why the third one gets skipped
Three signatures usually matter: the person who installed it, the person who tested it (sometimes the same human, sometimes not), and the owner or the owner's authorized rep. That third one is the one that goes missing constantly, because by the time you're standing there with a clipboard the owner's already left the site, or the property manager wasn't at the walk, or nobody thought to ask.
Some AHJs won't flag it. Some will hold the CO on it specifically, because that signature is what makes the ROC a legal acknowledgment that the owner accepts responsibility for maintaining the system going forward, not just that it was installed. I think that's the actual intent behind requiring it, though I'd check with your local fire marshal's office rather than take my word for how strictly they enforce it, it varies more than people expect.
why a blank block holds up the CO
The certificate of occupancy chain usually runs building final, fire final, then CO. Fire final often won't close without a completed ROC in hand, because the inspector's not just checking that the system works today, they're checking that there's a document trail proving it works and that someone signed off on maintaining it. A blank block isn't a paperwork nitpick to them. It's a system they can't verify was actually sized and tested the way the rest of the package claims.
That's the frustrating part for a GC waiting on their CO. The alarm passed. The form didn't. And now everyone's waiting on a signature nobody chased down three weeks ago.
Full disclosure, i built a tool called firedeck, and the reason the ROC comes up in the first place is that i got tired of filling in the same battery number, the same device count, on four different forms that all wanted it phrased slightly differently.
Anyway. Fill out block 12 before you leave the site. Save everyone the nine days.