How many defibrillators should a building have?

Loi 2018-527 (the French law of 2018 on AED access) and its implementing decree require an automated external defibrillator in buildings open to the public according to their category, with deadlines already passed: categories 1 to 3 since 1 January 2020, category 4 since 2021, part of category 5 since 2022. These texts set an obligation of presence and working order, not a minimum number of units per building or square metre.

Sizing the equipment correctly is therefore the operator's responsibility, on top of the maintenance duty set out in article R. 5212-25 of the French public health code (Code de la santé publique). A single AED poorly placed in a large building can technically comply with the law while being of little use if no one can reach it quickly from the far end of the site.

This absence of a legal figure explains why two buildings in the same category can have very different needs. A small town-centre shop and an out-of-town store in the same category do not share the same floor area, the same number of entrances, or the same number of visitors at a given moment.

Floor area and number of storeys are the first things to look at. A single-storey office floor can be covered with one centrally placed unit near reception. A three or four storey building with a single central staircase already complicates access from the far ends, especially when lifts are busy.

The visitor profile matters as much as floor area. A site welcoming elderly people, exercising athletes, or a large and mobile crowd carries higher risk and justifies denser coverage than a low-traffic office. The number of exits, partitioned areas or basements also weigh into the equation.

Every minute without defibrillation cuts survival chances by roughly 10 percent. That figure alone explains why a distant or hard-to-reach unit does not offer the same protection as a visible, well-signposted unit placed near circulation areas.

These benchmarks do not replace an on-site visit, but they give a first order of magnitude before planning an equipment project.

A municipality running a town hall, a community hall and a gym at separate addresses cannot rely on a single defibrillator, even though all the sites belong to the same local authority. Every building open to the public needs its own unit, reachable without crossing a public road or fetching a key from a neighbouring building.

The same logic applies to companies spread across several sites or chains operating several stores under the same trading name. Each Géo'DAE declaration (the French national AED registry) corresponds to one unit and one precise location, which naturally pushes operators to think site by site rather than at the level of the whole organisation.

A prior audit avoids two opposite pitfalls: under-equipping a large site and leaving whole areas out of reach, or multiplying units without any real gain in access speed. Listing the buildings, their opening hours and their entry points is the first step before settling on a final number.

Adding more AEDs does not mean multiplying maintenance procedures. Rental starts at 50 euros excl. VAT per month and per unit, maintenance included, which makes it possible to budget a fleet of several defibrillators with a predictable cost instead of scattered inspection fees across several providers.

Each unit is delivered within 2 to 5 working days and covered by a 5-year warranty. A quote to equip several buildings can be produced within 24 hours, leaving time to compare configurations before placing orders and spreading units according to each site's real needs.