Hi Brendon,
We have had a couple of incidents on site where dust has set off the emergency alarm.
1. using a leaf blower to blow out a long hallway in our amenities building.
2. Painter's hand sanding a wall in the same area
Neither of these events involved excessive amounts of dust.

We have been advised that we temporarily impair up to four (by capping off, you can get proper covers) detectors before needing to put in place an official impairment with FENZ/Insurance to complete these works. Obviously, procedures must be in place and followed.
The install or managing company can also impair the required detectors for you. But I would advise you look into the impairment notice criteria (the company may be able to help you there).

Hope this helps.

We got sick of false alarms (in the middle of the night) in our cabinet making factory, so we had the smokes changed to smoke beams in half the factory, and then heat wire in the extension. Of course this is something that has to be done by the right people with required consents etc.

For small work areas like rooms we use latex glove over the alarm of work area. works best for short duration works which might produce more dust then usual even with extractor fans and other controls.

Its hanging and visible and just need to pull them off at the end of the day.

Where I used to work we had smoke alarms set off by boiling jugs, deodorant spray, and by installation of smoke alarm dust covers. Fortunately, modern smoke alarms can be network-addressable. 24 hours' notice to the building maintenance team and the smoke detectors can be temporarily isolated.

Modern emergency lights can also be computer-controlled to aid compliance testing. The sparky with a computer tablet could activate the lights one by one to verify correct operation.

but also want to explore temporary suspension of smoke detectors. — Brendon Ward

Best to also check with your insurance too - a lot of commercial policies require a process around the disabling of emergency detection systems.

In previous companies I have works with any disabling of a smoke / fire detection system required a work permit, and that permit required the consideration of; communicating what/how the system has been disabled and how long it was to be disabled for, and the temporary alternative controls to be in place during the system down-time (e.g. fire watch / spotter present at all times with suitable fire fighting equipment such as 2x extinguishers of fire hose).

The detectors are there as a control - so if you take that away (ie: put caps on it) we would need to replace that control. Some places I have worked at had a fire impairment certificate that was required by the insurance companies when this took place. If hot work was taking place while the detectors were capped we would need a hot work certificate with fire watch etc. all risk based