Eight years on from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 coming into force and fire statistics show a significant reduction in fires. Yet enforcement actions against businesses for breaches of fire safety are on the increase. Jerry Flechais asks — is fire safety management getting better or enforcement?
Fire has been a staple of enforcement dating back to the Great Fire of London, in 1666, when legal wrangles to decide on where fault lay, went on for months. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) consolidated over 100 separate pieces of legislation, moving from a prescriptive, to a risk-based model of fire safety. But legal reforms take time to bed in. We are seeing an increase in enforcement and sanctions, as enforcers and the courts are becoming more familiar with the legislation, in parallel with the improvements in fire safety performance that the law was designed to bring about.
Although the number of fires is reducing,
1 the severity and spectacular nature of some recent fires, along with tragic loss of firefighters’ lives are forcing fire and rescue services to re-evaluate their operational approach to fighting fires. The cumulative effect of all these changes has left many employers feeling vulnerable or having to fend for themselves to protect their workforce and assets and ensure the continuity of their operation.
From a prescriptive approach…
Companies and employers in general have always been responsible for managing fire safety in their organisations and fire safety has long been seen as a vital part of business management. The FSO ended the Fire and Rescue Service’s role of prescribing fire safety requirements, shifting responsibility for the design of fire safety onto employers. This shift required a step change in business risk management thinking. Attitudes are changing from reluctant or grudging engagement with prescriptive safety, to a genuine recognition of the value of a risk-based management approach, both for their employees and for the company as a whole.
In theory, moving away from a prescriptive way of doing things allows more flexibility and innovation — bespoke, business-conscious management solutions on fire safety can be implemented and adapted to an individual organisation’s requirements. Employers will see fire safety improvements that fit their needs. This mirrors other risk-based approaches in use throughout business: good risk management identifies threats and opportunities affecting an organisation’s chances of success or failure and proactively manages these.
But this is reliant on people being equipped with a higher level of knowledge, allowing them to apply solutions suited to their environment.
Risk assessment is the cornerstone of fire safety and the
13 fire advisory guides produced by the Government are now viewed as the definitive documents that set out the minimum requirements for fire safety.
Unlike “elf’n’safety”, fire safety carries a certain cachet: the need for fire safety measures in an organisation is rarely, if ever, disputed. Perhaps because it is easy to foresee the havoc that fire can wreak upon people, premises and financial health.
The difficult question is how to make sure people have the right knowledge, to advise on or implement the right solutions for their organisations. UK plc is facing a knowledge void, where professionals whose remit includes fire safety are calling for more education and training to help them fulfil their responsibilities. Organisations are now dependent on the competence, experience and knowledge of other advising professionals to make sure they are complying with the law.
Illustrating this lack of understanding, the enforcement statistics
2 released for 2012/13 showed that, in England alone, there were:
- 22,800 informal notifications;
- 2,800 enforcement notices;
- 485 prohibition notices; and
- 58 prosecutions.
With the top five articles of non-compliance prompting enforcement or prosecution relating to:
- risk assessment;
- emergency exits;
- maintenance;
- fire fighting and fire detection; and
- general fire precautions.
Risk aversion and risk retention
A lack of understanding of hazards and control measures can lead to risk aversion or worse, oversight, with organisations taking ownership of risks without being aware of them.
To put it simply, fire safety has always been an easy sell. But the move away from a prescriptive approach makes it equally easy to scaremonger people into taking measures that might be disproportionate to the risk they face.
Without suitable guidance, it is easy to become risk averse and over-specify the control measures required. From a risk perspective, over-specification is not necessarily a problem.
However, from a business perspective, companies could be going way beyond what is actually required, spending unnecessarily and generating a bad reputation for risk management with their over-zealous measures.
Done well, fire safety can save money in the long run by introducing cost-effective, sensible and proportionate measures.
Suitable and sufficient assessment?
For most organisations, fire safety management will start with a fire risk assessment. Those three words alone have led to much debate, as the FSO does not state what makes a fire risk assessment suitable, let alone sufficient.
Untangling this is an article in its own right and I don’t propose to revisit it here. However, article 9 of the FSO clearly states that the responsible person (almost always the employer) should identify and assess the risk of fire, in order to determine the fire precautions required.
Broadly speaking, this means preventing fires from starting; warning occupants in the event of a fire and protecting them long enough for them to escape; and, managing the fire safety precautions installed. A fire risk assessment must cover all these aspects in order to be suitable.
The advisory guides and publications such as PAS 79 provide methodology and templates for carrying out risk assessments. However, as the FSO applies primarily to premises, too many risk assessments fall into the trap of becoming compliance audits against the standards used to design the premises.
There are many different design standards that can be used (Approved Document B of the Building regulations, BS 9999, HTM 05-01, BB100, CIBSE Guide E) or there is the option of a fire engineered solution following BS 7974.
There is a fundamental requirement to understand the building design, the function of the passive protection and active systems installed and, most importantly, the assumptions taken during design about the management of the premises in order to carry out a suitable risk assessment. This is before you can start evaluating the impact of any alterations made.
However, checking compliance with these codes does not constitute a sufficient assessment of fire risk. In order to demonstrate sufficiency, the assessment needs to show that the control measures:
- are proportionate to the risks to occupants; and,
- reduce that risk to as low as reasonably practicable.
It also needs to review the management arrangements, taking into account the impact of fire on the business as a whole. All of this requires competence.
Competent assessors
The UK Fire Industry Association’s (FIA) Fire Risk Assessment Council released the
‘Competency Criteria for Fire Risk Assessors’, at the end of 2011. Used by professional bodies, third party certification bodies and commercial companies as a benchmark for competency, it sets out the minimum knowledge required of fire risk assessors. These cover:
- the assessment of risk from fire;
- applicable legislation;
- appropriate guidance;
- behaviour of fire in buildings;
- behaviour of people in fire situations;
- means of escape;
- fire prevention;
- fire protection (passive and active); and
- management of fire safety.
In a landmark case in 2011, a fire risk assessor was sentenced to eight months imprisonment for lack of competence in carrying out an assessment on a hotel.
Courses such as the NEBOSH Fire Certificate and the Fire Protection Association’s (FPA) range of industry courses also form an important part of the way a professional equips themselves with the knowledge to do their job.
A number of specialist organisations within the fire industry also produce guidance to furnish professionals with essential knowledge and updates, such as the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP), the Sprinkler Association, BAFE, the British Standards Institution (BSI), BRE Group and the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) — to name but a few.
Choosing a competent assessor
Although the criteria define competence of fire risk assessors, they are an important tool for due diligence by employers. These can and should be used to help appoint the right person, along with the usual business checks around insurance, prior experience and sector expertise. In the same way that you would not appoint a plumber to do electrical work, you would not appoint a fire professional specialising in industrial premises to advise on hospital fire safety.
There are several schemes and registers for fire risk assessors, and fire safety professionals (see table 1).
A holistic approach
Although the fire risk assessment may very well be the starting point to fire safety for many organisations, it is most definitely not the end point. Fire precautions must be monitored, systems must be tested and inspected and the overall performance regularly reviewed to identify any areas of improvements.
Like quality, environmental and H&S systems, fire safety management needs an iterative approach to maintain efficiency and drive improvement.
It also needs to consider wider issues such as contractor selection and management, and supply chain management. Organisations already using the Deming cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) to manage other risks can easily fit fire safety management alongside their existing systems. Indeed, there is a case for embedding all aspects of risk management into day-to-day business by using an integrated management system.
For organisations who do not have these systems, a fire safety management specification (PAS 7) has recently been released by BSI. This provides a systematic approach to developing and embedding fire safety management in organisations.
Fire safety professional’s remit
A fire safety professional’s job can be vast, from simpler tasks (such as checking buildings for fire risks or blocked escape routes) to carrying out assessments, setting policies within an organisation or designing a strategy for fire safety management. The fire safety industry also includes those who install and maintain protective measures such as alarm and detection systems, suppression systems and passive protection (fire doors, glazing, ductwork, compartmentation).
This can be a hugely rewarding role but there is no doubt that it it is also a complicated one. Many people who enter the profession, or have responsibilities handed to them, find it difficult to get the knowledge they require to perform their duties.
The IOSH Fire Risk Management Group, along with other professional fire safety bodies aims to provide guidance and CPD opportunities to enable all professionals to improve their knowledge of fire safety.
References
1. DCLG – Fire Statistics Monitor: England April 2012 to March 2013
2. DCLG – Fire and Rescue Operational Statistics Bulletin for England: 2012-13
Jerry Flechais is the IOSH fire risk management group vice chair and a member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers
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Eight years on from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 coming into force and fire statistics show a significant reduction in fires. Yet enforcement actions against businesses for breaches of fire safety are on the increase. Jerry Flechais asks — is fire safety management getting better or enforcement?
Good article, agree with Ryan above. Regular CPD articles please.
The section regarding sentencing an incompetent Fire risk assessor indicates that there is still a mentality of needing to fulfil a tick in the box .
Good article ,
Useful article and now a discussion topic for my next team meeting
Very usefull article which i found to be informative for a practicioner who does not have detailed and extensive experience in the field. The links and refrences will be of particular use in the future.
Very useful from the point of revision, accessibility.Factual without divertion to other topics / thoughts / imaginings.Breaks down the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 into workable/memorable chunks –
Keep it up please!!
A usewful and informative article and more such CPD would be welcome. My only only concern is paragraph 2 and the comments concerning the changing ways of the fire service. These changes are more about the misdirected approach to training and competence issues rather than anything else.
A very helpful summary with useful references. The Guides published by the DCLG are very helpful, as is the Competency Council work to provide a template of requirements for a fire risk assessor. It is still a major concern that anyone can set up as an assessor without any competence and even former fire service personnel do not always make good assessors. The value of third party certification schemes for this and other fire protection services – alarms, extinguishers, emergency lighting, passive protection is highlighted by DCLG, FIA and others and in the absence of governments making compulsory competence requirements,… Read more »
That is an extemely helpful article. I always find it strange that the commissioning bodies cannot determine the advice to make a fire risk assessment suitable and sufficient but the enforcing authorities can when things go wrong. I found the reference to The UK Fire Industry Association’s (FIA) Fire Risk Assessment Council particulalry useful
useful article
competency is a big issue with SME’s
adds to my PDP as it may for others
can anyone guide me how to construct a cpd for firefighters