December 4, 2024The fire risk assessment landscape has evolved since the risk-based approach to fire safety legislation was introduced in the UK in the mid-2000s, Steve Hamm, Chief Executive of the Institution of Fire Engineers, told an audience on day two of the Anticipate event in London. But it’s since the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 that this evolution has accelerated.
The main changes have been brought about by amendments to the Fire Safety Order, said Mr Hamm, clarifying the requirements of fire risk assessments and the competency of fire risk assessors. S156 (4) of the Building Safety Act provides that a responsible person must only use a competent fire risk assessor, and then defines competent as “where the person has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable the person properly to assist in making or reviewing the assessment”.
This provision is yet to come into force. In the meantime, a number of work strands that would make its coming into force practicable have progressed. The first of these is Working Group 4 on the competence of fire risk assessors which has developed:
Long before the Grenfell Tower fire, the Fire Risk Assessor Competency Council was established. This provided the framework for the Institution of Fire Engineer’s fire risk assessor register and other similar schemes. The progress on competence continued with the Fire Sector Federation’s approved code of practice in 2020, and its Benchmark Standards for Fire Risk Assessors in 2022.
The IFE’s register numbers between 300 and 400 fire risk assessors, said Mr Hamm, but nationally there is a requirement for thousands of them, so there is still progress to be made. At present, there is nothing to stop anyone setting up as a fire risk assessor, so S.156 (4) needs to be enacted to close this loophole. In the meantime, to make membership of its register more robust, the IFE has made registration with the Engineering Council a condition of being listed.
So what does the future of competency look like? BS 8674 Built environment – Framework for competence of individual fire risk assessors – Code of practice is now at public consultation stage and should emerge in 2025, said Mr Hamm. It’s based on the Fire Sector Federation’s code of practice and sets out three tiers of competence. In addition, the Fire Risk Assessor Competence Verification Board has been set up to examine what needs to be done to establish competency schemes in the light of the introduction of S.156 (4) of the Building Safety Act.
The new approach to certification will see regulated qualifications for fire risk assessors, and a route for ‘experienced workers’, who might not otherwise meet the qualifications criteria. We also need a pathway for school and college leavers, said Mr Hamm, so apprenticeships will also be considered. The Grenfell Inquiry phase 2 report set out the need for this type of registration scheme. Together with BS 9792 Fire risk assessment – Housing – Code of practice, which replaces PAS 79-2, there is now a standard for competence and a standard for process (methodology). With these two standards, a professional body such as the IFE is able to assess individuals for a more robust register than is now the case.
“What matters,” concluded Mr Hamm, “is the outcome for practitioners and end-users – that those fire risk assessors are visible on a public register, plus the values-based ethics code of the Engineering Council. All that is for the benefit of end-users.”
