The FIA has released an introduction video to fire risk assessments, covering how a risk assessment is carried out and the dangers of using a risk assessor who hasn’t been assessed by a third party.
Colin Todd, who chairs the FIA’s risk assessment council and is considered one of the foremost experts on risk assessment in the UK, is among those interviewed in the video. He explains:
A risk assessment is basically a structured look at the premises and their fire risk. If we think of risk as having two components — likelihood of fire and consequence of fire — having dealt with the likelihood of fire by addressing the fire hazards, the things that can cause fire, the risk assessor would then look at the measures to keep people safe if fire does occur.
These are measures such as means of escape, emergency lighting, fire alarm systems, fire extinguishers, and so on.
Ben Bradford from the fire risk consultancy BB7, also appears in the video. He explains that, in addition to being a legal requirement, a fire risk assessment is an essential building block in ensuring the life safety of an organization’s staff. He emphasizes the importance of appointing a third-party certificated risk assessor, because a failure to do so could cost your business a huge amount of money.
There’s a cost of competence, but there’s a cost of incompetence, and if an organization makes the mistake of appointing incompetent fire risk assessors, they may find themselves spending more on fire safety than they necessarily need to.
Maybe because the fire risk assessors are overly cautious and don’t understand risk, and as a result they may specify more fire precautions than is necessary. But what is more worrying is what that fire risk assessor has missed. They may well be overspecifying some fire safety precautions, but they might have missed a hazard or something that has the potential to cause harm that’s really serious, and that’s the more worrying point.
Steve Michael, a fire risk assessor, takes us through some of the key steps in a fire risk assessment process that BB7 members take:
- An interview with management to work out the organization’s hazards context
- A general feel of the building to get an idea of the strategy and layout of exits and evacuations
- Whether there is a simultaneous evacuation or a special sequence that people must follow
- An idea of the people in the building — are they familiar with the layout or mostly visitors? Does anyone sleep there?
Only after these steps are taken do the assessors begin to look at the more specific components in the building.
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