Kurnal
Warrington will only get involved if there is a formal complaint made by a client of a certificated assessor or company; as you correctly say it is complaint/mediation, but there is a legal requirement to certification too i.e. if it did end up in court Warrington could be called to explain themselves and the certification process. i.e. how do we know Kurnal is indeed competent.
Those certificated by Warrington will be assessed against the industry standard through an accredited competent person’s scheme; which is as assured as you can get. (Through a third party scheme and that doesn’t mean that others without it are not)
The costs are set at a level that reflects a professional approach, all the other registers rely on free peer review, hence the delay in being assessed and the reduced cost. The true cost to be on the IFE register (if you had to pay) would be approximately 3 times that of the FRACS scheme, if not more.
To accompany the new competence standard there is an RP guidance document which (in its last draft form) listed UKAS accredited schemes as the first thing an RP should look for to assure competence. Secondly the professional registers could give an indication of competence and finally if the assessor has none of the above the RP should complete a due diligence process. (But they often don’t) This document when finished will be publicised by all stakeholders on the council, who include CLG and CFOA plus the IFE (Wait and see). This should mean that fire officers no longer just signpost the IFE listing.
I actually did a survey of all FRS service websites in the UK and only 5 list any schemes in their advice to businesses, 4 solely mentioned the IFE and one mentioned 3 of the current listings. Therefore they must be making a verbal recommendation, which is not based on anything but a knowledge that the IFE register exists. This should now change and hopefully quickly.
In Scotland all the registers are listed, which I think is a good thing but a strong caveat should have been included i.e. ‘Should you intend to rely on any of these registers as proof of competence you should be satisfied that the assessment process is indeed robust enough to assure competence’.
Sadly fire risk assessors’ schemes do vary massively but people don’t see that; they just see the end cost and say, “I can get that cheaper elsewhere”. Surely that’s the exact same thing the RP says when finding a risk assessor. Isn’t that what we are fighting; the ‘slap dash, quick tick, cheap as chips cowboy!’
I don’t believe the BAFE scheme in its current format goes far enough to assure the competence of the fire risk assessors a company employs. It certainly doesn’t compare them against the competence standard (in the last version I saw and discussed with the BAFE coordinator) However people won’t care as long as the UKAS badge is there. I do think sometimes of setting up the ‘CCCC’ (Cost Cutting Certification Company) it would only cost you £200 for the 4C rubber stamp of competence.
I do hope that LPCB or IFCC or another accredited certification body offer a competitive scheme to FRACS; as you and others say, you are just waiting to see what develops and you would like some competition. Which I fully understand and appreciate; but just make sure the competition is like for like and gives you and your clients the same assurances as the FRACS scheme.
I personally would wait to see what happens if I was an assessor in today’s market; who needs certification anyway, the good the bad and the ugly fire risk assessors out there are all busy. Possibly the assessor in Nottingham will look for certification once he has finished his prison term. I dare say he would get on to 2 of the existing registers if he tried.
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