Plz clarify the difference between Assessor and Responsible Person?

[kurnal]

.  The only complicated part of a fire risk assessment is the building component and construction elements for which you may have to employ the services of a surveyor, however with a local authority you can seek assurance from the Education Department that the school has been properly maintained to a document named BB 100. You do not need to know what is in BB 100 just seek assurance that the construction elements and fire safety arrangements satisfy BB 100. Its like taking your car in for an MOT just get the certificate. If you do not get the certificate then you have a significant finding.

Jim you are describing utopia. It is most unlikely that there will be any certificate or assurances available from the local authority. Pre 1950s with traditional methods of construction are easy to assess I grant you.  If the school was built from the 1950s onwards they were thrown up to cheap local authority designs (CLASP) that maximised the potential for cost saving and speed of erection blatantly exploiting their exemption from the building Regulations, with no thought to the fire stopping of voids or cavities, or compartmentation. They often used system design fire resisting partitions to protect escape routes many of which never went near a fire test, just mimicked typical design standards of the day.

This was then followed by years of neglect in terms of maintenance when local authorities were unable or unwilling to invest in basic maintenance let alone realisically assess or improve known design weaknesses. For about 20 years of my career the local education authority successfully used political influence  to prevent the fire service from carrying out inspections in schools because we found too many problems that they did not have the resources to rectify and they preferred to bury their heads in the sand.

Dont forget also that bb100 is hot off the press and represents significant fundamental design changes. It would not be useful to assess any existing building against it. BB7 was the previous version of the guidance. However condition of the fabric and original design weaknesses are likely to be the moost significant factors in the   risk assessment.

I do agree that there are some excellent people working for the local authority but I bet you my last fiver they will not be able to give out any certificates or even assurances. They have a huge list of priorities and the smallest of budgets- they have more immediate crisis than they can deal with and dont like to go looking for new ones.
In my opinion of course.

[PhilB]

Jim, I'm sorry but I have to disagree.

You cannot carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment unless you have the relevant skills knowledge training etc.

For example, an assessor needs to know about fire ...causes....growth rates..likely smoke generation......time to flashover...etc..etc.........building performance...human behaviour.....means of escape ....fire warning systems....emergency lighting.....fire-fighting equipment.......when you have an indepth knowledge of these matters you have to assess what you have against some benchmark.........a guide perhaps. To do that you must surely understand what the guide says and why it says it.

Of course the level of competence will vary with the size and complexity of the building being assessed, I would consider a school quite a specialist area considering the history of fire safety legislation and enforcement in educational establishments.

To suggest all of the above is "extremely simple" is somewhat misleading.

Yes many incompetent persons are out there doing just as you suggest.

On a daily basis I deal with shop managers, office managers, care home managers etc. etc. that have received  little training if any and yet have been tasked with carrying out the fire risk assessment. Usually they are not suitable & sufficient and this often leads to enforcement action being taken.

It can only be a matter of time before this incompetence results in serious injury or loss of life...maybe then we will see a decline in the number unscrupulous employers and incompetent consultants out there.

[jokar]

The basis of all this is to look for and ask the right questions.  To do that you need to know what the questions are and quite frankly most people that are notompetent have littl or no idea of what the questions are or what if any are the right answers.  As a classic example of this which is very healthy debate, see the thread about the night club and all over the UK numbers of individuals are assisting CarlyD with their own interpretation and they are all correct.

[Sunny]

Many thanks to all who posted on this thread - really appreciate your comments and advice - but one thing is still not clear - is it necessary to have the two ppl to carry out a FRA? (RP and Assessor)?

[jokar]

Sunny, a Fire Risk Assessor is exactly that, a person who carries out an assessment of risks from fire.  To do that they need to understand the dynamics of fire, issues about fire safety strategies and have information on fire alarms, emergency escape lighting, exit widths, travel distances and many other bits dependent on the layout and construction of the built premises.  They also need the know what is required from the evacuation startegy and how the warning system supports that.

A Responsible Person, who may not be a person but a Company or Organisation, in law has responsibilty to ensure that fire law is complied with, and part of that fire law is to ensure that a FRA is completed and that it is suitable and sufficient ( this term is defined and is over 2 pages long in the mnagement of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 Approved Code of Prcatice).

A Competent Person is someone that can be employed by the Responsible Person to assist them in undertaking the measures laid out in Fire law.

The answer to your question then is that an FRA takes as long as it takes and can be completed by as many people as it takes.  As an example, International Fire Consulatants use the specialism of their staff for different elements of the process, a specialist in fire alarms, a specialist in doors and glazing as examples.

[kurnal]

Hi Sunny
No. The Responsible Person is the legal term for that person or organisation who is held responsible for compliance with the Law, who would be held ultimately responsible for any breaches- the person who would be prosecuted in the event of a failure. In a school it is the employer.  
The Responsible Person has the duty to carry out a risk assessment. They may delegate this task to a competent member of their staff on their behalf  but they cant delegate their own duty to carry it out or their responsibility and accountability for its findings.

The Responsible Person ( the Employer ) may say in court "Here is the risk assessment I have carried out. I delegated the task to my administration assistant"
The Judge then would say " How did you satisfy yourself that the admin assistant was competent to do it?"
If the judge is not satisfied with the answer and the risk assessment is poor,  he will find the Responsible Person guilty of a failure to carry out  a suitable and sufficient risk assessment. The admin assistant has nothing to fear as long as they did their best and were as diligent as their training and experience allowed them to be.

If on the other hand the Responsible Person decides that the admin assistant does not have the necessary experience, training and/ or  qualification to be competent he could seek specialist advice. This could be as Jim suggests for part of the assessment or for all of it- ie a consultant. The consultant is expected to be competent and if the risk assessment is poor he would be in the Dock along side the Responsible person and also held personally accountable.

[Mike Buckley]

It all comes back to who is the responsible person. The one thing that is clear is that Sunny is not the responsible person.

I remember chatting to a HSE Inspector who served a Prohibition Notice on the Chief Exec of a County Council due to a HS infringement in a number of schools. (Boy was she popular!)

So if we follow this, then for a LA school the responsible person should be the County Chief Exec. who will also be the responsible person for all council properties.

This could be fun!

[jokar]

It has already happened, the CE of the LB Redbridge has been served with Notices with regard to the schools under the auspices of the Local Education Authority.

[davio1960]

Hi Sunny
What part of the country are you from?
Some county councils have drafted in a local authority fire safety officer to the council offices to assist in a whole range of different fire strategies. If your county council has this option the officer maybe able to asist you with the process not the actual completion.
I note others have clearly defined the risk assessor and the responsible person and very articulate they have done it too!
Davio1960

[Jim Creak]

Any Risk Assessor would need to seek assurance from the person in CONTROL to any extent of maintenance of the safety arrangement to a required standard. Therefore if maintenance of the school has been neglected then this obviously alters the risk matrix. I say yet again this is not rocket science. You do not have to appreciate the science or development of fire for a school, the profession has done all of this and concluded, with recommendation what is required. The Responsible Person just has to ensure the requirements are met and maintained. BB 100 is the current requirement taking all the current knowledge and understanding into consideration.

It is not the Risk Assessors role to cure the significant findings it is to report significant findings. To accept risk is clearly for the responsible person only. That person ultimately is the CE of the local authority. All the head teacher needs to do is to report formally the significant findings, quite clearly if the school does not meet the requirements of BB 100 which has been put together using all the qualification, expertise, experience, and technology then this must be a significant finding and possible increase in the risk matrix.

Again it will have to be the CE responsibility to accept this increase in risk above recommendation. In my opinion, if the Risk Assessor starts to take the role of the RP and accepts deviation from best practice then that is fire engineering not risk assessment. This is where most of the confusion occurs, there is no onus within the formal risk assessment process to find ways to reduce the risk only to formally record the risk.

When the Risk Assessor reports the significant findings to the RP the formal fire risk assessment process is finished. If the RP expects solutions it maybe necessary to call in a number of competent experts or professionals but it does not have to be the Risk Assessor. A Risk Assessor does not offer absolution, a Risk Assessor checks, collects and collates the significant findings.

[PhilB]

" It is not the Risk Assessors role to cure the significant findings it is to report significant findings."


Jim your post makes me question what you consider to be 'significant findings'. It appears you consider them to be just defects, am I mistaken in that assumption?

Significant findings should include:

1) A record of the preventitive & protective measures (defined in the order and includes all the general fire precautions, which are also defined);
2) An action plan for remedial works;
3) Proof of due process i.e. reasoning to support your conclusions & any recommendations that have been made.

So clearly the assessor must do more than just report how a building differs from BB100.

Also it is not just the significant findings that must be recorded...it is the precribed information. This includes all the measures that have been, and wil be taken. Persons considered to be especially at risk must also be recorded.

Furthermore article 11 requires all the management systems to be recorded....and I would also consider those systems to be significant findings anyway.

How can the asessor report on risk if they don't appreciate the science or development of fire for a school?  How will the headteacher know if the building meets the requirements of BB100 .........how many schools do you know of that do???

If we follow your logic, any person who can read can simply follow a guide to carry out a fire risk assessment with no understanding of why the guide says what it says. Do you really believe that?

If fire risk assessment was as simple as you suggest there would be all sorts of numpties out there doing it for a living!!!!!!!!!! Let's hope they have good insurance.

[PhilB]

there is no onus within the formal risk assessment process to find ways to reduce the risk only to formally record the risk.

Does the formal risk assessment process requires certain info to be recorded?  Does that info include the significant findings of the assessment including the measures that have been and will be taken?

Would those measures include the preventive & protective measures?


“preventive and protective measures” means the measures which have been identified by the
responsible person in consequence of a risk assessment as the general fire precautions he
needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed on him by or under
this Order;

So do the preventive & protective measures include the general fire precautions?
 

Meaning of “general fire precautions”
4.—(1) In this Order “general fire precautions” in relation to premises means, subject to
paragraph (2)—
(a) measures to reduce the risk of fire on the premises and the risk of the spread of fire on the
premises;

No further questions M'Lud.

[Ricardo]

" If we follow your logic, any person who can read can simply follow a guide to carry out a fire risk assessment with no understanding of why the guide says what it says. Do you really believe that?

If fire risk assessment was as simple as you suggest there would be all sorts of numpties out there doing it for a living!!!!!!!!!! Let's hope they have good insurance.

That made me laugh, Phil you are so funny sometimes.

[val]

The 'responsible person' as defined in Article 3 would be not the Education Authority but the full Local Authority. (Or chair of Governers in voluntary aided schools).
If a subsequent breach of the Order takes place then, depending on investigations the person standing in the dock will be the Local Authority + any others (probably the Headteacher) who have exercised some control over the situation.

The HSE has excellent guidance on identifying the defendant. I know their law is slightly different but we nearly always follow their advice

http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/investigation/identifying/defendants.htm

The responsible person and those you subsequently ask judges to send down for offences are different beasts.

[kurnal]

Thanks Val.
Now I should know the answer to this one but cant bring it to mind or find the answer at the moment-

If the Responsible Person for the school is the local authority as you point out above , and the local authority also happens to be  the fire and rescue  authority, who will decide the appropriate enforcement action to take in respect of a school and in the event of a court case who will prosecute?