Who can carry out Fire risk Assesments??

[Chris Houston]

I think everyone: consultants, fire fighters (whole time or otherwise) should all have to prove their competance to anyone they offer advice to.  Being employed as a fire fighter or a consultant does not prove competance.

[Mike Buckley]

I cannot speak for what is going on now as I retired from the fire service some time ago, but in my day the wholetime and day manning crews carried out a fair amount of fire safety work and they received fire safety training to do it. Principally it was inspecting and advising premises which did not require a fire certificate, there was also a move towards reinspecting certificated premises as well. This was backed up by training at recruit level and on station as well as during the promotion courses at Moreton. Also usually the fire safety officers worked from the station and were available for advice. This was compared to the retained who had a much shorter basic training and had only two hours a week ongoing training, most of which was operationally related.

I am not trying to dis the retained and I can't talk about the brigades today but the nub of the matter was that the wholetime and day manners did have fire safety training and a knowledge of what to look for, whilst the retained had little or no training and would have to rely on their experience.

I realise that the guides to the RRO should make it feasible for anyone to do a fire risk assessment but the correspondence on these boards seem to indiciate this is not so.

[AM]

The brigade I was in has cut back on fire safety for operational crews as they are not reqiuired to do inspections anymore due to the changes in legislation. Any fire safety knowledge can be third hand information passed down from an older member of the watch and is quite often out-of-date. If a crew turns out to a premises, they can often be asked about some fire safety matter by a manager, who may take it as read that that fire fighter knows what they are talking about and implements what they say. During my time as an FSO, I've done inspections of places like residential care homes where crews have advised managers that inadeqaute 'stay put' policies are fine, and that the fire service will evacuate residents. There is no audit trail of this info, and the Fire Service looks incompetant if one branch of the service tells people one thing, and the other does something else.

[AnthonyB]

Its not isolated for op crew staff to give out either patently wrong or outdated info, i always quiz carefully when somewhere refers to the FRS visiting as to who exactly did as some amazing stuff comes from staff not actively involved in FSO work.

It does of course depend on location & brigade as you can get some ops staff giving excellent advice and appropriate chastisement where they have a FSO remit or have just come of a stint as FSO.

Its like there are some areas I wouldn't dream of advising on without revision & consultation (eg parts of H&S stuff) as although qualified haven't worked in the area for some time & am too rusty to be competent

[bolt]

Some of these guys going around offering RA's have no idea of the repercussions if things turn sour. It needs better regulation in so much that a "professional" should not offer advice without certified training body.  Like the Financial Services Authority is prevents or at least tries to prevent those going around offering bad advice. If I am not FSA regulated and I told you to divert your entire pension into British Gas shares and that transpired to bad advice the consequences would be dire. Actually the way the gas prices are going up it’s probably very good advice LOL

For example I could suggest to someone preparing their own RA perhaps you should recognize that the residents on the top floor are partially deaf and maybe better suited to complement an AFD system with strobes in that area and/or move them to lower levels but I would not do the RA for them. In this respect I am offering generic advice for consideration that they may have overlooked or not realized.  But as the RRO does not expect a professional to do the risk assessment so it may be more prudent to offer generic assistance and let the owner put his name on it. This way you’re not in the frame.

[Tall Paul]

I would hate to see the consultant.v.FSO competency debate re-instated.

However on a personal note I do feel that third party accreditation is an essential element in this field for all parties.  I have raised within my own FRS the need for such accreditation for inspecting officers.  There is currently a requirement to join the engineering division of the IFE and I would like to persue the IFE Auditor route for all too.

[Jason Miller]

And, don't forget that people can do their own FRAs online or with videos or "courses" they bought.

Unfortunately, whilst most would agree that anyone proclaiming to carry out FRAs should be policed or 3rd party assessed, it usually boils down to "who is going to do it?"

Legislation is jumped on by the CBI and business associations as "more red tape" so the Government likes to see the industry self-assess so you end up with something like BAFE or NACOSS.

Jason

[shaun9631]

I am a full time serving firefighter. I have completed various fire safety modules with my service and as an operational firefighter we carry out FSEC fire safety visits to "gather info". This is carried out in shops, offices etc etc on my patch. My personal opinion goes right back to the initial posts. I believe competency is required along with a sound qualification such as the IFE modules etc. The litigation issues are very clear and comes down to good old "contributory neglegence" on behalf of the responsible person and the "consultant". We have had recent issues of officers giving FSEC briefs to firefighters and saying that they could indeed provide this type of consultancy. Dangerous talk!