Merseyside FRS

[kurnal]

Thats a bit contradictory Jokar.

If Lancs are prosecuting hotel owers with certificates doesn't it indicate that standards must have been pretty dire?

Or are they going beyond the guidance of the Enforcement Management Model and using legal action as a battering ram?

[jokar]

Sorry, perhaps I made the point incorrectly.  The comment before was that anywhere that had a certificate would be of a reasonable standard.  Obviously Lancs disagreed with that and took the oportunity to enforce better standrads under RR(FS)O.

[Tom Sutton]

What is missing of course is that the predominance of FRS IO's is on property protection aka FPA 1971 and not on the risk that abounds in any one premises.  Once we get over that hurdle then RR(FS)O will work very well.

What point are you tring to make, is it the FPA 1971 was about property protection?

[jokar]

Yes and hazard and risk were not considered as important.  Thsi was based on the presumption that a fire would occur whereas RR(FS)O is about reduction of hazrads and risk to the degree that a fire should not occur.

[PhilB]

In any building with people and electricity there will always be a reasonable likelihood that there will be a fire. This is where many consultants and responsible persons are missing the point.

I recently was at a meeting with the head of H&S of a large organisation who were taking some exits out of use for refurbishment. He worked on the theory that they only have two alram actuations on average per year so the risk was negligible.......was he correct??.............the worrying thing is that many out there, and on here will think he is.

Many people do not understand fire risk assessment yet they are carrying them out or auditing them. A quick question for all, is a fire risk assessment about the risk of a fire occuring, or the risk of harm being caused if a fire does happen?

[Paul]

Not been on here in a long time and sorry my input is minimal but the answer to this Phil is both.

P

[wee brian]

That being the well established definition of risk.

[Paul]

Jokar,

Surely you when you carry our a FRA you must consider the most likely fire scenario, given the set of given circumstances, only then can you start to reduce the effects of such a fire.  In that you must consider the occupants and how they are most likely to be effected and what is in place to such as passive and active systems.

I would never say never.  I may be wrong but I thought that part of the FRA process was to consider the effects of fire and in turn minimizing them as much as possible.

P

[PhilB]

Yes you must consider both the likelihood and the consequences.

However, many will try and argue that if you reduce the likelihood you can reduce the protective measures. In my opinion you have to accept that a fire may occur, you can never totally remove the risk.

You can reduce the risk of the consequences, for example by reducing the fire load so that rapid fire development is not possible, then you may be able to reduce the protective measures.

[wee brian]

now you are contradicting yourself again phil

[Tom Sutton]

Jokar how do you come to your conclusions based on what you have said?
Hazard and risk was considered important as it was one of the factors that determined travel distances. I agree we did not conduct a fire prevention inspection to reduce the likelihood of a fire occurring, prior to devising a means of escape scheme. But no matter how well you conduct an assessment to reduce fire hazards to the degree that a fire should not occur, there is always a chance that a fire will occur and there has to be satisfactory MOE.
Our only consideration was the life risk and property risk was the province of building control. We also considered passive fire protection as the best solution, because active solutions being mostly electronic were notorious unreliable but we did accept engineering solutions when it was very difficult to achieve a satisfactory solution by passive means.
I think the RR(FS)O could be an improvement on the previous legislation providing RP`s do not concentrate on achieving minimum standards instead of satisfactory standards and the enforcement is up to the job.

[Chris Houston]

A quick question for all, is a fire risk assessment about the risk of a fire occuring, or the risk of harm being caused if a fire does happen?

Risk = liklihood of event happening x consequences of event

So, to answer your qestion: both.

[messy]

Regardless of the flaws of the FPA 71,  medium to larger premises were visited regularly. The building's management knew this and generally (but not always)played the game.

What worries me now is that when the more unscrupilous RPs discover the new pathetic audit frequency (or if the Merseyside story is true - audits only after the fire) then managemnt standards will slip with the inevitable consequence that fatals will follow.

Again the big boys will be OK. M&S, Hilton, BP et al will carry on employing competent advisors. Mr Patel's small corner shop will remain as now, very few being risk assessed (but few risks perhaps). But it's those medium size but high risk businesses where the problem will occur.

My main fear are standards in single staircase Hotels - the reason for the FPA 71- will become incraesingly poor with fewer FRS audits. In fact, I am seeing this regularly already.

So perhaps it's the Brigade's enforcement models which are wrong, rather than the FS(RR)O??

[Paul]

Messy,

I'm finding a mixed bag really.  On the one hand, we still carry out assessments for large organisations, however we are finding we are now assessing smaller SME's, who in the past have never been visited by the LFRS and have in turn done nothing in terms of fire safety, and I mean nothing.

On the plus side, these such SME's are now at least doing something, and I feel this is due to the advertising campaigns on the radio etc.  It would appear the aforementioned FRS have undone some of this good work!!

Other areas of new business for us post Oct 2006 are small (7-10 room) hotels / B&B's, who again have not, in recent times, been inspected and through work with us have been advised to communicate with the LFRS.  This I feel is all good and for me I would consider to be a massive shift in improving the fire safety in some of the, other wise overlooked, premises.

On the negative side, we hae carried out work of companies who have previously used other assessors, and have found the standard of assessment they have been sold, in good faith, to be nothing more than a tick sheet.  As such organisations have, in their opinion, satisfied their requirment to conduct an assessment, they are essentially no better off, seeing the 3 page tick sheet as being suitable and sufficient they blindly and through no fault of their own continue to trade without carrying out some of the more basic, yet essential duties placed upon them as they see the fire risk assessment as just another sheet ofpaper to allow them trade--------its not a certificate!! it should be a working document.  

I'll throw this one open to the forum and say maybe its time to run with an industry standard format, one that may only be used by a regualted assessor.  Ok so PAS 79 is not the be all and end all, but its a start and surley through consultation it can be improved upon?

[jokar]

Whatever methodology is utilised, the outcomes depend on the quality of the assessor.  I have seen good and bad versions of PAS 79 dependent on who the assessor is.  As regards some of the statements above you can in a number of circumstamces have as much passive fire safety as you like but if you don't consider the risk, explosive hazard then for an example then it will not be much ggod in the event of an incident.  I am not advocating reduction only but the consideration in the RR(FS)O Article 4 starts very clearly with risk reduction and fire prevention before going on to passive fire safety measures.  This view has been reinforced by the Government in the latest draft of the enforcers guide which is now out for consultation.