The industry needs new people coming in and many of the skills required are transferable between different H&S or engineering disciplines.
Theres also a lot of hostility by people from different backgrounds- we ex firefighters / fire safety officers on the one side, on the other side are people who have qualifications in fire engineering but possible little else, and in the middle are many marketing based risk assessment companies that that regard risk assessments as just another way of making money and often have no underlying interest in the subject.
Your friend clearly has a lot of useful exerience and many skills that will be of use int he fire field. I would suggest that they first take a basic awareness course such as those accredited by the IFE or the fire course run by NEBOSH to test the water- to assess areas of common ground and ascertain whether they feel comfortable and interested by the topic. These courses will not make them competent to carry out other than the most basic assessment of an already satisfactory building but will be a good start. And then go from there- consider the IFE membership qualifications as development route for the future, read and research to broaden your knowledge and understanding.
The term general fire precautions is defined in the fire safety order. It defines the scope of the risk assessment and what must be recorded. On the face of it it is simple enough and limited in scope. What I find is the problem- and it might me me thats doing it wrong- is that most of the guidance and the definiton of general fire precautions make an assumption that the basic structure and systems in the building are already to a satisfactory standard.
This creates a foundation of safety on which the fire risk assessment can build- the buiding is inherently safe in itself, now through risk assessment make sure you are using it safely.
If only life were so simple. The fact is that so many fire alarms ands sprinkler systems are wrongly specced or poorly installed, so many corners are cut by builders, so many building inspectors will issue completion certificates without looking at the building in any detail and checking if fire stopping, compartmentation is actually in place.
I dont think it is possible to confine yourself to definition of general fire precautions as expressed in the guidance to carry out a competent fire risk assessment because you are so often starting from the platform of a substandard building. But to recognise that you do need a much deeper underlying knowledge of building standards, far deeper than is taught on any of the fire risk assessment courses.
By the way very many people tell me I have it wrong. And maybe I do.
I was looking at a clever risk assessment by one of the marketing based fire risk assessment companies the other day that found the landlords areas of large shopping centre to be entirely satisfactory. I looked at one tiny area for one of the tenants and found 14 landlords issues in the common escape routes that needed attention. When I looked at the template it had 5 pages of exclusions, 8 pages explaining the fire safety order and 4 pages listing british standards and explaining the fire alarm categories. And the clever bit was that it made the caveat to the effect that as the building was fairly recent the risk assessment was based onan assumption that the that all matters relating to the building regs and the installations had been inspected and approved by the responsible authority. But very glossy paper.
