My personal option is that most of the risk assessments that I have seen are rubbish.
Many of the ones that have been done by consultants are rubbish. Many of the people who are paid to do risk assessments are not good at it.
I think this is partly the fault of the government for not regulating the fire safety industry and partly the fault of the employers for not vetting who they contract to undertake risk assessments and partly the fault of people who should know they are not competant to do risk assessments.
I think it is unfair to tarnish all consultants with the same brush. Like employers, there are also many good ones.
What is it about the rubbish FRAs Chris that you think makes them so? I have seem many RAs both in the out of the F&R Service and apart from the obvious "rubbish" ones they can vary in format and content depending on how the author interprets the legislation. I have seen ones written by persons I would have thought should be pretty good. In my opinion they fell well short of what I consider to be an assessment of issues of concern in relation to fire safety in the workplace and how they can be resolved, which basically is what I think a FRA should be.
Some FRAers think it is sufficient to point out deficiencies and defects and record that they should be fixed.
Maybe that is sufficient to satisfy the F&R Service audit and maybe I am going way over the top, but a Fire Risk Assessment by a professional assessor should be much more than just a report of failings.