oops, reading back i am muddying the water there
Your career teacher can map out a career plan with a 5yr plan (for example).
What do you need bare minimum to be a fire risk assessor? I assume you would be going the consultancy route, check out the IFE register (yes there are others) recommended courses. Colin's is down as one. Once complete you would have met the training requirement on the back of which you would need to obtain suitable experience completing risk assessments on simple low risk environments for example.
This would enable you to apply a risk assessor register increasing your profile.
I would suggest lots of reading of relevant British Standards and Building regs etc. Lots of companies and orgs also offer CPD courses some free some not. Often the free ones are put on for a number of people where the trainer comes to you.
I would consider CFPA courses, degrees and masters etc as icing and something to work towards whilst working (of course if you have time and the money initially, go for it).
IMO, having a good presence on the internet is essential. As a minimum a website is a must. Doesn't have to be some crazy flash website. A basic html website with say 4 pages would be sufficient (and to be honest, depending on who does it, search engine optimisation works better on html). Depending on your knowledge/ability/time you can knock one up yourself. Be very careful of free hosting and companies who buy your domain name for you. With the first you have little control, all manner of ads will be on (which customers tend not to like) unreliable as there is no comittment to you and security and the latter can be problematic as you may find hosting companies not providing the service you would like then charge you excessively to get the name you thought you owned!
just some thoughts