Fire Risk Assessor - responsibilities

[lingmoor]

What is the scope of your responsibilities?


 for example if you carry out a FRA and produce your significant findings...do you include a time frame for completion of work? If so how do you come to that decision?

Would you produce an 'Action Plan' with specific dates that the work should be completed by or simply say 'one month' 'two months' etc

So, you list your significant findings...the client has not carried out the work by the time the Fire Service come knocking...say 6 months after the FRA is handed over...does that make your FRA 'not suitable and sufficient'?

Just asking

[nearlythere]

What is the scope of your responsibilities?


 for example if you carry out a FRA and produce your significant findings...do you include a time frame for completion of work? If so how do you come to that decision?

Would you produce an 'Action Plan' with specific dates that the work should be completed by or simply say 'one month' 'two months' etc

So, you list your significant findings...the client has not carried out the work by the time the Fire Service come knocking...say 6 months after the FRA is handed over...does that make your FRA 'not suitable and sufficient'?

Just asking

When devising an action plan you should liaise with the RP so as to come up with a suitable timetable for any necessary works. Other than any necessary and immediate interim measures an action plan should be realistic bearing in mind the cost and extent of any works. The F&R Service may take a dim view if someone was doing nothing and maybe your 6 months was not realistic.

[jokar]

Significant findings are not a list, see the definition in the Glossary of the CLG guides.  You can only give options to the RP as it is there responsibility to do or not do the suggested recommended work that a competent person has outlined.  It is about ALARP so some things suggested may not get done as they are too costly.  One option must always be not to do anything on the grounds of ALARP.

[Midland Retty]

Hi Lingmoor

As Jokar has already said, if you have undertaken a risk assessment, listed your signficant findings, have sat down and explained to the RP what those findings are, why they are important, why they need to be addressed, and then suggest action plan, it is then down to the RP to either follow your recommendations or not.

If they don't follow your recommendations the enforcing authority will want to know why, and may take action against the RP, especially if you highlighted something which needs to be addressed urgently for to ensure relevant persons are not risk of serious injury or death.

Action plans should wherever possible be formulated in conjunction with the RP, but as we all know some RPs simply aren't intrested and will just ask the assessor to carry on and formulate the plan.

Others will try and push the timeframes - they will ask if something can be done in 12 months instead of 6 for example, and this is where an assesor needs to guide their client on what timescales are appropriate and what is not.

[Mike Buckley]

My view is that you cannot impose a timescale on the client as it is the client's responsibility, what you should do is to give an idea of the priority of the actions you are proposing.

The problem with timescales is that they will vary dependant on who you are dealing with. For example the action to install a fire alarm system, for a small company where the owner MD etc is all rolled into one three months may be acceptable, however for a a site which is part of a major company by the time the person in charge of the site has obtained three quotations, made the business case, submitted that case, Head Office has examined it, the board of directors has reviewed it, decided whether it requires emergency funding or is a case for capital expenditure and from which financial year it will come out of you will be lucky to get a decision within 6 months let alone get it installed.

I tend to use an Immediate, High, Medium and Low priority scale. Immediate are actions which need to be carried out preferably before I leave the site, High are the actions that need to done first, then move onto the Medium priorities etc. but it is up to the client to decide what is to be done and when and then, if necessary, justify it to the enforcing authority.

The only people who can impose a timescale are the enforcing authorities via their enforcement notices.

[jokar]

The difficulty is of course how to proiritise rather than anything else.  If a sleeping premises has no AFD then that is a high priority but may take months to tender, contarct and get the work done.  So are interim measures allowed and if so when do they become not interim measures? 

[nearlythere]

The difficulty is of course how to proiritise rather than anything else.  If a sleeping premises has no AFD then that is a high priority but may take months to tender, contarct and get the work done.  So are interim measures allowed and if so when do they become not interim measures? 

If in the case of a sleeping risk with no AFD I would suggest a reasonable time frame and, in the meantime, as an interim measure, installing some domestic detectors.
If anything happened in the meantime then there is something in place.

[Midland Retty]

True, although domestic detectors may not be enough if there are no alternative means of escape available (such as escape windows in a HMO for example)

[Phoenix]

My view is that you cannot impose a timescale on the client as it is the client's responsibility, what you should do is to give an idea of the priority of the actions you are proposing.

The problem with timescales is that they will vary dependant on who you are dealing with. For example the action to install a fire alarm system, for a small company where the owner MD etc is all rolled into one three months may be acceptable, however for a a site which is part of a major company by the time the person in charge of the site has obtained three quotations, made the business case, submitted that case, Head Office has examined it, the board of directors has reviewed it, decided whether it requires emergency funding or is a case for capital expenditure and from which financial year it will come out of you will be lucky to get a decision within 6 months let alone get it installed.

I tend to use an Immediate, High, Medium and Low priority scale. Immediate are actions which need to be carried out preferably before I leave the site, High are the actions that need to done first, then move onto the Medium priorities etc. but it is up to the client to decide what is to be done and when and then, if necessary, justify it to the enforcing authority.

The only people who can impose a timescale are the enforcing authorities via their enforcement notices.

The fire risk assessor cannot, as you say, impose a timescale.  But throughout the process due diligence must be demonstrated by all parties.  The fire risk assessor can demonstrate the application of due diligence by recommending guideline timescales that are proportionate to the risk and that allow reasonable time for the process of carrying out of the work.  The RP can demonstrate due diligence by adhering to those guideline timescales or, if deviating from them, by providing suitable justification [any such justification can only really be made after discussion with the fire risk assessor].

I have to say that the process described as follows,

by the time the person in charge of the site has obtained three quotations, made the business case, submitted that case, Head Office has examined it, the board of directors has reviewed it, decided whether it requires emergency funding or is a case for capital expenditure and from which financial year it will come out of you will be lucky to get a decision within 6 months let alone get it installed.

does not demonstrate any diligence to me but rather an organisation that is more concerned with bureaucracy and budgets than safety.  Of course it takes time to organise tenders and to have work undertaken and all enforcing authorities recognise this and make allowances for it - but, for due diligence to be demonstrated, the timescales should have safety as their primary driver, not budgets and bureaucratic processes.

Interim measures can be very effective at dealing with shortfalls that will take longer to correct permanently than is reasonable for the risk.  The example of domestic detectors given above can be an effective solution in the short term but we know that domestic detectors are unlikely to remain effective over an extended period so it reasonable to expect the permanent solution to be completed well before we might expect the interim measure to fail.

Every case needs to be judged on its merits.  And in the last example, referred to immediately above, of course domestic detectors cannot provide solutions in all cases!  What you are referring to sounds like it might be one of Mike's "Immediate" actions.

Stu

[lingmoor]

Thanks for all your replies, I will let the forum know what this is all about, soon