New UKAS accredited scheme for Fire Risk Assessors

[longjohn]

sorry folks forgot to say
click on the fire section of the ifsec website and then the link 'Video Guide to Fire Risk Assessments '

[longjohn]

Actually I'll post it here, with a question 'Are all non accredited fire risk assessors incompetent?

Just like gas safe plumbers there needs to be national accreditation but may I make the following points to consider. there are many (mostly ex fire service fire safety officers) who meet the competency council criteria but are not third party accredited. Here is a scenario; so you leave the fire service or from another fire safety field of work and provide fire risk assessments for small companies say the local factory or leisure centre? for best practice you keep up to date by belonging to professional bodies (IFE,FPO etc.etc) at at least £100 a throw, then you need PI and posibbly PL insurance anything from £500 upwards, also the running a business from home costs and now depending on which accredited scheme you take up its going to be £300 upwards. So whats a reasonable fee for that local factory? well you tell me and I'll give you the answer! they are going to say 'no thanks' Remember the ethos of the RRO when the government of the day introduced it 'not a burden on business' 'cost neutral' and not a 'consultants charter' It's all fine for large consultancies doing work for national and multi national organisations but SME's make up the bulk of british business and they are not going to pay big bucks for fire risk assessments in the midst of a recession. So how viable a business is it to be a fire risk assessor? are these ex fire officers subsidizing their businesses with their fire service pensions? if so they are making an admirable contribution to Mr Camerons big society. We need to have third party accreditation,no doubt but Is there a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water in the drive to get rid of the cowboys?

[kurnal]

No of course there are competent non accredited fire risk assessors but whoever wrote that piece misses the point.
The purpose of third party accreditation was to help the responsible person to find a competent risk assessor, that's all.

[longjohn]

I take your point but although the plumber has to have his/her gas safe accreditation most work comes through word of mouth and reputation, I'm not disagreeing with the need for 3rd party accreditation.

[kurnal]

Work will still come through advertising, word of mouth etc irrespective of third party certification (TPC.)

But for those responsible persons seeking to choose a fire risk assessor, the schemes are there to help them find someone competent.

Without TPC, unless they have a firm recommendation from someone else how else could the the responsible person be sure that they are employing a competent risk assessor?

[Tom W]

Work will still come through advertising, word of mouth etc irrespective of third party certification (TPC.)

But for those responsible persons seeking to choose a fire risk assessor, the schemes are there to help them find someone competent.

Without TPC, unless they have a firm recommendation from someone else how else could the the responsible person be sure that they are employing a competent risk assessor?

ISO9001
Qualifications
Years on job
Case Studies
Method Statements
Awards
Meeting them
Previous examples
Levels of Insurance
Seeking advice from f&rs

I could go on Alan.

[kurnal]

I agree Piglet but it is hard work for the RP to do all this whereas to pick from a list of companies with TPC should save much of this work whilst providing evidence of due diligence.

[Kelsall]

The concept of third party is to marginalize the poor assessor and allow the RP some protection when selecting a competent person. If they have selected the contractor from a scheme they have done a big chunk of what can reasonably be expected. There are other checks they need to make; but in the event of a legal case it is for the accused to prove they couldn’t have reasonably done more to avoid commissioning the offence. Is it reasonable to select your fire risk assessor from an accredited certification scheme?  Yes I think it is!
There is little doubt that there are many good firms operating without third party certification but there is even less doubt that there are very poor fire risk assessors getting lots and lots of work. The RP, seemingly unable to complete due diligence and thus weed the cowboys out. The commercial benefits of certification will not be apparent for some time to come; the more the RP is informed about it the more those with it shout about it the better.
I do feel for those who haven’t got certification yet who are working at the industry standard. But if the good don’t take a leap of faith to third party, the bad and the ugly fire risk assessor won’t have to. There is a need to marginalize the bad and ugly fire risk assessor or little will change and RPs will continue to think one fire risk assessment provider is the same as the next. Price will always be important and when you are comparing apples with oranges and don’t know it; price often is the deal breaker. 
Value for money is in the quality or competence of the service you pay for; if you spend a little you may not get what you paid for and the subsequent result may mean you lose a whole lot more. There should be little doubt about the technical delivery of those with third party certification and hopefully those on a scheme will work hard to keep their standard up. It can work the other way too with very expensive assessors producing poor risk assessments.
More does need to be done to make the RP select from those with third party assurance especially where public money is involved. How much have Southwark spent as a result of Lakanal? Millions and millions of pounds according to some press reports. Where does that money come from? What about the coroner’s inquest, how much did that cost? Where did the money come from?
Sadly the risk of not getting it right in the first place seems to be a commonly accepted risk.  Lack of fires, lack of effective enforcement; pressure on budgets all contribute to a lowering of expected standards. It’s only when it goes wrong do we start looking at what went wrong and I would suggest that if you took most London Boroughs you could find similar conditions and practices as those in Southwark.   
Sadly it is an industry problem created by government and it looks likely they will add to the issues with a reduction in red tape for ‘lower risk’ properties."Fire safety shouldn’t be a ‘burden’ and industry needs to be free to spend fire safety money on growing their business and thus growing the UK economy".

Thats fine, until it goes wrong and we have another inquest; if they haven't spent money on fire safety they will be hung on the back of the 'burden' they didn't take on. I have no doubt about that!

[nearlythere]

Should FRA policemen not have 3rd party accreditation also? Makes sense that they should have an equal competency a level. Perhaps there was a scheme in place for them we might a better quality of audit and enforcement.

[Tom W]

in the event of a legal case it is for the accused to prove they couldn’t have reasonably done more to avoid commissioning the offence.

How many times has this happened?

If the government is backing businesses to complete their own FRAs without the need of an external consultant then its very hard to call a extinguisher company who have sent Jim Boggs away on one of Colins fine courses a cowboy.

[Kelsall]

It has happened quite a lot actually and in some very high profile cases. Lack of fire risk assessment or poor quality of fire risk assessment is an issue, and the RP does get fined for not having the foundation of fire safety completed correctly. Recently a North Yorkshire Landlord was sent to prison for the deaths of two people because he could have ‘reasonably’ done more to prevent the deaths.

How many times does it need to happen?

I think you will find that in all three of the major fatal fires in the UK more could have reasonably been done to prevent it happening.
The point is; those seeking professional advice need to have a safety net to allow for some form of self-protection, in the unlikely event of a fatal or serious fire.

If a landlord appoints a plumber to fix a boiler in one of his properties and he takes the plumbers word on him being on the gas safe register. In the event that the house blows up killing the family inside and it turns out the plumber lied, the landlord will be guilty of not carrying out reasonable checks. If the landlord checks and the plumber is on the register and the same thing happens; I believe the landlord would have done all that is reasonably possible to avoid the deaths.
 
The government may have wanted industry to do it themselves as far as fire risk assessments are concerned; but the reality is that loads and loads of RPs didn’t want to have a go at it and they have turned to outside experts to do the job for them. This created a real problem with cowboys, and for almost as long as the RRO has been in place the industry has been talking about a way to prevent the cowboy from ripping off the RP with substandard or dangerous assessments. Actually this ‘not a burden on industry’ was created by DCLG; but when the RP turned to the industry in thousands and thousands, it was suddenly an industry mess, that industry had to deal with. They have done that (not very well in my opinion) but none the less a system is in place; all the fire sector representatives contributed and the consensus is a recommendation to use firms with accredited third party certification. (If you want to appoint an external contractor)

Presumably this is to afford the best assurance against the risk assessor messing up and to assist in due diligence which is a defence in court; if an offence has been commissioned under the RRO.

So the above is a long winded way of asking piglet; what is your point?

[Tom W]

It wasn't a point it was a question.

You referenced cases where the RP was asked  "In the event of a legal case it is for the accused to prove they couldn’t have reasonably done more to avoid commissioning the offence"

I took that (as per the rest of the thread) you meant selecting of a risk assessor.

I see you mean in generic terms though.

[colin todd]

Longjohn, you sure you quoted the right link. All I could find was a really boring video from some certification body salesman talking about the price of his Tv set.

[colin todd]

Piggers the reverse burden of proof to which Kelsall refers does not apply to Article 9 and FRA. Just on a point of accuracy.

[Kelsall]

sorry folks forgot to say
click on the fire section of the ifsec website and then the link 'Video Guide to Fire Risk Assessments '

Excellent video longjohn; however it's a shame it won't reach the intended target audience; it is so difficult to get the message to RPs.