Fire Risk Assessment Software

[CWEENG]

With the increase in software providers offering their offering for Fire Risk Assessment, be it, ipad on site based, PC based, software.
I would be interested in what others have found to be, good, bad, or indifferent, ease of use etc.
Are the packages truly interactive, or just a PDF producer of an existing form? 

Maybe the Forum moderators could introduce a Section on this topic?

[nearlythere]

With the increase in software providers offering their offering for Fire Risk Assessment, be it, ipad on site based, PC based, software.
I would be interested in what others have found to be, good, bad, or indifferent, ease of use etc.
Are the packages truly interactive, or just a PDF producer of an existing form? 

Maybe the Forum moderators could introduce a Section on this topic?

You can have the best package in the world CWEENG but it still requires a competent person to do the looking. Because of that I would suggest that online assessment by a lay person would most likely be unsuitable and insufficient. But maybe I'm just one of those lost souls who likes to see assessments done properly.
Mind you very recently I have seen assessments carried out over here for a nursing home group. The two assessments I have seen so far were pretty poor and one practically a cut and paste of the other. Both also referred to the sprinkler systems which must be invisable types as I could not see any such installation in either premises.
And I'm afraid 3rd party accreditation would not have helped here as the business providing the assessors is on the IFE register.

[patrickhamblin]

I am confused here as the IFE Register is of individuals and not companies.

[nearlythere]

I am confused here as the IFE Register is of individuals and not companies.

Will check the website again and come back.

[AnthonyB]

To be honest rather than use an off the shelf one we developed our own in house, was a gamble but has paid off long term.

[CWEENG]

Totally agree with you  nearlythere,  my quest is for the tool, to help compile the necessary information after the survey (doing the looking) and deliver the report afterwards. When you see assessment s carried out by the client previously using on line portals etc, you can almost predict the content as much as you can predict what has been left out. Don’t think it is the portal or the software at fault but the person on the keyboard. There are some good packages out there.
Recently carried out a FRA for a client that was concerned about her incumbent provider offering to do an annual review over the phone, without visiting the site, and charging a hefty fee for this as well.
I wonder how they intended to review the items missed out of the original FRA report as there was quite a bit to the dismay of the client who thought they were compliant.
I have developed my own database for Fire Risk Assessments using a Filmmaker Platform, but I am always interested in others approach.

[Phoenix]

If you think about the fire risk assessment process (i.e. what goes on in your tiny little brain (or mine) when you (or I) carry out an assessment) what you are doing is comparing a building against a huge range of interactive variables that play off against each other in the manner of balancing scales stuck in a spider's web with the spider creeping round the edges of the web.  Ultimately, you have to make decisions that can affect people's lives based on the interwoven multi-dimensional fabric of standards, examples and experience.

This doesn't sound like the sort of process that can be carried out by some simple form filling app on a tablet.

The software can be used as a very useful recording and form filling tool.  But it cannot do the job for you.

On the other hand, the assessment that goes on in our brains certainly could be replicated by some complex and well informed algorithm.  And it would probably do a better job than our oft misguided brains can do.  Think for a moment, for example, on the fact that about 80% of drivers honestly believe that they are better than average drivers.  This cannot be, of course, and it illustrates that our intuition is not the most reliable thing in the world.  

We all have a tendency to make judgements based on our immediate experiences and not on broader facts.  There are a number of documented cases of interviews with murderers where the interviewer described the interviewee as 'charming', 'amiable' or 'engaging'.  Well, maybe they were during the interview but I don't think they always are!  We should all be aware of our inherent short-sightedness.  Risk assessment software could be based on facts and statistics, probabilities and known consequential losses.  

But no such software exists at the moment.  Maybe I'll put my mind to it....

...No, too busy balancing scales in spiders' webs.

Stu


  

[nearlythere]

With the increase in software providers offering their offering for Fire Risk Assessment, be it, ipad on site based, PC based, software.
I would be interested in what others have found to be, good, bad, or indifferent, ease of use etc.
Are the packages truly interactive, or just a PDF producer of an existing form?  

Maybe the Forum moderators could introduce a Section on this topic?

You can have the best package in the world CWEENG but it still requires a competent person to do the looking. Because of that I would suggest that online assessment by a lay person would most likely be unsuitable and insufficient. But maybe I'm just one of those lost souls who likes to see assessments done properly.
Mind you very recently I have seen assessments carried out over here for a nursing home group. The two assessments I have seen so far were pretty poor and one practically a cut and paste of the other. Both also referred to the sprinkler systems which must be invisable types as I could not see any such installation in either premises.
And I'm afraid 3rd party accreditation would not have helped here as the business providing the assessors is on the IFE register.

With apologies to the Hon. members of IFE. Not registered with IFE. I am pleased to correct my post.

[AnthonyB]

Recently carried out a FRA for a client that was concerned about her incumbent provider offering to do an annual review over the phone, without visiting the site, and charging a hefty fee for this as well.

Whilst clients can sign off actions online on our system, we would never review without visiting site and checking the original issues and we have been proven right in this because we often find:
- Something has been signed off, but done wrongly so the risk is still partly/wholly present
- Something has been signed off as 'quote requested' or 'purchase order sent' but not actually been completed
- Something has been signed off but simply not been done!

Plus you wouldn't know about any new issues or changes to layout/use/risk, etc

[Tom W]

Software for non professionals is useless. They sit by their desk and risk assess from memory with rose tinted glasses.

If you want software for professionals invest in a magic pen. Write it out as normal with the pen which recognises your handwriting and the template you use and emails it to a pc. Saves a lot of time.

[nearlythere]

Software for non professionals is useless. They sit by their desk and risk assess from memory with rose tinted glasses.

If you want software for professionals invest in a magic pen. Write it out as normal with the pen which recognises your handwriting and the template you use and emails it to a pc. Saves a lot of time.

What if I can't even recognise my own writing Piggy?

[Mike Buckley]

What if I can't even recognise my own writing Piggy?

You're OK, I have problems reading mine!

[Phoenix]

I write a lot of fire strategies for complex buildings and sometimes people ask me why these fire strategies are required.  The answer is simply that fire stategies set standards for the buildings against which all future fire risk assessments can be gauged.  [They also help with the management of the buildings, of course.]

Most fire risk assessors do not have the benefit of good fire strategy documents against which to gauge their assessments of buildings [because for most buildings they do not exist] so the fire risk assessment process is slightly more complex - it involves the creation of a set of notional standards in the assessors head and then a comparison of the actual building against those notional standards.  Many fire risk assessors will not even realise that they are doing this - but they are.

The simple fact that no two buildings (or the occupants of those two buildings) are the same means that the set of notional standards are never the same and this means that any software based fire risk assessment would have to be extremely complex to adjust to the different sets of notional standards and this complexity is liable to be self-defeating. 

This is also primarily why tick boxes are a bad tool for fire risk assesments.  I'm not denying that they can be useful reminders for the matters that have to be covered but they are utterly impotent in applying priorities to those respective matters.  And prioritisation is a pretty important element of the process (when I say 'pretty' I mean 'very').

Stu