BS 5306

[jakespop]

No doubt this has been discused before.

Several maintenance companies are advising on supply of additional equipment to comply with New BS 5306-Part 8. Most recently I have receieved a complaint from a client that they felt pressurised into agreeing additional equipment because they were told "regulations have changed". This results in serious initial and ongoing costs.  I feel it also encourages people to remain in a building trying to fight a fire, when in fact their priority is to evacuate. As far as I am concerned, this is a code of practice and Fire Risk Assessment should take precedence on selection and placement of fire fighting equipment.
I would appreciate any comments.

[The Colonel]

Not the first I have heard having problems with ext service personnel, I have sent the following to clients from the BS;

As a code of practice, this part of BS 5306 takes the form of guidance and recommendations. It should not be quoted as if it were a specification and particular care should be taken to ensure that claims of compliance are not misleading.

Many RPs are being fleeced again, as I understand it the BS is not retrospective and if installed under a previous version and compliant with it then there is no action required unless of course the ext person is building up their bonus for christmas

[AnthonyB]

Beyond the sensible advice on powder extinguishers, most of the latest changes to BS5306-8 appear to be a salesman's charter and little more, in fact only the powder change has any detailed rationale in the BS justifying and explaining it.

I will use my own judgement where I feel I can deviate yet still demonstrate it is suitable and sufficient - "because it says so" isn't good enough.

Example - a very small ground and first floor lock up shop unit only needed a single A rated extinguisher on the upper floor (it already had to have 2 on the ground floor even if it was small enough to have just 1 exit) if under 200 sq.m. now it has to have 2 regardless of size.

Add in electrical cover and you could have 8 extinguishers in a building of two rooms and a staircase if you applied the code.

Common sense would say 2 water mist would suffice or if you are a traditionalist 2 wets and 2 CO2, but that wouldn't be to BS.....

[Golden]

Anthony I agree with you totally here, the provision of CO₂ for anything connected to a bit of wire is getting nonsense and I'm specifying water/foam spray as the general purpose extinguisher and CO₂ only for specific risks. It frustrates me that the identical extinguishers can be sold in other EU countries with the electrical motif but in the UK we have to annotate them as not suitable. Again the area requirement is also over the top in my opinion and on a recent build I considered about 60% of the class A provision to be sufficient for the risk.

I also agree on the powder but recently found a school that had been sold a job lot early this year; even leaving out the possibility that the salesman sold them to get rid of some stock that would soon become useless (surely not?) who on earth would think that DP would be a good general purpose extinguisher for schools!

[AnthonyB]

British Rail led the way in using foam spray to replace halon in both buildings and rolling stock (even where the halon was there for electrical cover including some high voltages). They didn't increase the amount of CO2 extinguishers (which with powder were niche types for very specific areas, water, foam & BCF were the most common types) until the late 90's when the property stock became third party managed (British Rail's Property Board survived long after the demise of BR as a whole) and I for one was as guilty as others at increasing the numbers of CO2 extinguishers (this is over 15 years ago)

Sussex Uni has dispensed with the usual mix of foam, CO2 and wet chemical (kitchen) and just used 6 litre water mist throughout one of its new buildings.

[The Colonel]

Anthony, I agree the new standard is a glorified sales charter. I had a case very similar to your shop only it was a 1st and 2nd floor offices, following my assessment I recommended 1 x 13A water and co2 on each floor as a max however the clients ext company came back with 2x 13 A and a cos resulting in 6 in total, there were only 2 employees at the time and quoting the new BS. Despite my arguments and assessment the client went with the ext company, now they have 3 exts to each staff member. The offices amounted to two rooms per floor with a floor area about the same as you average 2 bed terraced house, overkill and over sell or what.

[TFEM]

Jakespop was right......we have had this debate before and I have answered exactly the same way as I will now.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is a legal document as you will all know. For those who do not know it off by heart, here is an exact quote.......

Maintenance

17.  (1)  Where necessary in order to safeguard the safety of relevant persons the responsible person must ensure that the premises and any facilities, equipment and devices provided in respect of the premises under this Order or, subject to paragraph (6), under any other enactment, including any enactment repealed or revoked by this Order, are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.

The "suitable system of maintenance" referred to will always as far as I am aware be BS5306 Part 3. It therefore logically follows that the installation, number and type of extinguishers in a premises should be in accordance with BS 5306 Part 8.

If, when the doo doo hits the whatnot, I don't want to be the one that gets pointed at and told......"you didn't follow the Code of Practice". I do not hide behind a limited company therefore my house and business is on the line if I don't do it correctly. So why should I deviate from what is written down in black and white, whether I agree with it or not? It is not my job to interpret the recommendations as I see fit.

Furthermore, page iii of BS 5306 Part 8: 2012 clearly states......"Any user claiming compliance with this part of BS 5306 is expected to be able to justify any course of action that deviates from its recommendations". You can just hear it now....."oh John said it would be OK".

Sorry guys, but we have to work to some recognised system whether we think it's right or wrong and for me that's 5306.

I think a greater problem is the standard of servicing that exists in the industry from allegedly "approved technicians", so and so registered engineers and unqualified personnel.

John

[Mike Buckley]

I disagree. The issue of the provision of extinguishers is not linked to their maintenance. The duty on the Responsible Person is to provide "general fire precautions" as described in paragraph 4:

Meaning of “general fire precautions”
4.—(1) In this Order “general fire precautions” in relation to premises means, subject to
paragraph (2)—

(d) measures in relation to the means for fighting fires on the premises;

I would agree the easiest way to comply with this is to follow BS 5306 pt 8. It also follows that if fire extinguishers are provided then the easiest way to show that they are being correctly maintained is to comply with BS 5306 pt 3. It is a short hand route for the fire risk assessment all you have to do is state that extinguishers are provided and maintained in accordance with BS 5306 job done.

However if you take a different scenario, you have a data centre, the data halls are protected with gas discharge systems. The last thing you want is the conventional class A fire extinguishers in there. The answer has to be that you supply some CO2s to cover the electrical risk and crucially you do not claim compliance with BS 5306 pt 8.

You will have to justify your decision as part of the fire risk assessment.

The British Standards are just that, they are standards not law. Most of the time they are a good easy way of showing compliance but as has been discussed in the correspondence above they can become over the top.

I am not advocating that the British Standards should be disregarded on a whim but there are times when you have to say that the Standard is not really suitable for the situation and then you have to justify your decision. It is after all a risk ASSESSMENT.

[TFEM]

The provision of extinguishers is covered by Part 8 which is what this debate is all about.
If it says "one X 13A rated extinguisher per 200m2 with a minimum of 2", I cannot say to my customer that one will be sufficient even if I believe it is overkill to put 2 in.
We as engineers cannot decide what is wrong and what is right about the standards.....we have to follow them to the letter otherwise it is US that potentially suffer the consequences and not the customer as they employ us to do the job in accordance with the laid down procedures.
"Cover your a**e".

John 

[kurnal]

Whilst I respect your opinion John I think you worry too much about covering your own back and not enough about what is suitable and sufficient in the circumstances to protect relevant persons from fire.

Douglas Bader DSO, DFC said "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools" and though the context is very different (his mistakes only generally put his own life and that of his team at risk) I believe that the BS sets a benchmark for most normal situations but are not to be blindly followed in all situations.

Mikes example is clearly not a normal situation, and I can give many similar examples, when it is appropriate to vary from the benchmark for very good reasons. Another situation might be a large sprinklered warehouse where to meet the A rating recommendation in BS5306-8 you need huge banks of the same extinguishers at your fire points. As we are looking at first aid fire fighting, to put multiple extinguishers of the same type at a fire point encourages persons to try and do too much and use multiple extinguishers on large fires, placing the user in danger when they should leave larger outbreaks to the sprinklers.  In such situations the travel distance is more important than achieving the combined A rating.  

All disciplines within the fire industry have similar dilemmas- means of escape, compartmentation, size of buildings, travel distances, sprinklers, alarms, lighting, signage, and if we followed each of the relevant codes to the letter we would completely de-skill our industry, become totally inflexible, stifle innovation and push our clients towards bankruptsy.

As an Industry we fire consultants  would be of little use to our clients if we simply always followed the standards and would not vary from them. Clients use us because our understanding of all the codes in concert  allows us to identify efficient cost effective solutions to keep the building safe from fire. Training and experience give us confidence to make such judgements and in accordance with the Law if we get it wrong , make no mistake, we will be in the dock. Fully understood and personal risk accepted. I dont spend much time worrying about my posterior.(Not in respect of fire anyway)

[TFEM]

We live in a litigious society these days. I don't unduly worry about covering myself because I work to the standards that are laid down. I cannot imagine any fire risk assessor saying "that's not in accordance with the standard but it will probably be OK".

I've already had one situation where my judgement was questioned by an insurance company following a clients claim.....thankfully I was proved correct.

You tell the insurance companies to stop looking for a scapegoat to get them out of paying the claim, inform the judges that black isn't always black and white isn't always white, tell my customers that I am capable of making sensible decisions.....then, and only then, will we all be allowed to make these judgements safely.

Until that time, 5306 rules.

John

[AnthonyB]

BS5839 is enlightened enough to allow for variations, I apply the same to BS5306 via risk assessment, with absolutely no issues back from enforcement or insurers, even where an existing provision has been reduced following an FRA.

In fact the only person who gets upset is the extinguisher supplier (especially at one site where they were expecting to find 70 extinguishers they could replace due to being at their 5 or 10 year test intervals but ended up with only 20 as most were superfluous). (Company name deleted by moderator) [/color] for example would send a raging mob with pitchforks and blazing torches to your door if you didn't follow code to the letter and openly slate on their website fire consultants and the the thoughts used by the writers of the LGA flats guide for daring to reduce the number of extinguishers in premises.


Of course BS5306 should be a starting point and a benchmark for most of the time, but the whole point of current fire and also building control legislation is to set a functional requirement, yet allow a number of different ways of achieving it relevant to the risk to the persons in the premises.

Sorry for editing your post Anthony but we cant start world war 3 here this week! We cant afford the legal costs! Kurnal

[Mike Buckley]

I agree with you Anthony, most of the time BS 5306 is a good bench mark and I would argue both ways, sometimes the minimum provision of BS5306 is not enough and at others it may be OTT and the job of the risk assessor is to make that call.

With regard to litigation we are damned either way.

If we follow BS 5306 slavishly in the data hall example the argument would be that because the extinguishers were unsuitable more damage was caused. Or in the warehouse example because each employee had in effect 4 fire extinguishers we were obviously encouraging the employee to fight the fire and that is why they died!

On the other hand that although BS 5306 was followed there were no extinguishers to cover the specific hazard and that is why the fire got out of control etc..

At the end of the day it has to be a matter of using your knowledge and experience to be able to identify the situation, a comprehensive FRA to justify your advice and sufficient insurance.

[Golden]

Just returned home from a school FRA visit where I've found a 9 Kg powder extinguisher in the kitchen ... the school is brand new and opened for business last month!

[nearlythere]

Sorry for editing your post Anthony but we cant start world war 3 here this week! We cant afford the legal costs! Kurnal

Ah come on K. Publish and be damned. Let it rip.