Protected Routes and Travel Distances

[PhilB]

On a point of detail, Philip, the WFPL includes certian clauses of the Man Regs, but then you already know that.

Oh dear, if these good training courses do not discuss liklihood, they will not enable risk assessments to comply with the management regs, nor will they prepare people for the RRO. .

Correct Colin...but nothing in the included clauses requires risk assessment to consider likelihood of fire...if all my employees can escape and I am a chain smoking petrol juggling lunatic...I commit no offence...allthough likelihood of fire is considerable......RRO improves situation a tad......I now have to prevent fires happening, so likelihood is relevant but only if relevant persons are placed at risk.

I will conduct my petrol juggling business and all year firework display on my desert island.....no-one in the vicinity and all inhabitants of my island have personal escape canoes........I do not consider the liklihood of fire relevant....please explain how I contravene the FSRRO.

You really do need to attend a good course...bring Wee Brian with you, as long as he doesn't tell me to grow up....nasty man!

[Chris Houston]

Phil,

I don't know enough about the RRO to comment, but of course various other pieces of legislation apply to a workplace, not just fire safety.

In addition to the legislation applicable to the use of petrolium, the health and safety at work act and various other pieces of legislation may have an impact.

[colin todd]

Since there are no desert islands within the curtilage of the United Kingdom the WFPL do not apply. The need to look at liklihood is inherent in the definition of risk, which is the liklihood of fire occurring in combination with the consequences of fire if it does occur. So, by definition, you cannot carry out a fire risk assessment unless you consider measures to prevent fire. Moreover, in assessing what is necessary under Part ll of the FPW regs, you have, according to the regs, consider the HAZARDS of the workplace. Since a fire hazard is something with the potential to cause a fire, it would be a bit difficult to do this, without thinking about your juggling act, albiet your juggling ability never seems lacking to me. PS Brian is not nasty, merely straight to the point. But as my good friend you can have these points above to enhance your courses free of charge.

[steve walker]

Steve, I think it makes clear that the fundamental principle ( one might even say truism) is that you need the escape time to be less than the ASET.

Colin,

Yes, it does make it clear. This part of 7974 is concerned with "occupant evacuation" and in the introduction it states:

 "A basic principle of a performance-based (fire safety engineering) building design is that the available safe escape time (ASET) is greater than the required safe escape time (RSET) by an appropriate margin of safety."

It goes on to say:

"4 Principles
4.1 General
The main aim is to provide a safe environment for building occupants for as long as they need to remain in the building and to provide for safe means of escape with sufficient capacity of all occupants to be able to evacuate in safety."

My criticism is that these islands of clarity are hard to find.

[dave bev]

colin, i dont think you are giving ALL the information - im pretty sure you must have spent quite some time on a dessert island within the UK?

dave bev

[colin todd]

No, I have never lived in Essex, Davey.

[Fishy]

I'm fascinated by the 'likelihood' aspect of risk assessment, touched upon by this thread, and its potential impact upon fire engineering.  

One consequence is if you pour enough resources into prevention - either preventing ignition or slowing growth (e.g. by tight control of fire load), you could throw away any guidance on travel distances - have them as long as you like; dead-ends cease to be a problem; dispense with alarms!  In effect, we go from the 'traditional' approach of assuming that a fire of significant size occurs, and designing/managing to deal with it to an assumption that it is improbable that a fire of significant size will occur.  If you assume the latter, then established risk assessment techniques could show that spending ANY significant amount of money on additional precautions (fire doors, extinguishers, alarms etc) isn't justified, in pure life safety terms.  The stonemasons could be an excellent example!

If we take this further, and look at the national statistics, the likelihood of any of us dying or suffering serious injury from fire in our place of work is infinitesimal - yet each year UK employers must spend millions on fire protection kit.  In true risk assessment terms, how can this be money well spent?  There must be a case to be made for reducing the current levels of fire protection, in these premises, especially if legislative changes improve prevention.  Protection of property and assets argues against this, of course, but I know of no policy that encourages employers to consider this - even if you factor in the likelihood that a serious fire would cripple your business, the risk is still small (better to pour resource into contingeny planning, in many cases).

Totally 'off thread', of course, but I'm convinced that, come RRFSO, large organisations at least will see an opportunity to reduce safety spending in this way.

[PhilB]

I don't think it will be a problem. In all but your fish-gutting factory and stonemasons without lights etc.most buidings will have ignition sources i.e. electricity and people to name but two. That is why I believe you have to start on the premis that a fire will occur and liklihood is irrelevant.

Development is more relevant. Most buidings would be unworkable if the fire load was reduced to an extent that no development is likely.

But if development is unlikely e.g stonemasons with no office yes protective measures could be minimal.

It is the consequence that is more important, yes there are not many fires in workplaces, but you have to assume that a fire could occur tommorow and the consequence could be death, so minimum levels cannot be reduced because likelihood is once every 50 years rather than once every 25 years.

[johndoe]

I am not totally happy with your  "I believe you have to start on the premis that a fire will occur " but if you take that approavh you must still look at what will burn, how fast ,production of heat smoke the raising of alarm movement and reaction of people and base your judgements on that . not a fire will occur and that room or compartment will be lost etc

[Tom Sutton]

Fishy Take a look at the national statistics for the early 1960's before any meaningful fire safety was imposed on non-domestic premises would this change your views.

[PhilB]

Yes John that is what I said..development not likelihood is relevant. I never suggested that you will always get full room involvement.

Please tell me the type of building with no chance of fire occuring, i.e no electricity, no persons and I will agree a fire will not occur, but there's not too many of them that I know of.

[Fishy]

...aahh, but if probability is low enough, in risk assessment terms consequence becomes largely irrelevant!  No law demands that you eliminate the risk from fire, only that you reduce it so that it is as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP).

The fact is that the probability of having a life-threatening fire in most non-domestic premises is small, and if you do have a fire the probability of death or serious injury is even smaller (0.7 deaths per 1000 fires in 'other buildings', according to the 2003 stats; the peak in casualties was not actually in the 60s but in the late 70s - when the FP Act had been around for nearly a decade).  Spread this over the entire UK building stock (non-dwellings) and the probability of death or serious injury in any one building starts to look tiny - and according to established risk assessment techniques you don't have to take ANY significant risk reduction measures against highly improbable events, no matter what the consequences.

Objectively, I believe that a case COULD be made that, in buildings where the occupants are likely to be awake and alert, with a reasonable number of exits, you need do little to mitigate fire risk.  Automatic smoke detection could be unnecessary - at most a type 'M' system would suffice.  Sprinklers would be complete over-kill.  Fire resisting compartmentation would be largely unnecessary.

The vast majority of money spent on fire protection is currently aimed at those premises where risk to life is lowest - this cannot make sense!  Risk assessment allows protection to be reduced where risk is low.  I believe that many medium-large organisations, at least, will use this as an opportunity to reduce spend on fire protection, as most will be able to demonstrate that, with fairly decent management, they can reduce fire risk to a level ALARP.  

I'm being deliberately provocative here (I don't personally believe that it is necessarily valid to reduce protection already bought and paid for, and this approach ignores the economic and social consequences of fire loss), but my view is that the new law encourages this approach, that some organisations will use this as an opportunity to reduce their fire protection measures and it's something that the fire industry needs to deal with!

[PhilB]

Yes probability may be low but it could reasonably happen tommorow. If it did happen tommorow and the responsible person has not taken reasonable steps to protect relevant persons he will be guilty of an offence. The defence that it was so unlikely to happen so I did nothing is unlikely to stand up.

You have to remember that usually we are at minimum standards for life safety as property protection may not be considered. You cannot lower those minimum standards because fire is unlikely,.... my opinion of course. However you could lower those standards if development was considered to be minimal.

[Tom Sutton]

I would accept, because I am unable to get hold of the fire stats before 1997, the peak in casualties was not actually in the 60s but in the late 70s and if my memory serves me well it was 800+ per year, since then they have reduced considerably Why? Also most of the reduction was in the non-domestic property.

Any legislation takes many years before it is any effect, the 70,s was still suffering the effects of previous legislation and the effects of the FPact will be felt for years to come. Positive I think.

I agree absolutely with Fishy`s view in the last half of the final paragraph.

[wee brian]

Phil

A hot air balloon may crash land on the roof of my house tonight. Do you think I should wear a hard hat, just in case?

When considering an exisitng building where the rules that would apply to a new building are not met we need to assess the risk that this presents.

Sticking extra stairways into buildings is a bit OTT in most cases and taking steps to reduce the risk of a fire starting would be a more realistic approach.