When you carry out a fire risk assessment, as for other areas of health and safety, you may need additional competent advice. This may be available in-house or in conjunction with your insurer and/or broker or other party. A fire risk assessment is no more than a systematic and logical analysis of all aspects of fire safety. The main areas that you should consider are:
- possible causes of a fire starting;
- means of detecting a fire and alerting:
- everyone in the premises;
- your fire team, if you have one; and
- the emergency services.
You will need a:
- means of evacuating everyone in the premises quickly and safely to a place of safety at any time of the day or night, with a roll-call or similar to ensure all people have escaped; and
- means of ensuring that all parts of the fire alarm and evacuation procedures are adequately maintained.
You can use the comprehensive fire risk assessment and audit checklist as a basis for completing your fire risk assessment.
Alternatively, the Fire Protection Association provides an on-line fire risk assessment. It comprises 51 questions with advice if a ‘no’ answer is selected. It is specifically aimed at small and medium-sized establishments (SMEs).
The findings of your fire risk assessment are likely to result in two types of actions:
- actions requiring regular longer-term reviews (typically annual) of:
- fire risk assessments;
- maintenance of fire detection and fire fighting equipment, including emergency lighting,
- emergency procedures, e.g. fire drills; and
- safe systems of work for activities with a high fire risk, e.g. hot-work permits etc.
- actions requiring frequent (typically weekly) checks on:
- storage conditions for hazardous substances and wastes;
- access routes to fire escapes and places of safety;
- transient conditions in the workplace that could increase the risk of a fire starting; and
- the operation of fire detection and fire alarm equipment, including any links to external monitoring stations.
In each case, arrangements should be made for appropriate reviews and checks to take place, complete with suitable reporting arrangements so that improvements can be made when the need is identified.