Fire Safety / What is a Fire Risk Assessment?

This is designed as an outline guide, to give our clients background information to help them understand RiskBase’s methodology in producing assessments. It’s by no means a comprehensive but is useful as an overview. It should be read in conjunction with our Guide to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

Introduction

A Fire Risk Assessment is an assessment of the Fire Risks to occupants of a building and other people in the vicinity of a building and to ensure that those people are safe from the risk of fire and its effects.

In England and Wales (under the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order 2005) a suitable and sufficient Fire Risk Assessment is a legal requirement. The legislation represents a shift from concentrating on Fire Protection to Fire Prevention.

There is neither a definition of ‘suitable and sufficient’ nor a required format for the assessment instead the adequacy is a matter for subjective judgement.

A Fire Risk Assessment is a systematic and structured assessment of fire risk designed to determine the efficiency of existing fire precautions and detail the need for additional fire precautions in the Action Plan. The objective of the Action Plan is to set out measures that will reduce fire risk to a tolerable level.

Under traditional legislation, responsibility for judging the adequacy of fire precautions lay with the Fire Services. Under the FSO, responsibility for the adequacy of the fire precautions and the Fire Risk Assessment lies with the Responsible Person. It’s essential that the Fire Risk Assessment isn’t treated just as a formality and filed away until the fire services request sight of it.

Factors to Consider in a Fire Risk Assessment

• Building Complexity, Size/Height & Construction
• Activites and Processes that take place
• The nature and number of the occupants (elderly, infirm, young etc) and their familiarity of the building
• Past history of fires, any incidence of arson etc

Fire Risks vs. Fire Hazards

It’s important to differentiate between a Fire Risk and a Fire Hazard.

• A Fire Hazard is the potential of injury or damage from fire
• A Fire Risk is the product of the probability of occurrence of a fire and the consequence of its occurrence (e.g. financial loss or death/injury)

Competency of the Fire Risk Assessor

There’s no required qualification to complete a fire risk assessment; but if the inadequacy of a Fire Risk Assessment results in one of the relevant people at risk suffering injury or death in the event of a fire, an offence is committed by the Responsible Person.

The following attributes should be sufficient if the fire risk assessor has:

• An understanding of the legislation (read our guide to the FSO here)
• A good understanding of the occupants and use of the building and the risks/hazards it presents
• An awareness of the limitations of their knowledge
• A willingness to supplement their experience and knowledge by obtaining help and assistance (for instance by using RiskBase).

For buildings with complex / special risks, it would be advisable to take specialist advice in any event.

Standards of Fire Precautions

The assessment of fire precautions does not necessarily require the rigid adherence to codes of practice (such as British Standards). Fire precautions should be proportional to the prescribed risk and any decisions or judgements made within the Action Plan need only be justifiable. This may mean prescribed standards above or below that specified in relevant codes of practice.

For example, the key factor in the safety of occupants is their escape time. Maximum travel distances prescribed by good practice may not be relevant, as they effect only the time of escape once the occupants recognise and react to the alarm signal. It’s more appropriate to compare escape times with ASET (the time between ignition, detection, alarm being raised and evacuation (which is made up of recognition of alarm, response and travel time)).

Circumstances where there is a significant deviation from prescribed standards should be acknowledged and that appropriate consideration has been given to the deviation and justified.

Format of a Fire Risk Assessment

There’s no single correct way of documenting a Fire Risk Assessment. Legislation prescribes only that Significant Findings and any group of occupants especially at risk be documented.

The BSI published a specification (PAS 79) suggesting that there were 9 steps to a fire risk assessment. Other guidance may suggest more or less, but will generally cover the same topics.

1 Obtain relevant information about the building

What processes are carried out within the building? Who and what types of occupants are in the building? Have there been previous fires and what were the causes?

This information can normally be obtained by interviewing relevant staff that work within the building. Their names and positions should be noted and referenced in the assessment so that when updated they can be consulted again.

2 Identify Fire Hazards and measures for their control or elimination

Note earlier section on Fire Risks vs. Fire Hazards

3 Make a subjective assessment of the likelihood of fire

Most of this information can be derived from steps 1 and 2 above.

4 Determine the current physical fire protection measures

These measures need only be relevant to the protection of people in the event of a fire and are often derived from the inspection of the building by the assessor.

5 Determine fire safety management measures and procedures

This will generally involve interviewing management and examining documentation such as equipment testing and maintenance records, staff training and fire drills.

Many serious injuries and deaths caused in fire are due to a lack of fire safety management and planning, rather than lack of fire protection.

6 Assess the consequences to occupants in the event of a fire

Make a subjective assessment of the likely consequences (i.e. the extent of injury) to occupants and the number of occupants at risk in the event of a fire. This should make reference to specific scenarios and/or be related to previously identified risks.

7 Make an assessment of the fire risks and decide whether they are tolerable

An accepted way of determining risk is by combining the likelihood and consequence of a particular scenario or risk. A very simplistic way of looking at this is a particular risk with a low likelyhood but a high consequence could be scored with a medium overall risk.

8 Formulate an action plan

Paying additional and specific attention to the ‘intolerable’ risks identified in step 7, identify ways to eliminate, or at least reduce risks (likelihood and/or consequence). A timescale should be set out for these and if necessary assigned to a person responsible for ensuring they are completed.

9 Decide on a review period

Fire Risk Assessments should be reviewed ‘periodically’ dependent on the risk factors involved. They should also be reviewed whenever risks change (and also as and when Action Plan items are completed). As a guide most premises should look to review at least every 6 months.

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