A quick Google search for the term ‘how many steps make up a fire safety risk assessment’ throws up all kinds of information, and you can get different answers depending on which article you visit.
We’re here to keep things simple for you.
In this article, Alex MacArthur, director at North West Fire Solutions, provides a step-by-step breakdown of a fire risk assessment and addresses other frequently asked questions from building owners, landlords, and managing agents.
In this article
What is a fire risk assessment?
What are the key steps involved in conducting a fire risk assessment?
How does the fire risk assessment process vary across different types of premises?
How often should fire risk assessments be reviewed and updated?
What hazards will a fire risk assessment uncover?
When should an organisation reach out externally for a fire risk assessment?
What is a fire risk assessment?
A fire risk assessment is a legal document that is required in the UK for most types of premises.
It will look at the risk of the premises catching fire and assess the risk to the building users and the building itself.
What are the key steps involved in conducting a fire risk assessment?
A site visit is the first step involved in carrying out a fire risk assessment.
The fire risk assessor will attend the site and look to identify fire hazards like the sources of ignition, fuel, and oxygen.
They will also look at how you manage fire safety on a daily basis.
For example:
- How do you enforce your “No smoking” policy?
- How are your electrics maintained?
- Do you have regular servicing contracts in place?
- What do your fire drill procedures look like?
Then, they will identify who is at risk. It may be that your building houses vulnerable individuals or individuals with specific requirements that need to be taken into consideration.
The next step is to assess the likelihood of a fire starting and the potential consequences of this, such as harm to people and damage to property.
Then, the risk assessor will look at what control measures you may be able to put into place to remove or reduce the hazards they’ve identified. For example, installing fire detection or suppression systems.
As part of our fire risk assessments, we produce reports that record our findings.
These reports are not black and white — you don’t pass or fail. They simply outline the deficiencies we’ve found and areas for improvement.
Within the report, we will include an action plan detailing who’s responsible for what, which actions are more high priority than others, and the timeframe within which these actions should be completed.
But the work doesn’t stop there. We have to ensure we communicate our findings to the relevant people.
While we’ll have a primary client contact, it’s important that the responsible people associated with said contact ensure any relevant persons (such as staff or general building users) are made aware of our assessment having been carried out.
And, of course, it could be worth incorporating further training into your management procedures moving forward.
The final step involved in a fire risk assessment is for the responsible person to review it regularly so that it’s suitable and sufficient for the premises. Note: We can carry out this service for you, so if this is something you currently require, please let us know by calling us on 0151 665 0124 or emailing info@nwfiresolutions.co.uk.
Now that you know about the key steps involved in a fire risk assessment, let’s address other frequently asked questions.
How does the fire risk assessment process differ across various types of premises?
The process of carrying out a fire risk assessment is similar for any kind of building. It’s a case of assessing what’s in front of you and evaluating the risks.
However, the risks and hazards we find in a chemical factory containing explosive materials and specialist machinery will differ from those that we encounter in a school.
At the same time, there are many similarities between these types of buildings. They’re both workplaces that include staff, and these staff may require different forms or levels of fire safety training. Both types of buildings will also require constant maintenance to ensure the various fire safety measures are working properly.
So, while the process of carrying out a fire risk assessment is the same for different types of premises, the outcomes and contents of a report can be very different.
How often should fire risk assessments be reviewed and updated to ensure ongoing compliance and safety?
The law around this is quite vague as far as we’re concerned.
Legislation states a risk assessment should be reviewed regularly.
There are two things to consider in the context of this legislation:
- What does ‘regularly’ mean?
- What is a review?
Starting with the first question, one of the details your risk assessor will include in your assessment is how often it should be reviewed or when it should next be reviewed.
If a lot of change is taking place within your building, such as remedial work or a change in usage, you may be advised to review your current fire risk assessment within as little as three months, reviewing the frequency again at the next assessment.
However, if your building is a low-risk site with not many issues at all, if any, you may choose to review their assessment every 12 months.
Some responsible people choose to review their assessments even less frequently than this. We’ve come across people who’ve done so every two, three, and even five years, which we would always say is excessive!
Our general advice is that reviewing your fire risk assessment every 12 months is best practice.
But, again, what constitutes a review?
Is a review a desktop exercise where you sit and read the assessment and think of possible changes in your head, or is it a physical exercise where you walk around your site, observing things as you go?
Maybe you need to review policies and procedures or your maintenance records, as certain things can be missed if 12 months have gone by.
As I said, some people can leave it even longer to review their assessment, and it’s easy to forget these things.
That’s why we always invite clients to get a new risk assessment done if they’re unsure as to how compliant or safe their building is.
This assessment could be carried out by a new risk assessor doing it who spots things that you don’t or sees things in different ways.
Any risk assessor we send to you will be competent, treat your building as a new site and carry out a fresh review of your policies and procedures.
Ultimately, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
What are the most typical fire hazards a fire risk assessment will uncover?
When we visit a site, the fire doors are typically in poor condition.
Fire doors are hard to maintain as they’re constantly in use, but their maintenance has improved over time as people are becoming more switched on to how important they are.
Fire compartmentation breaches are another hazard we encounter on a regular basis.
Lots of clients and contractors don’t understand the concept of compartmentation. It’s quite common that we find contractors have put pipes or cabling through walls, and they’ve not fire-stopped the damage to the walls afterwards.
But in general, the hazards that crop up from a fire risk assessment are simple to fix with the correct paperwork.
By this, I mean documents detailing how to manage fire safety, the evacuation procedures, who’s responsible for X and Y, who needs fire safety training — these kinds of things.
Most people we meet are trying their best, but they just have a knowledge gap, which is where deficiencies stem from.
They may know what they’re doing, how to evacuate, and who’s in charge, but they don’t have any kind of documented evacuation plan in place.
When should an organisation reach out externally for a fire risk assessment, and what credentials should they look for in a fire risk assessor?
The only requirement is that you need to be competent to carry out a fire risk assessment, and you should be able to risk assess your own premises.
But in this day and age, there’s so much more to consider within a fire risk assessment than there was when The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 originally came into force.
If a fire occurred and you went to court, it would be very difficult for you to convince the court that you were a competent person in the context of fire safety unless it was your day job.
That’s why you should always look to outsource your fire risk assessment to a third-party company.
This company’s assessors should be competent and experienced, open to continuous improvement, willing to listen and learn, and able to see things in a different way.
We make sure all our fire risk assessors have extensive previous experience in fire risk assessments.
They’ve either been in the sector for a long time or have a background in fire, and they’ve taken various courses to enhance their knowledge of the built environment.
This knowledge not only enables them to carry out sufficient fire risk assessments but also to use their judgements in critical moments.
It’s not just about looking at something in front of you; it’s about understanding what you’re looking at.
Reach out to North West Fire Solutions for your fire risk assessment
Fire risk assessments are our bread and butter.
Whatever type of premises you own, we carry out fire risk assessments at different types of premises all over the UK, and we have a strong team of experienced assessors.
These assessors have worked “on the pumps” as firefighters or at enforcement level within the fire service and have held very high positions. They’ve witnessed lots of fires and the aftereffects of these fires, which means they know what to look for when carrying out a risk assessment.
With a combined industry experience of approximately 250 years, we know what we’re doing when it comes to fire safety.
You can arrange for us to attend your site by calling us on 0151 665 0124 or emailing info@nwfiresolutions.co.uk.