Know your fire responsibilities

So what are your fire safety responsibilities? October 2006 saw the introduction of the most wide ranging piece of fire safety legislation for over 30 years; legislation that impacts on every business in England, Wales and Scotland. However, despite being some considerable way along the track in terms of time passed since its introduction, it is evident that business is certainly not as well advanced in terms of its knowledge. Research has shown that many businesses are either completely unaware of their new fire safety responsibilities or at least somewhat confused.

Employer awareness
The legislation in question is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, or the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations if you are north of the border. One of the most fundamental implications of the Order is that business owners and employers must be aware that the fire safety responsibility now lies very squarely with them. The spate of recent fatal fires has thrown into sharp relief the life safety element of the fire safety equation, while the estimated annual losses of £7billion demonstrates the scale of the economic cost. Risk assessment, the competence of those employed to implement fire safety measures and the standards to which those deemed competent work are all central to the new legislation.
    
Healthcare has been identified by the government as one of the 11 ‘sectors’ that need to be aware of the new legislation, with ‘Fire Safety in healthcare premises’ one of the Guidance Documents available in support of the Fire Safety Order.

Standards
It was Kenneth Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, who said in 1977: “The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.” Well, the Fire Industry Association (FIA) – the trade association that represents some 95 per cent of the UK active fire protection industry – disagrees with this statement. There may be a lot of different standards but for fire protection systems there is only one choice and that’s the highest possible standard.
    
With this in mind, the FIA has long chosen to set its sights on increasing the standard of fire protection installations in the UK, so that they are raised to the highest possible level and become the automatic choice for clients and specifiers.

Fire protection companies
So what does it take to be a fire protection company? Well, perhaps surprisingly, anybody can set themselves up as a supplier and installer of fire protection systems. Get yourself a white van, access to the job, a credit card to purchase products and you’re in business!
    
The one other thing that you will need, of course, is a computer so that you can print your own certificates that infer that your work is of the highest standard and these typically might read: “We at Friendly Fire take a pride in our work at your healthcare premises, so much so that we stand behind it and the proof of its quality is evidenced by this piece of paper.” Some of these certificates may even have a legible signature on them.
    
The word ‘irony’ is defined by the Little Oxford Dictionary as “expression of one’s meaning by language of opposite or different tendency” and the previous paragraph should be read with that in mind. That’s not to say, however, that it doesn’t happen.

Third party certification
So how do you assure that the fire protection systems in a hospital or other healthcare environment are of the highest standard and that, as the business owner or employer, you have fulfilled your statutory duty of care in protecting all those on your premises from the threat of fire? Well, in the UK there are Independent Third Party Certification schemes for suppliers, installers and maintainers of fire protection systems.
    
The government acknowledges these and says of such schemes in Approved Document B (the Fire Safety guidance document) of the Building Regulations: “Building Control Bodies may accept the certification of products, components, materials or structures under such schemes as evidence of compliance with the relevant standard.
    
“Similarly, Building Control Bodies may accept the certification of the installation or maintenance of products, components, materials or structures under such schemes as evidence of compliance with the relevant standard.”
    
Within the government, guidance documents for existing buildings published in support of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order stipulate: “Third-party certification schemes for fire protection products and related services are an effective means of providing the fullest possible assurances, offering a level of quality, reliability and safety that non-certificated products may lack. This does not mean goods and services that are not third-party approved are less reliable, but there is no obvious way in which this can be demonstrated.
    
“Third-party quality assurance can offer great comfort to employers, both as a means of satisfying you that goods and services you have purchased are fit for purpose, and as a means of demonstrating that you have complied with the law.”
    
Under these schemes the competence of the companies and its operatives to supply, install, and maintain a particular type of fire protection system is assessed.

New construction work
For new construction work at the end of the installation, the fire protection contractor supplies a ‘Certificate of Conformity’ to his client along with the specification and details of the work done. The FIA believes that any Certificate of Conformity that is not backed by an independent third party certification scheme, where appropriate, should be treated with some distrust. Since April 2007 this supply of information has been formalised in Building Regulation 16B, the rationale of this being that the information can then be used by the Responsible Person as designated in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order to operate and maintain the building in reasonable safety.
    
For routine maintenance work, you as the manager of the healthcare premises should look carefully at the documentation that the fire protection company supplies you with, to see if it references an Independent Third Party Certification Scheme. If it doesn’t then you should ask why not as without this you only have the word of the company that did the work that it is of the appropriate standard, and they would say that – wouldn’t they?
    
As a building gets older, occupiers will make changes and these may mean that the fire safety measures are weakened. A new tenant may, for example, increase the fire load in a certain part of the building or put in new offices that require extra smoke detectors. In theory all of these changes should be documented in the CDM (Construction, Design and Management) file. This provides a record of all matters to do with the health and safety of those concerned in the construction, management and use of a building.

Getting it right
In summary, the FIA believes that:

• The highest possible standard of fire protection is the only acceptable choice for all involved in the design, construction and maintenance of the UK’s healthcare facilities.
• To raise the standards in the UK, the industry should use only those companies that are independently third party certificated.
• A complete CDM file will enable the building’s fire protection to be properly maintained to meet the requirements of the Building Regulations.

But back to Kenneth Olsen, who also said in 1977: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” Well he certainly got that one wrong.
    
Similarly the FIA strongly suggests that for your healthcare premises you will also get it wrong if you accept anything less than the highest standard of fire protection, and that this should be evidenced via independent third party certification. Given the new fire safety legislation and the replacement of the traditional Fire Certificate with a risk assessment based regime whereby the business owner/employer is clearly identified as being responsible, the need for such a quality based approach has never been greater.

For more information
Details of Fire Industry Association member companies can be found on:
www.fia.uk.com
    
Details of the most active organisations providing independent third party certification for fire safety can be found on the following websites:
www.bafe.org.uk
www.bre.co.uk
www.warringtonfire.net