A fire of any size can have a major impact on the day to day operations or even the eventual viability of your business. With the potential to lose stock, finished work, business, customer or financial records; or the possible absence of key personnel due to injury or smoke inhalation – Can you afford to take the chance?
Make sure that you are prepared and legally compliant with an up to date Fire Risk Assessment.
What is a Fire Risk Assessment?
A Fire Risk Assessment is a detailed inspection of a building / facility, which is carried out by a ‘Competent Person’ to identify and evaluate, then remove or minimise any risk of fire.
The FRA should be carried out periodically to ensure continued compliance; or sooner when changes are made to the physical building or facilities, when there are changes to their use; or when there are changes to the number or physical capabilities of their occupants.
Why do we need Fire Risk Assessments?
By law, all buildings; other than properties which are owned and personally used as domestic properties; have to have an up to date Fire Risk Assessment (FRA).
It is the responsibility of the Landlord or building owners to appoint a designated ‘Responsible Person’ (sometimes known as the ‘duty holder’), who must then ensure that an FRA has been completed and that it is suitable and sufficient to protect the lives and safety of any persons in or around the building.
As the majority of people are not fire safety experts; the Responsible Person will then need to appoint a ‘Competent Person’ to physically undertake the FRA.
If the building normally has more than five people working or living in it, then the findings of the FRA must be recorded in writing.
How do I know that the Assessor is competent?
To be compliant with all current Fire Safety legislation and regulations and to ensure that the Assessment is appropriate to the individual site / facilities you need to ensure that the Assessor is a qualified Fire Safety specialist and ideally that their work is independently audited by a third party certification scheme.
At The Thompson Group, our Fire Risk Assessors not only hold memberships of The Institution of Fire Engineers and the Institute of Fire Safety Managers; but are also individually certified under schemes such as FRACS (Fire Risk Assessors Certification Scheme) – an independent scheme operated by Warrington Certification (A World leader in the certification of fire safety professionals), so you can rest assured that the report and action plan will be suitable and comprehensive.
