When carrying out a fire risk assessment, it’s really important to understand what you are trying to achieve.
Its amazing how often I have seen reports that seem to have missed the entire point. Assessors and Fire Service officers sometimes seem so fixated by guides and legislation that they are not actually looking at the risk of where a fire could potentially start. They often make recommendations that are so by the book but in reality would achieve little.
You need to look at the type of occupancy, usage, construction, number of floors and exits and who is actually in the building. Is the property occupied only in the day or also overnight? Where are your vulnerable persons in the building and are there persons with any history of arson or other worrying behaviour? Assessors and Officers often get so obsessed about the building and compartmentation that they forget to think about the people, the human behaviour that is often responsible for starting a fire and actually asking the simplest but potentially most important question....By whom and how could a fire actually start in this building? Often the answers are there staring at us in the face if only we can get back to basics rather than having our head lost in a guide that sometimes misses the entire point.
