Five Steps to fire risk assessments
Fire starts when heat (source of ignition) comes into contact with fuel (anything that burns), and oxygen (air).
You need to keep sources of ignition and fuel apart.
How could a fire start?
Think about heaters, lighting, naked flames, electrical equipment, hot processes such as welding or grinding, cigarettes, matches and anything else that gets very hot or causes sparks.
What could burn?
Packaging, rubbish and furniture could all burn, just like the more obvious fuels such as petrol, paint, varnish and white spirit. Also think about wood, paper, plastic, rubber and foam. Do the walls or ceilings have hardboard, chipboard, or polystyrene? Check outside, too.
As part of your fire risk assessment, you need to identify those at risk if there is a fire. To do this you need to identify where you have people working, either at permanent locations (such as workstations) or at occasional locations around the premises, and to consider who else may be at risk, such as customers, visiting contractors, etc., and where these people are likely to be found.
You must consider all the people who use the premises, but you should pay particular attention to people who may be especially at risk such as:
In evaluating the risk to people with disabilities you may need to discuss their individual needs with them. In larger premises used extensively for the public you may need to seek professional advice.
In general, most fires start in one of three ways:
Look critically at your premises and try to identify any accidents waiting to happen and any acts or omissions which might allow a fire to start. You should also look for any situation that may present an opportunity for an arsonist
Evaluate the risk to people
Having identified the people likely to be at risk, should a fire start anywhere in the premises and having identified the chances of a fire occurring, it is unlikely that you will have concluded that there is no chance of a fire starting anywhere in your premises, so you now need to evaluate the actual risk to those people should a fire start and spread from the various locations that you have identified.
While determining the possible incidents, you should also consider the likelihood of any particular incident; but be aware that some very unlikely incidents can put many people at risk.
To evaluate the risk to people in your premises, you will need to understand the way fire can spread. Fire is spread by three methods:
Convection
Fire spread by convection is the most dangerous and causes the largest number of injuries and deaths. When fires start in enclosed spaces such as buildings, the smoke rising from the fire gets trapped by the ceiling and then spreads in all directions to form an ever-deepening layer over the entire room space. The smoke will pass through any holes or gaps in the walls, ceiling and floor into other parts of the building. The heat from the fire gets trapped in the building and the temperature rises.
Conduction
Some materials, such as metal shutters and ducting, can absorb heat and transmit it to the next room, where it can set fire to combustible items that are in contact with the heated material.
Radiation
Radiation heats the air in the same way as an electric bar heater heats a room. Any material close to a fire will absorb the heat until the item starts to smoulder and then burn. Smoke produced by a fire also contains toxic gases which are harmful to people. A fire in a building with modern fittings and materials generates smoke that is thick and black, obscures vision, causes great difficulty in breathing and can block the escape routes.
It is essential that the means of escape and other fire precautions are adequate to ensure that everyone can make their escape to a place of total safety before the fire and its effects can trap them in the building. In evaluating this risk to people you will need to consider situations such as:
Record
Keep a record of any fire hazards and what you have done to reduce or remove them. If your premises are small, a record is a good idea.
If you have five or more staff or have a licence then you must keep a record of what you have found and what you have done.
Plan
You must have a clear plan of how to prevent fire and how you will keep people safe in case of fire. If you share a building with others, you need to coordinate your plan with them.
Train
You need to make sure your staff know what to do in case of fire, and if necessary, are trained for their roles.
Have you made a record of what you have found, and action you have taken?
Have you planned what everyone will do if there is a fire?
Have you discussed the plan with all staff?
Training should include
Have you?
Informed and trained people (practised a fire drill and recorded how it went)?
Nominated staff to put in places your fire prevention measures, and trained them?
Made sure everyone can fulfil their role?
Informed temporary staff?
Consulted others who share a building with you, and included them in your plan?
You should constantly monitor what you are doing to implement the fire risk assessment to assess how effectively the risk is being controlled.
If you have any reason to suspect that your fire risk assessment is no longer valid or there has been a significant change in your premises that has affected your fire precautions, you will need to review your assessment and if necessary revise it.
Reasons for review could include:
You should consider the potential risk of any significant change before it is introduced. It is usually more effective to minimise a risk by, for example, ensuring adequate, appropriate storage space for an item before introducing it to your premises.
Do not amend your assessment for every trivial change, but if a change introduces new hazards you should consider them and, if significant, do whatever you need to do to keep the risks under control. In any case you should keep your assessment under review to make sure that the precautions are still working effectively. You may want to re-examine the fire prevention and protection measures at the same time as your health and safety assessment.
If a fire or 'near miss' occurs, this could indicate that your existing assessment may be inadequate and you should carry out a re-assessment. It is good practice to identify the cause of any incident and then review and, if necessary, revise your fire risk assessment in the light of this.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Labels:
Fire Risk Assessment
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Introduction to UK Fire Safety Legislation
The current
legislation is The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, (FSO) or TheFire (Scotland) Act 2005 came into effect in October 2006 and replaced over 70
pieces of fire safety law. This Order reforms the law relating to fire safety
in non-domestic premises. It replaces fire certification under the Fire
Precautions Act 1971 with a general duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably
practicable, the safety of employees, a general duty, in relation to
non-employees to take such fire precautions as may reasonably be required in
the circumstances to ensure that premises are safe and a duty to carry out a
risk assessment.
The FSO
imposes a number of specific duties in relation to the fire precautions to be
taken. The FSO provides for the enforcement of the FSO, appeals, offences and
connected matters. It amends or repeals other primary legislation concerning
fire safety to take account of the new system and provides for minor and other
consequential amendments, repeals and revocations
The FSO
should have come into force on the 1st April 2006 but was delayed until the 1st
October 2006. It was in response to a call to rationalise and simplify fire
legislation in the UK, It has been achieved by reforming and amending the
previous United Kingdom`s fire safety legislation using the Regulatory Reform
Act 2001. The order is designed to provide a minimum fire safety standard in non-domestic
premises such as places where people work, including, shared areas, workplace
facilities, and the means of access to that workplace.
All premises
or parts of premises used for non-domestic purposes, which is used in
connection with the carrying of a trade, business or other undertaking, for
profit or not, with a few exceptions, will be subject to the FSO. It designates
a person usually, the employer or the owner and he is called the Responsible
Persons. The Responsible Person, is required to carry out certain fire safety
duties which include ensuring the general fire precautions are satisfactory and
conducting a fire risk assessment. The Responsible Persons can have competent
persons assisting them to perform their legal duties. If more than five persons
are employed it has to be a written assessment.
Previous general fire safety legislation
This FSO
replaces previous fire safety legislation and any fire certificate issued under
the Fire Precautions Act 1972 will cease to have any effect. If a fire
certificate has been issued in respect of your premises or the premises were
built to recent building regulations, as long as you have made no material
alterations and all the physical fire precautions have been properly
maintained, then it is unlikely you will need to make any significant
improvements to your existing physical fire protection arrangements to comply with
the FSO.
However, you
must still carry out a fire risk assessment and keep it up to date to ensure
that all the fire precautions in your premises remain current and adequate. If
you have previously carried out a fire risk assessment under the Fire Precautions
(Workplace) Regulations 1997/1999 and this assessment has been regularly
reviewed then all you will need to do now is revise that assessment taking
account of the wider scope of the FSO.
Your premises
may also be subject to the provisions of a licence or registration in that case
the fire authority may wish to review your risk assessment as part of the
licensing approval process. Fire safety conditions within your licence should
not be set by a licensing authority where the FSO applies.
Guidance on new fire legislation
The new,
risk-assessment based regime requires those persons responsible for premises
used for carrying of a trade, business or other undertaking, for profit or not
(including the self-employed and also members of the public) to take action to
prevent fires, and protect them against death and injury should a fire occur.
This was the
same duty currently imposed on employers by the Fire Precautions (Workplace)
Regulations 1997, but under the new FSO the duty will be extended beyond workplaces
to include the majority of premises to which people have access.
Labels:
Fire Legislation,
Fire safety Order 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)