Posted By Joanne E Price I'm in the process of conducting a Fire Risk Assessment at our manufacturing premises which is spread over a number of buildings. I'm looking for a good way of presenting the findings, as it's proving not straight forward using our standard risk assessment documentation. Any thoughts on documentation / software / tools etc.?

Posted By Ashley Wood As a H&S practitioner you know that a lot of what is required to carry out a risk assessment is 'common sense.' This applies with fire risk assessments as well. Unfortunately about 25% of the fire risk assessment will require knowledge of fire legislation, Fire and how it acts, how it spreads, how people react and how the buildings will react to fire. I am not a H&S practitioner but a fire safety practitioner and would not know where to start when it comes to the complicated parts of H&S assessments! There are guides available from the government that would help you or alternatively you could talk to a fire adviser/consultant. One of the hardest things to do when carrying out a fire risk assessment (and i still have to pull myself up on this) is to remember that this is a life safety assessment. Often there is a cross over from life safety to property protection to business interruption & you will need to control the urges to drift! If you still wish to do this yourself my advise would be to detail your findings in such a way that another person reading the assessment at a later date can see your thought process and understand the logic behind what you have done. Too often these assessments are reduced to 'tick sheets'. If I can assist in anyway please e-mail me.