Posted By anon1234
Shaun,

Look at this way - who is the enforcing authority?

However, I do tend to agree that some people do place too much faith their local fire officer - to the extent that they are not willing to challenge them on what they say (Same problem exists with HSE/EHO).

Re: specialist fire consultants - like most types of consultant there are some good ones, some indifferent ones and unfortunately some bad ones. Also in my experience many of them are ex-fire officers and are still working to out of date standards and old legislation. I accept that is not the case for all such consultants - but if you are employing one the chances are that you may not know sufficient to challenge them either.

Its all a bit of a catch 22 in my opinion - but at the end of the day if someone does not have the confidence to undertake the activities themselves (e.g. due to lack of competence) then you have to make a judgement, as with all other similar situations, on what you consider to be competence and then employ / get advice from someone with that competence.

Posted By Crim
Shaun,

A difficult question for me to answer, as I think you are aware of my background?

Short answer is you should have faith in the fire officer but I do realise there are occasions when this faith somewhat dilutes.

As opposed to using the word "faith" I would like to know what happened to the word "trust".

We should all be able to trust in ourselves to be competent in what we do and to know our limitations. Once we have carried out our work i.e. fire risk assessment we should then be able to trust the fire officer to be consistent in his competence but as we know this varies from brigade to brigade, so those of us who work in more than one county have to create an understanding of what is the norm in the different areas, then again different fire officers from the same county can also have differing views. This can be very frustrating.

I read from your thread that you have had another bad experience, am I right? If so you just have to put it behind you and go for the next challenge armed with added experience.

Posted By Crim
Shaun, from personal experience I know that fire officers are not usually trained in fire engineering to the extent that you probably are and this may be the reason for some misunderstandings and frustration?

Keep up the good work

Posted By shaun mckeever
I would expect my competency to be checked out but if I was wearing a uniform, as I used to, my competency would never be questioned.

The fire service do not want high wage bills and are now filling the seats in their fire prevention departments with people who have never sat on a fire engine, who have never experienced the sharp end of the fire and so cannot bring that experience to their job. Many will argue that this is not essential and I would say they are right although I do think it is a loss.

I think you get what you pay for. If you pay low wages you get a low standard of service. The trouble is we are putting too much faith in some of the less experienced fire officers. This faith is often above the more experienced persons who can prove their competence.

Posted By D. Hilton
Crim
Following that line of reason is it then necessary for a person to have:

Observed the actual dispersion of a toxic gas cloud

Extinguished a pool fire

experience a bleve first hand

in order to carry out an assessment of risk in relation to these scenarios. I would suggest not.

I do not believe that it is essential to have been operational or to have sat within an appliance in order to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire safety risk assessment.

Regards

DH

Posted By TBC
In response to the original question and as an ex-firefighter. I have met many an 'Inspector' from the Fire Service who as you say has only been as close to a fire as the fireguard would allow in his front room. The last one had any dealings with missed quite a few obvious points on his inspection tour, which were supposed have been dealt with prior to the visit. He was in fact an ex ambulance driver who applied for and got the job as a 'Fire Service Inspecting Officer' I can't remember the exact title - he had obviously gone through some form of training, but I was not impressed. As was said earlier the inspector you may get all vary even within the same authority whether off the run or ex something else.

Posted By TBC
Steven - I think you've lost the gist of that we are talking about here. There is no questioning the competence of the Fire Fighters who go into these Inspector roles - what I am and possibly others are talking about is the people who take on the role of 'Fire Prevention Officers or Inspectors' from other occupations. These people don't have the in-depth knowledge Firefighters accrue whilst involved in real situations and the knowledge gained through years of training including: building construction, chemical hazards and fire behaviour just to mention a few. I have got two sons serving in the Fire Service as I did so I'm certainly not 'putting them down'.

Posted By GT
Hi Crim,

I didn't know it was compulsory to take sides however, if I must, I am on the side of experience and knowledge. The object of my posting was just some good advise. As I do believe (as other threads past and running discuss)that there is required a wide range of expertise for HSE in general.

I also feel that for fire related subjects in particular these should only be undertaken and conducted by those with suitable experience and knowledge of the subject; rate of surface spread, ventilation, fire loading, structure, character, number of occupants, escape routes etc..............

To me it is a specialist role.Not for those out there that think they can make a fast buck!

I think in time we will see in the courts the results of those that wish to dip their toe into this pool of money, as RA following fires will be scrutinised by the courts and then the compilier of the RA must show how they are competent. I dont think 5 days on a RA course will be deemed suffice.


Regards

GT

Posted By David Bannister
Shaun's original post said to me that he believes that there is more than one route to competence and wearing the uniform is not the entire answer.

I agree.

Serving and ex-fire fighters have the greatest knowledge of the results of failed fire precautions but do not necessarily hold all the knowledge, skill and experience to monopolise the ability to carry out fire risk assessments or even always to recognise suitability and sufficiency.

Fire engineers, architects, builders, joiners, insurance surveyors, safety professionals and even fire consultants all have a role to play in ensuring that we are safe from fire at work (and play) and all will have competencies that are different to fire fighters.

To claim that is it necessary to have one's fingers burned to be able to do a fire risk assessment is rather like saying that it is necessary to have been a bit affected by asbestos fibres to recognise the dangers of exposure or to have partly fallen from a scaffold to be able to appreciate the work at height implications.

Competence remains a tough concept to fully understand and ultimately judges would make the decision as to whether our efforts had been appropriate.

Posted By shaun mckeever
John

I cannot agree with what you say.

Despite imposing whatever precautions you like, except for perhaps filling a room with concrete, you are not going to prevent fire from happening. You must therefore make the assumption that a fire does occur. It is implicit that you consider this. What is going to propagate the fire? what are the paths of travel throughout the building for the fire and smoke? what will the growth rate of the fire be? how will people respond? how will the building perform under fire conditions? will it remain stable?
Following your theory you might as well do without escape routes and fire separation etc. Why would you need them if you can guarantee that a fire will not start?

The original thread of the question was really aimed at competency. Why is it that a serving fire officer is seen as being more competent than someone who does not wear a uniform? What competency checks are carried out on fire officers as opposed to non-uniformed specialists? Why do we so readily accept that fire officers are more competent than the specialist?

In answer to some of the comments made above about who is competent to carry out FRA’s, my view is that the science of fire engineering has principally been developed by people who have never been fire officers. It is they who have developed our understanding of fire and smoke behaviour, of how people respond to fires, of how crowds move in restricted spaces, of how elements of structure behave under fire conditions. They have passed their knowledge on so that Standards and Codes of Practice can be developed. Many of the Standards and Codes that have been developed have also been developed with serving fire officers who can bring their unique knowledge to the table but many haven’t. It is much the same as fire risk assessments. There are many out there who have never sat on the back of a fire engine but who can perform excellent assessments. Those who have sat on the back of a fire engine can bring their own unique experience to carrying out an assessment but it is not essential and certainly does not make them any better than anyone else in performing this task.

Posted By Crim
Hi Shaun,

We tend to use the term "sat on the back of a fire engine" quite a lot but not usually "sat in the front of a fire engine"?

Perhaps we could consider those of us who have been fire service officers who received excellent training at the fire service college, including the higher level fire command and fire prevention, and consider this level as more competent and able to carry out a top quality fire risk assessment.

Just a thought to "fuel this fire"? (Pun intended)!

Posted By shaun mckeever
John you are right. I don't agree with everything you say.

You are right too in that prevention is better than cure.

So in my eyes you are right twice!

But to quote UK Fire Statistics for 2005 - 'In 2005 there were 35,300 fires recorded in buildings other than dwellings, 6% less than in 2004. Of these, 60% were accidental. 27 people died in fires in buildings other than dwellings – equating to 1 death per 1,000 fires. There were 1,400 injuries – 40 per 1,000 fires'.

So as you can see most fires are accidental. It is therefore imperative that you assume that a fire does start.

However, to support your case (gosh you are getting a lot of support from me), the number of non-dwelling fires has fallen dramatically over the last few years which 'might' indicate that the FRA process is leading to a reduction in the number of fires. Nevertheless the cost of fires to the insurance industry is over a £billion.

Posted By shaun mckeever
John

this is really drifting off the original thread. The causes of accidental fires are available in the UK fire statistics but include things like faulty appliances.

I have never said that you must have an in depth technical knowledge but I have always said that you must know what you are talking about. It is no good ticking the box for fire doors because the door you are looking at has got a label on it saying 'fire door', or not understanding the pressurisation system in a building that you are assessing. You need to look at the overall fire strategy of the building before being able to make a proper fire risk assessment. This is why the building regs changed this year and the new section 16B inserted.

I have just designed the fire strategy for a building in Central London. It is a single staircase 8 storey building with a pressurisation system. I can bet my bottom dollar that whoever carries out the FRA of that building, unless they understand the fire strategy, will be saying it only has one staircase, what are we to do?

If you look at the RRO the risk assessment process requires the RP to assess the risks to identify the geneal fire precautions he needs to take. To identify the general fire precautions you must have some knowledge of how fire will behave, how people will respond, how the elements of construction respond to fire etc.

Posted By J Knight
And I agree strongly about not ticking the box unless you know what it is you are ticking; in fact, like you I don't actually like tick boxes, unless the workplace is very, very simple,

John