Mouth - Open - Hook - Line - and Sinker, comes to mind. Bait taken....

Its an interesting point that ITER makes in his original post. Try these figures:

in 2007 36 people died from fire in buildings other than dwellings (note that these may not have all been workplaces)

falls from height kill about 70 people a year in the UK

in 2006/7 66 people died as a result of incidents involving workplace transport

Bear in mind that fire is a risk in all workplaces, whereas the majority of people do not work either at height or around workplace vehicles, and this puts fire death risk into context.

I'm not taking sides in this post on the fire debate, but consider this: I recently asked our senior managers to spend £8 per car per month to fit electronic stability control and curtain airbags to al our future lease cars. They have asked for more data. Now I know that our next fatality is almost certain to come from a RTI. On the other hand, if we need anything for fire safety, we can have it.

It is all very interesting, and Bleve, I think ITER is probably right, fire is dramatically overstated as a risk in most workplaces, as borne out by the death rates, and fear of fire distorts spending priorities in organisations,

John

Spending priorities are skewed by other considerations. Fire may be a low probability event, and we may have made it so that loss of life is highly unlikely (although this can always be a possibility if people go against their training and re-enter the building or ignore the fire alarm).

However, it is likely to lead to huge losses to the business. Small businesses will often go out of business in the aftermath as their cash flow takes a hit. Higher risk premises may face the prospect that the Fire Service cannot tackle the fire, so they face total loss.

http://www.frmjournal.co...RM+May+10+News+Fines.htm

Some of the consequences of not carrying out your responsibilities re fire.

Nobody died but a high price to pay.

Are we measuring risk by the amount of deaths. Death from fires at work may be low but injuries are higher.

Sadly today I have responded to an urgent call by a local primary school to carry out a fire risk assessment because the fire brigade condemned the previous assessment as not suitable and sufficient. Needless to say it is another risk assessment that has been carried out by someone who knows nothing about fire. Worse still they failed to provide an adequate emergency plan taking into account the building works going on in the building. It is only 450 primary school children and it is true that deaths from fires in school are pretty low but who wants to responsible for the first major loss of life because of an inadequate fire risk assessment.

I wish there was a name and shame for poor risk assessors. The one I saw today was absolutely lamentable. The template used was a typical tick box similar to some that are issued free of charge.

shaunmckeever
'The template used was a typical tick box similar to some that are issued free of charge.'

And who more often that not, provides such tick-box templates....ermmm!! Of course your friendly local Fire & Rescue Service

Quite agree if the FRA was that bad, why isn't the relevant fire service seeking to prosecute the individual who carried out the FRA?

My experience of fire risk - mostly in high risk areas, working around aircraft, BFIs, COMAH sites, nuclear, offshore etc - so certainly aware of the risks of fire, ignition sources etc etc DSEAR as well

Nice to see my argument gets some support - re the risk of fire that most people face at work.

As JWK comments, for most companies - control of smoking (now required), arson risks, hot work, control of HFLs/flammable gases, electrical practices and cooking - and a large percentage of fire risks are managed. Fire escapes clear and signed, escape plan (inc staff training) etc



Never expected shaunmckeever or BLEVE to agree with me, after FRA is jobs for the Boys

Unfortunately, the fire risk assessor is protected and it is the poor rp who is liable for sanction.

Fail to see how it's jobs for the boys get my work on the back of 4 degrees, 23 years worth of experience, corporate and chartered membership of 3 professional bodies not to mention cpd and continuous learning.

By implication it could be argued that if local fire and rescue services make such generic templates available - they consider the use of them to be 'suitable and sufficient'. If they don't want people to use them, then the fire and resucue services shouldn't provide template documents.

Of course like all regulatory bodies they will hide behind the usual get out clauses, if people use them.

Who says I don't keep up with CPD - you are assuming something that you have no evidence to support.

As I have said before - I work in a highly critical safety industry sector at the moment, yet very few people have attended IOSH courses or fire risk assessment courses, but internal training and verification standards are very high. Our fire assessments/ checks/calculations go way beyond normal building/factory FRAs standards.

Stop a fire happening in the first place and to some extent who cares about the layout of buildings, travel distances, signage, fire drills etc - just a pity the risk of fire starting can't be reduced by 100%.

Nevertheless, general fire risks for most people in this country while at work remain of a pretty low magnitude of risk.

Quite rightly the fire service should concentrate on domestic fire prevention strategies/campaigns. I would suspect domestic fires kill more people than at work - sorry don't have the figures at hand. Somebody quoted 36 people while at work, for recent years, how many killed at home?

It would be far better to concentrate resources on occupational ill health caused by chemical / dust exposures, road deaths/driving at work/vehicle related, work at height etc

I've been working 25yrs plus - how many people do I know who have been killed or injured by fire - 0 (nil, zilch, none, nought).

Killed/injured in road accidents - 3 dead, 4 injured. Early retirement through occupational ill health (possible early death/poor quality of life) 7-8. Fabrication/engineering 1 killed.

Bleve - quoting how many degrees etc you have, doesn't impress me - we all have degrees.

ITER says "Bleve - quoting how many degrees etc you have, doesn't impress me - we all have degrees".

No we don't ! Is it a pre requirement of the fire risk assessor ? Short answer is no.

Heather - I agree, almost totally, however I believe that anyone who is going to carry out a fire risk assessment should study the requirements and make up their own information gathering template, not just a tick list. We need to ensure the assessment is as thorough and comprehensive as possible in order that we can come to the right conclusion. Tick lists just scratch the surface, inside is where we need to go.

Not having looked at templates from FRS very much recently I thought I'd conduct a short survey.

I put "fire risk assessment template" into Google and looked at the first 5 that come up from FRS. Here's what I found:

1. Very comprehensive document with a "worked example" running into 31 pages and saying specifically in the guidance for its completion "The recording of information within this document should be in a narrative format and not simply a Yes or No answer to a question."

2. Same template (seems to be a standard FRS version and is most definitley NOT tick-box) with detailed guidance. Statement from FRS says "XXXXXX Fire and Rescue Service provide this guide to assist businesses to improve fire safety in their premises, but stress the need for the person completing it, to be competent to do so."

3. Comprehensive template following the "5 steps" format in the Government Guidance. Some Yes/No boxes to tick but in every case this leads onto further questions requiring a narrative answer. Different templates for single and mutliple occupation. Statement on site "If you identify that either the likelihood of a fire or the risk to people is not LOW you may want to consider seeking professional assistance."

4. Detailed checkllist requiring more than just a Yes/no answer. Good guidance and various different templates to download for different types of premises. Includes sample PEEPs.

5. Comprehensive checklist requiring much more than simple yes/no answers and providing a great deal of good advice and guidance on completion. Separate guidance available to download.

In short I can't find any inadequate tick box templates in this quick survey. In every case I thought the templates were well-written, easy to use and provided some excellent guidance. Also they all stress the point abut getting extra advice where a building is more complex.

So ITER - can you show us an example of a tick-box template provided by a FRS that you don't consider suitable for ANY fire risk assessment.

Claire - multiple quotes. If you click on the "quote" button you obviously get the whole post to quote. To split up the bits you want to quote it is necessary to put some quote commands around each piece. To do this you use what's called bbcode. This involves putting the word "quote" in square brackets to start the quoted piece and then the word "quote" preceded by a backslash in square brackets to end the quote piece. You then see the mutliple quotes as I have done in previous posts. Click "preview" before you post such a thing so you can check you have it right.

It would then look something like this (but replace the curly brackets with square ones)

{QUOTE} First bit of text to quote {/QUOTE} Your comments
{QUOTE} Second bit of text to quote {/QUOTE} your comments.

If you want the post to show who you are quoting then the first piece of bbcode needs to be in the format {QUOTE=postername}

Hope that makes sense!

Claire - multiple quotes. If you click on the "quote" button you obviously get the whole post to quote. To split up the bits you want to quote it is necessary to put some quote commands around each piece. To do this you use what's called bbcode. This involves putting the word "quote" in square brackets to start the quoted piece and then the word "quote" preceded by a backslash in square brackets to end the quote piece. You then see the mutliple quotes as I have done in previous posts. Click "preview" before you post such a thing so you can check you have it right.

It would then look something like this (but replace the curly brackets with square ones)

{QUOTE} First bit of text to quote {/QUOTE} Your comments
{QUOTE} Second bit of text to quote {/QUOTE} your comments.

If you want the post to show who you are quoting then the first piece of bbcode needs to be in the format {QUOTE=postername}

OMG and some people think fire risk assessment is complicated.

I'll stick to what I know thanks :-)

Clairel,
I agree with you with the caveat that people must recognise their limitations. The main problem being the perception of a simple building. There have been many cases of a simple building being involved in fire that have resulted in fatalities. A layperson carrying out a FRA using the guidance notes can easily have the perception that they are looking at a simple building and be oblivious to matters concerning the speed of smoke generation, travel and time to obscuration of signage/exts etc (take something as simple as artificial plants/greenery used in many premises (rapid combustion and smoke production) in many cases the layperson may feel that they have completed a S&S ra. Typically these FRA are audited by the F&R Service and in my opinion this is not an indepth review of the premises or acceptability of the FRA.

Clairel - I'm disapointed you no longer post so often, yours was a voice of reason and pragmatism against too many over zealous h&s people.

Anyway back to fire.

According to government statistics - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=12 there are about 28.83m working people. Children at school not included - so this will alter the figures slighty if included.

If the earlier quoted figure of 36 deaths per year from fire in the workplace is true, then your average chance of death is about 1.25x10^-6 or 0.000125% per year.

If we assume an average working day of 7.5hrs = 216225000 man/hrs per year

Equals about 1 death per 6006250 man/hrs worked.

Equally if a working life is 45yrs at 2000hrs per year = 90000hrs working life (say 100000 to allow for overtime)

Therefore on average it takes about 60 working lives to MAYBE get killed in a fire at work.

As an average you might get killed about every (45x60) = 2700yrs.

Sure no doubt the fire safety geeks (so could I) will/can quote particular bad examples of poor fire safety/risk assessments etc and there is always statistical variation/once in a career/lifetime events e.g. King Cross, Bradford Football ground etc.

But really is the risk death by fire in the workplace that great - 0.000125% per year - don't think so.

So for many cases, well designed templates will be fine for many premises and businesses.

Of course the RRO is only interested in (sect 8 & 9) in the safety of employees and relevant persons who are not employees. Property protection is outside the remit of RRO/H&S - to the letter of the law.

Once everybody is safe - a fire is then just an insurance claim/business continuity issue. Its obviously in the interests of insurance companies to drive down the risk of fire etc.

The trouble with 'experts' from any discipline they often have a distorted view of their own area of interest, and don't look at the bigger picture e.g. driving, occupational ill health etc etc as previously mentioned.

Ok, bored with this discussion now.

Come back Clairel!!

Afternoon ITER,

The figure of 36 deaths in non-domestic premises was taken from the Department of Communities and Local Government's report on fire fatalities in 2007, so it is true for a given value of true.

Shaun, do you have numbers to support the idea that non-fatal injuries in fire are higher than they are for say, work at heights? I would guess they probably aren't, but it would be just a guess, I have some idea of the overall serious injury level in the UK's workplaces, but I don't know what proportion of them realte to which cause, and I haven't got time right now to do the searching.

Good debate, but there continues to be a split along the lines of 'get your precautions right and you're probably OK (my view)', and the 'you need to know how a fire behaves'; it's the former view which is in the spirit of risk assessment and the heirarchy of control. Of course, if fire does occur, you need to have considered how it will affect your premises, but in most industries prevention is relatively easy,

John

Bleve - I assume these stats come from http://www.communities.g...tatistics/pdf/154796.pdf

If so then I think you've misinterpreted the tables somewhat. It's March 2008 - April 2009 by the way (I asusme this was a typo!)

There were a total of 104,000 Primary Fires ("Primary fires include all fires in non derelict buildings, outdoor structures and non-abandoned vehicles or any fires involving casualties or rescues or fires attended by
five or more appliances.")

Of these 104,000 fires, 61,000 were in buildings. Of that 61,000 some 39,000 were dwellings and 22,000 were other (mainly commerical and schools)

36,000 were vehicles

7,300 were "other"

Of the total 104,000 primary fires, 42,000 were deliberate. 24,000 of these were vehicles, leaving 18,000 to be in buildings. (not 68,000)

Since 32,000 of the 39,000 dwelling fires were accidental, 7,000 dwelling fires must have been deliberate.

This leaves 11,000 deliberate fires in buildings that were not dwellings.

I agree that arson is an important factor in fire risk assessment but let's not over-estimate the percentage of buildings set on fire deliberately.

Arson is something we always consider in FRA. It's not a great problem in our Care Centres/Hospices, though we do consider it, but it is a considerable risk to our charity shops.

In high risk areas we do things like fit metal fire resistant letter boxes (in case accelerant is squirted through the door), but in every shop it does come down, to an extent, to segregating sources of ignition and combustible materials; i.e. we move bins as far away from the building as is reasonable, and we ensure good external housekeeping. We do the same in the Care premises of course, but it is less of a risk there.

How many cases of 'arson' are deliberately placed fire by building owners?

John

My original calculation was simply an estimation of the number of man hours worked by the population of the country and also of individuals in a working life.

The fire death per man hours worked was for the population annual manhours and was simply divided by 36 to get 6006250man/hrs per death per year

Individual working life hours is based on a 45yr working life at 2000hrs per year. (most will work around 220days per yr at about 7.5hrs per day).

The actual number of working hours in a career I have used is probably excessive - I would suggest many people work closer to 1700-1800 hrs per year. So the actual time period of the average risk of death by fire at work will increase from 2700 yrs to probably more than 3000yrs.

Nice to see my rough and ready calculation was also pretty close to the figure quoted by Bleve - 1.25x10^-6 compared to 1.5x10-6

I think the argument put forward by fire geeks about the need to know fire behaviour/smoke behaviour, reaction of materials etc in a fire is a secondary argument. Although I do agree it is of interest to know.

It would seem far more important to stop a fire starting in the first place/understand ignition sources etc - if you could guarantee no fire ever starting, then you could build your factory out of wood.

The general quoting of fire data that includes domestic incidents or other non work related fires is not relevant (other than how it might affect fire fighters attending the fire) - this discussion is about fire in the workplace. RRO is only concerend with protecting life/injury - if applied strictly.

Put reasonable arson controls in place, control fire break out from other sources, keep fire escapes clear/unlocked/otherwise suitable and and I would suggest fire death risk will remain of a low order risk.

Well designed simple template forms will be ok for most work places - many SMEs simply want to show reasonable compliance and juggle fire risks with the many other business risks to be considered. Fire risks aren't too much to loose sleep over.

I saw a post on FRA yesterday, the issues of people completing these paper exercises, I believe it was a council who had a major problem.
So, let me say this.. I can get my secretary on a fire risk assessment course (duration 2 days).. She or he will return with a certificate confirming their competence in Risk Assessing the company premise.

Let me say this, untill the law says anything different than "Competent" and change the wording as laid down in the RRO, secretaries ( god bless them) will still attend these courses .

I wont send my secretary, Im ex fire service and understand the experience needed, what is needed is a complete overhaul of the training programmes available off the net.

Sorry John I do not have the figures to hand but I did not mean that injuries from fire are higher than other causes of injury, what I meant was the the injuries from fire are increasing. This is primarily due to the types of material that we have in the workplace, far more plastics and chemicals generating far more toxic gases than ever before. These toxic gases would actually lead to far more fatalities and fire would spread far more quickly than it does now if it wasn't for the generally high standard of fire safety we have today.

.

Another one of your classic comments ITER! So the material which makes up fireworks is of only secondary importance when assessing a shop selling fireworks eh?.....and that would be a simple FRA. Come on! A statement like that from someone who claims to have assessed far more hazardous sites.

This is the kind of statement made by someone who realises they are losing the argument.