Exiting a room you should eb able to see a sign pointing to the nearest fire exit and then that route should be signposted all the way to the final exit door. In my (humble) opinion you cannot have too many fire routes and providing you can find an exit it doesnt matter whether it is a primary one or not. I work in a reasonably complex building and from where I sit I can see 3 fire exit signs all pointing to different exits.

The easiest way around the matter is that all people who come to work in the building or who are transferred in the building should have a brief fire induction (seperate from any H&S induction) which shows the fire routes near where they work and takes them through any unfamiliar aspects of the escape route (security on fire doors etc). This should be done by or delegated by their line manager and the person should sign to show that they have been shown the routes.

Get people away from any fire and give them clearly signed options if their preferred route is unusable.

I hope this is of some use

Good morning Rich

This is a perennial question that genuinely has no easy answer!

There is considerable danger in proliferation of signs that may need to be successfully interpreted under conditions of stress [like responding to a fire alarm, being a visitor, contractor or new employee etc] and the intention should always be to provide routes that allow the user to walk away from the fire and products of combustion.

I do not disagree with Jonpsych and his "induction" approach; but that begs the question of providing an adequate number of suitably protected routes [including alternatives where necessary] that are suitably signed and will take the user to the designated "place of safety" by the shortest, safest, route.

If alternate routes are identified as necessay, they should be appropriately signed as well. To minimise confusion, the Primary route should preferably go via the route least likely to be exposed to, or affected by, fire. The Alternate route should also be protected from being affected by the fire or products of combustion and in complex buildings be clearly differentiated from the Primary route by coding on the signs - there are no helpful suggestions in the Safety Signs & Signals Regs for this and JJs suggestion of BS499 is a good one - and only be provided to address the possibility of the Primary route actually becoming sufficiently affected by the fire so as to become unusable!

No route should take a user out of the affected building and then back into it; although taking the user into another structure is acceptable.

I'm sure that you'll get an avalanche of other helpful responses so I'll leave it there. If you need any more just PM me.

Frank Hallett

Hi Carl

I entirely agree - but my point is that have to be clear and unambiguously signed routes to be inducted on!!

Frank Hallett

Yes there does, and I hope I am totally unambiguous in my support of your previous post :-)