The HSE define competence as:

"Competence can be described as the combination of skills, knowledge, training and experience (SKET) that a person has and their ability to apply them to perform a task safely. Other factors, such as attitude and physical ability, can also affect someone’s competence."

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety Order) 2005 defines competence in regulation 18 Safety Assistance as:

"A person is to be regarded as competent for the purposes of this article where he has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable him properly to assist in undertaking the preventive and protective measures."

This will include expereince and training in risk assessment, related to similar sized buildings etc. and qualifications such as NEBOSH Fire etc. The skills to know where to find the information that will help you compile a suitable and suffient risk assessment.

Most importantly and this should never be overlooked, competence is ulitmately about the individual knowing their limitations and advising those requesting assistance and advice of those limitations.

I hope that helps.

Been having a think, and I can make some general comments on what a good FR assessor might need knowledge and experience of:

• Effective fire prevention
• Causes and nature of fire including fire load and fire spread
• Human factors in fire causation and response
• Structural features of construction and their role in aiding and impeding the spread of fire
• The behaviour of electrical and gas supplies
• Relevant guidance such as Health Technical Memoranda for NHS or care premises, SIBSE or FPA guides, Home Office guides and so on

The extent of the knowledge and competency needed will vary with the risk. A simple shop can usually be risk assessed by somebody who has been on a FRA course using the government guidance: a large hospital can't.

So from that list you can see that it's not necessarily enough to have been on a course, or to have been a fire-fighter. I have found that the best fire safety risk assessments, especially in high-risk environments, are team efforts; so you might have a safety bod, a building surveyor/ maintenance person, a line manager and so on, each contributing their own particular competencies,

John

Edited by user 04 March 2019 17:03:42(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There is no requirement for the person conducting the fire risk assessment to be competent unfer the RRO. They must however, produce a suitable and sufficent FRA 

This is not a loophole. It allows Responsible Persons of SMEs' with a low risk to complete their own FRA and that was always part of the Govt's strategy for reducing the red tape burden on industry. 

There are roles in the RRO that need to be competent, Woolf13 posted one earlier. But the person completing the FRA does not need to be competent under any agreed definition.

It is unbelieveable but this is the case............. for now!

The HSE have been not very forthcoming with regards to in epth discussion of the question of competence and its management - they did however produce a document on competence and its management in safety critical tasks.  This provides some very good guidance and adds such things as personal attitudes and behaviours in such matters.  It is the management of competence on a continuing basis that really is a key topic to be addressed that is often omitted from many systems.

Originally Posted by: Dave5705

Originally Posted by: jwk

Andy,

That's a good point you raise and its quite a widespread omission. An RA of a building considered as walss, roof, fixtures fittings and furniture is one thing, but an RA of a workplace considered as a space where stuff happens, well, as you note, that's quite a different matter.

We've just had exactly the same issue, though not dealing with the same level of risk as in a lab. We just got two adjacent buildings re-assessed following change of use, and in both assessments the level of occupancy was noted as zero... Maybe the assessor visited at midnight????

John

John, I'm just curious. Did you not feel you wanted to perform the FRA for those buildings yourself then? You seem eminently competent to me, after all, you spotted the poor quality of the 'competent person's' report!

You do not have to be competent to spot someone else’s incompetence. If you needed to be competent to do that, then half of the stuff we do would fall by the wayside. This is the aim essentially of CDM. As client you don’t need be to competent to commission the work (if you were you could save yourself a lot of agro and do it yourself) you just need to be able to identify other competent people.

I believe that I am competent to say that!

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

Originally Posted by: Dave5705

Originally Posted by: jwk

Andy,

That's a good point you raise and its quite a widespread omission. An RA of a building considered as walss, roof, fixtures fittings and furniture is one thing, but an RA of a workplace considered as a space where stuff happens, well, as you note, that's quite a different matter.

We've just had exactly the same issue, though not dealing with the same level of risk as in a lab. We just got two adjacent buildings re-assessed following change of use, and in both assessments the level of occupancy was noted as zero... Maybe the assessor visited at midnight????

John

John, I'm just curious. Did you not feel you wanted to perform the FRA for those buildings yourself then? You seem eminently competent to me, after all, you spotted the poor quality of the 'competent person's' report!

You do not have to be competent to spot someone else’s incompetence. If you needed to be competent to do that, then half of the stuff we do would fall by the wayside. This is the aim essentially of CDM. As client you don’t need be to competent to commission the work (if you were you could save yourself a lot of agro and do it yourself) you just need to be able to identify other competent people.

I believe that I am competent to say that!

But the other side is, someone went to a lot of time and trouble to appoint a competent person to do the fire RA who turned out to be not-competent, so the selection process failed. Maybe if John had been asked to make the selection and had the opportunity to be more involved then a bad choice could have been avoided. As we have all said so many times, competence is not just about doing a course. "Education is not the learning of facts, it's rather the training of the mind to think".

We have all met H&S bods with poor attitude, weak analytical skills, bad communication skills, dismal interpersonal skills. They all had certs or diplomas.

In fact the UK gov guidance says to business owners: "You can do the fire risk assessment yourself with the help of standard fire safety risk assessment guides"

but

"If you don’t have the expertise or time to do the fire risk assessment yourself you need to appoint a ‘competent person’ to help, for example a professional risk assessor"

so effectively YOU decide if YOU are competent.

But in the spirit of the law, it is better people are told they must think about the risks and make some form, any form, of effort rather than to not think about it at all. As H&S professionals we are taught the most important thing is to recognise our own understanding and act within it, get more expert help if it is needed. That is what the gov is telling the public too. I think, given a little guidance, most business owners of SME's are able to recognise if they don't have enough knowledge to complete it properly.

Edited by user 07 March 2019 11:02:17(UTC)  | Reason: it didn't make sense!