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Posted By Eliot Clarke
I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction.
We often have problems getting some of the employees to sign in and out of the office. As far as I can see, there is no specific regulation that forces an employer to have a fire register of people going in and out of a building. It only says that you must have procedures in place to ensure the building is empty should the need arise. Is this correct? Is scanning the building for people ok, provided this can be done quickly and safely?
Thanks
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Posted By Richard Mathews
In my experience fire registers are unreliable for very reason that you have found, people “forget” to sign in and out. Even with electronic access you tend to get people “piggy backing” and so you quickly lose track of who is actually in or out of the building.
We still use a roll call for evacuations but we always back this up with a sweep of the building by fire marshals, which is far more reliable. The thing to remember with a sweep is to train the fire marshals in safe search techniques (e.g. checking doors for signs of fire behind them before opening) and have enough marshals to able to safely sweep the building in an acceptable time, i.e. they shouldn’t be too far behind the last other person out. This will be down to you to assess based on the size and layout of your building.
Richard
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Posted By Darren J Fraser
Eliot - have you considered nominating one member of staff to conduct a register at the start of the day, this could be rotated among staff and would not take long at all.
Also have you explained the importance to employees why it is necessary for them to sign in and out. Do visitors sign in and out?
A sweep of a room/s if not conducted properly will not necessarily find the party/s, example, little used room , therefore missed and later found to contain a work collegue, or sweeper states they have searched and have not.
I would consider conducting a fire drill to highlight any problems, unannounced of course.
At the end of the day, you need to be able to inform the attending emergency services that all persons are accounted for, if you are unable to do this, the emergency services will have no option but to risk their lives conducting a search of the building, filled with smoke/fire/heat, that is unfamiliar and therefore take longer to complete.
Therefore IMHO, instigate a fire register, in addition to sweeps.
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Posted By shaun mckeever
Keeping a register may be OK in a small building but what about the likes of Canary Wharf, the Natwest Tower or The Gerkin - not really practical, and that is in buildings where you could possibly account for people but what about public buildings such as the Trocadero in London or shopping malls at the height of Christmas, theatres cinemas etc.
Without a doubt the best procedure to have is a sweep of the building carried out in a logical fashion by trained personnel who clearly understand what part of the building they are responsible for. Any areas not able to be swept are then notified to the fire brigade on their arrival. If you practise this regularly and have regular debriefs followed by a written report based on the feedback at the debrief you will gradually improve the system.
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