OK, there's thousands of pages on the interweb all about fire risk assessments to protect life safety. (Fire Safety Order and all that) But is there any benchmark systems simply to assess building/property/asset protection? It is very likely that (as with fire alarm systems), more onerous control measures would be required, but is there an accepted methodology (such as BS) as there is for life safety FRAs? I assume insurance companies, those with heritage buildings, high value stock and IT companies would have a system as part of their business continuity systems. Can anyone point me in the right direction? (Yes I know this isn't strictly H&S, but any provision would of course add to the overall safety of the building)

flux to materials/furniture/fittings

Take a look at RiscAuthority - https://www.riscauthority.co.uk This is an insurer funded body, formerly known as InFiReS. Site contains a lot of research and best practice guidance on property / asset protection from fire and theft. A lot of the info is free once you have registered (also free). The FPA is another useful source of info - Fire Protection Association. For details of fire resisting materials (4 hours is the property protection ideal, not 30 mins), take a look at the LPC RedBook Live. LPC is the Loss Prevention Council.

Or me - I do the job stuff just described for an insurer and have done so for around 24 yrs now. From his terminology I suspect Stuff has done the job as well.

Did you used to colour your plans? Ever work for Royal or SunAlliance / RSA?

Stuff, I see no dilution of skills and do not see a problem with the use of cfd or computers in relation to establishing a book of quantum wrt to fire risk. I actually find your comment disingenuous. There are now more qualified and supported by cpd fire engineers than so called trained fire surveyors

Bleve, I'm certain stuff was refering to the dilution of expertise within the insurance industry. A lot of firms have laid off their surveyors or given them early retirement and now farm out the work to outside firms. Insurance surveying is a discipline in its own right but the customer is the underwriter who simply wants to know what it will cost in £ note terms and is the client doing enough to prevent it.

Thanks for the info everyone. I am obliged for your advice and views.

May be this thread should be renamed "How to teach an elderly relative how to suck eggs". I don't think Messy needs pointers on how to carry out a FRA. He was looking for information concerning specific property protection standards.

I don’t think that a fire specific BIA would be of particular benefit. Business interruption may well take place due to a number of factors. Your client should be able to identify their high asset premises, processes, product, supplies of raw materials etc. If they have not carried out this exercise then this needs to be completed prior to any further action. The next steps should be: Prioritize each site in order of the Client ranking (Premises and process level). It may be the case that there is a single high asset process on an extensive site and obviously the entire site would not need to be assessed. Carry out an assessment of fire risk versus the existing protection measures provided so as to identify those that are deficient, optimum and excessive/over engineered. Some over engineered measures involve ongoing and unnecessary expenditure while providing little value. The assessment should be based on: 1. Frequency of ignition based on the nature of the premises and surface area. 2. Extent of fire spread and damage 3. Financial/production/continuity loss based on predicted area of damage. Point (2) will be influenced by compartmentation/fire resistance, suppression systems, methods of fire detection/time to detection, response time to fire (on site response and fire service). The above are not as onerous as they seem, it makes life easier if you utilize a spreadsheet program like excel.

Thanks once again to all. During my research, I came across BS6266 which gives guidance on protecting electronic installations (data centres to you & me) from fire. http://shop.bsigroup.com.../?pid=000000000030012700 OK, not exactly what I was after, and not exactly cheap, but it does provide a rationale for establishing a system based on asset protection which I intend to convert into a procedure for this company