Apr
19
If you run a business from a building in the U.K. you must have a Fire Risk Assessment and from time to time a Fire Inspector will carry out a Fire Safety Audit. Having had two audits carried out myself, it looks as though they’ll be carried out every two years.
If you would like a free copy of our Fire Risk Assessment procedure that was given the ok by our Fire Inspector, which will enable you to create your own Fire Risk Assessment just click on the link.
You should have within your Fire Risk Assessment a section with the heading ‘Significant Findings’.
The Fire Risk Assessment law is relatively new, being past in 2005 and introduce in 2006. It’s becoming obvious that the ‘Significant Findings” section of a Fire Risk Assessment will in time become the most important part of the assessment and will be highly scrutinized by your Fire Inspector.
Changes to Your Fire Risk Assessment
Just to be clear, it must be said that each component of a Fire Risk Assessment is as important as the next; however once each component is in position, alarm maintenance, staff signage, staff training programs, fire extinguisher maintenance ect, the changes will be minimal.
Not so with the Significant Findings section of a Fire Risk Assessment. This is the component that your Fire Inspector will be most interested in when he comes to carry out a Fire Safety Audit because it will be the section that changes the most.
What are Significant Findings in Your Fire Risk Assessment
To give you an example here’s one of the Significant Findings we entered in the Significant Findings section of our Fire Risk Assessment.
In our Guest House we have 4 paneled, pitch pine, doors which we striped then brought up to 30 minute fire resistance by installing intumisent seals with smoke brushes around the door edges and painted the room side of the door with intumisent varnish.
Although the doors where within fire regulations standers, when our Fire Inspector came to do a Fire Safety Audit he said they where fine but suggested we may want to think about the most important fire door in the house and installing a purpose made, new, fire door.
Our most important fire door, as it is in most businesses that have a working kitchen, is the kitchen door it’s self; especially in our case because the kitchen door is off one of our main means of escape in case of a fire. Also within our kitchen is the entrance to a utility room so with both areas having a number of sauces of ignition:
- 2 Washers (Laundry)
- Dryer
- Toaster
- Large Gas Grill
- Gas cooker
- Microwave
- Dishwasher
- 2 Fridges
Fire Risk Assessment, Entering Significant Findings
The number of sauces of ignition together with a precedence of years of statistics that tell you most fires start in the kitchen; with one of the main causes in commercial kitchens being some what inaccessible (a build up of grease in the extraction system over the cooker, which should be industrially cleaned on a regular bases depending on the amount of traffic) the decision was made to change the door as the Fire Inspector suggested.
How it was Entered
Date: Date of change
- Replaced kitchen door with new oak (our preference) 30 minute fire resistant door.
- Including Intumisent seals with brushes.
- Refitted door closer.
- Fitted new automatic wireless operated door stop which reacts to fire alarm sounding.
- Fitted new fire door signs to both sides of door.
“fitted new fire door to kitchen”.
The more precise you are the better it will be when it comes to your Fire Safety Audit.
