When you are responsible for a building – and the health and safety of the people who use it – you have many obligations to fulfil. Here, we want to concentrate on fire safety, specifically the difference between a fire risk assessment and a fire compartmentation inspection.
Fire risk assessment
The purpose of a fire risk assessment (FRA) is to keep people and buildings safe. It’s not just a box-ticking exercise – findings have to be acted upon.
An FRA is a methodical procedure intended to:
- identify existing fire hazards
- identify the people at risk
- evaluate, remove or reduce those risks
The kinds of things you need to assess include the building’s emergency routes and exits (e.g., are they kept clear and clearly signposted), fire-detection and warning systems (e.g., are they well-maintained and working), what fire-fighting equipment there is (e.g., have fire extinguishers been replaced within recommended timeframes), and the needs of vulnerable people, such as children or those with disabilities, so that they can be safely evacuated in an emergency situation. Depending on the nature of the premises, you may also need to take into account the removal or safe storage of dangerous substances.
As part of the process the findings are recorded, an emergency plan is prepared, and training is provided so that people understand the plan and know what to do if fire breaks out. FRAs are updated regularly – at least annually.
Who carries out the FRA?
FRAs in non-domestic premises must be undertaken by a ‘competent person’. That could be a specialist organisation, or the building’s ‘responsible person’. A major issue here is that the ‘responsible person’ – who could be, for example, the owner, landlord, or occupier of the building – might not have any formal fire training. That might mean that even though FRAs are being carried out regularly, they aren’t sufficiently thorough. Yes, the responsible person will be in possession of standard fire safety risk assessment guidelines, but that might not be enough.
Look at it this way; if you want to service your car, you might get the relevant Haynes workshop manual. That gives you all the information you need, but without the right tools and the knowledge of how to use them, it won’t do you a lot of good.
Meeting the legal requirements of carrying out an annual FRA is important, but the true value – and people’s lives may depend on this – depends on two things: the quality of the assessment, and what you do with the findings. If you find issues that need addressing you might fix them and consider the job done – but people could still be at risk. You need to be confident you understand not just what’s wrong, but what it might mean, as those issues could have fuller implications.
Fire Compartmentation inspection
When it comes to stopping a fire from spreading throughout a building, the most effective method is compartmentation. With this, the building is effectively divided into a series of enclosed spaces beyond which fire, smoke and toxic gases can’t spread.
Within a property there are places where the walls of a fire compartment need to be breached so that services such as heating and air conditioning can be supplied to the whole building. Where this happens, a fire and/or smoke damper is fitted into the ductwork, so that in an emergency each compartment can be sealed.
Fire and smoke dampers should be fitted, inspected and maintained by fully trained experts. Fire damper testing should be carried out annually, as a minimum. BESA technical bulletin VH001 is currently being updated to make this even clearer for facilities professionals and building owners.
Hazards and assumptions
Dampers are subject to a build-up of dirt and dust over time, made worse if, for example, building work has been carried out in the property.
A common – but false – assumption is that if the environment is clean, for example, in a hospital or laboratory setting, then fire and smoke damper(s) will be protected from dirt and testing less frequently is acceptable.
I can understand why an assessor conducting a fire risk assessment might consider the risk of contamination and/or disruption to operations to outweigh the need for testing, but I must stress, all dampers require annual testing as a minimum. It’s a simple case of duty of care for the safety of building occupants.
In addition, there is also the issue of ductwork misuse. People use ductwork for all sorts of purposes other than that for which it is intended – running cables and pipes through ductwork is commonplace. The problem with this is if the cables and pipes pass through fire and smoke dampers, those dampers won’t fully close when they’re triggered.
There is also a danger that they might not have been fitted correctly in the first place, or can simply fail due to age and wear.
If a fire damper fails for any reason whatsoever, the fire compartmentation system is compromised and fire, smoke and toxic gases are free to spread throughout the building, rather than being contained within a limited area and so giving people vital time to escape.
Whatever the environment, inspection of fire and smoke dampers is a necessity to be confident that a fire protection system is fully operational and won’t fail when it is desperately needed.
Conclusion
While a fire risk assessment (FRA) is a legal requirement, the scope and thoroughness of an FRA often fails to include a full assessment of the efficacy of the compartmentation throughout a building.
Our team are undertaking damper testing across the UK and we rarely find a site without breaches to their compartmentation. Breaches identified around fire and smoke dampers are likely a fraction of the overall issues within the whole building.
It is therefore evident that most buildings are in desperate need of a complete fire compartmentation audit to identify any fire stopping issues.
For more information on fire and smoke damper testing and maintenance, or if any queries on fire stopping and compartmentation, contact our team of experts. We’ll be happy to help.
