Fire Safety – The Hidden Dangers

Quietly rightly media attention is currently heavily focused on cladding and the combustible materials present in some of today’s modern cladding systems. Fire stopping arrangements, however, are also extremely important and often are areas overlooked, or not fully investigated or captured, when a fire risk assessment is carried out.

Landlords need to consider how safe their buildings are and what potential hidden risks they are and how these can be eliminated through a carefully planned and targeted investigation by an expert in the field of fire safety.

A fire risk assessment should systematically identify all fire-related hazards within the premises and evaluate how those hazards may adversely affect the building and its occupants. It should identify the level of risk that those hazards may present and also identify suitable control measures for any significant findings.

The overall aim of a fire risk assessment is to reduce the likelihood of fire, limit the spread of fire, and ensure that people know about a fire and can escape.

A robust fire risk assessment should cover five keys areas, including Identify fire hazards, identify people at risk, evaluate, remove or reduce, and protect from risk, record, plan, inform, instruct and train and review.

Identify fire hazards

• Source of ignition;
• Sources of fuel; and
• Sources of oxygen

Identify people at risk

• People in and around the premises; and
• People who are especially at risk.

Evaluate, remove or reduce, and protect from risk

• Evaluate the risk of a fire starting,
• Evaluate the risk to people from a fire,
• Remove or reduce fire hazards,
• Remove or reduce the risk to people from fire; and
• Protect people by introducing fire precautions.

Record, plan, inform, instruct and train

• Record any major findings and action
• Discuss and work with other responsible people
• Prepare an emergency plan
• Inform and instruct relevant people
• Provide training

Review

• Review your fire risk assessment regularly
• Make changes where necessary.

Hidden Fire Safety Dangers

Landlords also need to recognise the safety of occupants can often be jeopardised by hidden dangers. For example, in one such incident, our Building Surveyors were carrying out a thermal inspection of a residential block and discovered that the fire stopping between flats had been incorrectly installed. These concerns led to further to a further investigation into the fire stopping integrity between flats and our surveyors discovered there was no fire stopping between dwellings where soil vent pipes passed from another dwelling to another. In addition, other service penetrations, such as between kitchens and bathrooms, had also not been fire stopped adequately.

Such hidden dangers are life-threatening and have the potential to spread a fire and hindered the ability of people to escape should a fire take hold. Fire safety within the home is an extremely important issue, especially in mixed-use premises and where unrelated occupiers, who live independently. Podium Surveying LLP would be happy to assist any clients that have concerns regarding fire safety or other areas of construction defects.