Inadequate fire safety measures in offices can lead to devastating consequences, irrespective of their size or purpose. These consequences can include injuries, fatalities, business disruption, and significant financial losses.
Having a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment in place can help you avoid these consequences while remaining legally compliant.
If you own or manage an office, our article explores the various reasons offices need a fire risk assessment and how to go about getting one.
Alex MacArthur, director at North West Fire Solutions, shares his insights.
How often should an office fire risk assessment be carried out?
Under The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, all workplaces need a fire risk assessment, regardless of size or number of employees. This assessment must be suitable and sufficient for the premises and reviewed regularly.
If your office doesn’t have a fire risk assessment, the first step is to get one in place. You then need to make sure it remains relevant to the ongoing activity on the premises. Although there’s no prescribed time limit, it’s best practice to review on no more than an annual basis.
Why does an office need a fire risk assessment?
Typically, compliance is the main motivation behind offices needing a fire risk assessment. When office managing agents approach us, we find that this is because more people are becoming aware of the legislation.
Offices tend to be quite low-risk environments on the whole. We don’t come across many cases where people have had fires or major incidents.
There’s the odd instance whereby an office’s layout is changing. For example:
- Internal walls are being built.
- Certain areas within the office are being segregated.
- Areas are being opened up.
- The managing agents want to check escape routes.
Various other changes within an office may also drive the need for a new fire risk assessment. It could be that the business is growing and the number of employees has increased, or maybe they’ve changed or updated their services.
However, the most common reason people reach out to us for an office fire risk assessment is that more people know they need to get one.
What are the common fire hazards within an office environment?
Modern offices contain a lot more electrical equipment than the offices of 20 or 30 years ago.
People bring their own electrical devices into offices these days, which could be potentially unsafe.
There is also a significant amount of flammable material, such as paper, scattered around.
Although these are low-risk examples, generally speaking, they are still hazardous.
The tidiness levels within an office can be a fire hazard, as well. We’ve been to offices that aren’t the tidiest, and, as a result, their escape routes are blocked. And, of course, this is not something you want in any circumstance; you want to make sure that people can escape if they need to.
Potentially, all areas of an office are at risk of fire damage because fires can spread quite quickly due to the high amount of flammable material.
Which factors influence the contents of an office fire risk assessment?
Things like occupancy, size, layout, and usage impact both the complexity and contents of an office’s fire risk assessment, as I mentioned before.
When your fire risk assessor is assessing the premises, it’s important they understand how the site is being used. They need to get a handle on the potential risks and how those risks are managed or minimised.
These risks might not be particularly complex, but having that understanding will allow the assessor to correctly determine the overall risk of the premises.
How should offices address the fire safety needs of vulnerable individuals?
Most Responsible Persons tend to fail in regard to fire safety due to their policies and procedures.
They must make sure that if any individuals on their site need specific support in evacuating the premises in the event of a fire, these needs are considered in advance.
One way to do this is by putting together a personal evacuation plan.
As part of this plan, certain individuals could be relocated nearer to exits or lower floors within the building.
You may also want to consider upgrading your alarm system. If you’ve got people who are hearing impaired, maybe they need a visual aid so they can see a flashing light when the alarm goes off.
Ultimately, it depends on the specific needs of that person.
Whatever measures you take to support vulnerable individuals within your office, you need to incorporate their work colleagues when implementing them. By doing so, you’re making sure they’re adequately trained to understand that they have colleagues with specific needs.
The personal evacuation plans also need to be regularly reviewed, and other people need to be made aware of this.
With this ongoing coordination and cooperation, the Responsible Persons are ensuring that fire safety is being considered correctly.
What are the potential consequences of offices not having an up-to-date fire risk assessment?
In order to properly manage fire safety at your premises, you have to understand the on-site risks and identify any deficiencies or failings that need to be addressed.
It’s important that you have an updated fire risk assessment in place so you can do this and make sure you’re constantly working to minimise or remove any fire risks from the site. This will ultimately prevent the worst from happening.
And by ‘worst’, I don’t just mean the threat to life safety—you also have to consider the threat to your business’s continuity.
If you don’t have a building to work in, then you could lose your business.
For these reasons alone, having an up-to-date fire risk assessment is so important.
What is the most important reason for fire safety training in the workplace?
The legislation states that all employees need to have basic fire safety awareness training. This covers different types of fire, what to do in the event of a fire, and other basic fire considerations.
However, you may also want to consider more advanced forms of fire safety training to protect people’s safety and business continuity, such as fire marshal training. This is a lot more comprehensive and covers fire risk assessments, legislation, and fire extinguisher training in more depth.
If you’re interested in these forms of training, we can provide them for you.
Our on-site training will be bespoke to your staff, business, and premises.
Don’t leave your office unprepared for fire
We’ve been going for 15 years at the time of publication and have risk-assessed many different types of business premises across the UK—and even other offices in our own building.
Fire risk assessments are our bread and butter, and our qualified consultants have experience in all walks of life when it comes to fire safety.
There’s not much we’ve not faced, which means you’ll get a good, thorough fire risk assessment from us.
You’ll also receive comprehensive fire safety training should you require it. We’ll ask you questions you may not have heard before, and you’ll get far more out of this training than you will from watching a few online videos.
Whichever of our services you require, feel free to reach out to us at 0151 665 0124 or email info@nwfiresolutions.co.uk.