subject: Understanding Fire Safety Regulations and Fire Risk Assessment [print this page] When you are an employer or a business owner, your responsibilities do not start and end with providing your customers good or exceptional service and your staff benefits as required by the law. Beyond that you should also subject yourself to laws and regulations that the state has put out to make sure that your building/ workplace remains safe to catastrophes and devastating accidents.
One of the noted regulations that you should really pay attention to is the Fire Safety Order of 2005. If you are not familiar with it, the order simply states that any business or building owner should make sure that everybody that goes in and out of his/ her building (whether they be tenants, employees and customers) be protected with from fire. And this is basically done by conducting a fire risk assessment.
Fire risk assessment is a simple process where the person in charge (who can be the owner or the designated fire marshall) goes around the building to check for the following things:
1. Fire hazards - things that easily catch fire when ignited. These may vary depending on what establishment you may have. If you have a bakery for example, one of your greatest hazards would be the oven you use for baking or the stove you use for cooking things. On the other hand, if you have a regular office then the possible hazards would be stocked pieces of paper in your workplace and perhaps even the computer that you sometimes overwork.
2. Sources of ignition and oxygen - these two go hand in hand because without one of them, it is virtually impossible for fire to actually start or thrive.
3. People who are at mostly at risk in case a blaze actually happens. These are the employees working farthest from fire exits, people with disabilities and employees who are more prone to experiencing blazes.
After identifying all those, the person doing the fire risk assessment should now make necessary measures to use the data he gathered as a basis to make changes in his building or workplace. And by changes that means striving to make the place safer from blazes. Most of the time that entails him to head housekeeping, purchasing appropriate firefighting tools, selecting the right safety and fire exit signs.
And as if that is not enough, sometimes the one doing the fire risk assessment also is the responsible person to go around, talk to the other staffs or tenants and educate them about general fire safety. More than teaching them firefighting tips, the person in charge has to make sure that everyone knows their part in fire prevention, how to respond when an alarm sounds and where to head to so that they can keep themselves safe.
That basically covers whatever it is that you need to do to fulfill HM Government's Fire Safety Regulations. Yes, it seems to be a lot but if you have managed to pull them all off you can have the peace of mind that your employees and equipment remain somewhat safe from fires. So in a way, all your efforts will eventually be worth it.
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