Do You Need a Fire Audit?

There are two ways of answering the question "do I need a fire audit?"

The first approach concentrates very heavily on the prevailing requirements of the law and majors also on the risks to an organisation that is found to be in breach of the appropriate regulations.

The second approach is rather more related to the practicalities involved and it is these that are touched on here:

· It would be a brave or perhaps even foolhardy company that stated it had zero risk from fire - a fire audit may help to identify and quantify those risks;

· Knowing that risks exist is fine but that knowledge in itself does not reduce them - only appropriate and targeted action is likely to achieve that;

· It is therefore typically necessary to identify specific actions required to reduce or remove the risks - and being clear as to what those actions are is something that may require specialist expertise;

· Not all the identified risks will necessarily have the same potential for destruction - by definition some are likely to be of a higher priority than others and once again, allocating those priorities requires fire risk assessment experience and industry knowledge;

· In a small company based in a single location, asking the appropriate questions internally may be relatively manageable, however, for larger and more dispersed companies, an external fire audit may be able to offer significant logistical advantages;

· Similarly, an external fire assessments may generate a more objective commentary on the reality of the position than may be achievable if trying to conduct the same thing through your own resources;

· Although the role of the company's safety managers and supervisors is critically important, their actions may, at times, be inhibited by a combination of internal political factors - these will not be present when dealing with external fire assessors;

· Fire risks often arise due to a progressive diminution of awareness on the part of staff coupled with an associated failure of management systems; an external audit may not only be well placed to identify such problems but it may also be easier to accept recommendations for change when they originate from an unbiased external source.

Sometimes the identification of a fire risk and the required action to address it is a matter of commonsense. Perhaps more frequently, it is a matter of fire risk assessment expertise, experience and knowledge of legislation.

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