FIRE SAFETY
Ensuring effective fire safety strategies for healthcare
Fire safety, and ensuring the skills, competence, and capability of those in hospitals responsible for minimising fire risk and wider fire safety policy, as well as external contractors, has long been a high priority for healthcare estates teams. The issue has assumed ever greater prominence, however, following June 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people died. At October’s ‘hybrid’ Healthcare Estates 2021 conference, Andrew Foolkes, Principal Fire engineer at Tenos, gave a topical presentation on ‘Fire Safety Management Competency’, with a particular focus on healthcare buildings. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Chartered Engineer, Andrew Foolkes, Principal Fire engineer at Tenos, a value- engineered fire safety specialist with offices in London, Bristol, and Manchester, has a BSc (Hons) in Building Surveying from Staffordshire University, an MSc in Fire & Explosion Engineering from the University of Leeds, and is a Member of the Institution of Fire Engineers. His previous roles have included Fire engineer, Senior Project manager, and Building Control surveyor. He began his Healthcare Estates 2021 conference address by explaining that he would be discussing fire safety management ‘with a particular focus on competency’; ‘What it is’, ‘What’s the need for it?’, and ‘What’s the relevance of it?’, and ‘What happens if you’re not competent?’ He explained that he had ‘set off thinking about the subject’ shortly after reading the recommendations of the Independent Review of the Building Regulations and Fire Safety by Dame Judith Hackitt, and the subsequent work by the Competence Steering Group’s Raising the Bar report, published in August 2019. He said: “These have really re-focused the need to demonstrate the competency of those working in the built environment, not just in construction, but also in post-construction, and of those directly involved in the fire safety management of an operational healthcare building.”
Setting the scene Andrew Foolkes said he would particularly be focusing on ‘Roles and responsibilities – what needs to be done, and by whom?’; on ‘What is competency, and how can it be proven?’; on ‘The role of the regulators’, and finally on ‘What does the future hold?’. His initial focus, however, would be on ‘Fire safety management, and what is it?’ He said: “When fire engineers are involved in the design of healthcare buildings – which I am regularly – it usually means placing reliance on the building’s Management team to achieve a specific fire safety
44 Health Estate Journal February 2022
The Independent Review of the Building Regulations and Fire Safety was commissioned by the government following the Grenfell Tower fire in London to make recommendations on the future regulatory system.
objective. So, let’s take as an example of the reliance on staff intervention to implement the evacuation strategy – the movement of people to fire-separated compartments to a safe space within the building, i.e. progressive horizontal evacuation. It’s a real-life example of what fire safety management means on the ground. However,” he added, “let’s take a step back before we get into what a fire safety management framework, system, or plan, actually is. We need to think about it at a more strategic level. What are the organisation, say an NHS Trust’s, fire safety objectives? Do we not need to define these before we can start looking at implementing a fire safety framework or fire safety management plan?, and What are we trying to achieve as an organisation?”
A fire safety policy An organisation’s fire safety policy,
Andrew Foolkes explained, merely set out its strategic objectives in relation to fire safety. He said: “It’s a high-level statement, that needs to be endorsed by the Board, that clearly sets out the organisation’s fire safety objectives. What, however, does that look like? A good place to start is to have a range of actions and steps to minimise the incidence of fire. “However,” Andrew Foolkes continued, “it shouldn’t just be limited to that; we have to consider that a fire will probably occur at some point in a healthcare building’s life, and if it does the aim should be to do as much as we can to minimise its impact – principally, clearly, on the occupants – patients, staff, and visitors. We will also want to minimise the impact on patient care delivery and continuity of service, and property protection, especially given that there is some very expensive equipment within healthcare facilities. There are also to consider business-critical systems
Courtesy of the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
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