FIRE SAFETY
– in giving them the confidence in the ‘competency’ of the person they have appointed.”
Awareness of skills and experience He continued: “While one might not expect a Trust CEO or Board member to necessarily have that awareness, perhaps the Executive Director should be aware of the skills and experience that their Fire Safety Manager should have. Again – going back to managing healthcare fire safety policy in HTM 05-01 – there are some very clear definitions of ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ qualifications, skills, and experience, that you would expect from a ‘competent’ Fire Safety Manager.” Andrew Foolkes said he believed ‘installing’ competent persons to have oversight of fire safety management systems in healthcare facilities was key. He added: “This is why I think the AE (Fire) is afforded this prominence in the HTM. AEs have – in the eyes of their peers – reached a particular level of professional qualification, and are expected to act in a professional and ethical manner. That is fundamental to ensuring that the fire safety structure stands up in the way it should.” The speaker’s next focus was ‘What is meant by third-party accreditation?’ He said: “Let’s take fire risk assessors in the first instance. There is a variety of schemes that show that fire risk assessors may become accredited. There are different types – depending on whether the registrations or accreditation are associated with the person or the company.” He continued: “So, if we take the IFC or the BAFE schemes, they are UKAS-accredited company schemes, whereas a Warringtonfire test and certification competency scheme (known
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Seek assistance and use the third-party accreditation schemes, the professional body registration schemes, and the trade contractor schemes, to ensure you are appointing people with the qualities, training, and experience, needed to demonstrate competence
as the Fire Risk Assessors Certification Scheme) assesses both the company and the individual. There are also professional registration schemes – such as those from Institute of Fire Prevention Officers, the Institute of Fire Safety Managers, and the Institution of Fire Engineers.”
Relevant healthcare sector expertise He added: “I would emphasise that – above all else – the assessor has to have experience relevant to healthcare premises. Healthcare is peculiar in the evacuation strategies adopted, and a good understanding on the dependency of the patients is fundamental to be able to provide the right fire safety advice. Competence-wise, say, a fire- stopping contractor could be third-party accredited, giving the Trust Fire Safety Manager assurance that they have a good understanding of fire-stopping installation practice, or, alternatively, their work might be third-party reviewed on completion. A third-party fire alarm contractor may also be accredited, for instance with the NICEIC.” Behind all this, Andrew Foolkes stressed, was the intention to give the layperson appointing these life safety- critical contractors ‘confidence that they know what they are doing’.
The regulators Turning to the ‘regulators’, Andrew Foolkes
said these included Building Control, the local fire authority, the Building Safety Regulator, and the strategic planning authority. He said: “With Building Control, at the construction stage, the importance of fire safety management at a very practical level is about making sure the design decisions made at that design stage are aligned to the Trust or other healthcare provider’s operational fire safety management capabilities. I’ve worked on projects where you go to a scheme that has been completed for a number of years, review the fire strategy, and see a reliance on an unsustainable management regime – due to a design decision having been kicked down the road a little bit, and it becomes the Trust’s responsibility to deliver – a really poor approach.” The speaker explained that a way of doing this ‘in a managed and structured way’ – particularly with a large and complex healthcare scheme – was to use as a structured technique called ‘Qualitative Design Review’ (QDR), referred to in HTM 05-02.
Importance of a ‘QDR’ Andrew Foolkes’s view was that, unless a healthcare scheme was ‘very small’, a QDR was ‘very important’. “It’s very important, in particular,” he said, “to understand the capabilities of the Trust, and to ensure that the design we’re developing isn’t placing
February 2022 Health Estate Journal 47
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