TRAINING AND EDUCATION
Fire safety courses add to growing training portfolio
PPL Training, one of the UK’s leading providers of Safe Systems of Work and technical compliance training – including for healthcare estates management and healthcare engineering personnel – has recently expanded its already wide-ranging training offer with a number of new fire safety training courses. On a recent visit to the company’s impressive York facilities, HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, discovered what led it to begin offering courses covering key fire safety topics such as fire-stopping and fire door survey and inspection. He also met Senior Fire Safety Training consultant, Richard Parker-Wood, who will lead the courses.
During two one-day conferences held at its York training facilities on 9 and 10 November last year, PPL Training not only highlighted the extent and speed of its growth over the last decade, but also provided delegates from the commercial facilities management sector, on the first of the two days, and healthcare engineering and estate management and associated personnel on the second, with some valuable guidance on a range of key fire safety topics. The company’s MD, Gary Cooper MIHEEM, Tech IOSH, MSOE, MIPlantE, a qualified and multi-skilled mechanical engineer with 30 years’ experience in military and commercial environments, and a practising AE for Mechanical and Confined Spaces, explained – on welcoming attendees to the ‘Effective Management of fire safety in healthcare premises’ conference – that PPL has been in business for 17 years, and is regarded as one of the UK’s leading providers of specialist training in Safe Systems of Work and technical engineering compliance. Its courses cover topics ranging from high and low voltage electrical, medical gas pipeline systems, ventilation, and working at height / in confined spaces, to Legionella management and risk awareness, mechanical and pressure systems, and working on equipment containing fluorinated gases. The company is also a provider of City & Guilds-accredited airfield lighting training courses. To this extensive portfolio – with the heightened focus on fire safety in public premises, and especially high-rise ‘residential’ buildings, since 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire – PPL has now added a range of fire safety training courses. In healthcare these are aimed squarely at those whose work entails installing fire safety products, inspecting and auditing them, and maintaining them in ‘a suitable and sufficient condition’ to ensure that in the event of a blaze, they prevent fire spread, and protect the building’s occupants until help arrives.
32 Health Estate Journal January 2023
PPL Training’s Senior Fire Safety Training consultant, Richard Parker-Wood, who recently joined the company from Humberside Fire & Rescue Service.
A combined approach PPL’s training model combines classroom- based tuition from experts, with hands- on practical training in a series of well- equipped rooms on the ground floor of each of the discipline-specific training buildings. Gary Cooper explained that its trainers possess considerable knowledge and expertise; some of its water safety trainers, for instance, have worked in the field for over 30 years. The combination of classroom tuition and practical hands- on training is designed to ensure that a delegate on, for example, the Fire and Smoke Damper Survey and Inspection course, not only goes away with good theoretical knowledge on how different types of mechanical and motorised fire and smoke dampers operate, how to maintain them, and any potential problem areas, but also having spent time handling a variety of such devices within the ground floor fire safety training area This, Gary Cooper explained, is especially valuable for those in hospitals tasked with inspecting and maintaining them, or with arranging their inspection and maintenance by
PPL Training MD, Gary Cooper, said: “The Grenfell Tower fire, and Dame Judith Hackitt’s report, have shone an even brighter spotlight on fire safety.”
external contractors. In some cases, those undertaking fire / smoke damper training might have never encountered such devices, and would gain some invaluable practical experience with them during their training.
Recent recruit from the fire service At the ‘Effective Management of Fire Safety’ conference on 10 November, which was complemented by an exhibition, one of the speakers was Richard Parker-Wood, who recently joined PPL Training to lead the company’s new fire safety training after an 11-year spell with Humberside Fire & Rescue Service. There he gained considerable experience inspecting a range of premises to determine their compliance, or otherwise, with fire safety legislation. Appointed as PPL Training’s Senior Fire Safety Training consultant in November 2021, he was charged with establishing a suite of fire safety courses and, at least initially, delivering them himself. In coming months he hopes to recruit additional staff to help him deliver the training, which is predominantly
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