WEBINARS COVID-19 – sector impact Digital Week 2020 – COVID-19 and the fire sector
IN LIEU of FIREX 2020, which was postponed and later pushed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event organisers scheduled a series of free to view webinars that featured a number of fire industry representatives. The two sessions covered COVID-19 and its impact on the sector, as well as regulatory developments for tall buildings after the Grenfell Tower fire (the latter will follow in a separate report). The first session saw talks from different industry
figureheads on how their associations or organisations were dealing with COVID-19, including Dennis Davis of the Fire Sector Federation (FSF); Ian Moore of the Fire Industry Association (FIA); Niall Rowan of the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP); and Jonathan O’Neill, managing director of the Fire Protection Association (FPA).
FSF
Mr Davis began by noting that it was ‘great we can meet’ in the virtual sense, before pointing out that ‘there’s an awful lot going on at the moment’ in the sector, specifically a ‘great deal going forward’ in terms of legislative change and competency. Despite the pandemic, this ‘great deal of activity is ongoing’, and he said: ‘It is important to note that none of this has gone away – for those of us in the sector a great deal of effort is going on with government’. He continued that in the midst of this ‘arose
coronavirus’, with one of the key factors influencing FSF members being the economy, which has ‘literally fallen of a cliff’. It was ‘extremely important to note’ that there ‘won’t be a bounceback’, with public messaging integral to the process of the ‘staged recovery’ the government had planned, specifically shifting to a message of ‘stay alert’. On that, Mr Davis added that this could be linked
to a ‘lot of workplace activities’ and that it was an area that the FSF has ‘been trying to alert people to and help organisations’, offering practical hints and tips ‘going forward’. With workplace health and safety,
20 JULY/AUGUST 2020
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businesses should ‘engage meaningfully’ with staff and trade unions, as confidence ‘that going into work and being at work will be safe and healthy is critical’. An easy to use, ‘open and frank’ feedback process
for staff to raise concerns was required, while you should ensure that appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) is available, with companies urged to also ‘avoid depleting supplies with purchases’. Social distancing means redesigning workplaces to ‘distance, isolate and contain risk’, requiring practical answers that ‘go into how we control processes and manage people’. Technological answers were becoming available
and were ‘very good’, as was the ability for people to continue working from home, but Mr Davis warned that it was the social interaction for those in a workplace that presented the ‘very moment when you relax your guard’. Workforces can be ‘relatively well assured’ that positive changes are happening, and redesignation and review of fire safety arrangements need to play a big part of this. Mr Davis warned that ‘one of the big issues’ with this element was that one way systems for social distancing ‘may have compromised evacuation or escape routes’, with a ‘practical need’ to review such arrangements being very important. As a sector, the fire industry ‘has been putting the message out that businesses should take time to review their fire safety arrangements to make sure they’ve not been compromised’ in such a way. Regarding the management side, he advised that in an uncertain situation ‘you look at what you can control’, because this will ‘at least give you a sense of optimism that you can change or alter’ things, but managers ‘still need to be realistic’, especially in light of timescales that are ‘quite threatening’. Many are wrestling with key issues about working together and how this will impact on senior managers, who are ‘suffering trying to manage through an incredibly difficult time’.
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