Fire risk assessment procedures

It is the general consensus within the worldwide fire community that the only proper way to evaluate the fire safety of products is to conduct full-scale tests or complete fire-risk assessments. Most of these tests were extracted from procedures developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Because they are time tested, they are generally accepted methods to evaluate a given property. Where there were no universally accepted methods the UL developed its own. 

While familiarisation with the area to be visited is important, an essential part of the risk assessment procedure, that is often overlooked, is familiarisation with the mode of transport to be used. If this is a self-drive minibus, prior to the journey, a check should be carried out on basic safety features such as tyres, lights, windscreen washers/wipers, brakes, availability of first aid kit and fire extinguisher, fluid levels, doors (operate freely and close securely) and warning instruments. Driver effectiveness and fatigue is also influenced by poor driving position and conditions so, before setting off the driver should adjust the seat, the mirrors and check that they can reach all the essential controls. 

Fire risk assessment has been produced. Fire procedures are in place and all employees are trained to deal with fire emergencies. A carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is available at every work site. 

The fire risk assessment is not a one-off procedure. Construction sites are continually changing as work progresses. The site should be continually monitored to ensure that the existing fire safety arrangements and risk assessment remains realistic. The assessment should be reviewed frequently as fire significant changes take place. 

As part of the evacuation procedure of a premise fitted with an automatic fire alarm the role of an alarm verifier should be considered. The fire risk assessment will indicate at what stage an emergency evacuation may be initiated and, depending upon the risk, this will either occur prior to a verification of the alarm, at the same time as the alarm is being verified or as a result of the verification of the alarm. 

As a part of fire risk assessment for non-domestic buildings, the effectiveness of the procedure for evacuation will need to be assessed. There are a number of strategies that can be adopted to ensure the safe evacuation of buildings. The strategies depend upon the magnitude and nature of risk from fire. In general there are two distinct strategies ... 

The fire risk assessment will provide much of this information and it will also give an indication of the time available for the occupants of a building to reach a place of safety. In most cases, the full evacuation of a building should be achieved in the region of 2.5-3 minutes. This time will be extended where a phased/sequential procedure Is adopted. 

Definitions relating to fire risk assessment >- The process of fire risk assessment > Risk assessment recording and reviewing procedures... 

Carry out a fire risk assessment >- Deveiop and produce a policy >- Develop procedures (particularly with regard to evacuation)... 

Records should include reviews of the fire risk assessment [9(3)], fire safety policy, procedures or arrangements [11.(1)(c)], training records, drills, certificates for the Installation and maintenance of any fire safety systems or equipment. The inspector can demand to see the records. 

Fire Precautions drills, maintenance of exit routes, regular maintenance. Hazards risk assessments/responsibilities and procedures (see Chapter 3 for further details). 

The procedures put in place for a particular project will be based on the results of a risk assessment that should consider issues such as locality of military firing ranges, previous survey results, previous ordnance finds, local knowledge, etc. 

Exceptional violations rarely happen and usually occur when a safety rule is broken to perform a new task. A good example are the violations which can occur during the operations of emergency procedures such as fires or explosions. These violations should be addressed in risk assessments and during training sessions for emergencies (e.g. fire training). 

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) develops and issues fire codes that are used by fire marshals and the authority having jurisdiction to enforce required fire safety measures. NFPA issued the new NFPA 45-2015 Standardfor Fire Protection for Laboratories Using Chemicals which included Chapter 12 on Educational and Instructional Laboratory Operations. This new section established new requirements for teachers and instructors who perform demonstrations. Instructors performing demonstrations must perform a documented risk assessment, provide a safety briefing to students, provide adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), and use secured safety barriers between the student and the demonstration to prevent personal injury unless there is at least 10 feet between the demonstration and the students. Institutions are required to train instmctors in fire safety procedures, emergency plans, hazards in the laboratories, use of PPE, and how to conduct risk assessments. 

The prioritisation of any recommendations contained within the action plan will also need to reflect, not only the level of risk, but also the feasibility (practicality) of implementing the prescribed workplace precautions and risk control systems. Risk assessments that merely list long-term recommendations, such as review. .. policy are unlikely to address the immediate requirements for managing fire risks, waiting for a formal policy or procedure, for example a review and revision of contractor selection and management due to poor management of hot work operations, may well take some time to be produced, approved and implemented. 

In the previous section, we investigated main sources of uncertainty in the probabilistic fire load procedure. There are many parameters to be used for the risk assessment. Each parameter is uncertain and can be expressed by probability distributions. For instance, when leak size distributions are represented by uniform distribution with specific ranges. Representative values are randomly selected in accordance with their distributions. These sets of values compose the sets of representative scenarios and are also used as input for simulating time-dependent leak rate profile and radiation intensity of fire. 

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