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Risk Assessment: Business Owners, Do You Know the 5 Steps?

Saturday, January 18, 2020 23:12

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Risk Assessment: Business Owners, Do You Know the 5 Steps?

UK regulations require business owners to conduct fire risk assessments on their premises to guarantee safety. Anyone who owns or operates a non-domestic property is held accountable. This includes property owners, employers, landlords, and property occupiers. Suffice to say that the government takes fire risks very seriously.

How does it work? Each non-domestic property must have a ‘responsible person’ so designated according to the definitions provided by law. Facilities managers, building managers, and managing agents typically act as responsible persons for fire risk assessment purposes.

Responsible persons must carry out a five-step process in order to comply with regulations. Each of the five steps is described in more detail below. If you are a designated responsible person looking for more information about your responsibilities, you might want to consult the Fire Risk Assessment guidance 2019.

Step #1: Identify Fire Hazards

The first step is to thoroughly look over the property with the goal of identifying any and all fire hazards. It is important to understand that fire is the result of a heat source coming in contact with fuel. Your primary goal of identifying fire hazards is to keep heat and fuel away from one another.

As you inspect the property, ask yourself if you have found anything that could act as a potential heat source. Think of things like heaters, open flames, electrical equipment, industrial equipment, and even lighting. Also, ask if you have found anything that could act as fuel. You might have observed petrol, paints and solvents, paper products, and the like.

Step #2: Identify People at Risk

Identifying fire risks naturally leads to identifying people who might be at risk. Technically, everyone inside a building is at risk in the event of a fire. But some people experience an enhanced risk due to where they work, the duties they perform, or a lack of familiarity with the site. The point here is to put yourself in the shoes of anyone else who might be in the building when a fire breaks out. Assess the risks each of those people are subjected to.

Step #3: Evaluate, Remove and Reduce Risk

The next step is to evaluate what you learned from the first two steps. Think about what your risk assessment has revealed. What are the real risks of a fire actually starting? How are people likely to be affected if a fire does start?

A logical extension of the evaluation process is to remove and reduce risk as much as possible. A good example is separating heat sources from fuel. Doing so is one of the most effective ways to reduce fire risks in the workplace. Where you can completely remove all risk, do so. Where you can only reduce it, do the best you can. The goal is to protect both the premises and the people in it through every reasonable means.

Step #4: Record, Plan, and Train

The fourth step is more administrative than the previous steps. There are actually three parts to this step, beginning with recording the information you have gleaned thus far. You need to make a permanent record of the fire hazards you identified, the risks to individual workers you uncovered, and the steps you took to evaluate, remove, and reduce risk.

Recording this information is not for posterity’s sake. Rather, it is to provide a framework for developing an emergency plan. This plan should entail how the company will work to prevent fires and, in the event a fire should break out, any action for protecting the health and safety of all those on-site.

The third part of this step is training. It is one thing to have an emergency plan in place; it is an entirely different matter to train key individuals to implement that plan should it become necessary. It goes without saying that key people should be trained to take charge in the event of a fire, understanding that there is a tendency to panic in emergency situations.

Step #5: Regularly Review Your Assessment

The previous four steps are the entirety of your fire risk assessment. Completing those steps does not complete your obligations as a responsible person though. You have one final obligation: to regularly review your assessment. Regular reviews are necessary to account for changes. Remember that over time, risks may change.

Do you own or operate a business in the UK? If so, are you familiar with fire risk assessments and their related regulations? You should be. You have an obligation to handle fire risk assessments yourself or by way of a designated person under your authority.

Ignoring fire risks is never a good idea. The fact is that accidents do happen. And as we have seen in the past, fire can lead to severe injuries and the tragic loss of life. The whole point of fire risk assessment guidance is to prevent such incidents as much is possible. We can never eliminate the risk of fire completely, but we can reduce it significantly. That is the point of the fire risk assessment.

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