When Was The Last Time Your Business Had A Fire Risk Assessment?

When was the last time your business had a fire risk assessment? If you have to ask it was probably not recently enough? If your business is like most others, it is probably growing and changing all of the time. In order to lower the risks to your business, you should assess the risk of fire to your business periodically. You should review your assessments annually to ensure that any changes are constantly being considered in your fire safety management plan.

Bespoke Fire Risk Assessments

You can find companies that specialize in this kind of risk assessment with online surveys, but we strongly suggest an on site assessment by a trained employee or an outside professional to ensure your unique needs are considered in how to reduce your business’s risk of fire. Your business is not the same as any other business so your assessments should not be the same either. With an in depth knowledge of which personnel carrying out what activities using what equipment in which areas of your premises will determine or confirm appropriate alarm coverage, placement of fire extinguishers and management of escape routes.

The sooner your employees are made aware of a fire, the better chance they will have to stop it before it damages your property or evacuating the building quickly enough to escape injuries or fatalities to your employees or customers. As an employer, this is your duty of care.

Fire Risk Assessment For Insurance Reasons

Your property insurance company might also offer to send out a professional assessor to help you reduce your risks. They do this because they would rather have clients who do business as safely as possible. This lowers the risk that they will have to pay damage claims. In fact, you might even find that they will offer to lower your insurance rates if you try to comply with their suggestions.

Changes Suggested By A Fire Safety Assessment

One reluctance towards carrying out regular assessments of fire hazards within your business property is the potential changes that may be suggested which will cost time and money. The assessment may show that you need to change the way you store flammable items, that you need to carry out more frequent electrical tests, that detectors put in a space that now has a different use need to be changed or that alarm call points need to be moved or added. To name but a few.

This is why it is an advantage to carry out assessments regularly so that the cost of changes can be spread over time instead of one nasty surprise every few years. A good assessment will be presented with these recommended changes prioritised so that you can then construct a management plan that your business can cope with and using this plan you can monitor your progress.

The Cost Of Not Doing A Fire Risk Assessment

If the fire risk assessment report does suggest getting new, better or more fire alarm devices for example, you will have to spend some money. Most alarm systems have fairly affordable devices. When you consider the lives and the property that fire alarms can protect, they really are a bargain!

A fire will certainly do damage that will cost you a lot more than a new installed Smoke Detector. Even if you have insurance – if your assessments are not up to date they may not pay.

Why not schedule a fire risk assessment with us at Fire & Electrical Safety as soon as possible with one of our safety inspectors, you will have the peace of mind of knowing you did everything you could to protect your people and property.