Commercial Fire Doors – the risks and hazards … and the fines!

This week we’re taking a look at the risks and hazards associated with fires, and in particular the necessity to carry out a proper risk assessment. Before we come onto that, let’s just clear up exactly what we mean by “risk” and also “hazard”, as it’s very important to put them in context.

The Health and Safety Authority has the following definitions:

A hazard is a potential source of harm or adverse health effect on a person or persons

A risk is the likelihood that a person may be harmed or suffer adverse health effects if exposed to a hazar

They use a simple example to illustrate the difference: if there was a spill of water in a room, then that water would present a slipping hazard to persons passing through it. If access to that area was prevented by a physical barrier then the hazard would remain though the risk would be minimised.

So far so good. So how can we be objective about judging the level of risk? By carrying out what is called a risk assessment. Again, from the HSA:

Risk Assessment is where the severity of the hazard and its potential outcomes are considered in conjunction with other factors including the level of exposure and the numbers of persons exposed and the risk of that hazard being realised. There are a number of different formulae used to calculate the overall risk from basic calculations using high, medium and low categories to complicated algorithms to calculate risks at nuclear power stations and other high risk work locations.

It is important to ensure that the residual risk following implementation of control measures is ‘as low as is reasonably possible’ (ALARP). For a risk to be ALARP it must be possible to demonstrate that the cost involved in reducing the risk further would be grossly disproportionate to the benefit gained.

Let’s now take a look at the broad structure of a risk assessment:

Preface
Executive Summary
Building Overview
Fire Protection
Fire Hazards
People at Risk
Building Occupancy
Means of Escape
Overall Risk Summary
Fire Risk Assessment, Significant Findings
Fire Risk Assessment, Non-Compliant Findings
Fire Risk Assessment, Compliant Findings
Fire Risk Assessment, Questions Not Reviewed
Appendix 1 – Methodology
Appendix 2 – How Risk is Calculated
Photo Addendum
Supporting Documents

If we look at the ‘Means of Escape’ section, it might be in the following format:

Summary assessment of overall risk (High, Medium, Low)
Travel Distances
Any other information about the means of escape which is relevant to the fire risk assessment

Quite apart from the obvious necessity to look after people, there are huge fines possible if organisations are non-compliant. For example, Shell have been fined £300,000 for:

Blocked escape routes
Blocked fire exits
Defective fire doors
Excessive fire loading

Although we’ve ventured off the topic of fire doors a little, we believe that it’s important to provide our readers with a holistic and comprehensive perspective on the dangers of fire, as it’s our mission to minimise if not eliminate injuries to people as a consequence of fire. And note the mention of defective fire doors in the fine handed out to Shell – so clearly you need to pay very special attention to commercial fire doors …

Talk to the experts

You can see more on our company and the fire doors we offer and if you’d like to contact us with any queries you may have, see our contact us page or call 020 3199 5840 and we will respond as quickly as possible. We look forward to helping you.