360 PFI/PPP Fire Strategy Working Group Meeting 10-11-2025

360 PFI/PPP FIRE STRATEGY WORKSTREAM MEETING 10-11-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON …I’ve become aware of a number of projects where people are saying that they need retrospective fire strategies done. Let me roll back a bit on that. A lot of what we’re trying to do with the Golden Thread Taskforce is being able to understand and get through what is really needed and what’s being done as just a compliance exercise as it were. And what we obviously want to try and do is to make it so that whatever activities that we’re asking people to do and supply chains to do are actually useful and valuable.

And one of the things that has become clear, in the design group meeting for example, and discussing the role of the principal designer and the principal contractor, is the importance of being able to refer things back to the fire strategy. And I think on new builds fire strategies are done, but they then don’t get updated. Or in some cases they don’t get updated during construction. And that has got obviously and impact on building safety. But that’s not the topic that we want to cover today. What we want to cover today as how are we addressing things from a retrospective perspective.

Because what we’ve actually got is circumstances where the fire strategy hasn’t been updated for some time, maybe because of a lack of resources or a lack of available expertise. But fire risk assessments, which are the statutory things, are still being done. And from what I’m told a fire risk assessment needs to have a current fire strategy. So, I was talking this through with Matt Wilkie who is leading our PFI workstream along with Richard bacon from Albany.

And what he’s identified on projects is a) they don’t have or they may not have a current fire strategy because some of the tenants who are maybe sub-tenants in their schemes haven’t told the trust or the landlord what they’re using the spaces for. They have not kept their information up to date, so there are holes in the overall strategy because it’s not been kept up to date. The second problem is that fire engineers are already very, very busy. So therefore to actually be able to engage a fire engineer, a lot of their time is taken finding information that should be more readily available.

So this all seems to fold in really quite well with what we’re trying to do with the golden thread. So if we can make sure that the information that is required by a fire engineer to actually carry out a fire strategy is more accessible and available, then their task is much more straightforward. The risk is lower for the fire engineer. They need to spend less time on it, and therefore cost impact. So, it seems that there is a degree or standardisation, or the standardisation of information to make it more findable is a worthwhile thing to explore. So that’s principally what we set this meeting up to explore.

The other aspect of it though is in going through this exercise Matt found that he’d got a couple of schemes where a tenant had actually put security systems in which conflicted with the fire strategy. And it may be because the fire strategy hadn’t been updated or it may be that whoever was doing that had looked at things from the security perspective, but not from a fire strategy perspective. So we asked out experts in security, Assa Abloy, Roy has been helping us for the last 4 years or so, to have a view on that. And Roy said yes, it is something that needs to be aligned.

So I’d like to ask whether people think that this approach of doing things in a more joined up organised way makes sense. The further bit is ventilation. So the reason that Paul White has come along, who is our expert in smoke ventilation, is that’s another part of the equation. At some stage I might go back to my graphic that most of you have seen where we talk through a scenario where a fire breaks out in a kitchen etc. I spoke to Ron Hedger who is a fire engineer, Paul White is a ventilation engineer and they worked together. I asked Ron to join the group and share with us his experience. But before I go on to do that has anybody got any comments or contributions to make?

BERNARD HORNUNG I would certainly wish to contribute in regard to toxicity.

KARL GASSON With regard to your observation about fire risk assessment requires fire strategy, of course you’re right. I think in less complex buildings, simple blocks of flats for example, it is appropriate to expect a competent fire risk assessor can make judgements about what the fire strategy was intended to be, without have reference to the document. But as soon as it becomes more complex, what I’m dealing with myself for example at the moment is the head office of the housing association involved. It has two floors of residential above, so it’s 6 storeys in total, 3 of which are largely devoted to parking.

There’s 2 floors of largely commercial activity and so on. There’s a community hall in the building. And I am constantly referring back to the fire strategy document to understand exactly what the thought process was. And I find this quite a lot, some of the thought processes in putting together fire strategies are really quite clever well thought through solutions to issues. And a fire risk assessor going into a building without that thought process made clear to them can very often fail to see what the intent of the design is intended to achieve. And can make poor judgements for that lack of information.

So I entirely agree with you that a fire strategy document underpins a lot of the future fire safety. My only other observation at this point, what I think I heard you say is a fire strategy document requires a fire engineer to put it together. Is that the position here? Or did I misunderstand what was said?

GEORGE STEVENSON If I sad that I was wrong. But it certainly needs to be somebody that is competent and can demonstrate that competence.

RON HEDGER I want to reiterate and confirm that point. A fire engineer is a bit of a loose term, it would be lovely if it were actually protected or defined in some way. I think the important aspect here is that even in a simple building a documentation of the fire strategy is necessary. However, that can be as simple as the fire strategy completely follows a particular guidance document, for instance the Approved Document B that would be suitable evidence for then a competent person to come in and assess the fire risk within that building.

As soon as you start stepping away from the absolute prescription then more writing is required. And as you pointed out Karl, sometimes, particularly in complex buildings, a lot of thought goes into how to achieve that level of safety. And if it’s not recorded then it evaporates over time, simply by lack of appreciation, a Chinese whispers type process. The important thing is that that strategy needs to be recorded and maintained by someone who is competent to understand what is written, what is being changed.

That can be a completely lay person, if just able to comprehend the standard prescriptive guidance. Or it might need to be an extremely qualified and experienced fire engineer or fire safety consultant, who can interpret the written document and understand what the original process was and then change it in a way that remains suitable.

ROY BUCKINGHAM A couple of things to highlight as I see as some issues. Firstly, when we actually develop the design for a new build project often the access control security systems are in a separate package to the door hardware. So often there is not collaboration between the two, so it’s not always clear that the correct solution is being defined. And sometimes, and this is something I see quite often, if it’s a multi-tenant building you may get the initial fire strategy being developed for that building. But that doesn’t take account of the individual tenants’ access control that they then come in and deploy on the building.

And I’m not always seeing a joined up approach where the security system installers are being given that fire strategy to base their design on for that application. So often there is a disconnect between the two elements. It’s not clear that what is being proposed actually is in alignment with the actual fire strategy for the building. And of course if we had any form of locking to a door, which is an escape door or a fire rated door, that can have an impact on their overall fire safety within that building. And that’s a common scenario, I find.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, I think the other thing is some tenants are reluctant to provide the landlord with the information about what they’ve done to the building or what they’ve done to their spaces. So we end up in a situation where the landlord doesn’t know what the space is being used for. And that is quite fundamental in terms of understanding what the risks are, particularly around storage and things like that.

ROY BUCKINGHAM Well, particularly if you’ve got a multi-floor building where you may have to escape back into a tenant area in order to reach the alternative escape route.

GEORGE STEVENSON Picking up on that, Matt, do you want to give an example, you’ve done a graphic for that.

MATT WILKIE I’ve done a quick sketch this morning. (shares screen). This is a building that’s managed by an SPV landlord, but the main tenants the healthcare and the local authority have taken on some areas. Now, because the healthcare area is open to the public, the local authority then put maglocks and door access systems onto the door on the corridor so that people couldn’t access the areas controlled by the local authority, because their kitchen, their help desk, everything’s on the other side of the door. But the problem is the stairwell for the fire exit is actually in their part of the building.

So, they selected to take that side of the corridor rather than the other side because their kitchen facilities is also on there. What they should have done is probably just put a door access to the kitchen and possibly a door further down that opens towards the stairwell so that they’ve still got the access facilities. But in this case they blocked the fire exit for the people in the healthcare facility. But the problem you’ve got there is the local authority is not our tenant. The healthcare manage the building and the tenants, but at the same time this is where a fire strategy has not been updated and the door system has been altered without agreement of discussion, it’s just happened.

And it’s not just one door either, I’ve had it where 60-70 doors have all had door access systems fitted to them without any agreements, no service contracts, nothing. And then it’s oh, it’s always been there, and suddenly nobody owns it as well, that’s the issue you get with that. But that’s quite a common theme that you experience in dealing with PFI/PPP contracts is people alter things and don’t tell you. And then when you find it they deny all knowledge of it.

ANDREW COULDRIDGE Just picking up on what Matt’s just mentioned there that’s quite common. I work in the leasehold world, property management and mobilisation of large, complex developments. And Karl’s comment earlier a simple block of flats, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a simple block of flats. But I know how complex they can be, particularly when you throw into the mix commercial units and community spaces, community halls or areas, retail. And you’ve got people living above them and it becomes a challenge.

But what I wanted to pick up on, we mentioned the fire safety strategy. Now I’ve got experience working with large developers and real life experience tells me that actually the fire safety strategy is something that’s required at the very early stages of the development. Part of the planning process, so it needs to be evidenced. What I then see is then that same fire safety strategy at the completion stages. So Regulation 38, handed over, albeit not in its entirety, occupation happens as a result.

A building assessment certificate has been issued for compliance, but it doesn’t actually quite work for me because compliance is one thing, the site being a development during occupation is something else, and that does happen. The question there is it ready for occupation? The answer is no, but i’ve got a safety assessment certificate that tells me it’s compliant, therefore occupation can happen. But that building safety strategy is the same document in the R38 handover as an as-built as it was at the design stage. Now I know that document says in version 1 that the strategy will be and should be. So, it makes reference to what it needs to be.

The actual document at the handover says exactly the same. Now I wanted to say not it should be, but actually it is. And that doesn’t happen, so I get everything that we’re talking about. But in real life scenarios from personal experience, I would love to say that the process works, I don’t think that the process does. I talk a lot about the deliverables and the ownership and responsibility, kind of who’s is it and who should be checking. But the deliverable is at the completion stage, the same as it was at the planning stage. Now who’s to check that that is correct? Because if I challenge it, I’m told that I’ve got a building assessment certificate which confirms compliance.

So, I just want to put it out there that nothing is perfect. I think we all know what our problems are and I’m really keen to get to the point where we can talk about what the solutions are because I’m not quite sure that we’re there yet. But we should be.

GEORGE STEVENSON I absolutely agree with you. One of the things, that’s part of what we’re trying to do to get an industry consensus in terms of what good looks like. I had a very interesting meeting this morning with Elspeth Grant. She’s done a lot of work on fire safety, but also from a point of view of disabled people and PEEPs and all of that sort of stuff. We’ve got another session on Thursday on Awaab’s Law. She gave me a bit of education this morning and that is that Awaab’s Law, which everybody is seeing as the damp and mould legislation, also incorporates fire safety and electrical safety.

So the new legislation that came into effect last Monday that now requires any serious risk then be resolved within 24 hours. Not a working day, 24 hours. She was saying she things that’s probably impossible. And certainly from an electrical and a fire safety perspective being able to address thing, clearly that creates a whole level of additional priority on these things. I think that’s a very interesting perspective to take.

ANDREW COULDRIDGE Yeah, I think the whole 24 hours, mission impossible. If it is possible it’s going to come at a cost and the tenant will pay, so it’s a vicious circle.

GEORGE STEVENSON What she was also saying…she’s been doing this for a long time and she was saying that back in 2009 the government at the time defunded the fire services from a point of view of having responsibility for checking fire. And as a result of that a lot of the roles that were in the fire services for actually overseeing fire disappeared. And in doing that the fire services no longer have the responsibility that they used to have. But who did pick it up?

The other thing she said was with person centred fire risk assessments, which is apparently now the law, if things need doing, for example somebody is storing a mobility scooter in a corridor. If that’s identified as a risk it’s up to the tenant to address it. Also evacuation chair and things like that, if an evacuation chair is identified and the landlord says that’s the device that’s needed, it’s £650 or something like that. And they go back to the tenant and say you need to pay for this, if they haven’t got the money they may well go and buy an evacuation chair off Ebay or Amazon which is not fit for purpose, but it then is a problem.

I don’t want to get too heavily into social housing because social housing obviously is an important thing. But we’ve got people on here like Ann from Resolis and probably Claire as well who are coming at things more from other types of buildings as well, so it’s not focused at all. And certainly Matt is doing hospitals and schools and things.

PAUL SHEEDY I know everybody’s going an impossible 24 hours. Well you know what? If it was 3 months they’d still be saying an impossible 3 months, so it’s almost good to have a near impossible deadline so people get off of their backsides and actually take it as seriously as they should do. There were some comments earlier on that triggered me, I look over here now straight ahead of me is 22 Bishopsgate which I am a vocal critic of and have been since they started putting cement in the ground. And I’d love to know who exactly signs off in terms of the fire safety and the fire expertise on a building that’s 64 storeys tall, has 13,000 people and has 2 evacuation stairways.

Which when I started protesting I was told by WSP that it was because people are getting more and more obese so they can’t evacuate through stairways. Well, in that case you don’t build the building so tall, was my logical common sense approach response back. I was then rebutted and said oh, we’re using the lifts as my joke. And every presentation I give the first commandment is though shalt not use a lift in a fire. That is exactly how you evacuate 22 Bishopsgate. And as I said back…at the time it was not my guerrilla marketing campaign to crash a helicopter into their building in New York into the plant room, but that’s exactly what happened about three weeks after my last conversation with them.

And I just question how in 2025, as Dame Judith Hackitt said recently, only 31% of high-rise buildings that she gets at Gateway 1 pass fire compliance. And I ask myself, I think she’s the only person who is actually right, the whole sector just simply has got a horrendously bad culture. And I’ve just come back from 5 countries over the Far East and I was working last weekend in Shanghai and every building I walk into you can see clear as day where the fire extinguishers are, where the fire hose reels are, it’s not hidden away. Whereas here in the UK, I walk around this building here and I don’t even know where the fire extinguishers are because they’re so hidden away and so numbed down in terms of their advertising, because aesthetically they don’t want people seeing stuff anymore.

We’re not taking fire safety here in the UK seriously at all and it’s about time we all just stood up and stated that clearly. I think we’ve got to get to a stage where we start digitalising things where nobody can get away any longer. So if you make a change to this floor, this building, and you change the way the fire strategy should be you legally have to have it digitalised that you made a change and you’ve informed all of the people working on this floor, whether they’re here on that day or not, that this is the new fire strategy because we’ve changed the layout etc.

I’ve talked to George over the weekend and I said to him that what I see in Hong Kong and certainly in Shanghai in particular is a totally different attitude to fire safety, it’s completely chalk and cheese to here. And I hope in the next few months that I’ll bring together some people from that side of the world over here to show on a session like this where they’ve gone, what they’re doing, why they’ve moved from manual box ticking which, let’s face facts, we all know a lot of people just box ticks because they’re too busy to actually do the real inspection. But digitalising the entire system going forward because I for one am not going to sit here and be quiet and keep my mouth closed and go with the flow.

And it’s got to change, whether it’s correctly, politely or it’s me putting my size 11s up people’s backsides, it will change. And I’m here on the 39th floor of this building and I was here about half 10 at night 14 or 15 months ago and we had a power cut, which is unusual, but every fire evacuation sign was broken because nobody had changed the batteries for 12 years. In terms of Assa Abloy which you mentioned earlier, well, I went to all 4 fire evacuation doorways of which not one of them would open. And nobody knew there was 5 of us still here on the 39th floor of the building at half ten at night.

Now, I just get to the stage where I question how in 2025 with so much data we have become so incomprehensibly. I don’t have words any longer, to know that there’s basic things that we should know are happening. They used to know who was in the building 4 years, they don’t know anymore because of convenience. So I have to tap in, like all of you probably do in most commercial buildings. But the same as 22 Bishopsgate, the same as this building here, when I get to the exit gate it automatically opens and doesn’t know that I’ve left. This is a little silly now.

And there’s so many areas from changing batteries logically at a certain time and digitalising that we did change all of those batteries, to having data on who is in your building, especially where a ladder can’t get anywhere close to you, that just needs to happen. And I think to myself am I just surrounded by people who have no common sense?

GEORGE STEVENSON No, you’re not, you’re surrounded by people who are also bothered.

PAUL SHEEDY They are in this group, that’s why we’re here. I hope in the next couple of months with George we’ll bring some real expertise from overseas, countries where they take things a little more seriously.

GEORGE STEVENSON My view is that we’ve probably got the expertise here as well Paul, but the problem that we’ve got is actually communicating that to people that have probably got control of budgets and things.

KARL GASSON Can I just briefly say I think I agree with almost every word Paul has said there, and I share your concern about, not this group, but how others think and feel about fire safety. What I wanted to come back to is this upcoming implementation of the residential PEEP legislation. That’s the acronym chosen by the Home Office for this residential PEEPs, Personal Emergency and Evacuation Plans. I’m seeing a lot of disinformation about exactly what this legislation involves and requires. Some of that misinformation being published by people who hope to make a further living out of the process.

The reality is that, certainly in resident8al, above 18 metres you must have PCFRM PEEP in place. And anything 11 metres and above that’s on a simultaneous evacuation strategy, the implication from that (although it’s not necessarily always the case) is that we have an alarm system that will trigger that evacuation. Anything above 11 metres with a simultaneous evacuation must also have R PEEPs in place. That legislation comes into effect on the 6th of April next year, but it is not an overarching piece of legislation that effects every residential. It doesn’t affect every block of flats, only those above 11 with a full evacuation in place and anything above 18 metres.

GEORGE STEVENSON Coming round to it, what I’m looking to do is see if we can use our expertise and technology as well to be able to make it easier for us to address this. And certainly when Paul introduced me to Ron Hedger. Anybody that knows me you’ll know that from an asset management perspective I’ve been singing the strategy of using 360 photographs as being one way of us being able to do things remotely that otherwise would require site visits and that takes a long time. And when I was explaining that to Ron he said that’s exactly what he does, he uses 360 photos. Ron, can you just explain the process? Ron’s a fire engineer.

RON HEDGER This is to an extent a very minor part of my interest in what’s been said so far today, but I’ll start with that and see where we go. A growing proportion of my work now is in producing and recording retrospective fire strategies. I have been expecting a surge in this since the Building Safety Act and various bits of legislation can into force. There’s been a longer delay than I had assumed, but it does appear to be gathering momentum now. And my appreciation of that is that any complex building cannot really have a suitable fire risk assessment carried out unless that fire risk assessor understands what it is that’s been provided for that safety.

I am now being called into buildings that have had fire risk assessments completed since the fire safety order came in where suddenly they’re realising that all that’s happened is that someone has come in and looked at what’s there and identified whether or not what is there, or what is apparently there, has been maintained. Which is not the same as a fire risk assessment. So therefore I’m having to start from scratch and try and guess what the original fire protection measures where in buildings. As an example, I’ currently looking at a block of 6 residential buildings which were built in 1906 and as purpose built flats and had an additional penthouse put on in 1991.

I have absolutely no idea what the original fire strategy, what the fire protection mechanisms were. I can find no guidance whatsoever to tell me what they might have been designed to and in effect they are blisteringly dangerous. Because there is no protection that I can see of either their internal stairs, each block has one internal stair and access to 2 internal stairs. I’m therefore having to apply some aspect of modern design and how much risk can I accept liability for in saying do this, this will make it good enough. In order to arrive at that obviously I have to survey the buildings and the only way that I can gather enough information to come back to my desk and actually have a reasonable stab at guessing what was meant and what might be good enough is to actually carry a 360 camera with me perched on my shoulder which will then record my walk-around of all of those parts of the building that I can access.

A typical survey of one of these blocks might take me 4 hours doing it that way and then probably another 156 hours of assessing and digesting and recording what I can see from the 360 recording. Because that gives me access to what was beside me, what was below me, what was above me, that I may well not have looked around, observed, actually noted that I was noticing it and recorded it on my pad of whatever form, whether that’s hard copy or electronic. So I then end up with a 360 degree video of all of those parts of the building that I’ve walked around, which then forms part of my record of due diligence if I’m then called to justify the documentation of the existing fire precautions as I saw them on the day.

MUSTAPHA MUNIR Mine is more of a question to help enrich the conversation. And I do agree with most of the contributions that have been made today, but one thing that I’ve heard is that in terms of documenting the fire strategy it’s sort of something that ought to be done, not something that must be done. So could raising that awareness for the need of some sort of statutory requirement for the updating of that fire strategy be something that we could contribute to? And secondly, for example some sort of framework in terms of how organisations may be able to build a retrospective fire strategy. Would that be something that may help?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think both of those things I agree, but the latter one I think is more within our grasp. I think the former one, getting legislative changes is more challenging, but what I would say is there is a logical way of dealing with this. My understanding is there is a statutory duty to create a fire risk assessment. Am I right?

RON HEDGER In answer to both of your questions Mustapha, first of all there is a legal requirement. It’s Article 8 of the fire safety order which requires that as it was written in the fire safety order anyone who employs five or more people must record their fire safety arrangements. That is not just the fire strategy, but also the policy and procedure that implements the fire strategy which includes the management, testing, maintenance, staff training, drilling and everything else. However, at the time that the fire safety order came in it was identified as a cut and paste from the Health & Safety at Work Act because that has an absolutely identical statement.

And nobody interpreted it in the Home Office guidance on carrying out a fire safety risk assessment, and so it never really got addressed. It is however that Article 9 says you must carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment. What nobody has identified is that that suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment is supposed to be based on the recorded fire safety arrangements which come under the previous Article. And the unfortunate thing which answers a question from previously is that the fire safety environment that we currently live in is only as good as the enforcement of that arrangement.

Twenty something years ago it was argued that the industry wanted lighter touch regulation. The Fire Precautions Act was withdrawn. That was not light touch regulation, that was you will do this and you will maintain it and we’ll check every year to make sure that you are and prosecute you if you’re not from the fire service. That was lifted, the Fire Safety Order came in, self-regulation. My own personal opinion on self-regulation is it is only as strong as how scared are you of the Regulator. Health & Safety executive, everyone is extremely scared of them. The fire service, no one is scared of the fire service because they’re the nice guys.

They’ve also been defunded such that my own experience, the office that I started in had 12 fire safety inspectors, it currently now has 1 part time fire safety inspector. All fire safety inspectors, so that’s less than 10% of what used to be there, the 12 used to have direct involvement in the design of the buildings. There is no fire service involvement in the design of buildings now that is all external. I currently run a consultancy which designs those buildings, I have nothing to do with the fire service anymore, I’m a private concern. So not only are there very few of them, but they don’t actually have the experience of designing the buildings in order to fall back on to work out what they’re looking at.

So in effect there is precious little in the way of regulation going on when it comes to fire safety. And I think that’s one of the primary reasons we are where we are now. We’ve had 20 years of actually no scrutiny of what it means to comply. Hence things like doors that don’t open, managing agents who don’t know who’s in the building. Tenants who change things without any idea what they’re changing them from or to or how it effects the rest of the building. Those are all prosecutable offences, but there is no one prosecuting them.

ANDREW COULDRIDGE Ron, that’s great, I’ve seen the fire brigade report at building sign off, which is crucial to the NHBC handover etc., which is all required for occupation to take place. It’s a box ticking exercise geared up to generate a revenue because occupation equals money in the bank for the developer. I get the model. I’ve seen the certificates and there are recommendations that have been made by the fire brigade, the LFB in regards to things that need to happen. But they’ve signed it, I’m chasing whether those things have happened in line with what’s been recommended by the fire brigade.

Bu i almost want to say, you said that the fire brigade has no powers. Enforcement I think is a strong word, but should it be enforcement? Which makes me think should the fire brigade have a right to raise a mandatory occurrence report?

RON HEDGER I need to correct one thing there. I didn’t say they had no powers, they have extremely draconian powers, they’re not not in a position to exercise them. The actual powers that the fire safety order give the fire services as the enforcing agents are extremely high powered. They can close a building down at the drop of a hat and just say you’re out. Out on the street now, pass it over to the local authority to rehouse. But there are very, very few fire safety inspectors now that the numbers have been thinned enormously.

And those that are there tend not to be serving operational fire fighters, so they don’t have the knowledge of the buildings on fire that the old 20-30 year old brigade used to.

And this is my opinion based upon my experiences, they are loathe to take a prosecution unless it’s an absolute sure fire win because their brigade is the enforcer and would have to foot the bill. And if they lost then the brigade is out of pocket for costs involved in having taken that case and not in fact brought it to positive fruition.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a very useful bit of knowledge, Ron. I’ve heard this also from the HSE that one of the reasons the HSE generally under CDM don’t prosecute as frequently as they perhaps should is because exactly as you’ve said, they are actually liable as a department for that. And if it’s a fire service that’s even more exposed.

RON HEDGER Yeah, the costs of taking an unsuccessful prosecution could in fact bankrupt a fire service. Particularly if it’s an American company.

KARL GASSON I just wanted to comment on something that Ron touched on about the fire safety order and so on. We have to keep in mind with the Fire Safety Order that it assumes that the building is in existence already. And so Article 9 requires a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions. And yes, I did just read that from the legislation. The required suitable and sufficient assessment of risk is not about designing the building.

And indeed when you look at various guidance for fire risk assessors it almost always makes the point that the fire risk assessor is not there to second guess the designer and so on. And I think that this is often missed by those carrying out fire risk assessment that what they’re there to do is identify the necessary precautions, confirm whether they’re there and identify those other precautions, mitigating controls if you will, that should be there.

And I think, going back to this point about locks on escape routes for example, that absolutely does fall on the fire risk assessor to know what’s going on in the building as they make that assessment about general precautions. So I think that distinction between design and the ongoing assessment of risk and the necessary precautions is one that we should keep in mind.

RON HEDGER You’re absolutely correct and I have been involved in some projects where the building has been designed and it has been signed off as actually meeting the design very nicely. But it’s completely not fit for purpose because the use to which the building is then going to be put means that they need to do significantly more work to make it safe. And of course then everyone involved gets extremely upset because there has been some original client focused consultation at the beginning and then the client gets involved at the end.

And what has happened in the middle is that the design has gone off somewhere which is not actually applicable to the end use of the building. Or the building has been built for a generic commercial use and then at the end with that completion certificate, or usually prior to gaining the completion certificate. Arrangements have been made by the occupier to take it at completion. The occupier has taken it and they do something with the building which is outside the scope of the original design. And so the building is not fit for purpose and needs to be redesigned.

I am working with a healthcare premises which has moved into a generic shell and core commercial 3-storey office building. They should never have done that. The extra work that they need to do to make it work as a hospital is just unbelievable and they are obviously not very pleased. But nevertheless it’s not fit for purpose as it stands, just because they have taken it on a long lease and it’s new doesn’t mean that they should have done.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we obviously want to try and do with this group, we’ve spent an hour talking about what the problems are, sharing our frustrations which is all good stuff. What I’d like to do is spend the last half an hour talking through what we can do about it. How can we do things to make them easier? And to prompt some thinking on that, is it possible to have some more standardised solutions for certain types of buildings that could be applied maybe 80% of the activity and then the other 20% to make them building specific. That’s one idea.

Also, looking at things from a point of view of the Golden Thread. Now, the Golden Thread for me is about making sure that we’ve got the right information, documents, drawings, photographs etc that we can then glue together easily. So that the fire engineer, or maybe in Roy’s case looking at things from an access strategy. Or in Paul White’s case looking at things from a smoke ventilation perspective, can actually pull these things together. So I think that’s something we like to talk about. Maybe we won’t be able to get onto that adequately in this session, but if you agree that this is a worthwhile thing to go with then we can set up another one.

ROY BUCKINGHAM Just wanting to finish off on what we’ve just been covering and I agree with everything Ron has said. There are other aspects of the regulations that are not being enforced. We have now the new construction product regulator and we have within the building regs, and have had for quite a long time since 2013, Regulation 7 which requires us to ensure that anybody delivering solutions into the built environment can be proven to be competent in what they’re doing. And also any construction products we add into the built environment can be verified and proven to be suitable for the application that they’re using.

What it actually says is they must be fit for purpose and used in the applications for which they are designed. And of course the easiest way of achieving that is through performance testing that proves that that product is used in the application for which it’s designed to be used in. And of course from a fire safety perspective that’s either being suitable for use on a fire door or suitable for use to provide that escape function. And we should have the construction products regulator enforcing that requirement. And the construction products regulator sits underneath the office of product safety and security, but my experience is there is no enforcement.

I regularly see buildings being handed over, signed off with solutions installed on fire escape doors which are non-compliant and they have no performance testing to prove that they are used in the correct applications. And that’s another common issue that needs to be addressed as well.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’d like to just raise a point on that. Part of the challenge is that the information that’s being handed over is so disorganised and incomplete in many cases that it’s very, very difficult for anybody to do any checks anyway. Now, in our new world of AI that’s something that should be easily addressed, if we can get people to just comply with the information standards that they should be following anyway. But even if they’re not there are techniques that can be used to do that. So I think it is something that’s quite doable.

ROY BUCKINGHAM It’s also in relation to the competence, because the people that are doing that checking need to be competent in what they’re checking. And at the moment the industry is still struggling to establish all of those sector specific competence frameworks. There’s lots of people talking about doing them, but how many have we actually seen established? They are still being developed at the moment, even though it is a requirement for people to be competent.

GEORGE STEVENSON Well, as Matt was saying earlier, one of the problems is we need to move away from it being a compliance checking culture. Do you have the label? There’s been lots of conversations in recent weeks about whether things like BM Trada actually are truly providing any value in terms of identifying what people, and there’s some very different views on that. Matt, is this helpful for you as an asset manager? Are we on the right track with what we’re trying to do here?

CAROLYN FLYNN I think George, just to touch on…I got the gist that the group seem to be talking of when a new built and what it should be and all of the standards. But I work in already built, so the healthcare they’re already built, it is what I have. And all I can do is enforce that a fire risk assessment be done. So I can only tell the client look, because it’s a hospital and people are sleeping here so let’s discuss. And it’s this thing of let’s discuss how often you should do a fire risk assessment because that’s the only thing that I can work all in compliance.

And then it’s like oh yeah, maybe 3 years or maybe 2 years. So, I don’t know how to go back and tell my client what should I be looking at to go back and tell my client to say hey, you need to implement it. It’s two yearly and once a fire risk assessment is done. And I totally get what everyone is saying here that the fire risk assessment is just there to give advice as such.

GEORGE STEVENSON Carolyn, you did miss the beginning of it but exactly what you’ve said. This is about existing buildings, that’s what we’re trying to do, not about new build. The other thing that is quite helpful to you is what Ron is saying, it’s not so much just the fire risk assessment, it’s the fire strategy plans. And what Ron is saying is that there is a legal duty for presumably the landlord to have that fire strategy plan. Is that right, Ron?

RON HEDGER Yes, so personal opinion here but based on a fair bit of experience. The confusion I think is that the retrospective fire strategy is the fire risk assessment. The British Standard has brought out a new guidance document on residential fire risk assessment and the old PAS 79 on both commercial and residential all referred to two processes. One was the fire risk assessment which should be repeated on a basis of annual, three-yearly, five-yearly, whatever is reasonable. And a second process which is a fire risk assessment review.

Now what everyone actually gets when they pay their money is a fire risk assessment review. It’s the second order bit, it’s the bit that originally 20 years ago was considered to be perfectly OK for the occupier to do. Residential it’s when you walk round and do your quarterly fire door checks to make sure that they open and they close, the strips are OK. the fire risk assessment is this is the building, this is what it’s used for, this is what it’s got in the way of fire precautions, is it good enough?

Now that can be carried out every 5 years, really just as a have the existing management and maintenance processes continued, has someone made a change that no one’s noticed. No, fabulous, yes, OK now we need to address it. But in the meantime those fire risk assessment reviews should be continuing and they should be as frequent as is necessary. Which is stabilised at annual, but could be that they need every 3 months, or every couple of years is OK. And the problem is that that retrospective fire strategy, the original purpose of fire risk assessment, has sort of never been addressed.

When I go and do one of my retrospective fire strategy surveys I am looking at the actual active and passive fire precautions that the building has been provided with. And then what people are doing in there, what the people are like in there, what the overarching procedures are. And I will then comment on whether in my opinion those are suitable and sufficient. That is the fire risk assessment. And then maintaining it, the fire risk assessor will come in and read that and say is this still as it said in the document? If it’s yes, fabulous, if it’s no it should go back to a competent fire consultant to work out what to do about it.

GEORGE STEVENSON I went into ChatGPT and identified the documents or the information that would be typically needed for a retrospective fire strategy. And it’s quite useful in that if we look at this, these are all things that we would expect to have for the Golden Thread. Now, in my experience it’s very seldom that any landlord would have that level of information that’s current and up to date. And that’s one of the things that we’re all wrestling with in the Golden Thread group.

Now if we could have a perspective. Ron, whereby this information was easily accessible, had already been checked and audited. Maybe you’ve also got 360 photographs of the spaces so you can effectively walk around the building. If you have all of this information, am I right that you’d be able to reduce the amount of time it takes to do your retrospective fire strategy?

RON HEDGER Yes and no. Obviously there would be a time factor involved in digesting that information and verifying it.

GEORGE STEVENSON You’ve still got to do that, but you’ve not got to look for it.

RON HEDGER No, absolutely not and what I would hope to happen is that the fire strategy document, in my experience, tends to be a very, very long, very detailed and very dry technical document identifying what, why and justifying it. What is then needed for the facility of management is a short summary of that under the necessary headings to cover everything. So rather than having 5 pages of dry justification, a short paragraph that is summarising the means of escape for the fire alarm, the smoke control sprinklers and how those work together.

Such that it’s easy to identify the important measures and a change to one of those important measures then needs someone to go back to that long, dry technical document and work out how that change which is proposed will maintain that overall level of safety. So, the strategy itself, once you’ve got all of that information, digested it and recorded it into a strategy, that strategy should then be summarised into something that is useable. Otherwise it will just sit on the shelf in the same way as current documentation does. If you have an OM manual with all of that in it it’s extremely rare that anyone ever looks at it. But it’s at least there.

GEORGE STEVENSON So this is where, and probably 70% of the people on this call have seen this hundreds of times, but it’s still important. It’s a matter of looking at scenarios so that you can say right, smoke breaks out in the kitchen. One of the principle hazards that we’re trying to address is to stop smoke from getting into that stairwell. Noe there’s a number of measures that need to work together to address that. One is making sure that you’ve got fire doors in place and they’re fit for purpose. But also the wall, the penetration seals, all of those need to work together to be able to perform. But then you’ve got to assume that maybe the compartmentation still won’t be 100% and you’re going to get some smoke coming out.

Therefore we need a smoke control system, we need a detection system, we need signage. So what I think Ron is that what we’re doing here is we’re providing a context for that information to be both used and also when it’s being inspected that the inspection by various different software applications is all referring back to that same risk. So that’s where I think we’ve got the opportunity to visualise a lot of this complex, dry information.

CLAIRE GRAHAM I probably look at things slightly different as I have overall, it’s not just a fire safety. And just going back to where you were driving to George, for the Golden Thread and a lot of the information that’s been fed into the group and how that needs to continue through the Golden Thread following the RIBA stages essentially, And how in facilities management, we don’t implement the same kind of processes and procedures as what’s done in the RIBA stages. And that’s something that I am actually looking to implement via BIM and strategies into facilities management.

So there is a few things like I think Paul mentioned and maybe Ron had mentioned about some way to be able to detail or at least highlight where information is missing or not been updated. And I’m in the process of building a software system that is extended from the AutoCAD build solution. But also highlighting areas where information has been missed, where things have not been updated on the frequency that they should have. And it also takes in some things that Pierre just mentioned about the CDEs.

So essentially we’ve got the IMS which is really your business strategies and policies are held, the CDE where it’s worked on. And then the new system I’m putting in place is the validated information.

GEORGE STEVENSON It would be great to have a more specific conversation on that because I’d really like to learn what you’re doing. And also there’s probably other software, services, people. Datasets that we can contribute as well.

CLAIRE GRAHAM That would be great. It’s really good to understand what everybody’s input and their thoughts on where it’s failing because I’ll be taking that back into mind.

MUSTAPHA MUNIR Just to contribute a bit in terms of the solution. And from most of the contributions I can see that there is a problem in the industry in terms of the inefficiency when it comes to data management. And also there is a problem of the reduction in terms fo manpower, we’re having fewer fire safety officers. And also the disconnect in terms of management. So first and foremost, I think it will be good to also agree in terms of if we’re thinking of solutions are we talking about a digital approach?

So that is because when we’re looking at the framework that can help to address these problems we are talking about a digital approach that can help to manage that data. Because we’re having fewer manpower then a digital approach would be logical.

GEORGE STEVENSON This group, definitely it will be digital.

MUSTAPHA MUNIR Yes, but the second factor is in as much as we’re talking about a digital approach, it’s also important to check the maturity. So for example, in terms of the digital approach the design and construction processes are quite high level in terms of their maturity at the moment. Whereas when it comes to asset management, facilities management, there is a problem in terms of that uptake of that digitalised approach as well. So it’s also important that we’re aware that the solutions that we may be suggesting, the industry at the moment in terms of uptake, they may not be at that level to be able to upgrade in that digital manner. So the framework should also take into account those factors.

So, talking about as a solution from that digital approach I think one good thing that we should cover is aspects relating to responsibility and reporting. The framework should clearly articulate the people that should be responsible to update that fire strategy and in terms of frequency of updating. And also linking it to the Golden Thread, just like you said. But I also think one good thing that would be useful is to have a reporting or a data template. Because some people may want to implement that fire strategy or to see how they can constantly work on their risk assessments.

But if a data template or a reporting template can be worked between some of us as a sort of white paper or suggestion, for example, then people in the industry would be able to see how to do it in terms of best practices. So also we can present examples, for example, of use cases.

GEORGE STEVENSON Mustapha, would you be interested in helping us pull that together?

MUSTAPHA MUNIR I would be happy to contribute, yeah. And also finally we need to think about enforcement. It may not be part of the framework, but enforcement is key. It has come up as something that needs to be strengthened.

KARL GASSON I’d like to be slightly deliberately contentious and propose that almost the entirety of the fire safety sector misunderstands the legal requirement for fire risk assessment. Ron was rehearsing the view that fire risk assessments should be renewed, carried out again every 12 months, 2 years, 3 years, pick a number. Which is not what the legislation asks for. The legislation requires the responsible person to carry out a suitable and sufficient assessment, it does not ask for it to be repeated, but asks for it to be reviewed regularly without specifying exactly how frequently that review should take place.

I propose, and I would suggest that this group takes it under its consideration of fire strategy, and Ron I’m talking specifically about new build not about retrospective. I suggest that a fire strategy document done correctly and followed through into build and future management obviates the need for a fire risk assessment. Because that suitable and sufficient assessment of risk is considered at design and suitable general precautions are put in place. I guess then the only remaining element of fire risk assessment is are people using this building the way it was designed to be used and so on. And so there always will be general precautions required after completion of the build.

But I suggest that as part of this group’s consideration to ask that question: have we as a fire safety sector entirely understood the place of fire risk assessment as required by the Fire Safety Order Article 9?

RON HEDGER I completely agree in that yes, if the fire strategy for the building is developed correctly and the use to which the building is put is maintained as the same, then there is very little need for a full assessment of the building, assessment of everything, to be repeated. If there has been no change then there is no need to repeat a very intrusive and intensive assessment process and development of a new document. However, there is a requirement should something go wrong to be able to demonstrate due diligence. And that’s I think the reason for the statement that says it should be reviewed regularly.

And that’s the fire risk assessment review process, that is the bread and butter of the fire risk assessment guidance is that review. I think the bit that is completely misunderstood is that that is just looking for those changes that have occurred, really. And are the systems being maintained and managed? Yeah, that’s the primary part. Have there been any changes? Frequently the answer is yes there have and the fire risk assessor is then being required to try and solve them. Fire risk assessors are not fire safety designers. And I think that’s the primary misunderstanding is that they should just be identifying when further work is needed.

And as soon as that box is ticked that says yes, there is a significant change been made here, the remedial action should be you need to get this reviewed by someone competent at this level. So I completely agree, I think there is a failure to understand the process and that clarifying that process would move us a long way forward.

ANDREW COULDRIDGE Karl, that’s a good point you’ve raised and Ron, I appreciate where you’re coming from. I’ve kind of lived that scenario where a brand spanking new development, it’s through the handover process. And an institutional investor that’s taken half of the development, hundreds of units, has said prior occupation we want an FRA done. The FRA has been bought and paid for, it’s been carried out and there were a significant number of high risks that required remediation before the investor would move tenants in.

And there’s obviously a huge amount of pressure on me, amongst others. It wasn’t my responsibility to put right, but I’m kind of stuck in the middle to make sure that it actually got rectified. So I think there is a place for an FRA on a new development. For me, it comes down to the word trust. Do I trust what I’m being given? And can I evidence it? And for me the answer is yes, I can evidence it. Do I trust it? No. And that’s just a lived and learned experience which kind of takes me to that place.

You mentioned earlier, Ron, that in regards to the fire safety strategy you said it’s rare that people look at it. And I agree, it is a long and lengthy document in some cases actually it’s difficult to translate. But the question has to be, and I like the idea of a summary, but the question has to be, and I used to have this in meetings with my FM team monthly, are we compliant? Is the building compliant? And if the answer was yes the question would be show me. Which comes down to a summary and then evidencing what we’ve got, being able to provide the documentation.

Sio for me it comes down to, I know we talk systems and we talk digital approaches, but for me I’m going to start with it starts with the people. And it comes back to Paul Sheedy, you said earlier it’s been X number of years since…your emergency lighting backup system wasn’t being looked at, batteries were faulty. Someone is responsible for that, that’s an individual not doing their job. So I think for me systems and process great, documentation great, but it starts with people. The question is are we compliant? If someone says yes, we are, the question has to be can you show me.

KARL GASSON Just two quick points. One on Andrew’s observations there, I think using fire risk assessment to snag a construction project and finding risk items demonstrates a breakdown of the supervision of construction. And the fire risk assessor is being misused at that point and so we should fix the construction process. And I realise that’s a huge brushstroke comment, but again, I think that’s a misunderstanding of the role of the fire risk assessor.

Also to come back to Ron’s comments, I think what we do, certainly in the housing sector which is where I primarily work, we treat the fire risk assessment, the repeat visit, as a health & safety audit, and that’s not its intention. I would illustrate this with housekeeping. So, it comes under the broad heading of housekeeping, a fire risk assessor finds a mattress in the stairway and reports that as an action of fire risk assessment, to remove the mattress from the stairway. That should already have been found by a housing officer on an estate manager or somebody who is following the general precaution identified of housekeeping.

Inspecting the site and removing combustibles and so on. But we have fallen into this terrible habit of getting the fire risk assessor to do that. I suspect it may not be disconnected that the advice generally was written by a fire risk assessor. So why wouldn’t you give that repeated income stream to the fire risk assessor in that case. I think that we should seriously reconsider how we use fire risk assessment in this country.

GEORGE STEVENSON We’ve got a couple of minutes left, so I want to make sure that what we’re doing here isn’t going to be wasted and lost. We’ve recorded it and we’ll share a report, but would you just put in the chat if you’d like a follow up meeting. Because I actually think we’re making some really good progress today, but I think we’ve spent a lot of time looking at what the challenges are. And I think we’re starting to uncover some solutions, but I think we need to move forward with that. We’re all volunteers and we want to make sure that we’re making the best use of our time.

RON HEDGER On the basis of trying to move things forward I have some observations on strategic requirements, things that I think are going to be very necessary. And it may well be, Claire, that these are hopefully useful to you. The first one, I’ll always view the functional requirement of the Golden Thread as being electronic as problematic because that’s the final solution. It must be based on something which is itself workable. The system, the electronic recording, must be of a system which works, We don’t have a system which works at the moment so there’s no point electronically recording it. It mustn’t be an information dump.

The electronic recording systems that I have had the misfortune to be involved in have been information dumps and I’ve stopped using them and had to go back to send me a paper record. The second one is it must also be scaleable. So we talked about simple buildings not needing a fire strategy. Now they all need a fire strategy, but the fire strategy can be very simple. And it must work, if we have a Golden Thread recording system that’s electronic of a useable system, it must work for a building that’s got 4 flats, 2 on the ground, 2 on the first. And it must also work for 22 Bishopsgate.

By the same process, so that the person who starts on 4 flats can get promoted eventually to managing 22 Bishopsgate. It must work through a range of software, so it can’t be a closed protocol. if it’s a closed protocol then we’re on to a disaster, so it has to work across a range of competitive systems. And it must continue to give the necessary emergency information during that emergency. So, another problem with electronic recording is that much of that information is not needed during an emergency, but some of it is. And if the power has gone out, if the system has gone down it has to be a backup that will provide that urgently required emergency information.

GEORGE STEVENSON Thank you Ron, that’s brilliant. We can pick up on that in the next session, we’ll try and arrange something for a couple of weeks’ time or something like that. Matt, I want to make sure that you’ve got out of this what you were looking for. Is there anything else that you wanted to raise?

MATT WIKLIE No, no, I found it very useful. I think there is a broader piece on there as well, I did make a note about high risk buildings as well which I think we need to do an overlap on. There’s some engagements I’ve had with them around containment because I think that’s another section where you’ve got a building within a building and how that all fits together. Because it’s who owns bits and pieces and you can understand how it becomes a nightmare when there is actually an incident on who owns it, who caused it, who’s responsible for it. Because it becomes a bigger piece on the containment piece of where does the building stop and start? Is it modular? Is it a whole building? So there’s a lot of good information today I think.

PIERRE VENTER One of the biggest things I see throughout all of our discussion here is about ownership. Not ownership as it the landlord, but ownership of data, ownership of the information, ownership of the tasks that have been carried out. Now one of the things that I see is the responsible person is really important about holding that data. So Ron, the same story about having this information in a box in my office I’m in charge is no good. This is the story of the CDE, but it demands a number of things about the standardisation and how the data is collected.

Now you indicated earlier, and this is the important part, is that you’re collecting information in the field. And every single time that there’s a visit of some sort there is information collected by 360 cameras etc, it needs to go into that CDE. And yes, it could be a pool where you dump stuff, but at the same time the person that is responsible for this thing suddenly has the ability to gather field information from different sources and be able to process it. So this is part of the AI process which will allow that kind of sanity to say there are exceptions.

I think the important part is about change management. And that relates to the owner, the tenant and then that responsible person. Because when somebody installs a door who knows how that’s actually happened? Now surely when somebody walked into the building as a contractor, subcontractor, white van brigade whatever, there’s got to be some mechanism in place, like Grenfell Tower, that you don’t have people leaving the doors open. Or if the door holdback is not working putting something in place to stop it. And those fundamental things need to be done.

I think that technology is a big enabler here. And what it is, is that if you take the same information can then be made available to the local council across the portfolio of their buildings within their remit. Suddenly you can see where there’s typical problems coming up and they can address it at that time, focusing on where the problems are. Not us talking about the problems, but actually how we can resolve that.

GEORGE STEVENSON Brilliant Pierre, and I think it’s testament to the fact that we’ve had a successful meeting because we’re 5 minutes over and we’ve still got 70% of the people still with us.

BERNARD HORNUNG Just by way of introduction, 48 years ago I attended a 3-day firefighting course, the Royal Navy at Gosport. And then I embarked upon 3 months firefighting in central London. We were fortunate, although we were completely overwhelmed somehow the army managed to respond to well over 2,500 fires. One of the limitations we all had was we had no breathing apparatus. But the buildings 50 years ago were much smaller, you were able to get in and out of a building whilst holding our breath. We were able to rescue many victims that had been overwhelmed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

In my work at the moment is very much in performance and using science rather than compliance to assess the air loss rate through fire doors, windows and hatches. And we know that the legislation is going to change, we know the fire door smoke test will no longer permit the taping up of the threshold gap and if applicable the letter plate, Those doors are going to have to be tested as they are expected to perform. The challenge we have is that we’ve got about 6 million flat entrance doors. i don’t know how many fire doors that are satisfied as smoke sealed exist, I have no idea.

But we’ve got to test these and we’ve got to test these in situ. And that is the area which i’m working on at the moment. And that is the area where we thankfully now have a solution.

GEORGE STEVENSON Thank you, and we can talk about that solution and others in a follow up session.

CHAT

Matt Wilkie (Unverified)….. It also seems to be compounded in complexity once it reaches a High Risk Buildings with multiple ownerships. Discussing with the regulator, their view is they are responsible for the containment of areas not reaching another container (unit owner). Not actually dealing with breaches within fire safety within a singular unit.

Ron Hedger (External)…. The desire for an 'Industry Concensus' to be achieved is very current, and I am currently working on the BSI Committee to develop a Standard for the recording of a fire strategy. This is in need of more members, and is almost entirely driven by fire safety consultants who develop design fire strategies, so is only developing one side. What we need is significant representation from the User side of the industry.

Paul White (External)…. Fire safety IN FUTURE PHASE - 2026, BUT WORTH BEING AWARE OF FROM HERE

Awaab's Law requires social landlords to address serious health and safety hazards in their properties within strict, fixed timeframes.

Awaab's Law and Fire Safety

While the initial phase of Awaab's Law (effective from October 27, 2025) focuses on emergency hazards and significant damp and mould issues, it will be expanded to include fire safety and other hazards in a later phase.

• Current Phase (from Oct 2025): Landlords must address all "emergency hazards" (e.g., gas leaks, exposed wiring, major structural defects) and "significant" damp and mould hazards with mandatory timeframes.
  • Emergency hazards must be investigated and made safe within 24 hours.
  • Significant damp and mould hazards must be investigated within 10 working days and safety works completed within 5 working days of the investigation concluding.
• Future Phases: In 2026, the regulations will be extended to cover a wider range of hazards, including fire and electrical hazards.
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Ahabs+law+fire+safety&rlz=1C1CHZN_enGB1074GB1074&oq=Ahabs+l…

Paul McLaughlin - multivista (External)…… Hi All, Many thanks for a insightful session. Not our area of expertise to contribute but all very interesting. I need to drop off unfortunately.

Pierre Venter (External)….. The pragmatic steps need to ensure there is ownership of the responsibility.

The lifecycle of the data, needs a platform where there is a handover and a current "owner" of the content.

The Resp. Person changes and the content they hold is not transferred to a new "owner". NO Golden Thread - its broken.

There is a need for change/alterations management. How? The change by tenants require the sign-off by the Resp. Person.

Use technology. A CDE/Shared Platform….Photographic references …Drawing/Installation Notes etc all available by the Local Authority…. This really works but who pays for it!!!

Paul White (External)….. George, please add in ventilation and smoke control design documents to your list….And equipment schedules, I am not sure they are there

Ron Hedger (External)… Observations for development of a solution:

Pierre Venter (External)…. Graham, Claire, the tech in Autodesk that is the current platform that all model,data and documents will be hosted is Forma. That would be part of the Digital Twin, which becomes very powerful.

Graham, Claire (External)… Yes with view to digital twin and IoT input, live.

Pierre Venter (External)……. Thats one approach, the other is the validation of scans and photogrammetry reviews of the spatial elements. Doors, ironmongery and changes in components, is another.

It can connect all versions of the different parties visiting and recording their journey in the building. This adds a continual checking capability, with exceptions referred to the Resp. Person

Ron Hedger (External)… Bernard - good point on the observation of breathing apparatus - this is another issue which must be taken into account, as the fire load (generally plastics) is MUCH higher in residential buildings now compared to 50 years ago.

Structured Academic Summary

Section Topic: Fire Safety Risk Assessment, Strategy, and Data Management

Key Points:

• Enforcement & Oversight:
  • Mustapha Munir highlights that enforcement is a key component of fire safety and needs strengthening.
  • Andrew Couldridge emphasizes that compliance relies on people: systems and documentation are effective only if responsible individuals act correctly.
• Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) Misunderstandings:
  • Karl Gasson notes widespread misunderstanding of FRA legal requirements: legislation requires a “suitable and sufficient assessment”, not repeated assessments at fixed intervals; reviews should be regular but not prescriptive.
  • FRAs in new builds, if a fire strategy is correctly implemented, may reduce the need for repeated assessments, focusing primarily on whether building use aligns with design and general precautions.
  • FRAs are often misused as health & safety audits, e.g., identifying housekeeping issues that should already be addressed by housing officers.
• Role of Fire Risk Assessors vs Construction Supervision:
  • Gasson highlights that using FRAs to identify construction deficiencies reflects a breakdown in supervision, not an assessor’s responsibility.
  • Hedger confirms that assessors are not designers; their role is to identify changes requiring competent review.
• Golden Thread & Electronic Recording Systems:
  • Ron Hedger stresses the need for workable, scalable systems for fire strategy documentation.
  • Electronic systems must:
    • Be functional and not just information dumps.
    • Scale from small buildings to major developments like 22 Bishopsgate.
    • Operate across different software platforms.
    • Provide essential emergency information, even during power/system failures.
• Data Ownership & Change Management:
  • Pierre Venter highlights the importance of ownership of data, tasks, and field-collected information.
  • Technology and Central Data Environments (CDEs) can enable proactive monitoring and address common problems across portfolios.
  • Change management is critical, especially for interventions by contractors/subcontractors, ensuring doors, holdbacks, and safety devices function correctly.
• Practical Fire Safety Considerations:
  • Bernard Hornung notes historical limitations (smaller buildings, limited equipment) and emphasizes science-based performance assessments for current fire doors.
  • Legislation is changing; smoke-sealed fire doors must be tested in situ, posing a significant challenge across millions of flats.

Observations / Notes:

• The discussion highlights the interplay of legislation, human factors, and technology in fire safety.
• Misunderstandings about FRA purpose and over-reliance on assessors can mask underlying systemic issues.
• Effective data management, CDEs, and scalable digital systems are critical for ensuring compliance and emergency readiness.

Key Risks / Key Insights & Action Points