B A F S A F O C U S M AY 2 0 2 0
Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance R I T C H I E O ’ C O N N E L L , B A F S A R E P R E S E N TAT I V E I N WA L E S
“ the fire al arm guy says he’s done loads of these and this is over the top” So many of my conversations these days seem to start like this. Generally they occur after I have written a fire strategy for a care home, sheltered accommodation, or similar. It isn’t always the fire alarm guy – substitute as applicablesprinkler fella, dry riser lady, fire door guru, bloke down the pub, my mate’s brother (“he used to be in the fire service!”) … Many people will be familiar with the old allegory where the order “send reinforcements, we’re going to advance” becomes, after transmission through a number of phone/radio operators, becomes “send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance”. This cautionary tale often comes back to me when I speak to contractors 14 | ba f sa .o r g .u k
regarding their queries/concerns over their particular deliverable. The fire strategy is essentially the fire safety blueprint for how a building, its management, and occupants, will perform in a fire. The strategy should consider what is required for Building Regulations compliance, the evacuation strategy, how the building will be managed and maintained ( with the strategy forming part of the Regulation 38 package informing the fire safety management), and also the characteristics of the prospective occupants. Quite often though the fire strategy is never provided to the sub-contractor, instead they will receive a request to tender for the provision of their particular element of that strategy. Often the request has been filtered through several intermediary companies, each of whom are often working to a fixed price
and will have already queried with myself and/or the client whether any element of the strategy could be a lower specification, quite commonly the conversation will be along the lines of “couldn’t we go for a category 1 sprinkler system instead?” (The answer to which is always NO, unless the occupant characteristics or building layout have changed!) so during the transmission via the, sometimes nuanced, filters of the various contractors ‘send reinforcements’ becomes ‘send three and fourpence!’ I am not suggesting that people should not query what is asked for in the strategy - of course they should, over specifying wastes money both in terms of installation and maintenance costs, and often times it doesn’t make the premises any safer to any meaningful degree.
