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All businesses in the UK have to carry out a fire risk assessment by law. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order of 2005 introduced this requirement. While the requirements of the legislation are all based on the very obvious need to protect people and property, the changes did put more responsibility on employers and managers for the fire safety of their premises. The knock-on effect of this does sometimes mean that people responsible for businesses do have to make the time themselves to ensure that they are complying with the legislation. This usually comes down to either paying consultants to do things like assessments and staff training, or finding the additional resource within your organisation. It is therefore not surprising that you may show an interest in fire risk assessment software if that sounds like something that might save you time and money. Perhaps you want to save the expense of using consultants, but do not feel confident enough in your own knowledge to undertake the assessment yourself from scratch. Maybe fire risk assessment software is the perfect middle ground that will guide you through the process? Possibly, but it does require a bit of thought before investing in a software system. Anyone who thinks that a piece of software will allow them to sit down and push a few buttons to get a fire risk assessment is likely to be disappointed. Any software package that suggests that is possible is certainly to be avoided. The very nature of fire assessments means that you (or someone) are going to have to take the time to thoroughly check all areas of your premises, in order to identify possible hazards. You cannot do that properly by answering a few questions at your desk. Your assessment will be unique to your premises, your work practices and the people in your workplace, so be cautious about the extent to which the process can be automated. There is a very clear step by step process to go through when carrying out a fire risk assessment and the results and actions need to be recorded. There is therefore a role for some type of software that can guide you through this process and provide a recording system and produce various reports at the end of the process. The extent to which this is going to be faster than just working from some type of template, though, is debatable. Whether it is worthwhile using fire risk assessment software or not will partly depend on the size and complexity of your workplace. I can see that the benefits of automation become more worthwhile the greater the volume of work there is to get through. The larger and more complex your premises, however, the stronger the argument should be for not attempting it yourself at all, but getting an expert consultant to do it for you. A useful starting point is probably to read through a good guide to the process of fire risk assessment and look at a standard form for recording your results. You will then be in a better position to judge how comfortable you feel about your ability to carry out the work yourself, and you will have more idea of the extent to which fire risk assessment software may have a role to play.
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