Today there is a cheaper and quicker alternative to hiring a fire safety firm to carry out your fire risk assessment. Essentially a fire risk assessment is nothing but common sense, and following guidelines that have been laid down by the government. The problem that most small businesses face is that, they cannot afford to hire a high profile fire safety firm to complete their risk assessment; and a fire risk assessment is mandatory as per UK law for a business to function.
The solutions is simple, there are websites like www.myfireofficer.com that actually allow business owners to carry out their own fire risk assessment, without paying large amounts of money in consultancy fees and charges. Online fire risk assessments are fast, easy and can be carried out as per one's own convenience. Unlike a consultancy firm that charges by the hour, there is no meter running and a business can spread the fire risk assessment across a couple of days if one wants. There are a few things to keep in mind when an online fire risk assessment is being carried out, and depending on the various factors that are involved an online fire risk assessment should always be carried out with due diligence, after all the objective is to genuinely guard your business from any future hazards.
The first thing to remember while doing an online fire risk assessment is to read all the documentation carefully, although all online fire risk assessment forms are designed to make the task of the surveyor simple, however there can always be areas that are ambiguous, or not easy to comprehend, it is therefore essential that before any kind of online risk assessment is carried out that the literature has been given proper scrutiny.
The next thing to remember while doing an online fire risk assessment is to stay true to the task at hand, many businesses are often in an hurry to complete the assessment. Being in a hurry is completely against the purpose of doing a fire risk assessment, there are often important aspects that a business might miss out on, and might cost them dearly in the future. It is therefore essential to remain honest, and complete the risk assessment thoroughly and if possible to the letter.
Another important aspect of online fire risk assessment is, that at the end of the day a person who has no prior experience is carrying out the fire risk assessment. If possible it is always a good idea to have more than one person carry out the fire risk assessment independently, this way if one person has missed something, another might find it. However make sure that it does not become a really complicated process where 7-8 people are working on the same assessment.
Another way of doing the fire risk assessment is to have different people manage different aspects of the fire risk assessment; one person can work on isolating high risk areas while another can take care of some other aspect of the online fire risk assessment. Giving people smaller tasks to complete is a great way of ensuring that each individual aspect of the fire risk assessment is carried out diligently.