Retrospective Fire Strategy

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) applies to the whole of commercial premises and the common parts of most residential premises. For newly built premises, the As-Built Fire Strategy describes the fire precautions provided, however, the Fire Strategies for existing buildings have often been lost, and the original design principles are forgotten. 

A Retrospective Fire Strategy is intended to replace the original documentation and provide a useful statement of the passive and active measures that are currently in place to protect occupants in the event of a fire. 

Our first stage is to carry out a site visit. During the visit, one of our Fire Engineers will observe the measures that have been put in place to keep occupants safe from fire.  In our second stage, these measures are compared to the prescriptive guidance, as described in the Government guidance documents for fire safety risk assessment to understand any limitations that the current measures in place impose on the building occupancy. Our final stage is to document the findings in a report that follows the best practice structure of a Fire Strategy report, and, in situations where changes have been made which cause the requirements of the FSO not to be met, or occupancy is limited below that which is required, a recommendation is made about how the situation may be improved or managed.  

Note: The Retrospective Fire Strategy is written to support the management of existing buildings, it is not written to support a building application.  If aspects of a premises are undergoing building work and an application to building control is being made you will need a Design Fire Strategy.

The Building Safety Act requires that residential premises over 18m tall have an Accountable Person nominated (building owner, freeholder, or management company), who will have an ongoing duty to assess Building Safety risks and provide a ‘Safety Case Report’ which demonstrates how Building Safety risks are being identified, mitigated, and managed on an ongoing basis. The Retrospective Fire Strategy details the fire risks and fire precautions taken to address these and fulfills the fire safety aspects of the Safety Case report.

Fire Safety Management Scheme

We are increasingly being asked to provide management support to convert an existing Fire Strategy into a series of documents to support the on-going management of the risk of fire in a premises.  Our Fire Safety Management (FSM) suite of documents are written to support the managers of a premises understand the active and passive fire protection systems that are in place, and the management actions that are needed to maintain them. The documents also provide the information that a Fire Risk Assessor needs to understand what provisions for fire safety, are present in a building. This is particularly useful when an engineered approach has been used in the original design of the premises, but when the documentation for the complex system of mitigation's has been lost.  Our FSM package includes:

• FSM Document (summarising the key components)
• FSM Drawings (providing a high level overview of the key components)
• FSM Procedures (documenting the procedures that are required)
• FSM Logbook (recording actions taken to maintain the systems)

The key difference between our Retrospective Fire Strategy and our Fire Safety Management documents is the level of detail.  Retrospective Fire Strategies are technical documents that justify the provision that is in place against legislative requirements, while the Fire Safety Management Documents describe the effective management of the active and passive fire safety systems present.

If a premises does not have an existing fire strategy document, we will need to complete a Retrospective Fire Strategy first so that the design of the premises, in relation to the active and passive systems to manage the risk of fire, is fully understood.