Retrospective Fire Strategy

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 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.  

We are increasingly being asked to then use these findings to prepare a document that lifts the important information from, what can be a complex technical report, into a format where the Fire Risk Assessor can quickly and easily find the information they need to inform a fire risk assessment. This Fire Safety Management (FSM) Scheme includes:

• FSM Document
• FSM Drawings
• FSM Logbook

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 fulfils the fire safety aspects of the Safety Case report.