H&S Question

Diddums · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:29

Dunno if this is even a H&S question but I'm sure the H&S bods on here might be able to point me in the right direction. We have sprinklers in parts of our building which are live. A fire risk assessment was carried out 9 months ago and my colleagues got fed up with chasing the managing agent and gave up, so I don't know if they need to be maintained, removed, etc.

I want to get this report from them but this company is notoriously poor at dealing with anything and will "be in a meeting" when we phone.

I want to throw the book at them to get the report we require because this is a life critical system after all.

Let's say I have many emails asking them for the information and they just ignore them. Can I tell them that they'd be liable should there be a fire and the sprinklers fail?

Any suggestions as to how to kick their arses a bit?

Ta

Rroff · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:33

I would say it was contained in the statement:

Employers (and/or building owners or occupiers) must carry out a fire safety risk assessment and keep it up to date. This shares the same approach as health and safety risk assessments and can be carried out either as part of an overall risk assessment or as a separate exercise.

Other things like fire extinguishers need periodically checking and signed as such so no reason why other fire suppression systems that might be critical for buying people time to get out the building won't also.

You might be best off finding a consultant to help with what you do and don't need and approaches, etc. http://www.hse.gov.uk/oshcr/index.htm

EDIT: Dunno if you've looked at this http://www.hse.gov.uk/comah/sragtech/techmeasfire.htm

Active fire protection systems require to be well maintained to ensure reliability. In particular systems using water and water based foam are prone to rust deposits which can block sprinkler heads and spray nozzles. Procedures should be in place to ensure regular maintenance and testing of systems. Maintenance contracts are often placed with the supplier of the fire protection system. Records of these activities should be kept by site operators.

Diddums · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:44

This is the problem, I look after our systems so I'm having our extinguishers serviced on Thursday, I'm having our our marshall training carried out soon, our fire alarm system is already maintained, and I'm looking in to having a proper fire risk assessment carried out (not that easy post Grenfell, not many people want their names on anything anymore).

The thing is our building comprises two blocks of flats and a massive office. These are all served by the same sprinkler system and I have no idea if this is meant to be maintained or not, which is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. Between me and that information is one of the most useless companies I've ever come across (I just checked them out on the Companies House site, they've renamed 4 times in the last 28 years, have had 4 CCJs against them, a million directors, you get the picture). My colleague has been pestering them for over a year and not got anywhere, so I need to find some muscle to throw at them to get them to pull their finger out.

If I can tell them that they'd be liable in the event of a fire it'd be a huge help but I dunno if I can just do that or what the legalities of that are.

peterwalkley · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:53

Do you have any influence on whether or when they get paid. No payment or slow payment usually gets attention quite quickly.

Rroff · 9 Jul 2018 at 17:01

Diddums said:
If I can tell them that they'd be liable in the event of a fire it'd be a huge help but I dunno if I can just do that or what the legalities of that are.

Unfortunately I'm not an expert in this area though I do a fair bit of the check listing that things are as they are supposed to be to then send on to someone else that is the expert :s

At this point you probably want to go to someone higher up the company quoting from the HSE:

"In particular systems using water and water based foam are prone to rust deposits which can block sprinkler heads and spray nozzles. Procedures should be in place to ensure regular maintenance and testing of systems. Maintenance contracts are often placed with the supplier of the fire protection system. Records of these activities should be kept by site operators."

And bring up the lack of cooperation as obviously you can't adequately complete a risk assessment without that information or have to note the lack of compliance which should be brought up with whoever is in charge of running the facility.