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Fire Safety Awareness Week a roaring success for Health & Safety expert

The first ever Fire Safety Awareness Week hosted by leading testing, inspection and certification firm Bureau Veritas last month has officially been a roaring success after high engagement amongst clients made it the most popular event in the business’ history.

The Fire Safety Awareness Week saw a collection of presentations and webinars on topics such as fire risk assessment, building regulations and fire science and engineering, offering steps to ensure duty holders understand their responsibilities and comply with relevant regulations around fire and life safety. The week then culminated in the companies’ first live Q&A session with key technical specialists within the business.

Testament to its huge popularity and the rising importance and awareness of fire and life safety, the sessions were engaged with by a wide variety of Bureau Veritas’ clients in the fire safety, construction and retail industry as well as the public sector.

Steve Highwood, Building & Infrastructure Market Lead at Bureau Veritas, said: “We launched our fire safety awareness week with the aim of providing both our clients and those who don’t yet use our services, with a solid overview of responsibilities when it comes to fire and life safety.

“With many businesses consistently facing pressure on resources, along with the added complication this year of COVID-19, achieving compliance and meeting best practice standards is no mean feat. And the statistics speak for themselves. Of the 50,000 fire safety audits carried out by Fire and Rescue services in 2018/19, 15,000 of these were rated as unacceptable, resulting in an average fine of £27,500 per business¹. This wholly demonstrates the importance and need for duty holders to have a greater understanding of fire safety and their responsibilities within it.

“We’re delighted with the success of our fire safety awareness week and that we were able to provide invaluable expertise and in-depth knowledge to a variety of industries. Building regulations especially has seen a number of updates and changes following the outcomes of the Hackitt Report last year, thus our webinars on Approved Document B and Fire Science helped viewers to understand more about these amendments and assess these against their own practices. Equally, with a number of fire and fire door risk assessments being delayed

due to Covid-19, our FRA presentation and infographic highlighted the importance of keeping up to date with inspections, both in terms of safety and financially for businesses.”

Those who were unable to attend the awareness week need not worry, as all of the information and webinars are available to catch up on.

Building Regulations day

Approved Document B fire safety live webinar

Fire Engineering day

Behind the Project video

Fire Risk Assessment day

Infographic on fire risk assessment safety and compliance
Fire Risk Assessment live webinar

Fire Science day

Safety at Christmas video
A day in the life of a Fire Scientist

Fire Safety day

Building Safety Bill and the Golden Thread live webinar
Live Q&A session with Bureau Veritas specialists who answered all questions surrounding fire safety

For further information on how Bureau Veritas can support with your fire and life safety compliance strategy, please visit www.bureauveritas.co.uk