The Process of Collecting Data to Improve Fire and Rescue Practices - Report Example

Work-based Learning Name Institution Executive Summary This report presents a reflective account of a work-based learning experience. The chief aim of this reflection is to reflect on the research project I undertook; its process, findings and the make out the issues that, upon reflection, I feel could have been tackled better. The paper aims to present the whole experience of the research project, relate theory into practice, and to recommend some interventions to improve fire and rescue practices. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have undertaken the research project. I did learn a lot in the process of collecting data and the actual writing. I learned how to evaluate effective its evacuation procedures as well as the factors that play a part in choosing evacuation procedures. I also got to appreciate this noble career and learned how delicate the evacuation process is. I learned the dangers the firefighters put themselves into whenever they respond to an emergency call. Interestingly, this attracted me the more to the career. Introduction Protection of citizens and employees in any private or public buildings is an issue of great concern. The buildings should have well defined emergency evacuation plan in case of a firebreak out or any other life-threatening emergency. All employees and residents of the building should be familiar and well conversant with the emergency procedures, and should be ready to assist other people in the event that an emergency arises. The issue that surrounded Gherkin building in London was how effective its evacuation procedures were. These procedures are to help save lives or for ensuring as far as possible, that no one suffers injury during emergencies, such as a firebreak out or bomb scares and explosions. It is mandatory that such tall buildings have well set evocation plan for its occupants. I was lucky to have undertaken this project and proud to complete a research. My experiences in this project were tougher than I initially imagined though I got to discover a lot and I am confident that I will get a chance to make use of the findings from the project at a point in the future. This report is aimed at the evaluation of the work-based learning I experienced in the research project, integrate theory into practice, as well as make some recommendations for practice improvement. Critical Reflection Report Failure to reflect upon ones action hinders learning lessons from previous errors. Work based learning experienced can be taken advantage of in different ways to improve on various skills to gain knowledge and attain objectives. The subject on which my research project was based on was Health and Safety in the Gherkin Building in London. In this project, a descriptive approach was employed to seek answers to issues that are connected to the efficiency of the evacuation measures in Gherkin building. I sought to find the answers for a number of questions, namely: how many people that the crisis service personnel’s can expect to come in a full crisis at the Gherkin building? Is the process of evacuation the most suitable and sensible approach to offer protection in London in an occurrence of huge disaster? Are the current evacuation plans the broad enough to enhance the evacuation procedure in case of a massive emergency? I choose to carry out my study on 30 St Mary Axe, the Swiss Re Building better known as the Gherkin building, since it is one of the major, and most recent buildings in London. The safety levels of the buildings, I hypothesized, would be a fair, though not perfect, representation of that of other modern buildings in London. A fire is the solitary utmost threat to the structure as well as contents of every building and, in the instance of a heritage building, the destruction of any authentic material in a fire is irreversible (Proulx, Reid & Cavan, 2004, P. 13). As such, I came to appreciate the added importance of minimizing the likelihood of a fire, through early neutralization of main threats or vigilant management as well as control over threats that cannot be neutralized. However, I came to appreciate that an effective fire emergency response plan in a building is vital in mitigating the adverse effects in case a fire breaks out, and in the case that the threat neutralization mechanism fail and a fire tragedy strikes. Cases of buildings catching fire are normal, and data demonstrate that from January 2002 to mid 2006, an average of 7 buildings in the United Kingdom are lost or damaged each month by fires (Furness & Muckett, 2007, p. 245). After learning all this information, I made up my mind to widen my knowledge, carry on with the same subject, and produce a research project on a building management’s mechanism of ensuring that all occupants who may be exposed to danger are alerted, and swift action is taken to make sure that they are safe. I was very keen to find out the mechanism that is in place to secure assets and prevent or eliminate the spread of the hazard are taken as well as to prevent personal and public assets from being destroyed before finally eliminating the fire by using any appropriate extinguishing technique. To start the project was not as hard as I initially feared. Information on fire emergency response and evacuation procedures in major buildings in general is widely available. Once I had a general knowledge about them, it was easy to focus on a single building. I earmarked a number of possible methods to use for data collection and these included interviews, questionnaires and observations. Finally, I choose to use interviews and observation to carry out the research project as well as researching on the data, which relates to fire emergency evacuation plan and occupational health and safety with the Gherkin building in focus. The Work Undertaken I carefully constructed the questions to ask during the interview and proceeded to contact the Gherkin building management team to request for an interview as well as a guided tour of the building. I had made up my mind to request to interview two officers in the fire and evacuation team. This was to be a junior and senior level officer to be able to get a balanced perspective. This is because senior officers seem to be overly enthusiastic about their programs and hence look at them through rose tinted glasses while junior officers may at times be highly critical of the same plans. I was lucky to be able to schedule an interview and carry it out with the senior-most officer and one junior officer. I was also able to schedule a tour of the building to see how it was constructed to accommodate the fire and evacuation mechanism. At this point, upon reflection, I feel I ought to have also integrated questionnaires as a method of data collection to get a more wide response. These questionnaires would have targeted the users of the building as the respondents. After carrying out the interviews and the tour in that order, I set out to analyze the information collected. This was quite easy considering that the report was of a qualitative and descriptive nature. According to the findings in the report, Gherkin building has practical emergency evacuation procedures, which include the emergency procedure action plan and the roles of the managerial team of the structure to the required responsibility of the occupants. Even though I agree that these methods are effective, I hold that they should be improved by posting a printed copy of instructions, on what the occupants need to do during a fire incidence on strategic places on the building’s wall, rooms and in elevators. Even though the building’s authority outlines the fact that evacuation should begin with persons who are in need of assistance, caution should be taken that, anything that can fuel the spread of the fire, and even jeopardize the life or the saving crew should first be gotten rid of. This approach ensures that all the parties in the scenario are catered for, and the most exposed are provide with safety, which prevents the occurrence of more injuries. The international emergency evacuation organization acknowledges and advocated for this approach to be adopted in fire evacuations. More insight to the approach indicate that, not only do the most vulnerable get positioned in safer paces, but also that the life of the rescuing crew is not put at risk. The procedure is given more weight by the fact that, all attention is directed first to life saving (Castka, Bamber, Sharp & Belohoubek, 2001), which it advocates for after which other plans are brought to effect. In my report, I failed to indicate, whether the building, has any fire-extinguishing apparatus and put in place for the effective emergency fire fighting. The installation of fire extinguishers, sprinklers and water hosepipes, in and around the building, assists in the immediate control of the spread of fire and further facilitate the evacuation process (Furness & Muckett, 2007 p.247). Gherkin Building Evacuation Procedures During my research project, I found out that Gherkin building has an alarm system that goes off in case of a fire outbreak. I found out that after the alarms go off, all users of the building should be evacuated, and this is expected to last for not more than 30 seconds after the siren is heard. The users in this building, I found out, are advised to stop all undertakings and get out of the building at once. This takes place though the allocated danger exits, and I found out in Gherkin building safety personnel are assigned the duty of directing the occupants on the safe way out and these exits are color coded for easy identification. I discovered that all evacuation process in the building starts with persons who need any form of assistance. I found out that the Gherkin building superintendent should be in a white hat in times of emergency while the level wardens and their safety counterparts are supposed to be in carroty hats. In the project, I also found out that, in Gherkin building, the lifts jam automatically such that no one can have access to their services in times of danger. The Gherkin building, I found out, has instead emergency windows (hidden, to avoid cases of suicide and misuse) where one can get out and be taken into safety through a chopper. In case of a bomb threat in Gherkin building, the safety team advices the occupants not to set the alarm system off, instead one should try to communicate to the safety team and they will gather as much information as possible. The team then will set out to find the location of the bomb, its features, and physical shape and the likely time of explosion if the occupant communicating the threat does not have the details. In case the occupant has received the call of a bomb threat, he or she is advised by the safety team to entice the caller into a longer conversation during the time, which he or she is supposed to call the emergency telephone on xxx2222, and report the threat to the team. I learnt that the security team after receiving the threat then advice everyone to evacuate and move to a safe place from the Gherkin building as they follow the safety personnel direction. Reflection on Evacuation Procedures and Evaluation on Effectiveness In the project, I also evaluated the Gherkin building safety procedures. The requirement that all evacuations in this tower start with persons who are in need of assistance is very reasonable and practical. This method, I learned, is meant to prevent the prospects of the disadvantaged sustaining injuries. It is common in various towers to jam elevators in an emergency, but the 40 floor Gherkin building out to be a special case. The practice of jamming the elevator such as when people are almost trapped by a fire in, say, 28th floor is ill advised. Occupants should be able to use the elevators to evacuate. I found out that the Gherkin building evacuation procedures are made more effective by the initial building design and structure accounting for emergencies and evacuation of the occupants. The building also, I found, boasts many experts and this was a plus. Amongst all the approaches that are embraced in Gherkin building, I learned, the outlining of roles and responsibilities, make the evacuation procedure more reasonable. I learned that the building has clearly spelt relative actions to take in varied dangerous circumstances and this is another very practical approach that facilitates the effectiveness of evacuation procedures in Gherkin building. Gherkin building’s evacuation procedures are very reasonable and effective to curb the situations, I found out. It is sensible to conclude that, the evacuation procedures that I found in the Gherkin building are practically very effective approaches in case of emergencies though the procedure could benefit from a few changes mentioned already. I found out that the building methodologies to be very practical. Its mechanisms of managing emergencies are modernized. I found out that Gherkin building evacuation procedures are significantly effective in the containing of emergencies and risky happenings. The management of the building safety would easily be rated as one of the most effective towards the risk management in the UK. Why the Management Settled on the Particular Evacuation Procedures While carrying out my project, I learned that the choice of the evacuation procedures in a building is made based on various critical factors. In this case, of Gherkin building, I learned the management team was influenced first by safety consciousness (the need of fleeing occupants from danger and the safety staff). Secondly, the management was influenced by the effectiveness and efficiency: this is how the evacuation methodology is able to get the most victims out of the Gherkin building within the shortest duration possible during crisis. According to Curtis, (2006, pp. 42), this is a variable that cannot be compromised and incorporates the evaluation of evacuation procedures before implementation to ascertain their likeliness of being reasonable and applicable. Thirdly, I learned that the management was influenced by cost. The management considered cost-effective procedures, which are up to standard. Installation, operation, and maintenance costs were considered. Ease of access, training, and development of the safety staff, sought advantage, and standards along with quality played a bigger role in the choice of the evacuation procedures in Gherkin building. Finally, I learned that legal requirements also play a vital part of determining the choice of to be implemented method of evacuating the victims in times of crisis. Reflection and recommendation on how to improve practice A proper fire emergency effective program that is easy to practice in the process of evacuation is a critical thing to all storied buildings, and Gherkin building is not exempted from such standards. I found the methodologies and plans of the Gherkin building that are associated with the evacuation process in case of emergencies like fire outbreaks and bomb attacks or threats to be effective. However, a few improvements as I have indicated in this reflective account need to be put into consideration. I learned that choice and implementation of the emergency effective evacuation procedures need time, finances, and expertise with diligent minds, to make a choice based on sought advantage and how well each approach met the stipulated crisis management standards. I would also recommend that with the consultation of the international body on occupational health, safety, the building’s management team, should re-evaluate, and institute, more state of the art, fire emergency evacuation plans to match the building’s status and time. Conclusion This is a reflective account of my fire and rescue service research project based on the Gherkin building plan and mechanisms. The study opened my eyes and offered sneak previews to how major buildings in the UK plan their emergency rescue mechanisms in case of fires and to some extent bomb scares. This study was worthwhile and extremely enlightening in the field of emergency fire rescue mechanism in high-rise buildings. The project showed me how delicate the process of setting up these mechanisms can be and how important they are. It prepared me for future extensive comparative studies in the field of fire emergency management, in storied buildings in UK. Bibliography Castka, P., Bamber, C., Sharp, J., and Belohoubek, P. (2001) Factors Affecting Successful Implementation of High-performance Teams. Team Performance Management; 7:123 Curtis, V.2006. Legal Considerations for Fire and Emergency. Manchester: Delmar Cengage Learning. Furness, A. & Muckett, M. (2007). Emergency Evacuation Procedure: Introduction to Fire Safety Management. New York, NY: Elseiver Ltd. Proulx, G., Reid, I. M. A., & Cavan, N. R. (2004). Human Behavior Study, Cook County Administration Building Fire, October 17, 2003 - Chicago, IL (Rep. No. Research Report No. 181). Ottawa, Ontario: National Research Council of Canada. Read More