Fire Safety Management Plan - Term Paper Example

Fire Safety Management Plan xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lecturer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date Fire Safety Management Plan Introduction The University of Central Lancashire in Preston has a moral and legal responsibility under the Fire Safety Regulatory Reform Order 2005 – RR (FS) O. The university has the duty and responsibility to ensure safety of all persons who enters the university compound. The university also has obligations to act in accordance with requirements of fire safety act and fire regulation as well as other fire safety regulations. This will involve making sure that there is proper maintenance of fire procedures and systems, training requirements are well agreed to ensure that students, employees and other staffs are aware of their fire safety responsibilities (Beard & Carvel 2005, 114). Fire is a considerable risk to any organization with large infrastructures. This fire safety plan is prepared to help the university to manage fire risk appropriately (Chow 2001, 56). Fire Safety Policy Statement University of Central Lancashire recognizes that fire is a major risk to students, staff, members of public and visitors in the institution. We are a responsible institution and we take fire and safety duty seriously. The university has formulated this fire and safety policy to help comply with legal duty to students, staffs and visitors under the fire safety order of 2005. This will include provision of safe places of learning and working with minimal fire safety risk. Owing to this significance, the university will ensure that this fire and safety policy is a priority in all vicinity under its control (Peha 2005, 11). Fire Safety Management Structure This structure entails all the persons responsible for the various tasks in ensuring fire safety. Fire safety is not a one-person responsibility but a duty for every person (Levin & Kuligowski 2005, 219). As such, these persons are tasked with ensuring fire safety at all times in the university. Vice-Chancellor Overall fore and safety responsibility but delegates to other nominated persons Deans Making sure there is effective fire and safety governance (Purkiss & Li 2013, 78) Allocating resources to fire marshals for carrying out their tasks Ensuring completion of fire risk evaluation HR director Development, implementation and examining of fire safety policy Ensuring availability of specialist staffs regarding fire safety Finance director Making sure that there is sufficient and available resources for implementing this policy Fire safety manager Have authority, sanctions, resources and powers for ensuring every day safety management of the university. Ensuring maintenance and essential repairs are in order. Fire marshals Evacuation duties as indicated in the evacuation procedures Regular fire checks Creating awareness of fire drills, fire alarm and sprinklers Evacuation Strategies These strategies arranges for evacuation of the buildings upon discovery of fire. Simultaneous evacuation will involve everybody reacting to fire warning alarm and signal upon noticing fire, and then escaping to fire assembly point from the buildings (Kobes 2010, 8). Fire alarm and signals initiate this strategy. Another strategy is vertical phased evacuation. Involve first evacuating area where fire is discovered and then warning the other people to evacuate the building on fire (Shi & Chen 2009, 339). The floor where fire is detected and the above floor are evacuated first. Another strategy is silent alarm evacuation. Used where the general alarm is not appropriate to start immediately. Lastly, there is defending in place strategy (Cherniak & Zadorozhny 2010, 155). This is used where fire surrounds people and there is no exit available. Emergency Response If there is, fire or you notice fire: Raise the fire alarm immediately. Do not use the elevator incase of fire. Do this by activating the nearest fire alarm point by pressing them hard against the glass using your thumb. They are located on corridors of every floor. Then evacuate immediately using the nearest fire exit available. Do not stop to collect anything or to shut windows. Go directly to the fire assembly point immediately (Upadhyay et al. 2008, 34). If you hear the fire alarm: leave the building immediate by using available fire exits. Do not use the elevator incase of fire. Go to the fire assembly point. Look for a visitor, member of public or friend you were with at the assembly point. Fire marshals - on hearing the fire alarm: Check classes and rooms are empty and liaise with director of students for all persons. Contact the fire brigade and give them all information concerning the evacuation. Fire Alarm and Detection The buildings will be fitted with fire alarm and detection system. The system will have sensors for detecting fire and trigger response for raising alarm. The fire alarms will be fitted in all open places within the building, along the corridors and staircases (Chen et al. 2006, 67). There will be regular assessment of the proper working conditions of the fire alarm and detection systems to ensure that they are in a good working condition (Töreyin et al. 2006, 53). Fire Prevention and Arson Awareness This policy document contains fire prevention guidelines. The guidelines are ways of preventing fire in the university building. These are; The university will install smoke alarms at every level of the buildings. Changing of the smoke alarm batteries will be on regularly basis to ensure that they are in good working conditions (Palmer et al. 2007, 108). Keeping away any flammable objects from the university compound unless permitted to do so Keeping clutters away from any type of furnace or heater Cleaning the lint trap after use The university will also install carbon monoxide detectors throughout the building Never interfere with the electrical or lighting system in the university These measures are very crucial in fire prevention and arson awareness. Routine Procedures for Staff The staff and students have a duty and responsibility of ensuring that the fire safety systems in the university are in their place and in good working conditions. Routine procedures will involve training, assessment and coordination. There will be regular staff and student training to equip the staff and students will the necessary skills for fire safety. The human resource will ensure that there are specialists in the university responsible for training. Selection and Control of Materials The finance department will be responsible for ensuring that resources are available for fire safety equipments and materials. There will be selection and purchase of fire safety materials by the university in liaison with the Department of Communities and Local Government as well as fire safety specialist hired by the university. The university will appoint a committee for controlling fire safety materials. Maintenance and Testing of Fire Safety Systems This is a very important management task. There will be regular testing of fire safety systems. The testing will be on weekly basis to ensure that they are in good conditions. Fire safety manager will be responsible for maintenance of fire safety systems in the university (Purkiss & Li 2013). The university has formulated a clear fire safety systems maintenance program. Maintenance and testing will be done by the only authorized university fire safety personnel. These will ensure that the university complies with moral and legal obligations of maintaining satisfactory standards for all fire precautions provisions (Dhillon & Liu 2006, 28). This will range from routine inspection of the extinguishers to daily clearance and checking of escape means. Decoration, Alterations and Extensions The buildings will have decorations that are fire warnings. The fire alarm system and other fire safety equipments and materials will be decorated with red colour so that they can conspicuous and visible without constraining. Alterations will be made where necessary, that is, when integrating new materials and equipments to make the system better. There will be available areas of extension within and outside the building. This will allow fire brigade and future extensions to be possible. There will be communication of alterations and extensions to all staffs and students during the regular testing and training in order to keep them informed. Staff Training and Fire Drills Staff training will be conducted by a fire safety specially. The training will be on a regular basis on every week to keep them updated. Fire drills will help the staff and the students to practice on what to do in occurrence of fire. There will be routine scheduled fire drills in a space of two months as (Smith & Trenholme 2009, 561) recommends. Fire Risk Assessments The fire safety manager will carry out weekly and regular review of fire risk assessment in the buildings. These assessments will indicate what needs to be done to prevent fire as well as keep people safe. The manager will be required to keep record of the assessment as required by the fire act. The manager will; Identify fire dangers and hazards Identify persons at risk Assess, reduce or remove the risks Record the findings prepare emergency plan and provide training A competent person (fire safety manager) will carry out the fire risk assessment. Record Keeping The university will keep record of all fire safety information and activities that take place. Every training, evaluation and assessment, alterations, extensions and any other fire safety related activity will be on record and forwarded to the Vice-Chancellor (Hertz 2005, 447). Audit and Updating of This Manual Updating of this manual is every time there is assessment, training or any other activity that warrant inclusion in this manual. The fire safety manager and the university the Vice-Chancellor will authorize the updating. An external organization will carry out regular auditing of this fire management plan and the fire safety manuals in the university (Ridley & Channing 2008, 67). References Beard, A., & Carvel, R. (Eds.). 2005. The handbook of tunnel fire safety (pp. 113-115). London: Thomas Telford. Chen, T. H., Yin, Y. H., Huang, S. F., & Ye, Y. T. 2006. The smoke detection for early fire-alarming system base on video processing. InIntelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, 2006. IIH-MSP'06. International Conference on. IEEE. Cherniak, A., & Zadorozhny, V. 2010. Towards adaptive sensor data management for distributed fire evacuation infrastructure. In Mobile Data Management (MDM), 2010 Eleventh International Conference on (pp. 151-156). IEEE. Chow, W. K. 2001. Review on fire safety management and application to Hong Kong. International Journal on Engineering Performance-Based Fire Codes,3(1), 52-58. Dhillon, B. S., & Liu, Y. 2006. Human error in maintenance: a review. Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, 12(1), 21-36. Hertz, K. D. 2005. Concrete strength for fire safety design. Magazine of Concrete Research, 57(8), 445-453. Kobes, M., Helsloot, I., de Vries, B., & Post, J. G. 2010. Building safety and human behaviour in fire: A literature review. Fire Safety Journal, 45(1), 1-11. Levin, B. C., & Kuligowski, E. D. 2005. Toxicology of fire and smoke.Inhalation toxicology, 205-228. Palmer, E. J., Caulfield, L. S., & Hollin, C. R. 2007. Interventions with arsonists and young fire setters: A survey of the national picture in England and Wales. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 12(1), 101-116. Peha, J. M. 2005. Regulatory and policy issues protecting public safety with better communications systems. Communications Magazine, IEEE, 43(3), 10-11. Purkiss, J. A., & Li, L. Y. 2013. Fire safety engineering design of structures. CRC Press. Purkiss, J. A., & Li, L. Y. 2013. Fire safety engineering design of structures. CRC Press,78 Ridley, J., & Channing, J. (Eds.). 2008. Safety at work. Routledge. Shi, J., Ren, A., & Chen, C. 2009. Agent-based evacuation model of large public buildings under fire conditions. Automation in Construction, 18(3), 338-347. Smith, S. P., & Trenholme, D. 2009. Rapid prototyping a virtual fire drill environment using computer game technology. Fire safety journal, 44(4), 559-569. Töreyin, B. U., Dedeoğlu, Y., Güdükbay, U., & Cetin, A. E. 2006. Computer vision based method for real-time fire and flame detection. Pattern recognition letters, 27(1), 49-58. Upadhyay, R., Pringle, G., Beckett, G., Potter, S., Han, L., Welch, S., & Torero, J. L. 2008. An architecture for an integrated fire emergency response system for the built environment. Read More