A week in the life of… a fire safety project officer

Tuesday

A day of FRAs is always followed by a morning of admin, writing up those reports and going through any actions.

In the afternoon, I went to our offices in Bedford to meet with our asset and compliance team. My colleagues are hybrid working so for a meeting with several colleagues, some will be face-to-face and some on Teams. This meeting was about the sprinkler campaign by the National Fire Chiefs Council in May, looking at what information we’d like to get to residents and the best way to make the campaign a success. It was very productive and we’ve now got a plan in place.

Before the day was done, I carried out an FRA of our own office. I do this each time COVID-19 rules change as it affects the number of people coming into the office. While there are no drastic changes each time, it’s vital to ensure our insight and plans are accurate and up to date to keep colleagues safe.

Wednesday

We do a lot of work with the fire services across the counties where our residents live. I used to be a member of Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service (BFRS) and have known people there for many years, so we work well together. This morning, we were talking about BFRS using an empty home in one of our high-rise blocks as a base for a training session for crews. It will allow them to practice dealing with unfamiliar layouts when looking for people in the dark – a key part of training for a fire in a high-rise block – so we’re very keen to support this. We talked through the format of training, access to the property and how to let residents know what’s happening, why and when. I’ll now speak with our voids team to establish whether we have a property available on the dates requested.

Following Monday’s meeting, I visited the resident who’d had a fire at home. Together we determined that there would be some benefit from having additional detection fitted to aid early warning. The recommended standard installation is one detector per floor but in BPHA properties, we fit a heat detector in the kitchen and smoke detectors on each level – and in cases such as this one, we may decide additional detectors are needed.

Later on I carried out an FRA at a low-rise block of flats in Wixams, Bedfordshire.

Thursday

After writing up yesterday’s FRA report, I assessed a block of flats above a garage block. I determined that the original garage construction provides 60 minutes of fire-resistant compartment ceiling, which is more than adequate for the intended use. I followed this up with an email to the senior project officer who made the enquiry.

Next, I travelled to one of our Bedford high-rise blocks to meet with an alarm and sprinkler installer, currently undertaking installation work. Together we walked all accessible areas of the 15-storey block of flats to identify any outstanding works required before the full commissioning of the systems. There are definitely days where I complete my 10,000 steps!

I’m proud to be part of BPHA’s equality, diversity and inclusion network. This is a group of colleagues, established to ensure BPHA promotes, champions and encourages diversity. We challenge the organisation on its policies, procedures and culture to ensure equality and diversity is fairly represented and understood across the organisation. The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence has published a blog on LGBTQ+ and social housing and in our group meeting today, I reported back that it’s a useful and relevant resource for our colleagues, so we’ll use that on our employee intranet in the coming weeks.

My last meeting of the day was on Teams – a regional meeting for the National Fire Safety in Social Housing Group. This is held once a quarter and feeds into the national group, which in turn reports to central government on fire safety matters. It’s a valuable meeting – it allows us to hear trends and activities in other parts of country that we may not be aware of. Before the meeting, I reviewed the Fire Safety Act and Fire Safety Regulations 2021, which are due mid-May, and this was a chance to feed back, along with everyone else. That feedback goes back to the group, who collate and feed it back to the government. And that was the end of my week and it was a fairly typical one – it’s a varied role, busy and very rewarding!