Taking a responsible and holistic approach

HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, spoke to Adair Lewis, technical manager at the Fire Protection Association, for a run-down of some of the most important things for those responsible to consider.

Adair Lewis BSc, CEng, FIFireE, CChem, MRSC, CPhys, MInstP, has extensive knowledge, expertise, and experience in all aspects of fire safety and fire prevention, having, for instance, been one of the first engineers to achieve recognition on both the life safety and property protection streams of the Institution of Fire Engineers’ Register of Fire Risk Assessors. The author of ‘The Prevention and Control of Arson’, and co-author of ‘Fire Risk Management in the Workplace’, he has contributed to many other FPA publications, as well as assisting with the drafting of several Home Office and HSE guidance documents. Before joining the FPA in 1987, he served as a forensic scientist at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, for the latter 10 years as head of the Fire Investigation Unit, during which he attended ‘the scene of almost every notable fire in the south east of England’, including those at Kings Cross underground station, the Savoy Hotel, the Ladbroke Grove (Paddington), rail crash, and the Colindale construction site fire. Today he utilises his experience to reduce incidence of fire in a wide range of domestic, commercial, and industrial settings. Alongside managing the FPA’s safety audits and fire risk assessments, he has himself undertaken numerous such procedures, including on NHS sites. He advises on fire safety in hotels both in the UK and overseas, regularly lectures – on subjects ranging from fire risk assessment to deliberate fire-raising – and represents the Association on a number of BSI and other international standards committees.

Regular risk assessments