Focus on competence in the wake of Grenfell fire

Fire safety is a key responsibility for healthcare estates teams, and June 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire, and the subsequent official review, have ensured an even higher profile for it. Last November saw a new IHEEM Fire Safety Technical Platform formed, set up – like its existing counterparts – to provide guidance, act as a focus group and create policy on technology issues, advise IHEEM’s Council, and manage technical responses and activities. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, recently met with its chair, IHEEM member and former London Fire Brigade firefighter, Maz Daoud, to find out more about the new Platform’s priorities and planned work, and discuss some of today’s key fire safety concerns in healthcare.

I met up with Maz Daoud – in his ‘day job’ Fire Safety engineer at integrated facilities management specialist, Sodexo – at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton – one of the healthcare facilities where he is responsible, on the company’s behalf, for fire safety, and began by asking him about his own professional background, before discussing the aims of the new IHEEM Fire Technical Platform. He said: “My current role as Sodexo Fire Safety engineer involves considerable travel to Sodexo sites at hospitals, and a range of other properties, throughout the UK.”

Of his earlier career, he said: “I began my time in the fire service as a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade, which I joined in 1982, aged 24. It was on subsequent promotion to Station Officer that I moved substantively into ‘fire safety’. I first enrolled as a firefighter, and, after five years with the LFB, moved into training for two years, emerging as a subofficer, two ranks up from when I entered. I then progressed to the next rank of Station Officer, in charge of a watch.”