Ensuring effective fire safety strategies for healthcare

Fire safety, and ensuring the skills, competence, and capability of those in hospitals responsible for minimising fire risk and wider fire safety policy, as well as external contractors, has long been a high priority for healthcare estates teams. The issue has assumed ever greater prominence, however, following June 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people died. At October’s ‘hybrid’ Healthcare Estates 2021 conference, Andrew Foolkes, Principal Fire engineer at Tenos, gave a topical presentation on ‘Fire Safety Management Competency’, with a particular focus on healthcare buildings. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Chartered Engineer, Andrew Foolkes, Principal Fire engineer at Tenos, a valueengineered fire safety specialist with offices in London, Bristol, and Manchester, has a BSc (Hons) in Building Surveying from Staffordshire University, an MSc in Fire & Explosion Engineering from the University of Leeds, and is a Member of the Institution of Fire Engineers. His previous roles have included Fire engineer, Senior Project manager, and Building Control surveyor. He began his Healthcare Estates 2021 conference address by explaining that he would be discussing fire safety management ‘with a particular focus on competency’; ‘What it is’, ‘What’s the need for it?’, and ‘What’s the relevance of it?’, and ‘What happens if you’re not competent?’

He explained that he had ‘set off thinking about the subject’ shortly after reading the recommendations of the Independent Review of the Building Regulations and Fire Safety by Dame Judith Hackitt, and the subsequent work by the Competence Steering Group’s Raising the Bar report, published in August 2019. He said: “These have really re-focused the need to demonstrate the competency of those working in the built environment, not just in construction, but also in post-construction, and of those directly involved in the fire safety management of an operational healthcare building.”