DDS (International) Limited – NSI Approved Company

When the Fire Safety Order was introduced in 2006, a legal requirement for all businesses to have a Fire Safety Risk Assessment was introduced, and for this to be “Suitable and Sufficient” and also carried out by “Competent Persons”. In simple terms, that’s the Law and that it what you need to do to fulfil your statutory requirement.

However, as usual with UK law, whilst it is very specific in parts i.e. you must have a fire risk assessment, it then gets non-specific when it introduces the requirements for it to be “Suitable and Sufficient” and also carried out by “Competent Persons”; as in both of these cases the legislation does not detail exactly what the requirements are for either of these!

Unfortunately, over the past few years we have seen widespread and many different interpretations on what these two phrases mean by the Enforcing Authorities, and even by different inspecting officers within the same authority. There has also been an increasing trend of successful prosecutions to businesses where (normally following a fire related incident) the courts have decided that the FRA was not “Suitable and Sufficient” and that in some instances the fire risk assessors were not “Competent” to carry out the assessment in the first place. The worst case scenarios for these instances have seen heavy fines or imprisonment for the businesses, owners and risk assessors.

Whilst this paints a very bleak picture, we have always prided ourselves on leading the way as far as fire risk assessments, quality and competence, are concerned. As a result of this we have NEVER had to deal with any enforcement proceedings for any of our clients, which underlines the quality of what we do.

However, as the Fire Industry moves forward, the relevant professional organisations and public bodies have sought to set a national standard or guidelines. In conjunction with this, accreditation bodies have been set up so that specialist companies and organisations can adopt these standards and by doing so can demonstrate industry best practise for ensuring “Suitable and Sufficient” fire safety risk assessments and “Competent” fire risk assessors.

The ultimate objective of these national standards is to set guidelines that enforcing agencies can benchmark against, and also provide assurances to organisations seeking professional services that the Fire Risk Assessments and assessors meet these set criteria.

As part of this process the National Security and Safety Inspectorate (NSI) in partnership with the British Association of Fire Engineers (BAFE) introduced a National Scheme for accrediting companies and individuals providing Fire Safety Risk Assessment services, to demonstrate that those approved and accredited meet the national guidelines.

In early 2014, DDS (International) Limited became one of the first companies nationally to be awarded with accreditation, and since then we have been revisiting your fire risk assessments during their annual reviews to ensure that they are aligned with the new standards, and also these are then awarded an NSI certificate of compliance, which is now acknowledged by the Fire and Rescue service as demonstrating that your FRA meets the requirements.

NSI recently collaborated with BIFM (the British Institute of Facilities Management) and ITN Productions in the making of a documentary film showcasing various aspects of facilities management. The film highlights the added value to customers using the services of NSI approved companies in Guarding services, security systems and fire safety. The new film can be watched below.