While online risk assessment tools are not new, tying the process up with a detailed inventory of fire safety measures, assets and procedures is a challenge, especially on complex sites like airports. Colin Simpson outlines a new initiative.

 

When the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 was introduced in England and Wales, it shifted the responsibility for fire safety away from fire brigades and placed

Airport environments are complex ones in terms of fire safety Photo © BAA Limited

it firmly on the shoulders of building owners and occupiers. It also heralded a greater focus on the prevention of fires. It affected just about every building, of every shape, size and use – excluding single-occupancy dwellings – in England and Wales. This, of course, includes airports.

From the outset, the International Aviation Fire Protection Association (IAFPA) was concerned that this would place an enormous burden on airport managements. Time has proven this apprehension to be well founded. Indeed, while the British government has, in its first review of the performance of the Fire Safety Order, expressed its general satisfaction with the way the Order has bedded in, the facts paint a somewhat different picture.

The review showed the 60 per cent of what the Fire Safety Order refers to as responsible persons were unaware of their responsibilities. Hardly surprising that there appears to be a lack of confidence in the ability of any single responsible person to manage complex or multi-location sites. At the same time prosecutions under the Order are on the increase, there is no credible accreditation system for airport risk assessors, and no clear or universally accepted understanding of who could be considered what the Order describes as a competent person.

Now, shift the scenario away from any vague notion of a typical building and turn the spotlight onto an airport. Just about every challenge is heightened.

Airport-specific focus
The IAFPA recognised that a robust solution was needed that ensured that the correct person or other duty holder is clearly identified and recorded for each and every airport activity and asset. Those conducting fire risk assessments – the cornerstone requirement of the Fire Safety Order – would have to have some form of realistic accreditation and a thorough understanding of the airport environment. With such a diversity of locations and operations, and with such high-value mission-critical assets, the solution would have to be easily tailored to each airport’s precise circumstances and requirements. The information would also need to be securely available only to authorised personnel, some of whom may work remotely from the particular airport.

We discussed our thoughts at length with John Trew, airport fire manager at BAA Heathrow Airport during the IAFPA's annual conference in 2007 and discovered that we shared many of the same concerns and aspirations. In common with the experience of many airport operators, the Fire Safety Order had generated reams of pages of risk assessments that could not be easily interrogated, interpreted or integrated.

 

Any internet-based programme would need to be a universal solution that would work equally well for both large and small sites and which would also need little or no special training. It would also have to provide real-time tracking of actions, communications, and progress, store all of the critical information needed to monitor assets or respond to a crisis, and not require any unique software.

A more detailed evaluation of the programme highlighted a number of airport-relevant features. Every asset should be easily identified and plotted on a mapping system, from where asset records could be located and relevant events relating to any of them could be flagged-up. The information held on any asset could include compliance plans, evacuation strategies, statutory licenses – such as petroleum licences – and work routines. There would also be the facility to store any number of photographs of the particular asset and the overall airport.

A traffic light identification system would make it possible to view and rank the importance of all significant findings and track their progress through to satisfactory completion. The programme would also be a safe central depository for operational, fire safety, security and health and safety procedures, enabling them to be accessed by staff with the appropriate security clearance and audited during or following a crisis. With the stored information available in an instant, a method of asset stewardship would be indexed and viewed dynamically.

Significantly, all of this information should be capable of being accessed by approved personnel from anywhere in the world, and an email list or pdf of any significant findings could be in the hands of the responsible person or competent person within minutes.

Solution development
It was agreed that the airside team at BAA Heathrow would work alongside the IAFPA to first establish a number of strategic organisational goals. BAA's John Trew summarised these under four headings: help; improve; deliver; and save. Help, in the form of the shortening of effective emergency response times, the protection of lives and airport assets, and the maintenance of a consistent approach to fire risk assessments and asset stewardship. Improve goals included the shortening of post-incident recovery times, greater efficiency in service delivery and faster maintenance turnaround times. In relation to deliver, John identified the need to ensure the delivery of the right people and resources to the right location at the right time. Finally, in the save box he identified the need to cut costs, avoid wasting effort and do away with unnecessary resources.

However, while the direction of the development programme has been guided by BAA's requirements and working practices, the solution, supplied by Kingfell plc, has been devised to suit any airport environment.

Following the loading of pre-inspection details, completed risk assessments are added to the programme – called InterAct FRA – via an Internet connection. These details populate the database in readiness for interrogation by the airport's fire, health and safety and security management. The information contained in the risk assessments is then used to create or update particular asset records. This ensures that there is a comprehensive and complete overview of every asset, together with its precise location, which can be seen in context on the programme's site map, plus contact details of the now clearly identified responsible person or other duty holder. To enable this information to be printed for off-line use during any subsequent inspections, it can also be accessed in a Microsoft Excel-style format. A fire safety systems area of InterAct FRA ensures that the airport has a complete overview of all of the fire systems, which is updated every time a change is made.

Effective asset management
Accountants are fond of the expression: What you cannot measure, you cannot manage. Certainly, the sentiment applies to risk assessments and asset stewardship.

In reality, fire risk assessments, asset records, compliance plans and evacuation strategies can all be produced and stored as paper documents, as the vast majority still are. However, what that approach cannot do – and certainly not for sites with an airport's complexity – is to allow the process to be properly managed. Paper-based systems are simply too slow, too labour intensive and too prone to inaccuracy to be of any real management value.

The InterAct FRA solution being trialled by BAA overcomes these obstacles using a combination of interactive maps, detailed asset plans and the traffic-light alerting protocol. The location maps show the position of all the airport's assets and enable the particular asset's status to be updated. From a fire planning viewpoint, these maps also enable nearby risks to be identified, explosion zones to be ascertained and effective firefighting plans to be devised. Detailed floor plans for every asset show the position and type of every detector, call point, emergency lighting luminaries and fire control panel.

The traffic-light protocol provides an immediate overview of the risk status of each asset and highlights any current significant findings; green, amber and red icons are generated depending on the answers given to a BAA bespoke risk profile, visually identifying risk areas. These colours are generated and updated automatically from new data as it is entered.

The InterAct FRA programme also has the facility to include the airport’s standard operating procedures. This dramatically improves response times on risk-based operational procedures, provides a broader knowledge base of information, assists in ensuring that every key safety aspect is considered, and makes available a critical checklist for all current identified scenarios. This information can prove invaluable at the onset of an incident. It is also an indispensible tool at the planning stage, when deciding on training needs, during an incident, and throughout post-incident recovery operations.

There is no denying that we live in troubled times, with many major cities around the world in a constant state of high alert. In these circumstances, preparedness is not an option; it is essential. When a crisis breaks, everything must be in place to minimise the impact and resolve the challenges in the shortest time and most effective manner. It is not an opportunity for learning on the job.

Colin Simpson is chairman of the International Aviation Fire protection Association (IAFPA). Formerly with Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service, he is now a consultant with Kingfell plc. An online demonstration of the InterAct FRA can be arranged by contacting Kingfell plc on +44 (0) 845 2582 844.