I am trying to find out if there is any guidance for the amount of Fire wardens you should have at any one time. Where a building is a different size from the other, some having higher staffing levels and additional floors etc, how do you ensure you have enough?
Looking at the Fire Reform Act and I can only see that you should have a nominated 'responsible person' who has had sufficient training, who through said training can be deemed as competent, but nothing showing guidance on the numbers.
I understand if you haven't got adequate cover, this would be mentioned in a Fire risk assessment that you should review the amount of fire wardens, but I would like some more information to read.
Through 'googling' I have found some information/tables etc, which give a rough idea, but nothing from the HSE or GOV websites (I can imagine it is there, but once again I did not find it)
As far as I am aware there is nothing that specifies, and I doubt there ever will be, because it's an incredibly building-specific thing.
How many essential roles are there? How many people will need to be ushered out? How many are staff and how many are the public? Are those staff members well trained, or are some of them temps / under 18s? Will there be other children? Elderly? Multiple people with disabilities?
How many floors? How many emergency exits? Do these all need to be manned to prevent re-entry, or just some of them?
What about holidays, or staff working offsite?
The only person that has a clue about any of this is yourself, and it's easy to see that each of those variables could well have an effect of the number needed.
For what it's worth, here's how I worked out that 7 was my minimum in a large branch of M&S a number of years back:
Assumptions:
1. General staff are well-trained and able-bodied (or alternative measures were in place) and will self-evacuate.
2.The public will only be in certain locations, which will also have trained staff, who will usher them out / report to the wardens.
3. There are two public entrances, by which people may try to reenter the building. These will both need to be manned by two wardens, as the public can get pushy.
4. Two further wardens may be needed to investigate the source of the alarm and / or assist non-ambulant people.*
5. One person will remain by the fire panel to greet the FRS and provide information.
6. There is always a manager present who will take on the role of accounting for staff, and will not be part of the on-site team.
7. After closing time, the required number drops to 3 due to there being no issue of members of the public trying to enter.
*Under very specific circumstances, do not go back into burning buildings etc.
Repeated false alarms and evacuations tested this, and we found it worked well. To make sure we always had those 7 members of staff, I took the lazy option of massively over-training, and getting wardens to meet at the fire panel during an alarm at which point any excess would be sent to join the others at the assembly point. The alternative was constant checking of rotas, sickness and so forth, which was far more effort than I was willing to put in.
Hopefully that helps. As long as you are confident that you can justify your decisions and that drills are supporting those decisions, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'
Occupation: 46 years experience with a metropolitan Fire Brigade and then Fire Safety Manager for a global brand.
Now sort of retired from the fire safety game, but doing the odd job here and there to keep my grey matter working and as I hate sudoku and havent got the back for an allotment
Location: Sunny London where the streets are paved with gold ;)
We aim to maintain 240 fire wardens in our biggest building, when we only need 80 to do the job of sweeping pre defined areas and reporting their findings to a coordinator. But leave, courses, sickness, offsite working, Flexi working between 07:00 and 19:00 and meetings on other floors soon take a toll.
We have almost 5,000 people in the building, so there's always leavers, those who move depts and those who are promoted. So its a thankless task keeping the numbers up. Recently post covid occupancy numbers have been around 25% of normal levels. So we have had a quarter of wardens in work trying to sweep the entire building. So we have just completed a massive recruitment surge - with the added difficulty of training these extra volunteers whist maintaining social distancing
You will note that unlike witsd's example, our wardens don't investigate the fire, or guard doors. We have security officers in that role. So the legislation is spot on to allow total flexibility
The key is making sure you cover all times by having sufficient spare wardens and keep that allocation under review.
We should have had security guards for securing the main doors, but over the years '3 at all times' became '2 at all times' and then 'frequently 1 poor sod trying to cover both sides of the building whilst also on his lunch break'.
Seemed easier to work with reality and assume that they wouldn't be there, and then they were a bonus if actually available.
We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'
Thanks for this, I understand now why there is no definitive structure to follow. Guess that airing on the cautious side and having more than you need looks like the better way to go!
