Housing FRAs

Recently, we provided Type 1 and 4 FRAs, retained fire safety support, and a fire service liaison officer for a large housing association involving 3,150 dwellings over an 8 month period.

The professional team were supported by our dedicated office staff who utilised state of the art software to organise and process the workflows involved in delivering high volume FRA contracts.

We undertook a comprehensive review of their policy and procedure and, following on from the fire risk assessment programme and site inspections, we developed a risk matrix against property types (categorising the entire stock list into high, medium and low risk premises) to ensure that the housing association had sufficient information to allocate resources for the remedial works programme (and fire risk re-inspections) based on risk.

We undertook the fire risk assessment programme – a mix of Type 1 to Type 4 surveys. Access was achieved to all blocks and all areas within blocks, ensuring appropriate levels of quality control/validation and any urgent or unacceptable risks were highlighted immediately. We compiled a photographic record of each property recording the full survey and identified all fire safety measures in place as well as any defects. We also captured basic information of known or potential quantities for remedial works required, so that indicative costings could be applied. We collated the remedial works from all the individual fire risk assessments into a single works schedule. A range of indicative costs was prepared to reflect both the cost of all contractor recommendations where the extent of the works was known, and also the potential worst case cost where further site checks/intrusive inspections were recommended. This enabled us to develop a realistic and cost-effective programme of works for the housing association to set appropriate budgets and complete over a number of years.