Introduction to Fire Safety Management

3.2.7 Fire safety coordinator
In some cases the fi re safety manager will wish to dele-
gate some of his duties to an individual to coordinate the 
management of fi re safety. This is particularly relevant in 
the construction industry for larger projects, particularly 
those that fall under CDM, where it is recommended 
that each site has a fi re safety coordinator whose role 
is to:
➤
Ensure all preventive and protective measures on 
site are maintained
➤
Assist in the development of the construction site 
fi re risk assessment
➤
Nominate and manage fi re marshals
➤
Ensure contractors operate in a way that minimises 
the risk of fi re
➤
Manage the permit to work system for hot works
➤
Ensure effective arrangements for liaising with the 
fi re service and other emergency service prior to 
and at the time of an incident.
Figure 3.3
Fire fi ghting equipment must be appropriate 
and adequately maintained

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Introduction to Fire Safety Management
42
3.2.8 Fire 
wardens/marshals
The fi re safety manager and/or fi re safety coordinator will, 
in most cases, require the assistance of competent fi re 
wardens or fi re marshals (these terms are interchange-
able). Fire wardens/marshals have two distinct roles; fi rst, 
they will assist in the overall management of fi re safety in 
a workplace (active management) and second, they will 
undertake specifi c duties in the event of a fi re emergency 
to ensure the full and safe evacuation of all people in the 
premises and to ensure, as far as is possible, the risk of 
fi re spread is minimised (see Chapter 10).
3.2.9 Fire alarm verifi er
As part of the evacuation procedure of a premise fi tted 
with an automatic fi re alarm the role of an alarm verifi er 
should be considered. The fi re risk assessment will indi-
cate at what stage an emergency evacuation may be ini-
tiated and, depending upon the risk, this will either occur 
prior to a verifi cation of the alarm, at the same time as 
the alarm is being verifi ed or as a result of the verifi ca-
tion of the alarm.
The specifi c duties of the alarm verifi er include:
➤
Attending the fi re alarm indicator panel at the time 
the alarm sounds
➤
Identifying the reported location of a fi re
➤
Conducting a physical check of the location of the 
fi re to ascertain if there is a fi re or a false alarm
➤
Communicating the situation to the fi re safety man-
ager or fi re incident controller.