Back to basics

Does the fire engineering profession need to be deconstructed before it can be rebuilt? Denise Chevin listens to the experts on what the future of the industry must look like.

When the Grenfell Phase 2 Inquiry was published in September 2024, there was one recommendation among the 58 that made the fire engineering profession sit up sharply: Recommendation 15. This states that “that the profession of fire engineer be recognised and protected by law, and that an independent body be established to regulate the profession, define the standards required for membership, maintain a register of members and regulate their conduct”.

The inquiry’s chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his panel of assessors pointed out that there is currently no statutory recognition or protection of the title ‘fire engineer’, which means that anyone can describe themselves as one, regardless of training or qualifications. The inquiry highlighted how this contributed to confusion and a false sense of assurance during the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, as contractors and clients assumed competence where it was not guaranteed.

The inquiry therefore recommended that fire engineering should be placed on the same footing as other regulated professions (such as architects and doctors), with clear entry standards, independent oversight and enforceable codes of conduct to ensure competence and accountability.

For many fire engineers Recommendation 15 addressed concerns they already held: that the sector’s regulation of competency, accountability and oversight was weak and that an overhaul was long overdue. Inevitably though, there were those who expressed reservations. Defining competence, shortage of resources, wide variation in practice and training would make registration enormously complicated. And clients would push back on the inevitable costs that it would add to services.

These concerns and other associated issues increasingly came to the fore when the government in Westminster accepted all 58 recommendations in the second phase of the Grenfell Inquiry and appointed a panel of eminent experts (the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel) to translate the inquiry’s recommendations into policy for the fire engineering profession. This included Recommendation 15 and also Recommendation 17: “That the government develop and publish an authoritative statement of the knowledge and skills to be expected of a competent fire engineer, to inform the establishment of the independent body referred to in Recommendation 15.”

The Fire Forward Collective

It was to help inform and support the game-changing work of this panel that an unprecedented meeting of 20 leaders from fire engineering companies and organisations gathered in September this year at the Royal Institution in London’s Mayfair. The meeting was convened by Ben Bradford, Founder and CEO of the fire consultancy BB7 and a Past President of CABE, with support from CABE providing an independent chair for the meeting. His motivation was to help the panel usher in a system that would genuinely help the public and clients to “differentiate the credible from the questionable”.

To encourage frank debate, it was held under the Chatham House Rule, which meant that participants could feel confident that only the sentiment of their views would be captured, and comments would not be attributed to any individual. The following commentary from the gathering – christened the Fire Forward Collective – reflects that convention.

Opening the discussion, Bradford and the roundtable chair Hywel Davies, CABE’s Head of Technical Insight, stressed the urgency of the debate. They expected that the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel would be making an initial report to government shortly and were keen to hear the collective view of leaders in the fire engineering profession. Bradford emphasised that there was a great deal riding on the outcome.

There was much enthusiasm for reaching consensus among participants and, after the meeting, the Fire Forward Collective drew up a statement of ten commitments that would advance the profession in the public’s interest. As Bradford’s letter to the Fire Engineers advisory panel makes clear: “We recognise that the time for reflection has passed and that reform is imperative.”

The time is now

So, what has the group committed to supporting and why? Here are five big takeaways.

1. Registration of individuals and firms

The UK government has accepted the recommendation to regulate fire engineers, and the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel has been set up to advise how to regulate fire engineers. Participants at the meeting considered how this would work in practice, and how the role that fire engineers were registered to perform could be clearly defined. There was also a consensus that registering individuals alone would be unworkable and regulation had to also apply to the companies themselves. The parallel drawn was building control. Under its new regulatory scheme, there are registered building inspectors (individuals) and organisations (companies and local authorities), which have to be registered building control approvers.

The arguments in favour of both are many. It was argued that regulation of firms would set a benchmark of acceptable practice that all in the sector must subscribe to. As one attendee put it: “Those determined to do the right thing will not be undermined by those who cut corners. Commercial people seeking to squeeze costs or stretch margins will be faced with a set of rules that they cannot squeeze or stretch.” Another said: “We do need company registration to give the law-abiding and compliant companies protection from being undercut by the cowboys.”

A further reason for regulating firms relates to the balance of responsibility between employers and employees. It was strongly felt that regulating engineers but not their employers places significant and unfair burdens on the individual engineer, yet not on their employer. The individual carries the most significant risk – loss of licence to practice – without the protection of knowing that their employer faces a similar risk.

The point was made that individual fire engineers would not accept roles that are regulated where they carry personal liability while employing them does not impose similar obligations.

Impracticalities in just registering individuals were also cited. The length of projects often runs into several years, so there was no guarantee the same individual would remain on the project from start to completion. There is also a question of insurance costs – without regulation of firms there will be greater uncertainty and insurance costs will be higher.

The outcome was that the group agreed to “wholeheartedly endorse Recommendation 15 and support the implementation of a new national system of registration and regulation of fire professionals”.

It also agreed to “work urgently with the Industry Competence Steering Group [which reports to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) Industry Competence Committee] to contribute to a thorough competence framework for fire safety engineers and to assist in identifying the fire-related competences required by other engineering disciplines”. And that should apply to both individuals and companies.

The group went on to recommend that a system of regulation be in place by April 2029, when by this time “a registered fire engineer, from a registered fire engineering company, would be required to provide a statement of compliance for all buildings over a prescribed height, size or occupancy”.

2. Fire engineers must sign off on the Golden Thread

Fire engineering has traditionally been a front-end role. As noted at the meeting, fire engineers work with designers on the fire strategy as part of the planning application, and their services are then normally dispensed with. The Building Safety Act is changing that. Before being certified as safe to occupy by the BSR at Gateway 3, dutyholders have to produce a Golden Thread of Information.

This is a comprehensive digital record of information (including photographs of areas where fire-critical work is subsequently covered up) evidencing that a higher-risk building has been built as designed and is therefore safe to occupy.

It was agreed that it was crucial that the fire engineer should play an important role in this Golden Thread process. The group committed that “a registered fire engineer would confirm that the design achieves compliance with the relevant building regulations (in relation to fire safety) prior to construction, and that the building was constructed in accordance with the building regulations (in relation to fire safety) prior to issue of a completion certificate”.

There was a degree of nervousness about this commitment, because it potentially could involve fire engineers signing off the work of other consultants and contractors over whom they had no oversight. The commitment therefore made clear that “these responsibilities must be accompanied by a defined legal framework and supporting guidance to avoid ambiguity in responsibility and liability”.

3. Introduce consistency of roles across the sector

As well as the current confusion in the market about fire engineers (such as their difference from fire risk assessors), it is also hard for clients, peers and the public to get any real sense of a fire engineer’s competence from their titles. An associate level fire engineer in one company could have a very different magnitude of skills, knowledge and experience to someone with the same title in another.

It was acknowledged that regulators could not start prescribing what titles companies bestow on their employees because these are often aligned to other job functions within firms, or elevating someone from engineer to senior engineer when they have only been in the role a few months, as means of recruitment or retaining key staff.

One idea was to introduce visibility and rigour into this situation, by which a fire engineer would need to reach a certain level of skills, knowledge, experience and behaviour to undertake certain roles. The group committed to “working together to agree a level of consistency of roles between companies so that quality, competency and technical knowledge of a specific role are comparable in all firms delivering services in the UK and would draft and publish national guidance”.

4. Capacity concerns

The support for change was widely embraced, but concern about capacity issues was a theme running throughout the meeting. The sector is currently struggling with not enough people joining with the right academic qualifications. And getting new entrants to chartered status requires more members of professional bodies to volunteer their time to interview those applying for that status. It was felt that the group and government had to be cognisant of these types of constraints and reflect that in the timetable for delivering reforms.

However, there was one exception. It was felt peer review of fire strategies should be embedded into best practice for higher-risk buildings and that this was a process that should be happening already. It was acknowledged that this would be an issue for sole practitioners, but members of the group questioned whether it was right for sole traders to be leading on the fire safety on HRBs.

There were questions too as to whether adopting a quality management system should be obligatory and who should carry out peer reviews.

5. Upskilling for the future – and government support

The tone of the meeting was one of enthusiasm to accept change as a badge of professionalism and as a means of differentiating “the good, bad and ugly”, as Bradford described it.

It is clear to all attending that the timetable needs to be carefully thought through, and practical detail carefully drawn up to minimise disruption and not create another delay to building.

Institutions will need to up their game and in turn, professionals will need to offer more support to institutions in a spirit of collaboration. Such substantive changes as proposed will inevitably inflict some pain on companies, professional bodies and clients. Fees will need to rise and institutions will need to raise their game.

Government support would be vital for training and backing those companies that were determined to improve. It would need to offer financial help to universities to set up more postgraduate courses in fire engineering and agree itself to only use certified fire engineering firms on public projects. As one participant summed it up: “The Building Safety Act applies to public sector clients too, and they must follow the new dutyholder and competence requirements they have legislated for rigorously.”

The meeting achieved its aim of sending an unequivocal message to the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel and government: “We accept the case for reform, and we stand ready to play a constructive role in supporting and delivering it.”

Read the Fire Forward Collective’s ten commitments and letter to the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel at b.link/BB7_letter

Image credit | Shutterstock