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Guidance note 5

Introduction

Before the FSEC Toolkit can be used in an individual brigade it must be customised to reflect local operational practice. Once customisation has been carried out, the Toolkit can be used immediately to provide risk assessments based on local information derived from national data sources, which is supplied with the Toolkit.

However, greater value can be obtained from the Toolkit if the local information supplied with it is supplemented with more detailed information provided by the user brigade (data refinement) which must subsequently be kept up to date (data maintenance).

Customisation of FSEC for use by an individual brigade

Determine and input response options for planning scenarios

Planning responses to incidents is a key element of fire and rescue cover. In FSEC, there are two elements to planning response:

(a) Defining a planning scenario - what incident is it reasonable to plan for in this area for this type of risk.

(b) Defining the response options required for the planning scenario - what resources would need to be sent to deal with the planning scenario.

Both these elements should:

Be recorded
Be evidence based
Be auditable
Take into account safe systems of work

FSEC allows the input of different planning scenarios and responses to the same area for:

See table below:

Dwelling fires	Other Buildings
	Hospital
Special services	Care Home
Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs)	HMO
Extrications	Purpose Built Flat, 4 storeys or more
Lift Rescues	Hostel
Lockins/outs	Hotel
Hazardous Chemical Incidents (Hazchem)	House Converted to Flat
Line Rescues	Other Sleeping Accommodation
Ladder Releases	Further Education
Water Rescues	Public Building
Other Special Services	Licensed Premise
Major Incidents	School
Floods	Shop
Bombs	Other Premises Open to the Public
Railway Incidents	Factory or Warehouse
Shipping Incidents	Office
Aircraft Incidents	Other Workplace
Hazardous Chemical (Hazchem) Incidents
Vehicle Incidents

The FSEC toolkit requires inputs for the following:

Planning scenario

The planning scenario defines the response that would be needed for a likely incident within an area. There may be many planning scenarios for a given area for the different types of risk for example an area might have one planning scenario for dwelling fires and a different scenario for RTAs.

Response options

Response options can be broken down into three key elements:

(i) Vehicle type

Each type of vehicle needs to be defined. For example, Pumping appliance 5 might signify a standard pumping appliance with a crew of 5. The costs associated with the vehicle, such as maintenance and capital costs, will also need to be input.

(ii) Vehicle combinations

The potential vehicle combinations that could be used in each planning scenario need to be detailed. For example, a planning scenario that requires '2 pumps' might be adequately served by the following combinations:

2 pumps with 5 riders
2 pumps with 4 riders
1 pump with 5 riders and 1 pump with 4 riders

Each of these possible combinations need to be specified.

(i) Phasing of vehicles

The planning scenario may be such that a phased arrival of vehicles is appropriate. A planning scenario that requires 2 pumps may for example be phased such that the second pump can arrive 3 minutes after the first. The decisions on phasing of vehicle must be evidence based, preferably using a task analysis approach, and should have due regard for the health and safety of firefighters.

FSEC requires the output of this response planning process for its calculations, but it does not provide the mechanism for developing, recording or justifying the planned responses. It is the responsibility of the Fire & Rescue Authority to plan, record and justify planning scenarios and responses to the risks identified.

The FSEC team will need to input the planning scenarios and responses defined by the senior management team. This is likely to include the following tasks:

Input of vehicle types
Input of planning scenarios, including phasing of vehicles
Input of vehicle combinations

This is covered in detail in the FSEC documentation.

The planning scenarios and response options planned to meet them are vital not only to the risk management of the community but also to the health & safety of firefighters. As such, these processes must be overseen by the senior management of the Fire & Rescue Service.

Add essential Other Buildings data

Additional data will be need to be sourced and input on:

HMOs that are 3 storeys or above
Purpose built flats of 4 storeys or above
Houses converted to flats of 3 storeys or above

This task is covered in detail in the documentation provided.

Define areas and groups for risk assessment

The FSEC Toolkit uses a system of 'areas' and 'groups' to define and assess risk.

'Areas' are composed of similar census output areas. 'Areas' may differ between the different sorts of risk. For example, a housing estate might comprise a single area for dwellings fire risk assessment, but it may be part of a larger area for road traffic accident risk assessment.

'Groups' are composed of similar areas. 'Groups' are used to make the risk assessment more robust.

The FSEC team will need to define areas and groups for the Fire & Rescue Authority area. It is suggested that the entire Fire & Rescue Service should be assigned areas and groups for dwellings fires. However, risk assessments for other types of risk, such as flooding, may be confined to one or more geographic areas.

This is covered in detail in the documentation provided for each module.

Data Refinement and Maintenance

Data checking

The data supplied in the toolkit will be the best that is possible to provide at a national level. But the final checking and refinement can only be done at a local level. The data that will need checking and refining includes:

a) Incident data

Incident data will have been geo-coded and formatted to a national format (as specified in DCOL 1/2001). However, even the best geo-coding process will inevitably get some wrong or will not be able to draw sufficient location information from a record to place it accurately. Each incident record will have been given a confidence code, which should provide the user with information about how accurate the geo-code is likely to be. Typical codes will suggest that the geo-code is likely to be accurate to the building, street or locality. Where Fire & Rescue Service's grid references are good, these will have been used to place incidents with otherwise poor location information.

b) Other buildings data

Valuation office records have been used to provide a first estimate of the location and type of Other Buildings in the Fire & Rescue Service. These records have been geo-coded to postcode.

The FSEC Team will need to check these records are correctly located and that they have been assigned to the correct building category.

Further guidance on this is given in the 'Other Buildings' module documentation.

c) Road data

The Integrated Traffic Network layer from Mastermap has been supplied as the base road network. Unfortunately, the data does not contain details of one way streets or other traffic calming measures likely to impact on the speed and direction of travel of emergency vehicles. This data needs to be refined against other data, such as travel times to actual incidents.

Each aspect is covered in detail in the documentation provided for the appropriate module.

Analyse results

The FSEC toolkit produces many outputs. It is suggested that the first run is one which reflects current situation - a 'base case'. This base case would assess the risk as it currently is, and include responses as they currently are. This base case can then be useful for:

a) Checking that the inputs to the toolkit are correct

If the outputs from the toolkit vary significantly from your professional judgement of the area and the service, then it is likely that some of the data inputs are incorrect. Establishing a base case which matches with professional judgement is a useful way of checking that the data inputs are valid.

b) Calibrating the toolkit

The toolkit uses national relationships. This means that for an individual Fire & Rescue Service the toolkit is unlikely to predict exactly what the service is currently achieving. For example, if your Fire & Rescue Service is 5% better at saving lives in dwelling fires than the national average, then the toolkit will over-predict the lives lost in dwellings in your Fire & Rescue Service by 5%.

It must be the responsibility of the senior management of the Fire & Rescue Service to ensure that the Toolkit has appropriate input data and is predicting valid outputs.

Ongoing review and maintenance of data

All data and risk assessments should be the subject of ongoing review and maintenance. This might usefully be prioritised using the following considerations:

the difference the change in data is likely to make to the overall predictions
the speed of change of data
the local interest in data quality

A key element of workload is Other Buildings data. Generic records for Other Buildings can be modified as part of an ongoing programme of risk based inspections. It is suggested that IRMP Guidance note 4 (FSC 1/2004) provides a sound starting point for a risk based inspection programme.

See Annex A1 (available from the foot of this page).