Fire Safety Certificate

[cfmonk]

Hello everybody!

 

Not entirely strictly the correct forum but with the lack of a marquee / temporary structures forum to ask, here goes...

 

We have been asked to retrospectively produce fire certificates for a marquee we provided for a Food and Drink festival in August.

 

I don't have one of these and I don't know how I would get one. All my equipment is manufactured to flame retardent British Standards BS 7837 : 1996 / BS 5438 and panels detailing this are sewn onto every piece of PVC. I keep on file the fire certificates from my manufacturers detailing the tests they have done on the PVC, do you think it is this that they want?

 

A quick google has turned up things along the lines of this: http://www.crockerbros.co.uk/documents/firecert.pdf however Crocker are a manufacturer and also, I'm not sure if that document means anything at all... MUTA* are just a trade organisation....

 

Thoughts?

 

* As an aside, I can't get over the fact that an organisation calls itself the Made Up Textiles Association, can anyone ever take them seriously?

[ianl]

depends who you were and who they were

 

if you were a marquee hire company providing a marquee of the size specified by the customer. and they are the customer, then a copy of the manafacturers test certificates is all I'd expect you to provide, you may want to photocopy the info on the pannels and possibly produce a header sheet with your company name saying all your poroducts are to the enclosed certs

 

 

 

however if you are involved in the production, either by providing a production manager or providing safety equipment, or the customer has asked for " a marquee to safely hold 200 people" for instance, then I would expect risk assesments showing the calculations of apropriate floor space and stipulating the number of exits required, signage required and extinguishers required that either you have provided or the customer needs to provide. and possibly even details of the fire procedure, alarm system and assembly points

 

 

 

 

Hello everybody!

 

Not entirely strictly the correct forum but with the lack of a marquee / temporary structures forum to ask, here goes...

 

We have been asked to retrospectively produce fire certificates for a marquee we provided for a Food and Drink festival in August.

 

I don't have one of these and I don't know how I would get one. All my equipment is manufactured to flame retardent British Standards BS 7837 : 1996 / BS 5438 and panels detailing this are sewn onto every piece of PVC. I keep on file the fire certificates from my manufacturers detailing the tests they have done on the PVC, do you think it is this that they want?

 

A quick google has turned up things along the lines of this: http://www.crockerbros.co.uk/documents/firecert.pdf however Crocker are a manufacturer and also, I'm not sure if that document means anything at all... MUTA* are just a trade organisation....

 

Thoughts?

 

* As an aside, I can't get over the fact that an organisation calls itself the Made Up Textiles Association, can anyone ever take them seriously?

[cfmonk]

Thanks for the reply I was personally involved with the festival but my company was just contracted to provide a marquee of 12m x 18m size.

 

The premises licence for the event stipulates that "Fire Certificates" must be provided for all temporary structures and this is the requirement we are trying to satisfy...

 

Thanks for the suggestion of photocopying, it's a good idea! Although I am now going to have to contemplate the logistics of getting a rather large piece of PVC onto my all in one printer / scanner!

[DrummerJonny]

Thanks for the suggestion of photocopying, it's a good idea! Although I am now going to have to contemplate the logistics of getting a rather large piece of PVC onto my all in one printer / scanner!

 

if you're careful, you could probably just take a picture and get just as good an image.

[dsharp7th]

despite the silly name of the Made Up Textiles Association (cake anyone? :unsure: ) it is a useful to know that any company with the 'MUTAmarq' has at least committed themselves to the standards set out in their Code of Practise, and from a hirers perspective, the COP is something that can be consulted if a marquee crew seems to be cutting corners. it also sets out the British Standard fire certifications that are relevant, which seem to be the same as what are on your panels.

 

http://www.performancetextiles.org.uk/publ...ds/mutamarq.pdf

 

on

 

http://www.performancetextiles.org.uk/public/codes.asp

 

here's the relevant bit:

 

6.2.1 Fire retardancy of fabrics

 

6.2.1.1 New manufactured membranes and fabrics should be of inherently

flame retarded fabric or durably flame retarded fabric when tested

to BS 7837. Fabrics tested to BS 5438, tests 2A and 2B, with a 10

second flame application time in each case continue to be

acceptable. (The method of test described in BS 7157 is also

acceptable). Other sheet materials should be Class I surface

spread of flame in accordance with BS 476: Part 7. Materials

should be free of flaming molten droplet characteristics and should

not readily support combustion. All membranes and fabric should

be so labelled.

 

6.2.1.2 Further guidance on flammability of materials is given in

Temporary Demountable Structures Chapter 12

 

there are international fire certification standards that our local fire officer accepts as equivalent to the BS standards. (iirc Saddlespan tents are certified by the Coal Board of Canada).

 

I expect your client is having a safety audit and someone is trying to get their paperwork in order - after the event is not really the time to be checking suppliers' documentation!

[cfmonk]

Exunctly! My initial thoughts were that the thing neither caiught fire not fell over so what's the bother??

 

I know the MUTA stuff off by heart. We are not a member but we use all of their checklists and working practices.

 

My comment about them was because they are, at the end of the day, a trade organisation whos first responsibility is to its members.

[kerry davies]

Could you let us know who exactly is requesting a "fire certificate" as they could well be unaware that there is no longer such a thing. The guidance on outdoor events ( http://www.communities.gov.uk/fire/firesafety/firesafetylaw/ ) with regard to the 2005 changes now ask for RA's rather than certificates:

"THE FIRE SAFETY ORDER

Previous general fire safety legislation

The Order replaces previous fire safety legislation. Any fire certificate issued under

the Fire Precautions Act 1971 will cease to have any effect."

"They" sounds like the LA licensing officer, and may want your MUTAMARQ stuff but should have checked the tents while they were erected .There should also have been an RA from the event organiser dealing specifically with fire for each separate structure. It is utterly pointless to do this after the event and sets a really poor precedent, it's about safety not papertrails!

 

This past weekend I had a licensing officer tell someone that they didn't need SIA badged staff at a licenseable event as long as the bouncers were volunteers, so I don't have too much faith in officialdom. My local fire service has actually removed their own guidance on marquees from their website so that they don't have to enforce it!

[Jivemaster]

The point of this exercise is to help some desk bound person save thair job when they should have done the documentation before the work was done.

 

All "Quality Assurance" is having the paper trail to prove that the choices that were made were the correct ones. This is a collation of the papers after the fact.

[cfmonk]

It is indeed the LA Authority. We did the Fire RAs for the event (quite complex as there were ignition sources all over the place) but it was (apparently, I wasn't told but this is no excuse) a condition of the premises licence that we supplied them with this documentation, to be fair to them though they are not asking for a Fire Certificate those were my words.

 

Exact wording:

"A current certificate showing that the marquee and all hangings used in the marquee and any soft furnishings used are of durably flame

 

retarded fabric or inherently flame-retarded fabric and a certificate should be provided, signed by a competent person, for all such

 

structures erected in connection with your licence."

 

My confusion came from not knowing whether they specifically wanted something from Cascade Events Ltd or whether the copies of my manufacturers ones were fine. I've sent off the manufacturers ones along with photos (thank you Jonny) of the bits attached to the PVC.

 

You are right though that they should have just checked 'em whilst they were up.

[dsharp7th]

Sounds like the LA are retrospectively checking all license conditions were met in order to declare 'No Breach'.

 

Whether marquee fire retardancy is something that the Licensing Act 2003 was intended to concern itself with is another debate! (It doesn't round these parts)