FIRE SAFETY INSPECTION SCHEME
(An initiative of IFE and AHPI)
There have been a series of fire incidents, some with grave consequences lately especially in healthcare sector.
While fire safety is covered under regulations in each state with a designated regulatory authority, what is needed is a panel of competent inspection agencies which are available to healthcare industry, or for that matter, any building owner, who may wish to ascertain where he stands as far as compliance to regulations and standards is concerned to be able to address the gaps and be better prepared for regulatory inspections.
With the above objective, the Institution of Fire Engineers (India), a 50 years old pan India association of fire safety professionals, has taken the initiative to develop a Fire Safety Inspection Scheme, and initially joined hands with the Association for Healthcare Providers (India) (AHPI), having 20000 plus hospitals, big and small across India as members, to address the needs of the healthcare industry.
The Scheme envisages fire safety inspections to the applicable regulations/National Building Code Part 4/any recognized standard or part of them to be carried out by competent inspection agencies, duly accredited to the international standard, ISO 17020 as per a defined inspection process for uniformity across various agencies. The Scheme provides for truly third party agencies who can issue a certificate of compliance based on the inspection as also inspection agencies who can besides inspection, can also help address the gaps, and thus are not truly third party agencies.
An expert group comprising fire safety, healthcare and inspection experts have developed the following documents:
1. Fire safety inspection criteria
2. Fire safety inspection process
3. System for provisional approval of fire safety inspection agencies
These documents are herby place in public domain for inviting comments for one month upto 5 Feb 2023 – pl send your comments at info@ifeindia.org