All of our safety signs comply with the safety colour regulations. This ensures that certain colours adhere to their specific meanings. Evacuation scenarios for analysis taking account of factors such as occupancy levels, training, mobility of occupants, etc.

Fire action notices provide information about the fire safety plan of a building. These should be mounted in areas where people in your building will have a chance to read the information, such as a staff room, waiting area or next to an entrance. Remember, people who are new to your building must be able to familiarise themselves with the details. Different types of sign are available, but most have spaces to fill in essential information specific to your building. Fire Door Signs This includes the timely evacuation of disabled occupants, familiarity of the use of lifts (rather than escape routes), reductions in physical effort, stair congestion and a reduction in evacuation time. However, the use of lifts can also present risks. These include: The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 (the Safety Signs Regulations) implement European Council Directive 92/58/EEC on minimum requirements for the provision of safety signs at work. This guidance is aimed at helping employers meet their responsibilities under these Regulations. Summary When assessing the risks, all relevant fire protection measures need to be given consideration. For example, if the property has significant protective measures such as a sprinkler system and compartmentation, this may influence and enable the early use of a lift.Health and safety legislation require fire safety and emergency signage to be put in place. Whether you own a shop, student accommodation or an office you have a responsibility to comply with the relevant legislation. In the event of a fire, it’s vital that occupants know where to find fire-fighting equipment, and which equipment they can use, depending on the type of fire. Therefore the point being made is NOT that any reasonable person would have trouble interpreting that sign. The point being made is that, if you've got your mathematician hat on, it is not precise enough, and as such it allows for a number of other interpretations, even though the main one is in theory reasonably clear enough from the context. A Fire action notice (or often referred to as Fire Action Sign) provides simple clear instructions to staff and visitors on the fire procedure of the premises.

Although the phrase "IN CASE OF FIRE" clearly means "if there is a fire", in general, we can say "[just] in case" to refer to an event that may already be the case, but where we don't know for sure. Somehow if you can’t get out of the building, then you’re going to be in danger. Once the fire begins to spread, the smoke can easily flood the elevator shaft. This will suffocate anyone in the elevator at the time, and so is extremely dangerous. The movement of the elevator will act as a billows in the building, pushing air around and making it even easier for the fire to spread. A review of the building design including building characterisation and environs, occupant characterisation and fire safety management. Often warning signs and prohibition signs are combined into one fire safety notice. Combined warning and prohibition signs – examples Summary Some Fire Action Sign variations contain writable sections on the sign - these can be filled in to suit the fire plan of your organisation (such as where your Fire Assembly Point is located or the number to call the Fire Brigade).Depending on the type of exits you have, you may also need to provide instructions on how to operate the door, or indicate that a door opens automatically. Fire door signs – mandatory examples At Coopers Fire, we’re always developing our fire curtains, smoke curtains and fire safety courses to keep us at the cutting edge of fire safety. Get in touch Don’t delay: If the alarm has been raised, do not delay getting out of the building. Don’t stop to collect belongings or anything else you think you might need. The number one priority is you getting out of the building. Close doors: When you’re making your way out of the building, ensure that you’re only opening door that you need to. If you come across any doors that are closed that you don’t need to go through, keep them closed. These doors will help stop fires spreading, so don’t open any door if you don’t need to.

E.g. you are a mathematician / engineer, and you are tasked with coming up with rules that a robot could follow. You are given this sentence and are asked to design a rule for the robot. Even within the limits of the intended meaning, we still have a lot of ambiguity: Stay together: If you’re with others when the alarm is raised, ensure that you stay together as you evacuate. This will ensure that you are all safe. Other factors to consider will be in relation to the measures built into the property including the provision of a refuge area, communication equipment, protected lobbies, etc.

Do you need a Fire Action Notice?

Blue door signs help to ensure the spread of fire is limited in the event of an emergency by reminding people to shut doors. Fire doors should be kept closed, unless approved door retainers are used. Green signage is also required to provide clear information on how to escape using a specific door – push bar to open, turn to open, pull, etc. Fire Extinguisher Signs We hope this guide about all of the different categories of fire signage has been useful to you. In summary, if you are responsible for the fire safety of commercial premises, these are the signs that you must have and may need to have. Heat stress takes a long time and truly infernal temperatures to have an effect on the structure of a building – so failing cables and collapsing elevator shafts, while possible, are not immediate dangers. Understanding Fire Safety Perhaps most importantly of all, your fire alarm call-points must be clearly sign-posted so that occupants can easily find where to raise the alarm if they spot a fire. Every call-point should have the relevant fire alarm sign, and if you also post Fire Action Notices here, the person raising the alarm will have all the information they need to proceed. Fire alarm call point sign – example 4. ‘Warning’ and ‘Prohibition’ fire safety signs Warning signs

Responsible persons are not required to report faults in passenger lifts which are not for use by firefighters, do not have a switch control to allow firefighters to take control or cannot be used as evacuation lifts to the fire and rescue service. Requirement to report faults to the fire and rescue service The (supposed) ambiguity would be that you could try to use the elevator to combat the fire. Honestly, this is a vast exaggeration, nobody in their sane mind would think that. In some cases you may need a series of directional signs leading occupants along the shortest route to escape. These are familiar to us as green exit signs with arrows indicating which way to go. Fire exit signs – examples Fire Exit Doors This is also reflected in the recently published BS 8899:2016 Improvement of Fire-fighting and Evacuation Provisions in Existing Lifts. Code of Practice. This document, like others states that the use of lifts should be risk assessed and “put into context as part of a wider building fire strategy”. The assessment and strategy development should include the following.The Grenfell Tower Inquiry noted in the Phase 1 report that “When the firefighters attended the fire at Grenfell Tower, they were unable to operate the mechanism that should have allowed them to take control of the lifts.” The Inquiry recommended (Recommendations 33.13(a) and (b)) that the owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law to carry out regular inspections of any lifts that are designed to be used by firefighters and to report these results to the fire and rescue service at monthly intervals and that they also be required to undertake tests of the mechanism which allows firefighters to take control of the lifts and to inform the fire rescue service monthly that they have undertaken them. [footnote 3]