A Fire Risk Assessment Can Identify Electrical Hazards in the Office

It’s devastating to think that fires can destroy millions worth of properties, cause hundreds of injuries and steal dozens of innocent lives all in one instant. It’s even more depressing to think that a conflagration could have been caused by something as foolishly simple as someone leaving a cigarette butt that caught fire. Every day, people practice mindless actions that they remain unaware of it so that they perpetuate a kind of dangerous negligence that could lead to something as treacherous as an accidental fire. One of the common causes of workplace fires is faulty electrical wiring. Offices and workplaces are hosts to several kinds of equipment and machines that consume a great amount of electricity daily, making workplaces a hotbed of electrical fire hazards. If you’re not wary of these potential deathtraps, you might fail to take note of the common causes of electrical fire when you attempt a thorough fire safety risk assessment on your own.
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Pinning Down Electrical Faults

Faulty electrical wiring is one of the common causes of workplace fires. Various workplaces host many kinds of equipment that consume a great amount of electricity daily, and without proper wiring, an average workplace can instantly turn into a fire hazard. A professional fire safety risk assessment helps identify problematic electrical areas.

Old and Faulty Appliances

There are workplaces where some of the appliances have soldiered on for years. As such, they may have frayed or faulty wiring. Defective power cords lying on or placed under fabrics may cause cloth surfaces such as carpets, rugs, or curtains to catch fire. This is true when the wiring is chafing under the foot traffic.

Big Bulbs

The lighting industry has some products touted to produce high amounts of luminescence, but at a great cost in wattage. Always check if the light bulb wattage is suitable for the light fixture; if the amount exceeds the fixture’s specs, overheating could result in a fire risk.

Stopping Fires before They Begin: Fire Safety Tips

Fire safety should be everyone’s responsibility, especially with the troubling fact that there were 192,600 fires around the U.K. from 2012 to 2013. The Fire Safety Order states that everyone who owns or occupies a non-domestic property should, among other things, conduct their own inspections for potential fire hazards, inform their colleagues of any such hazards identified within the premises, and participate in emergency planning. For common or shared areas, however, the responsibility falls entirely upon landlords.