Being a country with one of the world's largest economies, it is only a responsible gesture for the United Kingdom to take extensive care of its business sector. With the country's bustling cities and urbanized areas, business establishments then increase their chances in being vulnerable to artificially induced incidents, such as fire. In the year 2007, the UK fire brigades have responded to a total of 804,000 fire incidents. Of these fire incidents, total fire deaths amounted to 443 people. With such an alarming number of both fire incidents and casualties, it is only sensible for business establishments to toughen up their preventive measures and make sure that their work places are safe premises for their employees.

Basically, fire safety is a set of precautionary measures which prevents that occurrence of unpleasant incidents such as fire. Not only does it prevent fire, but more importantly, prevent any indications of death, injury or property damage. Such things, as may very well be known, are degrading to a business establishment. Fire safety consists of the different preventive measures being implemented within a building and different lessons taught to its occupants.

These measures are solely in prevention of fire hazards bringing danger to the work place. These fire hazards refer to any situation or equipment which has the likelihood of igniting fire within the premise. In order to properly install these fire safety measures in your building, it is the responsibility of business owners to conduct a fire risk assessment in their work place. A fire risk assessment will definitely help you in identifying the different fire hazards that may be present in your work place and give you possible alternatives in eliminating these hazards. In the end, the fire risk assessment will make your work place a much better and safer place not only for you but also for your employees.

A fire risk assessment generally has five steps:

a) determining the fire hazards which are present in your work place such as faulty wiring, equipment and appliances, even old and dysfunctional stairwells or materials

b) identifying the people within your work place who are most vulnerable in case a fire breaks out, such as the employees stationed the farthest from the emergency exit

c) evaluating the risks that you have pointed out and deciding what necessary steps must be taken in order to eliminate these risks

d) recording significant data and findings that you have gathered in your fire risk assessment; and lastly

e) reviewing your records and revising it as the need arises in the future.

Conducting a fire risk assessment will definitely heighten the fire safety capability of your establishment. Not only will it give you light on understanding how fire can be initiated but moreover, it will give you the opportunity to prevent such incident from happening. Every business establishment only wants to sustain its growth, especially in the country that develops rapidly over time. Having fire safety measures within your work place will not only help your achieve that but it will also help you protect the lives of your employees.