Fire Safety Matters Podcast – Episode 22

The Fire Safety Matters Podcast is hosted by the magazine’s Editor Brian Sims and Western Business Media’s CEO Mark Sennett and kindly sponsored by The Fire Safety Event, which runs at the NEC in Birmingham from 5-7 April 2022.

As reported by Fire Safety Matters at the time, Steve Davies was appointed CEO at the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP) back in March, taking the reins from Niall Rowan at the organisation’s 2021 AGM held on Wednesday 28 April. Davies serves as our lead guest on this episode.

A Chartered Mechanical Engineer, Davies has brought a wealth of experience in senior leadership to his new role, as well as technical and operational capabilities developed across a range of industry sectors. He’s a skilled Trade Association CEO with a strong track record of advancing and growing the reach and profile of such organisations.

In conversation with Fire Safety Matters’ Editor Brian Sims, Davies outlines the core goals he would wish to see come to fruition during his tenure as CEO. He also touches on the new corporate branding recently unveiled for the organisation and focuses on the feedback received to date for the ASFP’s new e-Learning platform.

In terms of wider industry issues, Davies discusses why he feels it’s so important that robust and compliant passive fire protection measures are built into today’s structures and pinpoints his hopes in relation to both the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Building Safety Bill and the positive impact they need to exert on the built environment going forward.

Issue of culpability

When matters turn towards ‘all matters legal’ in relation to fire safety, there’s arguably no better expert to reference and learn from than our regular Fire Safety Matters Podcast contributor Warren Spencer (managing director at Blackhurst Budd Solicitors). In fact, Warren has prosecuted more cases under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 than anyone else. The list of such cases with which he has been involved, in fact, now stretches to over 200.

For the purposes of this edition of the Fire Safety Matters Podcast, Warren focuses his attentions on the issue of culpability in the area of fire safety-related prosecutions. He highlights two common types of case featuring ground floor takeaway establishments with living quarters above on either the first or second floors. Culpability can be high or medium in nature, with the former denoted by a blatant disregard for fire safety exhibited by the ‘Responsible Person’.

Centralising workflows

Our final guests on this episode are Matt Simpson, business development manager at simPRO Software, and also Darren Thorne, the managing director at DT Fire Systems (and one of simPRO’s end user customers).

Matt has worked at job management software specialist simPRO for the last six years across several roles including commercial manager and key account manager. Darren moved into the managing director’s role at DT Fire Systems some 15 years ago having worked as a self-employed fire and security systems engineer for over a decade.

During the podcast interview, the duo focus on the benefits to be realised as a direct result of today’s businesses opting for digitisation of their workflows and also examine how companies can make that leap of faith.

As always, the Fire Safety Matters editorial team analyses the latest major news stories emerging from the fire sector here in the UK. There’s also a keen focus on The Fire Safety Event and FSM Live, the magazine’s one-day digital conference that runs on Wednesday 3 November.

Listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast

You can listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast for free on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play. To download the Fire Safety Matters Podcast on iTunes or Spotify, all you need to do is enter the term ‘Fire Safety Matters’ into the search box of your chosen platform.

Alternatively, you can listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast online at fsmpodcast.podbean.com or via our YouTube channel by clicking here.

*If there are any specific subjects you would like to see featured in an upcoming Fire Safety Matters Podcast please do contact us. You can do so on Twitter by using the hashtag #FSMPodcast. Alternatively, send an e-mail direct to bsims@westernbusiness.media