Hydrock fire safety team spearheads industry competency standards

“Since the Grenfell Tower fire, in June 2017, resulted in 72 of its occupants losing their lives the UK construction industry has grappled to create a regulatory regime and culture to prevent such a tragedy happening again. Subsequently, there has been a paradigm shift as societal constructs command that everyone in our industry should aspire to reach a higher standard - especially from those responsible for building safety. Inevitably, there has been much scrutiny on the work of fire safety professionals and their technical competency to develop fire safety strategy and provide fire safety advisement on complex buildings.”

“Hydrock has been meeting these challenges ‘head on’. One of our missions has been to address the chronic shortage of fire safety professionals by ‘growing our own’ - investing in academic learning and formalised training of our staff. Hydrock’s fire safety division now has over one hundred team members. To date, we’ve put over 20% of our staff through a masters in fire safety engineering, with 10% more currently studying to achieve this academic milestone. We are also currently sponsoring PhD research, as well as the International Masters in Fire Safety Engineering course (IMFSE). In addition, we’re passionate that more woman are given leadership opportunities in the fire safety industry, which is why we were the headline sponsor of the recent IFE Women in Fire Safety Conference and a sponsor of the upcoming Women in Fire Safety Awards.”