"We're saving hours per report but the ultimate benefit is the quality"
Customer: Beacon Fire Protection (Cumbria)
Interviewee: Simon, Lead Assessor
Previous system: Aurora
Headline results: More consistent fire risk assessments across assessors, templates Beacon can amend easily themselves, streamlined validation, a better-looking report that has helped win council work, and hours saved on every write-up.
Beacon Fire Protection is a family-owned fire safety business that provides a full range of fire safety and security solutions tailored to rural, commercial and residential properties across Cumbria. Fire alarms, extinguishers, emergency lighting, security systems and training sit alongside risk assessments, and the assessment is often where the business relationship starts.
Whenever we create an assessment, if there's a fire alarm shortfall or an emergency lighting shortfall, then these are things the company can provide.
So the assessment has to make a good first impression. But Beacon was having a few problems with their previous system. The assessors found it frustrating, the depth and quality of reports varied by assessor, the templates difficult to change, and Simon, Beacon's Lead Assessor, was spending a long time validating the team's work. Here is what changed on each, in Simon's words.
Fire risk assessment quality: from patchy to consistent
Assessors at the same company were producing very different reports.
Previously we had a big deviation in responses, and in the amount and the quality of the information that was given. The quality of the responses provided by the assessors is more uniform now. And the quality of the report, I think, is better than we've had previously.
When Simon talks about consistency, we're not talking about reports that look and feel generic. It's about consistently hitting the level of depth and quality Beacon's leadership team are aiming for. The reports themselves are capturing the specificity of what's going on in their customers' buildings better than ever, because it's so easy to capture detailed observations on site using FireCheckr's AI voice capture technology.
The fact that they're actually inputting what they're seeing at the time means we're getting a more accurate picture of what's there.
It's not just the substance of the reports that's improved. Simply put, it's a better-looking report too.
We're picking up work, like council work, where the previous consultants they used, the look and presentation of their reports hasn't been the best. FireCheckr has helped us make inroads into the council, because they like the profile and the presentation.
Fire risk assessment templates: from fixed to flexible
Before, if Beacon wanted to change their templates they had to ask their software provider, even if it was a small change.
The templates were relatively inflexible and difficult to amend and update. If we wanted to amend any questions, we had to refer back to the company to have the templates changed. We didn't have the flexibility to do that ourselves.
With FireCheckr, Beacon can now make quick amends to their templates themselves.
Validation and peer review: fewer errors to catch, easier to fix
Simon validates reports for the wider team. Checking their work took a long time and involved sending versions of documents back and forth. Now in FireCheckr, validation is all handled inside the system with a clear audit trail and tracked changes that make every suggestion and amendment crystal clear.
Broadly it's been very, very positive. It makes it easier for me to amend the sections where something needs to be put in, or there's a discontinuity.
For Simon, this is where the real value sits.
The ultimate benefit is the quality. Without being too negative, there's a lot of poor fire risk assessments out there. What this system and the validation allows us to do is more easily regulate the quality of our output, from a visual point of view and from a content point of view. The company's going through a process of improvement, and the system is allowing us to more easily improve our risk assessment processes.
Faster write ups
Simply put, Aurora was hard going for the team.
Our assessors still found it frustrating at times. It's quite clunky. Not very user friendly. With FireCheckr, in terms of actually completing the fire risk assessment, I'm probably saving 1.5 to 2 hours per report.
On site, Simon captures his notes in whatever way the job allows.
Sometimes I take notes as I'm going around. Othertimes, I'll speak them in afterwards before I leave the site. If I'm doing a PAS 79, about 80% of the questions will already have at least a partial answer drafted for me in FireCheckr when I'm ready to start typing up my report. The more I'm getting used to it, the more sections are written for me based on my notes from the site.
FireCheckr drafts the report from those notes in Beacon's own template, and nothing is issued until the assessor has reviewed and approved it. Simon expects it to get quicker still.
As we train the system to recognise our responses, it's going to get faster.
The business impact
Faster write-ups help, but Beacon's bigger gain is the standard of what goes out, and that is bringing in work without them even making a push to expand.
It's grown organically. I think the quality that we're providing will organically grow the risk assessment profile as we go forward.
| Before | After (FireCheckr) | |
|---|---|---|
| Consistency | Big deviation in the amount and quality of information | More uniform responses across assessors |
| Report content | Padded with unneeded guidance | What the assessor saw on site |
| Report presentation | Adequate | Better than previous reports; has helped win council work |
| Templates | Fixed; changes went back to the vendor | Flexible; Beacon amends them itself |
| Continuity | Missed dates and typos | The same date carried through the report |
| Write-up time | Time consuming write ups | Hours saved on every report |
And Beacon is staying put.
We want to stick with one system. We don't want to be chopping and changing. So we're going to be staying with FireCheckr.
Want to streamline your validation process and raise the bar with your own team's reports? See how FireCheckr works by booking a demo.
