Published 6 Jun in
What Do You Need from your Fire Marshals?
The duties of a Fire Marshal – and the number of them you need – will vary from venue to venue, and it can be daunting for anyone managing a theatre to know whether or not they have enough qualified individuals on hand and what support they need to do their job – but this is still very important, and needs handling with care.
How Many Fire Marshals Will You Need?
The first step in answering this question is to determine the risk level at your venue. An up-to-date Fire Risk Assessment will confirm whether yours is low, normal, or high risk.
Because your audience is regularly likely to include a significant number of high risk individuals (the young, the elderly, and the disabled), it’s quite likely your venue will be considered high risk, but if your safety measures are clear and well maintained and the emergency evacuation route is easily followed, you may be in the normal risk category.
A good rule of thumb is that high risk premises require 2 fire marshals if the number of occupants at any time is likely to be under 50 and an additional marshal for every additional 50 occupants – so calculate according to your seating capacity plus your staff.
In normal risk premises you can change those 50s to 75s; as you can see, there’s a major difference between the two.
What Should Your Fire Marshals Know?
Our Fire Marshal Course is designed to cover the full role of a fire marshal within a theatre or production environment, covering everything from the behaviour of fires (so they can estimate likely spread patterns) and general fire precautions to how to shut down vital or dangerous equipment and conduct a systematic search to keep your guests (and staff) safe.
They’ll also learn how to handle firefighting equipment, how to develop and implement emergency plans and evacuation strategies, and how best to help those on the premises to leave.
The certification on this course is valid for three years – best practice is continually updating and improving, and it’s important to keep your knowledge and skills sharp.
We’ll even tailor our course to your venue, making sure that as well as the theory your Marshals receive a clear understanding of how it applies to their role directly.
If you’d like to discuss the course or the duties of a Fire Marshal further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch using our form, at admin@rbhealthandsafety.co.uk, or over the phone on 0845 257 1489.