Fire safety consultants provide a range of services to different organisations and individuals, including business owners, project managers, construction teams, schools, and homeowners. 

The role exists to help provide advice and support with preventing and managing the risks of a fire. This includes undertaking fire audits and fire risk assessments on different properties and sites to establish any risk-causers, or areas of concern. Fire safety consultancy services also focus on addressing these areas, suggesting implementations which can help to prevent fires and keep buildings and people safe. This can be anything from installing fire alarms, adding fire extinguishers, or conducting scheduled fire alarm and evacuation drills.

The duties of a fire safety consultant are varied and can include some or all of the following:

• Conducting audits on buildings to identify potential fire risks and hazards
• Advising business owners and property managers on how they can eliminate these risks 
• Implementing features and making changes to properties where risk factors are identified
• Advising building owners and managers on the materials to use in their building to help prevent fires starting or spreading of fires
• Advising Organisations on the procedures they should follow to be compliant with fire safety laws
• Helping Organisations to keep the people in them safe by designing fire evacuation procedures
• Conducting risk assessments 
• Writing up fire safety reports and fire strategy reports
• Using CFD modelling reports to prevent combustion or fires in higher-risk industries and locations

Fire engineers help to design new buildings, as well as provide structural advice about existing buildings during refurbishment projects, in the context of fire safety measures.

Fire safety engineers are usually qualified, experienced civil engineers, as is the case with the fire engineering consultancy team at Vemco. 

The role of a fire engineering consultant is to protect properties from fires and smoke damage, as well as protect people’s lives. 

The typical duties of a fire engineer include: 

• Identifying potential fire-related risks and putting procedures in place to eliminate or prevent them 
• Creating fire strategies, which involves creating designs, diagrams, calculations and blue-prints to help prevent fires from starting or spreading
• Designing and implementing features into buildings to stop fires being started to spreading around properties (for example, sprinkler systems, or fire-proof furniture and doors) 
• Making thought-out recommendations on the types of materials used to build properties 
• Assisting construction sites with the designs of buildings and ongoing buildings to ensure fire risks are eliminated
• Assisting architects with building designs to ensure that their designs minimise the risks of fires
• Calculating and writing up fire engineering reports, including CFD fire modelling reports
• Being responsible for advising on, designing and implementing a range of fire engineering solutions to prevent fires starting or spreading

When it comes to fire safety, the duty of care differs depending on the type of building in question. In a working or non-domestic environment, the person who is responsible for making sure fire safety precautions are met, is the person with ultimate control of the premises. For example, in a business, the CEO will be ultimately responsible for making sure safety procedures are followed — a duty which they can choose to devolve to managers or an HR department should they choose. This responsibility primarily applies to employers, it can also apply to the occupier, building officers, landlords and anyone else with control of the premises: such as the building manager, facilities manager, project manager or office manager.

CFD fire modelling is a method used to solve equations to do with the growth and spread of fires. It specifically looks at heat transfer and fluid flow in buildings, to firstly predict the spread of heat and smoke in the event of a fire within that building. It is a key tool in fire engineering, and is used by fire safety consultants and engineers to assess the risks of large fires on different properties. CFD fire modeling uses in-depth calculations on an advanced software, to create a replica model of a building project/existing property and then to numerically calculate and map the spread of heat, smoke and flames. 

CFD not only accurately predicts fire patterns; it also helps fire consultants to find areas which can be improved on and features which can be installed to prevent the spread and growth of fires in different locations. 

The law states that all shared managed residential properties (including blocks of flats and managed lets) and business premises must conduct regular fire risk assessments. 

The UK legal guidelines for these are as follows: 

• Building fire risk assessments should be conducted every 5 years
• Once an assessment has been conducted, it should be reviewed every 12 months
• A new fire assessment should be conducted if the layout or building structure in a property is changed and when there is a considerable change in the occupants
• In all workplace, public or residential buildings (where more than 5 people live) risk assessments must be written
• In residential buildings where 5 people or less live, risk assessments do not need to be recorded in writing, although this is highly advised

Employers and building owners must carry out a fire safety risk assessment, which they must review and renew according to the legal guidelines. 

Examples include: 

• Offices and workplaces
• Construction sites
• Factories 
• Schools
• Public entertainment venues like theatres, cinemas and galleries 
• Gyms and spas
• Hospitality venues like restaurants, pubs and hotels
• Residential buildings that are managed and let out (this doesn’t include ‘private homes’ which are occupied by their owners).