FIRE SAFETY CONSULTANTS
Vemco is an independent fire safety engineering consultancy in Cambridge. Our fire engineering and safety services operate in Cambridgeshire and around the UK. Our team of experienced fire safety consultants provide bespoke fire engineering solutions to companies and individuals across the UK, helping them to get the required approvals from Building Control, approved inspectors and the fire service.
With years of experience providing bespoke fire safety engineering consultancy services, we undertake a variety of projects, ranging from residential and commercial developments to schools and nightclubs. If you need fire engineering consultants — in Cambridge or anywhere else in the UK — we can help. Our team of fire and safety engineering consultants are experts in fire engineering, with more than 10 years’ experience in the industry.
Our fire safety consultancy services include:
- Fire Risk Appraisals of External Walls (FRAEW/PAS 9980)
- Comprehensive fire safety audits (FRA) and fire engineer reports
- Fire safety strategy and planning
- Fire evacuation assessments and plans
- Fire Strategy reports (using Approved Document B and other codes)
- Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling
- Temporary staffing requirements of a technical nature
Vemco Consulting is an engineering consultancy company that specialises in assisting UK developers (large and small) to gain the necessary approvals for their development through the planning and building control process. Contact the team in Cambridge today to find out more about our fire safety consultancy services or to speak to a fire safety engineer today.
Fire Engineering Solutions For Your Business
Our expert fire engineering consultants are well-versed in the engineering tools that lead to the design of non-prescriptive solutions to fire safety problems in buildings, including CFD fire modelling software. Because of this, we can develop specialist fire engineer reports to support your development and satisfy the requirements of the recognised UK codes. Our fire safety designs are bespoke and tailored to the individual needs of businesses, organisations and individuals — as well as the type of property they need assessing.
We are confident that, whatever your specification, our team of Cambridgeshire fire safety consultants will come up with a solution to meet your needs, wherever you are located in the UK. Contact us today for more information regarding proposals and estimates.
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Reliable & Thorough Fire Risk Assessments
The UK’s Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 states that every business and block of flats must have a designated ‘Responsible Person’, accountable for fire safety. This means having a proper fire risk assessment (FRA) carried out by a qualified fire safety person to identify fire risks and hazards in the premises so that the Responsible Person can take appropriate action.
At Vemco Consulting, we cover every aspect of fire safety consulting and fire engineering in Cambridgeshire and across the UK to help you understand the potential risks so that you can improve fire safety precautions to keep people safe. Make sure your building is meeting your obligations today with a professional fire safety risk assessment.
We understand that you have specific objectives for your project in terms of its ‘“look and feel’, and also that you have a budget to work with. Because of this, our experienced Cambridge fire engineering consultants will work with you to fit our work to your requirements, regardless of where your team is located in the UK. Our experienced fire and safety engineering consultants will aim to achieve all your fire safety objectives whilst limiting compromising on your specific requirements.
Whether you need a fire risk assessments for a block of flats, a schools, care home or, the workplace, we can help. Our team of fire safety engineers is up to date with the latest UK compliance laws and regulations and can offer guidance and recommendations to make your building safer.
Fire Risk Assessment Process:
During a fire risk assessment, our team of Cambridge fire safety engineering consultants will complete a thorough assessment of your property to ensure that the building has all the right fire precautions and fire safety measures to protect people against risks. Our team will also check for sufficient fire detection systems and emergency exits throughout the building. This will allow our fire risk consultants to draw up a strategy report that is tailored to your building.
Every FRA will be slightly different, however, most will include checking a building for:
• A working fire alarm
• A means of escape from fire
• Fire extinguishers and firefighting equipment
• Potential escape routes in the case of fire
• Electrical equipment that could be a source of ignition
• Living areas being clear from combustible materials
• Proper storage arrangements for dangerous substances
Our fire risk assessors will record all significant findings in detail and consult with you about the work they’ve completed. They will also make you aware of risks they’ve detected or any significant changes they’ve made so you are properly prepared in the event of a fire. Based on their assessment of the building, they will recommendwill recommend an effective evacuation plan for occupants to follow in the case of a fire.
It is highly important that all commercial and non-commercial properties in the UK undergo a thorough fire risk assessment. Cambridge-based fire engineering and safety consultants, Vemco Consulting, assist a range of organisations and individuals around the UK to ensure their buildings are compliant.
Fire Risk Assessment for Residential Flats and Houses
Our fire engineering safety consultancy services include fire risk assessments for residential houses and flats in Cambridge and across the UK. We understand that mortgage and insurance companies can get nervous about the construction of some buildings. Our job is to provide a thorough fire engineer report that fills these organisations with confidence that your building is fully compliant in terms of the risks associated with fire or smoke.
Over the last 10 years, there have been a number of significant fires involving cladding or other highly flammable materials on building façades or blocks of flats in the UK. All have caused major damage to property with many involving significant loss of life.
Our knowledgeable staff of experienced fire engineering safety consultants will bear this in mind when performing professional fire risk assessments. We use scientific and engineering principles to assess the entire property, including walls and balconies, for the risk of fire.
Government has provided guidance on addressing the risks arising from external walls and balconies on residential buildings. When completing a fire risk assessment on your building, our fire risk consultants will work to the latest guidance from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and help you develop cost-effective compliant solutions for your development.
Approved Document B, BS 9991 and BS 9999
Fire prevention regulations in the UK have evolved over many decades in response to notable fires of the past. For this reason, ADB and other codes focus on preventing two means by which a fire can be initiated:
• To adopt measures to ensure a reasonable level of fire resistance is achieved within the building itself.
• To prevent a fire initiated in one building from spreading to an adjacent building.
Our expert fire engineering safety consultants understand the intricacies of these codes and other fire safety laws. Using expert knowledge, we will develop a strategy to make your property compliant with these essential documents.
A UK Fire Safety Consultancy You Can Trust
Our team has received full fire engineering safety training and is experienced when it comes to performing thorough and dependable fire risk assessments on a range of buildings. Each piece of work we produce will be carried out by competent and experienced specialist fire engineering safety consultants registered with the Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE).
Get in touch today via email: info@vemcoconsulting.com or phone: +44 1223 655570 to discuss the specific details of your scheme so that we can develop a bespoke solution for your development and provide a reasonable fire risk assessment cost.
Why Choose Us
Vemco Consulting is an engineering consultancy company that specialises in assisting developers (large and small) to gain the necessary approvals for their development through the planning and building control process.

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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).