Air and water treatment services company, Airmec, has won a three-year contract to monitor the quality of domestic water at 25 sites for Avon Fire & Rescue. Airmec will also be reviewing risk assessments for each site in line with latest legislation on legionella and pseudomonas control, and other hazards.
The new contract coincides with a major investment programme designed to enable the fire authority to make necessary budget savings in the longer term. This includes building new stations, including one in Bristol, amalgamating two South Gloucestershire stations and upgrading facilities at others to ensure they remain fit for purpose.
In Bristol, Bath and Weston-super-Mare the fire stations are crewed 24 hours a day, while in more rural areas retained firefighters who live or work within five minutes of the station, are paged when they are needed at an incident.
Inspection and regular flushing of taps and outlets is essential, but with so many stations unmanned it is particularly important to maintain logs and audit trials of all activity undertaken on site.
In law the responsibility rests with named, responsible people at Avon Fire & Rescue, even if the day to day work is contracted out. Key staff at Avon Fire & Rescue have therefore attended an Airmec training course to ensure that they have a good understanding of their duties and responsibilities and what to expect and demand from a contractor; and Airmec has built a comprehensive asset register that underpins a rigorous and reliable reporting and recording regime.
Avon Fire & Rescue supplies and procurement officer Alison Phillips said: “With 900 staff and 25 sites to manage, we liked the structured approach that Airmec proposed. It gave us confidence that we would have comprehensive records of our facilities, up to date and fully compliant risk assessments and an inspection and monitoring regime that we could trust unreservedly.
“The training course was a real eye opener to the importance of up-to-date risk assessment and maintaining logs of all activity.”