By FRA scope
A re-assessment triggered by a fire incident or near-miss in the building. Captures lessons learned, verifies whether the fire safety arrangements performed as intended, and updates the risk position with what has been learned.
When commissioned
A post-incident review is appropriate after any fire incident in the building, including: a small contained fire in a flat that was contained by compartmentation as designed, a near-miss where smoke or fire was detected before significant damage occurred, a more serious incident requiring fire and rescue service intervention, or any incident that revealed a fire safety arrangement performing differently from how the FRA had predicted.
The threshold for triggering a post-incident review is low. Even minor incidents can reveal information about how the building performs under fire conditions in practice. The risk-management value of capturing that information promptly outweighs the cost of running the review.
What it covers
Working with FRS
For incidents requiring fire and rescue service attendance, the FRS produces an incident record and may carry out their own investigation. The FRS findings are an important input to the post-incident FRA review. The dutyholder requests the relevant records and the assessor incorporates the FRS observations alongside their own.
For more serious incidents, fire investigation may continue for weeks or months. The post-incident FRA review can run in parallel with the formal investigation, with the FRA capturing the immediately-evident lessons and being updated as the investigation conclusions become available.
In FRA Flow
A post-incident review is initiated by selecting the property, choosing the post-incident trigger, and recording the incident details. The previous baseline's findings, evidence, and action plan are carried forward. The assessor adds the incident-specific observations and any new findings. The output report is a current baseline with the incident referenced explicitly in the building description and significant findings sections.
For HRBs, the post-incident review feeds into the building safety case. The PAP can reference the FRA in the safety case update, demonstrating active risk management in response to incidents.
Common pitfalls
FAQ
BS 9792 expects judgement. Most genuine fire incidents (anything beyond a controlled cooking incident contained immediately) warrant at least a brief review, even if no material risk position changes. Near-misses where fire safety equipment activated unexpectedly are also typically worth reviewing.
For a contained incident, within weeks of the event. For more serious incidents, the review may run in parallel with the formal FRS investigation and be updated as conclusions become available. The dutyholder records the timeline in the audit trail.
FRS records are attached to the post-incident review as supporting evidence. Where the FRS investigation continues after the FRA review is issued, the audit trail records the position at issue and notes that the assessment may need updating when the FRS conclusions are available.
Yes. Where an incident reveals a building-wide or portfolio-wide pattern, the lessons can be captured at the programme level and applied to other buildings' next reviews. FRA Flow surfaces this through the action plan rollup; programme-level patterns can be tracked across buildings.
The post-incident FRA review is one of the documents the safety case can reference to demonstrate active risk management. The PAP updates the safety case with the FRA findings and any building-level changes that result.
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