High rise buildings of all descriptions often involve multiple stakeholders: the developer, the owner, the landlord, the facilities management company and, last but not least, the occupiers -- who could be business owners, employers - so who is accountable in the event of a fire?
Building use and renting are becoming increasingly fluid. The rise of shared and collaborative workspaces, hot desking and short-term leasing makes it easy to lose sight of the importance of clear communications around fire safety and evacuation, especially when your occupiers are transient.
Every commercial, residential or public building needs to have someone who is specifically assigned the responsibility of planning and communicating the procedures for safe evacuation of people from a building, including the mobility-impaired. As building use changes, those roles and responsibilities must always be kept up-to-date and highly visible to all building users.
Evac+Chair's mission is to raise awareness of the regulations and legal requirements that the responsible person needs to take account of when planning for an emergency. To achieve this, each year Evac+Chair carries out thousands of site surveys to help develop processes and training in order to keep pace with the rapid changes taking place in high rise buildings up and down the UK.