Safety always comes first at Encore. People’s lives depend on us; we’re responsible for ensuring the places that people call ‘home’ are safe, and a significant part of that responsibility is fire safety.
Since Encore began, two decades ago, we’ve never allowed ourselves to become complacent about our standards of fire safety. We’ve always strived to be experts; to adopt the latest best practice, and to even shape how the property management industry approaches fire safety.
That’s why we’re now embarking on the latest step in our fire safety journey: Encore is working towards obtaining our BAFE SP205 Accreditation.
BAFE accreditation is a clear way for us to demonstrate our commitment to fire safety across our entire property portfolio. It’s no easy feat to secure accreditation. From assessors needing to pass competency audits, to Fire Risk Assessment templates meeting BAFE standards, through to annual external audits on the entire process and much more, there are many different requirements that must be met for Encore, and our individual assessors, to be successfully accredited.
At Encore we have our own Fire Risk Assessors and a team of health, fire and safety professionals. With BAFE SP205 accreditation, our clients can be reassured their assessments have been undertaken only by the best in the industry – combining our high safety standards with our property management expertise to get the best standard of outcome.
“Our teams are working incredibly hard to provide evidence that our systems, processes and the core competencies of our people are to the standard required,” explains Dean Clarke, Estate Management Director at Encore.
“It’s a rigorous process to obtain BAFE accreditation, and rightly so as it’s often considered the ‘gold standard’ for fire risk assessments. The standards have to be high and we’re committed to demonstrating that we meet those requirements - and that we will continue to do so in the years to come.”
As quoted on the BAFE website, the accreditation will signify: “independent evidence that an organisation is working competently to the appropriate quality standards and best practice for specific fire safety services”. That means end-users, such as the RMCs, developers, leaseholders and freeholders we work with, can have “peace of mind that their fire safety compliance requirements are being fulfilled by a provider with quality evidence of their competency for specific services.”
Once secured, the BAFE accreditation will apply to Encore as a company, as well as our individual Fire Safety Assessors. To become BAFE accredited, we must achieve certification in one of the nine fire safety services covered by the BAFE competency scheme. We are looking to be accredited in BAFE SP205 for Fire Risk Assessments.
Our journey won’t stop at obtaining the accreditation. We’ll undergo regular surveillance audits to ensure we’re continuing to meet the high standards required by BAFE. We’ll also have to continue to meet their high criteria for accreditation. And across Encore, now and into the future, we’ll continue to be vigilant for other ways we can lead the property management industry in fire safety - because we’re never going to become complacent when it comes to this vitally important part of our work.