Search results

One of the facilities manager's continuing problems is meeting his responsibilities with respect to fire safety. In this field he is working with difficult legal requirements, fragmented among many local statutes, ad hoc standards and recommendations. To meet these requirements he must call upon his full range of skills. He must be able to balance a concern for hardware and technology with a need to ensure that building occupants are trained and that an effective fire plan is in existence.

Radical changes are being planned in the way the Fire Precautions Act (Facilities, May 1985) is administered in the United Kingdom. The Home Office is suggesting a system of ‘self‐certification’ so that the role of the fire authorities can be reduced. Facilities managers should take note of this possible development as the burden of fire safety may weigh more heavily on their shoulders. These are controversial proposals and interested parties have the chance to make their opinions count. A consultation process is under way and continues until the end of the year. Copies of the review document are available from the Home Office (see references).

Last month we introduced the advantages of new generation fire alarm systems. We ended our introduction on a cautionary note, however, by warning facilities managers to be wary of the indiscriminate claims of those selling ‘intelligent technology’, which is currently something of a fad in building services. Sound experience of analogue/addressable systems in use is not widespread: the potential for extra capital costs with this equipment and the opportunities for customised designs, means that care must be taken in comparing your needs with the varied facilities available. Some companies specialising in new generation systems accept that they are not the answer for all applications. Others do not Coping with this commercial bias, in the face of genuinely different design philosophies, will prove difficult; more so because of the absence of definite codes and standards (BS 5839 is currently being revised). This article hopes to present some useful information to help you procure the right system.

Early UK philosophy on the subject of fire protection of data processing installations strongly deprecated the use of water‐based extinguishing installations. It was common practice to remove sprinkler heads and pipework from computer areas in otherwise sprinkler‐protected premises and ensure — by, for instance, the use of waterproof ceiling membranes — that any sprinkler protection elsewhere in the premises did not present a risk to the computer installation.

New generation fire alarm systems are not altogether new in 1986. The British Fire Protection System Association (BFPSA) has had a Technical Working Group discussing them since 1981, the first commercial system was launched in the UK four years ago and the number of available systems is now considerable (see list of systems and suppliers below). As yet, however, there are no definitive standards or codes of practice for their use, and this can make life difficult for the facilities manager who has to specify and operate an alarm system. He is likely to have little more than sales literature for information. To help rectify this situation this first article explains what a new generation system is, what advantages it has, and presents a costed example. A second article will offer advice on how to choose a system together with feedback from users who are already operating new generation equipment.

Sprinklers are one of the earliest forms of fixed fire protection. As early as 1812, a manually‐operated system was installed in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was later in the 19th century, however, that automatic sprinkler systems were developed. A common application for early systems was protection of textile mills.

There now appears to be a real prospect that the present chaos will give place to a well‐ordered set of enactments. In the House of Lords there has been introduced by the Lord Chancellor a Food and Drugs Bill, which is a purely consolidating measure of 137 clauses and twelve schedules, designed to replace virtually all existing Food and Drugs statutes dealing with England, Wales and Northern Ireland (without amending their substance), and in particular to repeal wholly the Food and Drugs Act, 1954. In the House of Commons the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Bill, which is both an amending and consolidating measure—has for the third time been launched on its Parliamentary career. Meanwhile, much progress as been made with the preparation of the promised Regulations, which, before this note appears in print, will have received some consideration from the Food Hygiene Advisory Council. And, simultaneously, the contemplated revision and enlargement of Codes of Practice appear to be near completion. We know of no reason why all these operations should not be completed before the end of the present year. One of the important matters to be settled is the way in which the Minister of Health will exercise his discretionary powers in relation to the local governing bodies which will be Food and Drugs Authorities.

On the face of it the content of the security cost looks simply to be the cost of in‐house or contract personnel providing varying degrees of attendance and inspection.

This chapter provides the context for understanding how English widening participation (WP) policy has interacted with the development of a marketised and expanding higher education (HE) system (the ‘dual imperative’ highlighted in the introductory chapter of this volume). It traces the intensification of market approaches in HE since 1997, examining how these interact with and become intertwined with evolving national WP policy concerns. Since 1997, WP for under-represented groups as a national policy aim has become firmly embedded in the activities undertaken by higher education providers (HEPs). Policy initiatives have moved between incentive and risk to encourage HEPs to address national and local inequalities of access and (later) student success and differential graduate outcomes. This chapter gives an overview of the key policy moments in this period and argues for how they have shaped the way in which the business of WP is enacted throughout the sector. It highlights how the business of WP drawn widely has become simultaneously a regulatory requirement, a way for institutions to differentiate themselves in the HE market and a key marker of institutional civic or social responsibilities. Situating this alongside the increasing focus on students and applicants as consumers, this chapter also begins to problematise the issues of collaboration and competition this creates.

Education is, or should be, a gateway to a better life, a better understanding of ourselves in a complex and hierarchical social world. As a political scientist from a working-class mature-student background I have been fortunate enough to build a career that not only celebrates and embodies the possibilities provided by educational access but also aims to highlight the staggering lengths the socially advantaged go to in their denial of educational opportunity for the vast majority of people from my background. Like all autoethnographies, I guess this contribution may seem an idiosyncratic take on working-class life and academia; it is at once a primal scream against ingrained classism we have to confront every day, but also a recognition of the intellectual pluralism and tolerance of academia that allows and rewards even members of the ‘awkward squad’ like me if we stick it out long enough. It is a rage against the machine, but hopefully, also a small step towards changing the definition of academia.