Polite request for participation in a survey

[deaconj999]

Hi,

I am presently writing a paper on Fire Safety Signs & Notices and have developed a small survey to assess the UK populous understanding of such.

Could I please ask you to oblige me in this venture by completing the survey at

http://www.dfrmowales.org/fds/index.php?sid=31295&lang=en

I would also appreciate if you could pass this request onto your colleagues, friends & family and ask them to do the same, so that I capture data from different persons all over the UK.

There are only a few questions, it takes a maximum of 5 minutes and is strictly anonymous without the need to login.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Joe Deacon

[Editor]

I applaud you desire to research this subject and suggest having looked at your survey questionaire that you are likely to find a huge set of confusion that exists with the current state of affairs in buildings today. Having spent 20 years trying to make sense of both Standards and Legislation it will be of no surprise to understand that most people will act instinctively and discount all the signs and rely on self belief to escape or locate emergency equipment. Sadly some of those will get it wrong as a consequence of the mess that is around as you have found already.

There may be a ray of light on the horizon as half of the signs in your survey will have to disappear as a function of the adoption of ISO 7010 as a European Norm and the withdrawl of the illustrated annex in EC 92/58 which created the confusion in 1992

[deaconj999]

Thanks for the reply,

I see you also spotted the deliberate inclusion of signs I have discovered on a few different websites that are just 'made up' by the sign designers/manufacturers. In terms of taking advantage of the statements in the standards that seem to convey the message that the signs can be similar in design to what the standard is trying to implement; and the signs that are actually contravening BS 5499 comment of only one instruction. i.e. one arrow per sign.

Would you mind if I quoted your reply and acknowledged you in my paper ?

I also saw only yesterday that you have now produced the Means of Escape Guide to Fire Safety Signs and Signing, priced at £4.99 +P&P,
http://www.means-of-escape.com/products/product.aspx?id=4 is there a PDF version available ?

Regards

[Editor]

The Means of Escape Guide to fire safety signs is a guide for application and use. It does not cover Graphical Symbol Design and help to answer the questions you pose in your survey. This is because the guide is to help with both the process of risk control, communication and instruction as a consequence of a formal risk assessment and only shows the use and siting of fire safety signs that conform to Standard.

I would not want to mislead anyone to think that it gives any reasons for the confusion caused by EC 92/58 in buildings today.

That honour must rest squarely with the Health and Safety Executive who are the custodians of the Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996. It also rests with enforcing Authority both Fire Service and Building Control for allowing signs to be used that as you point out are just made up by a sign industry that is trying their best to interpret the conflicting information.

The Means of Escape has consistently supported the conformance to recognised British and International Standards BS5499 and ISO 7010 which are as one. We have never supported so called EURO signs that have absolutely no provenance or credentials other than mere illustrations created by Brussels.

[nhemmings]

As someone that has been involved in fire safety for a number of years and in particular specializing in Fire Safety Signs I am pleased to see an interest taken into trying to understand just how well signs are understood.

Looking at the Standards for Fire Signs both British and International it should be straightforward to identify the correct sign for any given location. However, I still see signs in premises that are incorrect and/or appear to be cobbled together from a variety of sources.

I believe that fire signs should be an equally important element in the whole fire stategy and by using the Standards for guidance we can hopefully provide consistent information to those people when they are perhaps likely to need it the most.

Good luck with your survey.