PAS7 seeks to provide a defined structure for the management of fire safety and is already raising interest amongst housing agencies, universities and other providers of accommodation. Taking the principles of other management system standards, primarily 9001, on board the standard encourages landlords and organisations to take a risk based approach to their management of fire safety, looking at how they make their provisions, how they define what those provisions should be and how they assure themselves that what is in place is not only working but is suitable and sufficient.
The standard will shortly go out for 'trial' and a small group of companies will take forward the 3rd party testing of certification against the standard, and I will be very interested to see how this testing stage goes, and to be involved as the standard rolls out across the UK. I suspect there is going to be high demand for it!