Health and Safety in the workplace is vitally important, and even small businesses will need employees to act as fire wardens in the event of an emergency. Here's a taste of what you can expect from GTG's Fire Warden course.
If your team is expanding, your employer might need more fire wardens to ensure everyone, employees and visitors alike, is directed safely to a muster point in the event of a workplace evacuation.
Thinking of signing yourself or your employees up for fire warden duties? We tell you what you'll learn when taking the course.
Early learning
Arriving at the GTG Training Centre in Glasgow, you'll grab yourself a pre-class tea or coffee before you meet one of GTG's friendly instructors, and in the classroom you'll meet fellow learners from a range of backgrounds.
After some getting-to-know-you introductions, you'll learn the importance of fire and combustion in our everyday lives, and by extension, our workplaces.
Fire warnings
As a budding fire warden, you'll gain an appreciation of the risks for everyone in a place of work when fire safety protocol is neglected, and you'll be shown examples of workplace fire safety failure in the relatively recent past.
You'll learn about household fire risks, the threat of industrial fire, and how seemingly small acts of carelessness - a spark against a dry Christmas tree, or a discarded cigarette end to a pile of rubbish - can have grave consequences.
You and fellow fire wardens-to-be will see some of the changes to the law made in the UK to avoid repeats of such incidents, and how there have been drastic improvements in fire safety in the modern-day workplace compared with even thirty years ago.
Making work fire-safe
You and your fellow candidates will go on to see how cultivating a strong workplace health and safety culture will create a safer working environment for everyone.
Plus, you'll learn about the responsibilities of a fire warden within the workplace, how fire spreads, and importantly, ways to put out a small fire safely, and gain the ability to react to any fire crises that could prove priceless in the event of emergency.
New skills
There's a practical element to the course, too. You'll head out to the GTG courtyard where you'll be shown each different type of fire extinguisher and the kinds of fire they should be used on.
New to the subject and not entirely sure about your fire extinguisher types? That's okay. There are several types to identify and familiarise yourself with, such as water, foam, powder, wet chemical and Carbon Dioxide (CO2), and in no time at all you'll be outside remembering their colour coding, operating them, and seeing first-hand the extinguishers' different properties.
Trying out the fire extinguisher range will make it much simpler to operate if one of them ever needs to be used for real. After all, it pays to be able to fire it in the right direction - a surprisingly common mistake!
And finally...
Back in the classroom, your final job of the day will be a short, ten-question quiz designed to test, and hopefully reinforce, your knowledge, before you and your fellow candidates return to your places of work and spread the good word about fire safety.
How do I sign up?
If you or your employees need training in good fire safety practice, you can register to attend the Fire Warden course here.