Fire risk assessment in USA:

The document NFPA 551:2010 is entitled Guide for the Evaluation of Fire Risk Assessments.   In this document is set out the American use of the phrase 'fire risk assessment'.

This document takes a broad view of the subject and treats the matter of FRA very much as an exercise in probabilities.  It gives reasonable descriptions of requirements, processes, objective setting, of who should be involved, expected outcomes, interpretation of results, etc. but it is generally theoretical and does not give much assistance to a fire safety officer who wants to go out and practise conducting or checking FRAs.

The document states that the qualifications of a person conducting a FRA should be presented along with the FRA so that people reading the FRA can have confidence in the author.A FRA,  the  guide  states,  is  a  combination  of  the  concepts  of  hazard  and consequences.  A hazard is something which has the potential to cause harm.  Risk is the likelihood of that harm actually happening.                                                             

Often risk and consequences are multiplied together to give a risk rating. This will be discussed later in this document.

NFPA 551 states that FRAs can be used for any of the items listed in the table reproduced below.