FIRE SAFETY MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISE OFFICES IN Old INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS Gigi C.H. Lui, and W.K. Chow † Research Centre for Fire Engineering, Department of Building Services Engineering Area of Strength: Fire Safety Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China ABSTRACT With the change of the economic structure, most of the old industrial buildings built before 1972 in Hong Kong are now used as offices or non-industrial workplaces. Those old building might not have adequate fire safety provisions and it is difficult to upgrade these hardware provisions too. The occupational safety and health problems on fire safety are even more serious if the offices are use for small and medium enterprises which have special characteristics of small areas packed with large quantity of combustibles and high occupant loading. There is limited investment on safety in those offices. This paper aims to solve the aforementioned problems by applying a total fire safety concept to the old industrial buildings. To provide adequate fire safety, software fire safety management schemes should be worked out carefully. Actions to be taken in the management schemes are recommended to control and integrate hardware passive building construction, active fire services installations and control of risk factors. How a fire safety plan can be prepared by recommending a maintenance plan, a staff training plan, a fire prevention plan; and a fire action plan to outline the procedures clearly with normal mode is illustrated in the paper. KEYWORDS Fire safety management, Small and medium enterprise offices, old industrial buildings INTRODUCTION As surveyed (Chow 2006), small and medium enterprises (SME) in Hong Kong included those manufacturing enterprises with fewer than 100 employees and those non-manufacturing enterprises with less than 50 employees. SME is usually of limited investment. Most of them are housed in old industrial buildings, as most factories have moved to the Mainland. Industrial buildings constructed before 1972 do not have much fire safety provisions as now, because the fire safety codes were not so well-developed. There is insufficient funding for SME to upgrade the fire safety provisions. Therefore, occupational safety and health problems related to fire for such SME offices, especially in non-industrial workplaces of old industrial buildings are a concern. There are no statutory fire safety requirements on SME yet. Fire precautions in workplaces of non-industrial sectors follow those requirements for factories, i.e. Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance (FIUO) and its subsidiary regulations (Labour Department). Such provisions might not be suitable for non-industrial workplaces. It is not convincing to apply the Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance (OSHO) (Cap 59) issued on 23 May 1997 (Laws of Hong Kong 1997) and the Guidance Notes on Fire Safety at Workplaces by the Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the Labour Department for such non-industrial workplaces without detailed studies. A project aimed at surveying the current situation (Buildings Department 1995a, 1995b, 2004, Fire Services Department 2005) and exploring what to be studied was worked out (Chow 2006). † Corresponding Author: Tel: + 852 2766 5843, Fax: + 852 2765 7198 E-mail address: bewkchow@polyu.edu.hk