Factors Influencing the Performance of Fire Safety Management Program in Nigeria

Abstract

Proper fire safety management program plays a critical role in achieving a desire fire safety objective in building. Therefore, several-studied have been conducted and shown that ineffective fire safety management program implementation is the main cause of failure in fire safety management. Thus, this paper aim at identify component influencing the performance of fire safety management program in building. One hundred and twenty (20) questionnaires were distributed to the relevant participants, which include Architects, Builders, Quantity Surveyor, Engineer, and Fire safety experts. In the end, 100 completed questionnaires were retrieved and analyzed with the use of descriptive and ranking analysis. The finding of the study revealed that the reliability of the instruments was higher than 0.7, and show that maintenance of fire safety equipment is the most influential component that affects the fire safety management program performance, while fire safety training and fire risk assessment were second and third most influential components of fire safety management program respectively. Hence, the study found to be that, non-maintenance, inadequate provision and non- functional fire safety equipment, often led to the main causes of fire disaster in buildings. Thus, the study suggests to the fire safety/building managers to implement adequate maintenance program, carried out proper fire safety training for the occupants, conduct regular fire risk assessment and increase fire safety budgetary allocation to the fire safety department in order to improve the maintenance/ replacement of fire safety equipment’s. It is anticipated that by improving the performance of fire safety equipment, provision of adequate training for the occupants/building owners, the rate of fire disasters could be minimized to a barest level.