Feature FIA Market Conditions Survey Review FIA Guide to the UK Fire Safety Industry
FIA Market Conditions
Survey
2021 has been another challenging year for the fire industry. With the
global pandemic still making its presence felt, as well as the effects of
Brexit being prominent and the response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy
evolving on a gradual basis, Adam Richardson assesses how the industry
is continuing to develop in parallel
10
AS THE restrictions put in place by the
Government to combat the COVID-19
pandemic have begun to ease, there has
been an introduction of the ‘new
normal’. A hybrid method of working
has evolved with a return to the office
for some, in addition to many still
making use of technology for remote
working and virtual meetings.
The Fire Industry Association’s (FIA)
Annual Report for 2021 focuses on this
concept of the ‘new normal’. As we
further investigated the market
conditions of the last year, we witnessed
continued adversity, yet we were also
very encouraged to see that this ‘new
normal’ has allowed our industry to
continue to grow.
Despite the difficulties that 2020
presented (and in ample volume), we
observed that over 68% of respondents
to our Market Conditions Survey had
received the same or substantially more
enquiries than the previous 12 months,
while 61% had received the same or
substantially more orders. These
impressive – and, it must be said,
somewhat surprising – figures just go to
show both the resilience of businesses in
the fire industry and the importance of
the work that they regularly transact.
The Government agreed on the
importance of that work by granting fire
sector professionals ‘key worker’ status
early on in the lockdown. That decision
emanated as a result of the FIA clearly
voicing concerns that not doing so
would endanger public safety.
We’ve seen the effect of the ‘key
worker’ decision through comparing
businesses’ access to customers’ premises
through our COVID-19 Survey
(conducted in May) with our Market
Conditions Survey (October). Back in
May, 69% of respondents found that
premises were already becoming more
accessible as lockdown progressed. This
trend continued in October, with 77% of
respondents finding customer premises
to be more accessible.
It's also worthwhile considering that
the increase in accessibility could be due
to the nation as a whole adapting to a
new way of living. In 2020-2021, there
has been something more important in
play than ‘the customer is always right’,
specifically ‘hands, face, space’.
Skilled labour
On the subject of employer recruitment,
30% of respondents continued to recruit
skilled labour and grow their workforce.
On the other hand, 6% of respondents
lost skilled labour which, while being
the highest percentage in five years for
the Market Conditions Survey, is only a
2% increase from the prior year.
All things considered, this is better
than expected and far better when
compared to other industries across the
nation such as retail, aviation and
hospitality. Our analysis found this was
due to a mix of the Government’s
unprecedented and greatly appreciated
furlough scheme and ‘key worker’ status
allowing a significant proportion of
businesses to continue working through
lockdown, which in turn enabled
companies throughout the industry to
keep on generating considerably good
order and enquiry numbers.
Organisations in the fire industry did
more than just continue to operate in
the face of a pandemic. Most had to
drastically change the way in which they
operate. For instance, in our recent