About
Karissa Thomas AIFireE MIFSM
Director and Fire Surveyor
Karissa has spent the best part of 17 years being nosy and looking around some of the coolest buildings in the country (in her opinion!) looking out for fire safety issues and finding some pretty surprising things (although not much surprises her about fire safety these days).
Karissa specialises in heritage buildings as they are the most interesting, quirky, and always leave you pondering over something new with their own unique characteristics.
When not doing fire safety things, Karissa’s interests extend to greyhounds, classic cars, bonsai trees…
Her fire safety work has included:
- Fire risk assessments, including HRBs and Type 4s, with a speciality in heritage buildings
- Retrospective fire strategies
- Pre-occupation fire risk assessments
- Fire safety policy and procedure development
- Construction phase fire safety inspections and audits
- Fire equipment asset surveys
- Compartmentation surveys and strategic compartmentation drawing production
- Management fire safety procedure audits
- Fire evacuation strategies and plans
- Specification of firefighting equipment, signage etc
- Work scheduling
- Gap analysis
…and just a few of the buildings and organisations Karissa is proud to have completed work for include:
- The British Museum
- The Parliamentary Estate
- The Royal Household (Windsor Castle)
- Sotheby’s
- Selfridges
- Goodwood House
- The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple
- National Theatre
- Blythe House – Joint Museums’ Store
- Brighton Pavilion
- The Horlicks Factory
Experience
NHS – Karissa has worked on a contract basis for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust in Deputy Fire Safety Manager / Fire Safety Officer roles undertaking fire risk assessments, training, incidence response and investigation and general fire safety management. She has also worked on a consultancy basis at King’s College Hospital, St George’s Hospital, Poole Hospital, Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital, Worthing, Southlands and Brighton Hospitals.
Karissa has most recently been the Fire Safety Officer for Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Wakehurst.
Other roles include Fire Safety Officer for Norfolk and Suffolk Constabularies and Interim Fire Safety Manager for The British Museum at the time that the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre (WCEC) was being constructed and opened for the first time.
Voluntary Roles
Karissa is involved in the Institution of Fire Engineers at the International General Assembly – representing the South Eastern Branch to Board level and guiding the future of the IFE.
Karissa is involved in the IFE’s Heritage Special Interest Group and the Heritage Fire Networking Group. She also represents Women Talking Fire at events and conferences – a networking group for Women in the Fire Industry.
Qualifications
Karissa holds a Diploma of Higher Education (Level 5) in Fire Safety Management from the University of Central Lancashire and various other fire safety qualifications. She is an Associate member of the Institution of Fire Engineers and a Member of the Institution of Fire Safety Managers.
Karissa is also available for Associate or Contract work, please contact her below.
Phone / WhatsApp
07579 794285
Location
Burgess Hill, West Sussex UK