Fire Services Editing and Proofreading Services

Fire services produce two very different kinds of writing and are usually resourced for neither. The operational record — incident reports, investigation findings, exposure documentation — may end up in a coroner's inquest, an insurance dispute or a prosecution years later. The regulatory side — inspection notices, orders to building owners, fire safety plans — has to compel action from people who would rather not spend the money, which means every deficiency must be specific enough that compliance can be verified and non-compliance proved.

We edit what fire and rescue services produce — incident reports and narrative documentation, fire origin and cause investigation reports, inspection reports and orders to comply, fire safety plans and their approval requirements, occupancy and life safety enforcement correspondence, pre-incident plans for complex buildings, standard operating guidelines and departmental policy, mutual aid and automatic aid agreements, training material and evaluation standards, firefighter exposure and health documentation, community risk assessments and fire prevention strategy, public education and safety campaign material, and annual reports and council submissions on service levels. Our editors check that orders are enforceable as written and that reports separate observation from conclusion.

The order to comply is the document that most determines whether a building gets safer, and vague drafting makes it unenforceable at exactly the moment it matters. "Ensure the fire alarm system is maintained in accordance with the code" tells an owner nothing they can act on and gives a prosecutor nothing to prove. We rewrite these so each deficiency is stated as an observed fact with its location — the device, the floor, the room number — followed by the requirement it contravenes, the specific corrective action, and the date by which it must be done. Where several deficiencies exist, we separate the ones creating immediate life safety risk from those that do not, and say so, because an order that treats a blocked exit and a missing logbook entry as equivalent will see both ignored. We also make the consequence explicit, including what happens on re-inspection, since owners routinely assume a first order is advisory.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including investigation files, material relating to active prosecutions and documents concerning identifiable people. We are editors rather than fire officials, investigators or legal advisers, and we offer no view on cause, code interpretation or enforcement. What we can do is make orders enforceable, reports factual and public material clear.