Telangana Plans Risk-Based Fire NOC System for Industries
Telangana's Fire Services is weighing a risk-based classification for industrial Fire NOCs, grading units as low, medium or high hazard to streamline approvals.
Industries in Telangana could soon face fire safety requirements calibrated to the hazards they actually pose, with the state's Fire, Disaster Response, Emergency and Civil Defence Department examining a framework that sorts establishments into low, medium and high-risk categories.
The proposed system, described as a G1/G2/G3 classification, was placed before industrial stakeholders at a workshop in Secunderabad on Monday. Under it, G1 would cover low-hazard industries, G2 medium-hazard units and G3 high-hazard establishments.
Classification would rest on several factors, including fire load, the presence of hazardous materials, storage arrangements, electrical and process risks, occupancy levels and the potential impact of an incident.
Rather than applying a uniform set of conditions, the department is looking at proportionate regulatory requirements for each category, so that norms irrelevant to a particular industry or process are not imposed on it.
Discussions at the workshop also took up the simplification and standardisation of procedures for provisional, occupancy and renewal Fire NOCs. Officials are considering category and industry-specific fire and life safety checklists, along with minimum safety requirements suited to different risk levels.
Technology featured prominently in the deliberations. The department is exploring IoT-based monitoring of firefighting systems, intelligent detection and alarm systems, aspirating smoke detection, thermal monitoring, gas and leak detection, and automated suppression systems. Such tools could relay real-time information on whether critical firefighting infrastructure is functional, allowing faults to be corrected promptly.
Other themes included third-party fire safety audits, periodic testing, preventive maintenance, emergency drills and continuous compliance between statutory inspections and renewals.
The workshop, held at St. Mary's College of Pharmacy, drew representatives from industrial associations and major industries, architects, structural engineers, fire safety and MEP consultants, safety professionals and other stakeholders.
The department said the feedback gathered during the consultations would be studied while refining the proposed Fire NOC procedures, the industrial risk classifications and the technology-enabled fire safety framework.