How Many Fire Marshals Does a Team of 30 Need for Two on Site?
Three fire marshals in a team of 30 leave a two-marshal site short on about 11.5 working days a year. Four brings that to 1.9.
Four, if two must be on site to sweep the floors and take the roll call. Three holders are short whenever any one of them is away, which is about 11.5 working days a year; four holders are short on about 1.9, and five on 0.3. Fire marshals are usually appointed to satisfy a risk assessment that names the number present, and a risk assessment that says two means the site needs at least four people trained, not three.
Each extra holder, and what it buys
The rule says 2 fire marshals present on every working day. Each holder is absent on about 12.6 percent of rostered working days. This is how many working days a year fall short at each holder count.
Holding exactly 2 is a coin flipped every working day. The first spare holder removes most of the exposure; the second removes most of what is left. On these assumptions, 5 holders bring the expected shortfall to one working day a year or fewer, and 6 to one a decade.
How many are actually present
With 3 holders, the average working day has 2.62 present. Averages do not break rosters; the working days with fewer than 2 do. Across 261 working days a year, this is how the year is expected to distribute.
What is hard about this one
Fire marshalling has a feature that makes the spare holder more important than it is for most qualifications: the job is done during an evacuation, which is also when absent people are most obviously absent. A sweep plan that assigns the east stair to one named marshal and the west stair to another has already assumed both are in, and a plan with a third name in reserve has assumed at most one is out. With three holders, at least one is away on about 11.5 working days a year, and on those days the plan is running on its reserve before the alarm sounds.
Thirty people is also the size at which a site tends to have more than one sweep zone, and the rule "two marshals on site" is usually a simplification of "one per zone". Two zones, one marshal each, is two separate one-required problems, each needing two holders of its own, which is four in total but four in specific zones. Three holders who all sit in the same zone leave the other zone with nobody, regardless of what the headcount says. The drill is the test: if the same two people always sweep, the site is running on two holders for two required, which is short on about 61.8 days a year.
The lapse problem bites harder here than for first aid, because fire marshal refreshers are short, easy to postpone and rarely tracked by the people who run the roster. A marshal whose refresher is overdue may or may not be counted by the risk assessment, depending on who is asking, and a site that believes it has four holders while one is lapsed is running on three, at the 11.5-day rate, until the training record and the roster are put side by side. Treat expiry dates as part of the cover count, not as an administrative detail.
Move the requirement, move the answer
The holder count is usually the thing being argued about. The requirement itself is the other lever, and it is worth knowing what the same 3 holders buy if the rule were one looser or one stricter.
| Required present | Covered | Short working days a year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 99.8% | 0.5 |
| 2this page | 95.6% | 11.5 |
| 3 | 66.7% | 87 |
What this assumes, and where it is generous
These figures treat each holder as independently likely to be absent, which is the assumption most favourable to the roster. Holders are rarely independent: the two people who did the course together take the same school holidays, a certificate that lapses removes someone for the weeks it takes to rebook, and the person who is always asked to cover is the one most likely to be off sick. Treat every number here as the best case.
Only a valid certificate counts. A holder whose certificate has lapsed is a zero in this arithmetic for as long as the renewal takes, so the practical holder count is often one lower than the roster believes, and the row above the one you planned for is the one you are actually living on.
The absence share is 25 days of paid annual leave and 8 days of average sickness per person across 261 working days, which is 12.6 percent of rostered working days. Both inputs vary by country; the relief factor library carries sourced figures for 17 of them. Swap your own in and the shape of the ladder holds even as the counts move.
What to do with this
Hold four fire marshals for a two-present rule. Three is short on about 11.5 working days a year and four on 1.9.
Assign marshals to sweep zones and count holders per zone, because a two-zone site with three marshals in one zone has no cover in the other.
Put refresher dates next to the roster. A lapsed marshal takes four holders back to three and the site back to the 11.5-day rate without anyone deciding it.
The holder count on this page only works if it is the count of people whose certificate is valid today. Keeping that record current, who holds what, at which level, and until when, is what the Skills tab in Soon is for.
Common questions
- How many fire marshals should a team of 30 train?
- Four, if the risk assessment requires two on site at all times. Three holders leave the site short whenever any one of them is absent, about 11.5 working days a year on the assumptions here; four holders cut that to 1.9 days; five to 0.3. If the site has separate sweep zones, each zone needs its own two holders.
- Is three fire marshals enough for two on site?
- No. Three for two required means a single absence breaks the rule, and each holder is absent on about 12.6 percent of working days. The first holder above the requirement is used up by the first absence. It is the second spare, the fourth holder, that makes the arrangement hold.
- What does a lapsed refresher do to the count?
- It removes a holder until the refresher is done. A site with four marshals and one lapsed is running on three, which is short on about 11.5 days a year rather than 1.9. Because refreshers are easy to postpone, this is the most common way a site that planned four ends up operating at three.
Other qualifications
3 required, 5 per crew
How Many First Aiders Does a Team of 40 Need for Two on Site?2 required, 4 held
How Many First Aiders Does a 24/7 Team of 20 Need?1 required, 2 per crew
How Many German Speakers Do You Need for Three on Every Shift of 10 Agents?3 required, 6 per crew
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