History of JOIFF

When Richard Coates, (now retired) Group Fire Advisor of BP joined BP in 1990, he saw the need for a group of Senior Fire Officers to meet to deal with Fire Safety matters within the Oil Industry. He contacted a number of colleagues in the Oil Industry around the UK including Eddie Davies, Elf Milford Haven, Dave Murray, Conoco Humberside, Roger Marshall, Lindsey Humberside and Rob Wardle, Dow Corning Barry, and together they established an informal group which they called the Joint Oil Industry Fire Forum.
The first meeting of JOIFF was hosted by BP in the former Britannic House, London, England. The initial objective of JOIFF was to be an informal group of purely Oil Industry Fire Chiefs to have a forum to discuss matters of mutual benefit. As time progressed, the value and potential of JOIFF was recognised by Fire Chiefs in Chemical and other related Companies the name was then changed to the Joint Oil & Industry Forum to allow other industries to be elected as members.

Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, the Membership of JOIFF grew, not only in number of members and range of industry/commerce sectors in which they are engaged, but also in the number of Countries in which its members are located. This resulted in a much wider based involvement by JOIFF in its activities and to truly reflect the nature of the membership and range of interests of JOIFF, the name of the Organisation today is "JOIFF - The Organisation for Emergency Services Management".
In 1999, JOIFF and Fulcrum Consultants, originally part of the GD Group, a Group of Companies based in Dublin Ireland that has been engaged in the Fire Safety Industry for more than 60 years, came together to form the JOIFF Training Standards Committee which developed Industry Standards for Competency Based Training, including not only Course content but also minimum requirements for training establishments and instructors.

At the beginning of 2001, Fulcrum Consultants were invited to become the Secretariat of JOIFF and have worked with the Executive since then in developing JOIFF into the major International Organisation that it is today.