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Bristol Uniforms

Address: Wathen Street, Staple Hill, Bristol, United Kingdom

Telephone Number: + 44 (0) 117 9563 101
Email Address: enquiries@bristoluniforms.co.uk
Website: http://www.bristoluniforms.com

Profile

Bristol Uniforms is one of the world’s leading designers and manufacturers of head-to-toe protective clothing for firefighters – commonly referred to as PPE (Personal Protective Clothing). Bristol pioneered specialist protective clothing during the 1960s when the first aluminised suits were designed to protect emergency firefighters at RAF airfields and was an early adopted of Dupont’s original Nomex™ fire resistant fabrics in the early 1970s. The company’s leadership was further demonstrated when it initiated discussions with the UK government’s Home Office and London Fire Brigade about the introduction of standards for firefighter clothing. These led to the successful introduction of the A19 specification, followed some years later by the A26 specification which was the first forerunner of the modern bunker style structural fire kit.

Today, Bristol supplies a wide range of firefighter PPE to meet the increasingly specialised nature of 21st century firefighting. Structural firefighting head-to-toe protection is focused around a range of Nomex™ and Pbi™ outershell combinations featuring the most advanced fire resistant fabrics available. By using highly efficient combined moisture and thermal barriers, supplied by W L Gore, lighter weight fire coats and trousers have largely replaced the heavier combinations widely used until the end of the 1990s and have helped to reduce the physiological impact and levels of heat stress associated with earlier designs.

Firefighters, in addition to performing their traditional role as tackling building fires, are now required to protect, as well as rescue, the public from situations ranging from collapsed buildings, forest and heathland fires to road traffic accidents. Fire & Rescue services have, over recent years, increasingly adopted a policy of acquiring different types of personal protection to suit these situations. Wildland PPE has been developed to provide lightweight coveralls to minimise the impact of intense radiant heat whilst providing high levels of protection from flame lick. The rescue element of a firefighter’s role often also involves searching for people in collapsed buildings or buildings after fires have been extinguished. USAR (Urban Search & Rescue) PPE is designed to provide maximum physical protection for working in dangerous situations where the risk of fire is small or absent. Bristol has designed a number of alternative protective clothing options to meet both wildland and USAR hazards along with a range of accessories for full head-to-toe protection when operating in all conditions.

The performance integrity of PPE is an essential part of its ability to continue to provide the intended level of protection throughout its service life. Given the frequency of exposure of PPE to a range of hazards, its regular maintenance is critical to ensuring the safety of the wearer. Since 2000, Bristol has provided a comprehensive garment managed service for its customers. This involves washing, repairing, decontaminating (where required), inspecting, condition coding and tracking individual items of PPE from new to end-of-life use. In addition to providing assurance to employers that they are meeting their obligations under the Health & Safety at Work regulations, managed care helps to prolong the service life of garments to ensure best value and avoid unnecessary premature disposal.

Bristol is not only a leader in product design and development, but has been active for many years in helping the appropriate authorities in the UK and Europe to develop performance standards which most fire & rescue services adopt when specifying firefighter PPE. In particular, members of Bristol’s technical staff have been involved with the working groups which have been active since the early 1990s in developing performance standards for structural PPE. Drafted by European committee CEN/TC162, the current European standard is EN 469:2005. Bristol designs structural firefighter PPE to meet other important standards including international standard ISO 11613:1999 and USA standard NFPA 1971:2007.

In 2008, Bristol secured the contract to supply products to England’s fire & rescue services which chose to adopt a comprehensive range of PPE and non-PPE clothing under the government’s Integrated Clothing Project (ICP). The project, begun in 2004 under the auspices of Firebuy as part of the National Procurement Strategy, selected Bristol’s designs after an exhaustive evaluation process covering technical testing, wearer trials and value-for-money assessment. The ICP has already been widely adopted in a choice of options including simple purchase (PO), purchase with managed service (PMS) or lease with managed service (FMS).

Bristol’s firefighter PPE is now used by fire and rescue services in over 110 countries around the world, supplied through an international network of over 70 distributors. The company generates around half its business from exports and is active on every continent in the world providing both product and technical assistance to governments, fire authorities and industrial users of firefighter protective clothing around the globe.

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