"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" - The IFSM Bob Docherty Regime
Suppressing Fire, Suppressing Dissent
With the release of Grenfell: Uncovered on 20 June 2025, public discourse in the UK regarding the state of fire safety and building regulations eight years on from the worst fire disaster in the UK since perhaps the WWII-era Blitz levelled large parts of London and other major UK cities has seen a resurgence. The main narrative of this resurgent discourse has been one of outrage and demands for redress and justice for the 72 dead, be it the prosecution of the “Grenfell Crooks” or for the implementation of reforms including the establishment of a mandatory unified national accreditation scheme for fire safety professionals (like fire engineers, fire risk assessors and building control professionals) and centralisation of fire safety oversight under a dedicated government ministry and secretary of state.
Currently, the state of fire safety professional accreditation in the UK is fragmented and largely split between two organisations: the Institute of Fire Safety Managers (IFSM) and Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE). Of these two organisations, IFE is the senior one having been founded in 1918, with the IFSM only founded in 1993. Both organisations are currently engaged in various levels of behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts and establishing beachheads of political support within the current UK Labour government to be the one appointed as sole official national accreditation authority for UK fire safety professionals.
The IFSM effort has been particularly vigorous, with its president Robert “Bob” Docherty at its helm. Under his leadership, the IFSM entered an alliance with the UK Fire Industry Association (FIA) to augment its membership with the Fire Safety Federation (FSF) (now known as the Fire Safety Confederation (FSC) with registered charity status) to establish his organisation as the frontrunner choice to be the sole official national accreditation authority for UK fire safety professionals.
Docherty himself has been heavily invested in the idea of a national “Passport to fire safety” as far back at 2018, casting himself and the IFSM as the outstandingly responsible ones who “dutifully and diligently” carved academic pathways to recognised fire engineering and fire safety degrees as recognised within the 1990s-era UK National Core Curriculum in Fire Studies established following the Bickerdike Allen & Partners Report.
On the surface of things then, nobody can fault Bob Docherty’s professional dedication towards the advancement of fire safety standards in the UK. Certainly a lot of though has also been put into the careful buildup of reputational and political capital for the IFSM, which according to industry insiders is very much his personal baby shared only with David White, with both individuals having been the only ones to be IFSM president since its founding 32 years ago. With this background context in mind, it should perhaps be no surprise then that serious effort has been put into the IFSM Code of Ethics and Discipline, which places a high importance on the preservation of the organisation’s reputation in the eyes of the public under the overarching trigger reason of “bringing the Institute, fire safety profession or industry into disrepute”.
Yet since the beginning of 2025, an internal scandal within the IFSM has simmered along and threatened at various points to boil over. For the first time now, The Narrative Shaper can report on the basis of internal whistleblowers at IFSM the ongoing attempts by Bob Docherty to silence internal dissent and attempts at publicising them by current and past IFSM members regarding Adam Kiziak, a now-disgraced former fire engineer exposed for forging signatures to sign off on building fire safety assessment forms which he was not sufficiently qualified to do so.
To briefly summarise, Adam Kiziak was initially suspended in August 2024 and ultimately expelled from the IFE in March 2025 after he was exposed by Awwal Salisu for having forged Salisu’s signature and IFE membership number to sign off on fire risk assessment certification forms delivered under Kiziak’s company name, Tri-Fire. According to Salisu who has an extensive client base for his professional services both within the UK and abroad in European and Gulf State countries, he had received no care nor concern for his wellbeing nor professional reputation having been affected so negatively by Kiziak’s fraudulent actions, with IFSM claiming in an email reply to him on 24 January 2025 that no direct complaints with substantial evidence in support had been made to IFSM to justify them initiating any investigations or taking any disciplinary action against Kiziak. This was on top of IFSM downplaying the significance of Salisu’s complaint by the sheer fact that he was not a member of the organisation.
Salisu provided the following screenshot of the IFSM email in a LinkedIn comment left on The Narrative Shaper’s LinkedIn post sharing this article.
Kiziak would be further exposed by Inside Housing in March 2025 as having attempted to sell his company whilst still suspended under investigation by the IFE. Known officially as External Wall System Form 1 (EWS1), this document is deemed sufficiently important that it is one of several certificates that property finance lenders ask to see when assessing mortgage applications for buildings with cladding or balconies particularly if they are over six stories or 18 metres in height. With Kiziak and Tri-Fire’s downfall, there have been significant long-term repercussions for many property owners as banks withdrew their mortgage offers for buildings with fire safety certificates issued by Tri-Fire.
As a fire engineer, Kiziak was a member not only with the IFE but also with the IFSM, even having been co-opted onto the IFSM Council of 2021 and stayed there till at least 2022.
So it should be pretty disquieting to the UK general public that whilst IFE has very publicly sanctioned and expelled Adam Kiziak as a fraudulent fire engineer, the IFSM has thus far stayed stubbornly silent on the issue at least in public. In private to its own members however, the IFSM embarked on what some fire safety industry insiders have remarked to The Narrative Shaper as “rearguard defensive action” in an effort to induce a closing-of-ranks for IFSM members against public scrutiny
However, The Narrative Shaper understands that internally within the IFSM things have not been so quiet with its president Bob Docherty being personally involved in reporting an IFSM member by the name of Jay Leslie to the IFSM internal disciplinary board on charges of harassment, using aggressive language, and bringing the organisation into disrepute.
Quite how this works without conflict of interest real of perceived, an organisation’s president filing a formal complaint against a mere member to an disciplinary panel appointed by the organisation’s council of which he is the president of, is about as clear as mud.
Jay Leslie had publicly discussed the Kiziak scandal on his own podcast on 26 January 2025, and Docherty used that as well as later comments on LinkedIn made by Leslie where he had also tagged the IFSM in as evidence justifying his formal complaint on the pretext of Leslie having brought IFSM into disrepute.
Of those comments, one was ultimately seized on by the IFSM disciplinary panel and used to find Leslie guilty of bringing disrepute to the organisation. The screenshot of the now-deleted comment published below was provided to The Narrative Shaper along with other key documents pertaining to Leslie’s disciplinary case by an IFSM insider with knowledge and access to Leslie’s disciplinary case on condition of anonymity.
Readers can judge for themselves if this warrants Docherty’s charge of Jay Leslie “bringing into disrepute” the IFSM.
Though as the full complaint form leaked to The Narrative Shaper by the same IFSM insider demonstrates, the primary motivation for Bob Docherty’s complaint seemed more like his personal feelings being hurt by his “IFSM baby” and his leadership of it being criticised.
Note that Bob Docherty whilst justifying his complaint against Jay Leslie with accusations of inflammatory language “amounting to conduct unbecoming of a member of the Institute”, was perfectly comfortable flying off the handle online with his personal LinkedIn profile in a very public spat between himself and Matt Hodges-Long, the founder of the Building Safety Register and self-proclaimed “Martin Lewis of building safety regulations, that has all the qualities of an academic and professional pork sword-waving contest.
Jay Leslie would allude to this personal and organisational attack on him by Bob Docherty and IFSM in a public LinkedIn post on 22 June 2025, where he alleges that as a direct result of such attacks he has suffered professional blowback including being investigated by yet another fire industry organisation (owing to his initial suspension on March 6 according to industry insiders, thanks to Docherty’s complaint kicking off the IFSM disciplinary process) and copped a warning for the aforementioned LinkedIn comment questioning IFSM’s internal governance which had only been made because “organisations refused to be transparent, refused to answer questions”.
And the question was indeed simple: why Kiziak wasn’t publicly dealt with and expelled from the IFSM, considering that back in 2021 the IFSM had itself announced publicly its removal of an unnamed member for signing off EWS1 forms they were not sufficiently qualified for? By this very precedent, what Kiziak had been exposed for doing (forging signatures of other individuals to sign off on forms beyond his qualification to certify) is even worse.
As things go, under the IFSM’s own rules there are clear provisions for publicising any sanctions up to and including expulsion of Adam Kiziak, given his name and scandal being already a matter of public record on mainstream news including the BBC. So is the public supposed to take no public statement from the IFSM about an individual previously public recorded as its Council member being exposed for fraud as no action taken?
According to the anonymous IFSM insider who provided The Narrative Shaper key information including Bob Docherty’s complaint against Jay Leslie, the intention indeed is one of keeping silent in public not unlike “going to the Winchester, having a pint, and waiting for it all to blow over”.
The Narrative Shaper can also exclusively disclose that as of publication, the official internal line decided upon at IFSM to any enquiries by its own members, press organisations, or members of the public is to simply claim that “there is no record of any individual by the name of “Adam Kiziak” being a member of IFSM”.
Indeed, it is also the anonymous IFSM insider’s additional disgust at how Docherty’s public spat on LinkedIn as IFSM president with Matt Hodges-Long merely resulted in him getting a private, internal reprimand for “goading a member of the public”, in marked contrast to Jay Leslie’s LinkedIn comment and podcast episode which caused Docherty so much offence, that motivated them to reach out to The Narrative Shaper to provide material for this expose article once they found out about this independent investigative journalism site’s interest in the issue.
The double-standards further deepen with the revelation too that it was the SAME disciplinary committee involved in investigating and doling out the disciplinary outcomes for Docherty and Leslie.
The disciplinary committee also ignored the explicit statements from IFSM office staff who had handled both phone and email correspondence with Jay Leslie (which have been sighted by The Narrative Shaper courtesy of the anonymous IFSM insider) saying that at no point did Leslie threaten them, and all he could be describe as was “persistent”.
As for Jay Leslie, when The Narrative Shaper reached out to them for comment, he curtly refused to provide one and directed attention to his 22 June LinkedIn post where he clearly stated that IFSM had refused to give him advice on how to deal with press enquiries despite him asking them for advice.
This lack of response on IFSM’s part has also been confirmed by the anonymous insider not just as a case of innocent oversight from having too many emails to reply, but a deliberately malicious trap set to force Leslie either to self-censor out of fear of further sanctions or for any of his future public posts about IFSM and his suspension to be seized upon as once again “bringing the organisation into disrepute”.
And this seems to be a central theme of conflict not just within the personally-motivated punitive actions of Bob Docherty, president of the IFSM against one of his organisation’s members, but within the entire fire safety industry as well. One camp made up of individuals like Jay Leslie and Matt Hodges-Long believe in the value of shining lights into dark spaces and speaking up publicly about industry shortcomings and cover-ups, which given the nature of the industry almost always imperil public safety and therefore are of public interest.
The other camp made up by individuals such as Guy Doyle and Martin Bainbridge seem to fear more the loss of public confidence stemming from public takedowns of rogue individuals and “collective talking down of the industry”, preferring to focus more on “finding solutions and forward strategies” instead. Never mind the famous aphorism made by then-Lord Chief Justice of England in 1924 stating that “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done.”
Or when that doesn’t come to mind as demonstrated by Docherty who leads one of the main industry organisations in UK fire risk assessment angling hard to be the final word of authority on the subject, aggressive defensive actions against external critics and punitive blackballing against internal critics. All in the name of “confidentiality” and “protecting against disrepute”, even if it meant imperiling innocent lives.