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Hidden dangers in trade-off? |
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Mike Wood, Chairman of the Fire Safety Development Group, argues that in new builds, fire safety is every bit as important as low building costs and aesthetic innovation
MODERN BUILDINGS SEEM TO BE EVER more complex, and urban environments more congested. This presents fire safety with increasing challenges, compounded by diverse occupancies and multiple uses. Modern structures often rely on design flexibility. It is, of course, right to innovate – we should all want to create interesting buildings that make life comfortable and stimulating for the people who use them. However, the fire safety community should also be aware of trends that threaten the robustness of fire protection in modern buildings. There are risks to fire safety from design attitudes that set out to reduce fire protection to the minimum in preferentially serving the interests of ever lower building costs whilst concurrently aiming to increase building value.
I believe trade-off needs vigilance. The reasons for trade-off must be well-defined on technical grounds, but too often the practice seems deployed to fit expedient judgments and preconceived outcomes without adequate justification. Unchecked it may lead to substitution of one system for another under the guise of equivalence. In practice, different fire protection systems, based on different technologies, are intended to do different things. Indeed, systems are tested and evaluated differently, making it questionable to attempt direct comparisons on a rigorous basis.
Robust Safety System
Impartial risk assessment at the design stage, with a view to fitness for purpose, is critical. Design flexibility need not automatically lead to radical trade-offs between different components of fire protection that make up a coherent, robust safety system. A different emphasis in the mix of fire safety measures may well be needed according to the building and its occupancy. But, the principle of holistic, integrated fire safety should remain sacrosanct.
Yet changes are happening that the fire safety community must understand fully since these have fundamental implications for the future. Shifts in design practice are difficult to reverse once established unchallenged; and misconceived trade-offs risk compromises which can weaken the whole fire protection concept.
Fire protection, as we should continually remind ourselves, requires a blend of defence and attack. Balance should be the watchword, backed up by comprehensive risk evaluation. We should watch out that trade-offs do not become received wisdom and handed down as established practice. Tacit acceptance – even encouragement – right at the start leads to an uncertain, and potentially unwelcome, destination.
The issue of firefighter safety is critical here. We must be confident about a fire situation, its anticipated dynamics and the likely structural response, before attempting to tackle it. Trends in building design and utilisation are fundamentally important. But through no fault of their own, firefighters could have limited knowledge of what awaits in today’s modern individualistically designed buildings.
Firefighter Deaths
Unfortunately news of firefighter deaths in the line of duty has hit the front pages again in recent years. On injuries, official statistics tell a more encouraging story, ostensibly at least. Firefighter injuries have fallen by more than 40 per cent since 2003. However, as the number of fire incidents has declined, the actual rate of firefighter injuries in primary fires in fact may not have seen a comparable reduction. Insurers could be another lever to moderate poorly-conceived examples of substituting one fire safety system for another. Many insurers will be focused on the fallout from last summer’s flooding. But disruption in the financial markets may turn minds more generally to property value and the risks of fire. While the number of fires is in steady decline, insurers note that they incur just as much in fire losses and sometimes more, rising above £1bn a year. Caution about trade-offs is already out there in the public domain. Schools Building Bulletin 100 wisely alerts stakeholders to the dangers of trade-offs that are not grounded in scientific evidence. Helpfully the guidance also positions fire protection as a core building function, rightly ranking it alongside, and integrated with, other structural requirements, such as energy efficiency and sustainability: ‘Trade-offs of one system for another need to be carefully evaluated, as they may compromise not only overall fire safety provisions, because of reductions in the levels of safety back up and engineering redundancy, but also other building functions. ‘Reductions in the level of compartmentation, for example, may compromise performance in other respects (such as energy efficiency, acoustic insulation, multiple space utilisation, security, and privacy). The designer needs to take these wider considerations into account in the overall achievement of functional design and cost targets’.
There are inevitably partisans amongst the fire safety community for one system compared with another – but we know that risks are minimised by a combination of measures working together. Focusing too much on one type of fire protection can risk neglect for the other critical components in a structural fire safety system. Those who would prefer to pare down – and save on – fire protection without a solid evidence base may interpret this as a green light to do precisely that. Yet we all know that holistic fire protection offers the best structural fire safety solution for people, property and firefighters. The fire safety community as a whole needs to stand firm. There should be a re-evaluation of the trends in modern building design and a review of our response. Let us embrace the age of design flexibility but within the context of appropriately advanced – robust and integrated – holistic fire safety.
And let us remember that short cuts and compromises which, in effect, erode fire safety principles, are not in the best interests of advancing fire safety in buildings. |
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