Competence, quality and the importance of sustainability were among the themes emerging from a round table discussion on designing for fire, hosted by Architecture Today in partnership with the Business Sprinkler Alliance (BSA). Ruth Slavid reports.

Round Table Participants

Ahmed Allam
Director of Fire Engineering, Cundall
Chris Jarvis
Associate Partner, Sheppard Robson Architects
Iain Cox
Former fire chief and chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance (BSA), the National Fire Sprinkler Network (NSFN) and the Fire Risk Assessment Competency Council
Jane Duncan
Director, Jane Duncan Architects and former president RIBA
Tom Gilbert
Head of Fire Safety, Integrated Solutions, LendLease Europe
Tom Roche
Senior Consultant Codes & Standards, FM Global
Ruth Slavid
Chair

Nearly half of architects have not changed their working practices in the light of the Hackitt review of Building Regulations and fire safety, research by Architecture Today has shown. Of 156 architects who responded to the questions ‘Are you working differently following the Hackitt report?’, only 55 said yes. And fewer than 60 per cent said that their clients were asking for more information on fire safety at the design stage.

There is a strong feeling that the regulations should be treated as a minimum requirement only. Yet when asked, ‘Are your clients now requesting specific measures that exceed regulatory guidance?’ only 40 per cent answered yes, despite the fact that nearly half of clients were interested in going beyond the regulatory guidance. Not surprisingly, those that were showed the most concern about residential buildings.

Evolving fire strategies
This is a complex field and in order to understand it better, AT brought together a group of experts with different viewpoints for a round-table discussion. One problem that they highlighted was that too often a fire strategy produced at the design stage is not carried through the life of the project. Ahmed Allam said, “Most of the perception at the moment is that the fire safety strategy is only a design document. But a fire safety strategy is a living document that goes all the way from planning through the design into the construction and operations stage. Any changes in the building should dictate changes in fire safety strategy.”

He also explained that even seemingly minor changes to the building, such as using a different kind of paint, can change the behaviour of the building in fire and hence need to be incorporated in an evolving fire strategy. Put simply, a fire strategy needs to be a living document that evolves through the life of a building, adapting to change.

Quality and compentence
Competence was another word that came up often in the discussions. There was concern that there was little diligence in verifying that a building will perform in the way it is intended and that people are delivering in a way that will ensure the intended outcome. It is unacceptable that there are buildings less than 10 years old where the owners and operators do not have key information about how they were built.

There was also a concern that few people involved in design and construction realise how badly they may be performing. Because large fires are relatively infrequent, although devastating when they do happen, few construction professionals are aware of the potential consequences of their actions. Rather than designing to save lives they may be more easily motivated by the idea that they could be penalised at the end of a defects period.

The very largest projects tend to have dedicated consultants and a good fire strategy. The concern of the panellists was more about the medium sized project where expertise may be less. They talked about a ‘golden thread’ of fire safety that should run throughout the project’s life.

The other issue they talked about was quality – when we are concerned about building quality, we should get everything, including the fire design, right. Ian Cox said, “The phrase value engineering means strip it to the bone.” And for Jane Duncan, “The whole thing is about quality. We have lost pride in what we are producing for people. A building has become an asset – we don’t take joy in it.”

She explained that the RIBA has been discussing extending the roles of the principal designer and principal contractor to run throughout the project, finally signing off the building. But, she warned, “It’s a very big responsibility and you have to pay them properly for it.”

Sustainability and sprinklers
Another hot issue was sustainability – in particular, that if a building is to be truly sustainable then it has to survive a fire. Otherwise all that embodied energy literally goes up in smoke. Chris Jarvis said, “To be truly sustainable we should design buildings thinking about the implications of fire events. If huge elements of building need to be refurbished that reflects badly on sustainable credentials.” Tom Roche added, “It amazes me to see a building that has a fantastic BREEAM rating and wins awards, and in a fire it completely burns to the ground. I think, but surely all those sustainability credentials just went up in smoke. When people are striving to make their buildings green, they might realise that there is something they have to address with fire resilience, otherwise those green credentials are transitory.”

Iain Cox stressed that there is not a choice between saving lives and saving buildings – it should be possible to do both. “If you make your property safe you automatically protect the people,’ he said. From his insurer’s perspective Tom Roche said, “We need some clarity over what outcome we are trying to deliver. You have to understand that regulations only get you so far. If you intend your building to stand up over time you have to do more. Or we change our regulations to make sure that they deliver what is going on.”

Both he and Iain Cox argued strongly for sprinklers. Roche said, “I am always amazed by the number of buildings where people say it meets regulations so we don’t have to put sprinklers in, but there is no clarity over what has been given up. The value of that only becomes apparent when something goes wrong.”

Cox said, “One reason I am a fan of sprinklers is that they are effectively a firefighter on duty 24/7. So if things do go wrong they stop it from getting worse.” There are, he said, a lot of misconceptions about sprinklers. People think that they will all go off at once and that the water damage will be awful. But, he said, “You can recover stuff that is damp. You can’t recover stuff that is ash. Sprinklers are one of the most effective means of fire safety.” He criticised the lack of clarity, with requirements for example to have sprinklers in residential buildings over 30-metres high, but not in hotels or student accommodation.

The importance of testing
Another problem is a shortage of testing of new methods and materials in construction. Cox said, ‘”We have been running a real time real world experiment in fire safety. We are putting stuff up without knowing how it will behave in fire.” Chris Jarvis was also concerned about testing. “As architects we want to push boundaries and develop new systems”, he said, “but we are coming up against some resistance with things like CLT.” Elements must be given appropriate tests, he argued, which would reflect the way that they perform in reality, so that we can have both innovation and reassurance.

It was clear from this discussion that most built-environment professionals would benefit from learning more about this topic, and BSA and AT are running an online technical seminar to explore the impact of fire in the context of resilience and sustainability – look out for details.