The importance of a fire strategy – Part 2: key concepts

A fire strategy should provide information on the design basis for a project and can generally follow a prescriptive code-based approach or performance-based fire engineering approach.

In order to ensure its inclusion at the beginning of a project it is often good practice to conduct a Qualitative Design Review (QDR) that involves all relevant project stakeholders.

Following this the existing fire safety management of an organisation can be appraised, and data on existing fire system audit protocols can be used, to provide useful information for analysis. This review would include in-house standards, policies and existing strategies etc. The fire systems audit would determine how the fire protection is working in existing buildings and whether it’s effective? If concerns are raised over existing standards of management and maintenance then future fire strategies for new projects should be cautious of making design assumptions based on an expected high level of fire safety management and maintenance.

A fire system health check involving a third party validation of fire systems is often a worthwhile exercise to establish, ‘if you actually have the system that you think you have?’

The fire strategy mandatory framework

It is important to ensure that the fire strategy clearly states the applicable legislation and mandatory framework relevant to the country and/or region to ensure approval by the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ). This should not be limited to building control or municipality requirements but should encompass all relevant stakeholder requirements including insurers and special interest groups in the country/region.

An important factor when developing a fire strategy is to record and set objectives, such as:

• Life safety – considering the occupants of the building, the likely number and type of visitors, contractors and in the event of a fire incident the responding fire fighters.
• Property – the building structure and type, the fabric, fixed and movable assets.
• Business – the business mission, confidence, long and short term operations.
• Environment – long term, locality, external and internal

Many codes and legislation have evolved following fire events that have resulted in large loss of life. Codes often inherently mitigate risk from lessons learnt and provide guidance on basic fire safety concepts such as:

• Occupancy type
• Construction type
• Travel distances
• Number, size and location of exits
• Time to escape
• Fire Service access requirements
• Fire safety management

Although a code compliant solution can be recorded in a fire strategy a risk and hazard assessment should also be carried out and can follow a qualitative or quantitative assessment methodology. Risk profiling can be incorporated to accompany a hazard assessment and fire modelling can also be undertaken to support the overall analysis.

A conceptual understanding of how different risk profiles require different levels of resource (cost) should be used to arrive at similar residual levels of risk. As an example, a hospital will have a different risk profile to an offshore installation or to an office complex. For similar equivalent levels of risk, different risk profiles will require varying levels of investment in fire safety and protection. Similarly, the same level of spend on different risk profiles will result in different residual levels of risk. Consequently, a budget will need to be commensurate with both the risk profile and the acceptable level of risk remaining.