ACCESSIBILITY & LIFTS 77 Safety rises to the top
The Building Safety Act has wide-ranging implications across many areas of construction; Nick Mellor at LEIA explains what it means for design of evacuation lifts
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n the wake of Grenfell, the initial focus of the Building Safety Bill is understandably on higher risk residential
buildings. This follows recommendations from Dame Judith Hackitt for a “new regulatory framework to develop an ‘integrated systemic change’ with a greater focus on getting building design and ongoing safety right.” In a nutshell, the Bill is concerned with improving consistency and oversight across the entire supply chain. This means a digital record for projects, with a ‘golden thread’ of information from design, through to construction and occupation, all overseen by a new building safety regulator. For architects, or the principal designer on the project, this means new requirements to plan, manage and monitor design work to ensure it complies with Building Regulations. In addition, they must co- operate, communicate and coordinate work with other duty holders. So where does this leave the design of evacuation lifts in projects?
Accessibility for all
Until various documents such as Building Regulations guidance and standards such as BS 9991:2015 (‘Fire safety in the design, management and use of residential buildings’) and BS 9999:2017 (‘Fire safety in the design, management and use of buildings’) are revised, the only current description of an evacuation lift for the evacuation of disabled people is in BS 9999:2017, Annex G. This describes a lift which is removed from normal operation and used by a rescue team with a manual operator driving the lift to the floors where people are awaiting evacuation. However, the use of lifts for the evacuation of disabled people is being looked at in several pieces of work. There has been work to draft a European standard which would be EN 81-76 (‘Evacuation of persons with disabilities using lifts’). A draft for public comment should be circulated in May 2022 which will include proposals for optional evacuation modes including a
driver assisted operation – similar to but a development on from what we have seen in British Standards – and an automatic evacuation operation. Approval and publication of a final EN 81-76 (2023 at the earliest) is not guaranteed so the draft EN 81-76 should not be referenced as if it were a standard.
The possibility of an automatic evacuation operation for disabled people to self-evacuate without assistance was recognised by the new London Plan – published in March 2021 – which includes Policy D5(B5) requiring development proposals to be “designed to incorporate safe and dignified emergency evacuation for all building users. In all developments where lifts are installed, at a minimum at least one lift per core (or more subject to capacity assessments) should be a suitably sized fire evacuation lift suitable to be used to evacuate people who require level access from the building.”
London Plan
The changes in the London Plan will have very significant implications, in influencing other guidance and recommendations revised to respond to similar challenges. At the time of writing, the supporting
In a nutshell, the Bill is concerned with improving consistency and oversight between the entire supply chain to improve safety
ADF APRIL 2022
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