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Professor James Glockling of the Fire Protection Association and RISCAuthority looks at the insurance challenges that must be tackled for mass timber to remain viable for architects as a specification option
A
n inevitable consequence of the net zero 2050 ambition will be the increased use of wood as a structural building component of large buildings. Architects are keen to specify timber for a range of sustainability and design benefits, and the Government is committed to the goals, but a lack of insurance capacity within the market is stifling progress.
In a number of recent cases, specified ‘mass timber’ designs have had to revert to more traditional materials in order to be built. For some, this is viewed as a knee-jerk reaction by insurers against an unknown set of risks, but it demonstrates a lack of understanding of how insurance is conducted, which in turn leads to indifference to insurers’ legitimate concerns, leaving them unaddressed.
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
White paper news In February 2022 RISCAuthority (A scheme to fund research for UK insurers backed by 24 major insurers and administered by the Fire Protection Association), released a white paper detailing the challenges of insuring high-rise mass timber buildings. What made this paper noteworthy was that it provided insight into insurance methods and succinctly demonstrated the legitimacy of the concerns. The challenges and concerns are often associated with the Grenfell catastrophe, but that is misguided; there are few, if any, similarities, except perhaps showing how badly things can go wrong in a high-rise context.
It’s not only fire
Key to understanding the challenge is that this is not just about the use of wood as the
key structural element of large buildings, and it is also not just about fire. It is less well known that ‘escape of water’ events in domestic and residential settings exceed the combined contribution of both fire and security insured losses, and this is amplified further still in the multi-storey setting. Any move away from fire and water tolerant structural materials such as concrete and steel to any other – such as composite timber products which might be less resilient to these perils – is always going to be a challenge if local regulations fail to develop in line with these changes. In the UK, our Building Regulations seek only to assure that successful evacuation of the building occurs in advance of structural collapse, and they do this very well. However, for those that might want a higher level of performance that includes
ADF NOVEMBER 2022
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