and the systems they sit within to assure the safety and ongoing viability of our built environment. In isolation, a car park fire might not be viewed as such a big deal: no one was hurt, after all. A cursory investigation of the financial impact


RISCAuthority insight T


Dr Jim Glockling reviews how recent events are opening up healthy conversation on the benefits of property protection


HE LIVERPOOL Echo Arena car park fire has added fuel to the ongoing debate on the appropriateness of our building regulations,


will run into millions and its impact will be felt for a long period: that’s aside from the material damage. The dock area could be considered an ‘out of town’ shopping and entertainment venue – most visitors won’t be local, and the ability to park is so important that it’s hard to see how the car park’s value was overlooked in the decision to build without sprinklers. Whilst we are always very sympathetic in the


event of such a loss, it’s entirely appropriate to look back and ask tough questions, so mistakes do not get repeated. This is business continuity planning in its simplest form, and whilst hindsight is 20/20 vision, here it looks like someone’s dropped the ball. Reasons for missing or ignoring the obvious


may be clear, or very complex. All too often business continuity is missed, and with the responsibility for fire often devolved by designers or architects to a specialist fire engineer, the route for communicating protection options to the customer – and the potential benefits higher levels of protection might bring – is often broken. The customer needs a design supporting


form and function, and the third party addresses meeting building regulations requirements (which have an exclusively life safety focus) so property protection is missed. With car parks, it’s not helpful that, extraordinarily, the regulations say that for such sites ‘sprinklers are not normally required’. It would be interesting to find the origins of that phrase, as it has probably steered a lot of ‘no sprinkler’ conclusions before full consideration of requirements has been given. Normally standards and regulations tell you what you have to do, not what you don’t have to do. The upside is that it has added to an already


healthy debate on property protection benefits, and how they need to be better integrated into planning and regulation. Sprinkler protection of car parks is highly developed and commonplace – it is beyond any doubt that they would have controlled


the fire to being a non event. Without this, once a number of vehicles’ fuel tanks rupture and burning petrol is flowing down ramps, there’s not much anyone can do except protect adjacent buildings – I understand the fire service did this very well (the nearest building had a clearance of just 3ft). Residential sprinkler standards that might be applied to the protection of buildings like Grenfell, on the face of it, are less highly developed. In basic form, they are simple systems designed for compliant buildings, aimed at helping occupants to reach a place of safety, and do not seek to protect the property as such. Within the standard however, many ‘special circumstances’ are noted that may require the design to be enhanced – little guidance is given on how to do this, even though their requirement for action will be commonplace. Such circumstances may include compensating for design deviations from code, or housing vulnerable people. Clearly some are property protection issues and demand a higher level of resilience, as would any system deployed as part of the overall fire safety policy. As bad as this sounds, it is encouraging to


see that, whilst solutions are not formalised in standards, special circumstances don’t generally get missed. Under scrutiny from approving bodies, installers and designers ensure these are appropriately embedded within end designs. Let’s be clear: in comparison to systems used in commercial manufacturing, which for very good reasons are belt and braces, residential solution compromises are inevitable if they are going to be affordable – this altered mindset is a challenge for an insurance backed organisation like ours. We’re working with residential sprinkler designers


and installers, as part of the ABI funded study, to formalise areas poorly handled on paper but well managed in practice, to raise the bar, promote knowledge sharing, and improve performance with a lower chance of increasing the escape of water insurance challenge. This will probably result in a technical guidance note allied to the British and European residential sprinkler standards


Dr Jim Glockling is technical director of the FPA and director of RISCAuthority


www.frmjournal.com FEBRUARY 2018 19


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