FOCUS
Unique challenges Andy Nicholson discusses fire strategies for
different and challenging buildings, ahead of case studies from Lisa Farnell, Yen Luong and Matt Ryan
T
HROUGHOUT MY entire career, I have developed fi re strategies for unusual buildings. My fi rst project in 1997 was the Millennium Dome – a 320m wide, 1km circumference, 50m high, polytetrafl uoroethylene (PTFE) clad cable net structure, designed to house the UK’s celebrations for the millennium. Technical design notes were developed over three years which were issued to Greenwich Building Control and London Fire Brigade to justify non compliances with Approved Document B of the Building Regulations (ADB). Over the course of 21 years, I have developed
fi re strategies for unusual projects designed to protect 28 million insects at the Natural History Museum’s Darwin Centre; World War II planes at RAF Cosford; the fi rst letter written by Nelson with his left hand at the National Maritime Museum; Newton’s manuscripts at Clare College Cambridge; and the highlight – Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus at the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. What makes a project unusual is not always its special contents. It can be the age of the building, such as our fi re strategy for the scheduled ancient monuments at Winchester Cathedral, or the age of non buildings, as for the Cutty Sark restoration.
26 JULY/AUGUST 2018
www.frmjournal.com
Usually in such cases, the relevant risk profi le is B2-3 from BS 9999, where the potential for higher fi re growth is possible and the occupant characteristics are unfamiliar, eg museums, galleries, castles, ships, domes, piers, stadia, theatres or nightclubs. It is not realistic to expect standard fi re safety design codes to adequately cover all aspects of fi re safety in these types of building. Even very specifi c guidance, such as the Yellow Guide for theatres, isn’t wholly applicable to the fi re strategy we developed for the untreated timber, indoor candle lit, Jacobean theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe. An architect or client will use a fi re engineer on
an unusual building to demonstrate compliance with the Building Regulations for fi re safety, without being restricted to generic guidance documents. Fire engineering is the application of knowledge in fi re science, human behaviour, technology, and performance of materials and systems, to develop alternative solutions from the prescriptive answers given in Building Regulations guidance. Designs are developed specifi cally for the building or project under consideration, and hence can be more appropriate than the generic code solutions. The designs developed are shown
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