Current affairs
carpet – safety will be actively documented, checked and managed. Those who do not follow requirements to improve safety will be held accountable by the regulator.
Finer details
Whilst it is understandable that Dame Judith’s report focused on high risk residential buildings, this is now being extended to multi occupancy residential buildings taller than 18m. This means that the benefits provided by the system will only be realised by a limited number of buildings. The extension may be eminently sensible as we start to build expertise and operate a separate system for defined buildings. But either way, running a two tier system in the long term will pose challenges, as it will offer opportunities to play the system. It also overlooks the fact that fire safety challenges are found across the whole built environment.
Risks and outcomes
The implementation of the proposed framework will mean a shift from a singular focus on compliance with guidelines to actively demonstrating an understanding of the risk in a building. This will mean defining the desired outcomes in the face of risks for safety in the event of fire, implementing systems to achieve them and actively managing
change to ensure the outcomes are achieved over time.
Defining outcomes is fundamental, and we
are seeing a shift in expectations – notably about the ability to return to using a building quickly after a fire. A fire in a block of flats in Barking, east London, last June provided a stark example of the broader consequences of fire; thankfully there were no injuries, but 20 families and residents will have to be housed elsewhere for many months. Then in September, the fallout from a serious fire in 2016 resulted in the manufacturer Total Polyfilm collapsing into administration (see case study on page 42).
Effective and efficient
Fires such as these highlight the rationale for greater consideration of property protection alongside life safety as a reasonable outcome. Such an expectation would result in more buildings being designed for resilience to disproportionate damage, using combinations of passive and active fire safety measures. The BSA believes that sprinkler systems
would be a major part of this change and that they should be considered more readily as a viable option right across the built environment, whether it is a block of flats, hospital, school, retail or leisure facility, or commercial and industrial building. Doing so would be in line with the ‘layers of protection’,
FOCUS
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