FOCUS
Take a stand Toxicity must be considered in our building regulations as well as in both fire prevention and safety, argues Jonathan Evans
I
F YOU want a building you can be rescued from, let a firefighter design it. If you want one that doesn’t catch fi re in the fi rst place,
give it to an engineer. On 8 July last year, I gave evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, chaired passionately by Clive Betts MP, on building regulations and fire safety. Alongside me were Roy Wilsher, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) and member of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG’s) Independent Expert Panel; and Adrian Dobson, an executive director of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The committee’s work has been highly effective in calling to account ministers, government offi cials and industry fi gures on their response to the Grenfell tragedy. It has covered a number of issues such as the
fi tness for purpose of the approved guidance, the scope of the new combustible cladding ban, the Hackitt report, the cladding remediation programme and its associated funding. However, as the session drew to a close, Mr Betts turned to the person on his right and casually said a few
24 MARCH 2020
www.frmjournal.com
quiet words that have stuck with me ever since: ‘I think the fire services should be leading a review on the design of tall buildings.’ I couldn’t disagree more, and it highlights
one of several damaging misconceptions (such as meeting building regulations being an acceptable quality standard) that have thwarted attempts to deliver a safer built environment. It’s easy to be impressed by decorated, uniformed and honoured fire service professionals and conclude that they are the best people to deliver safe buildings. But it’s a grave misjudgement – literally.
Response and the law
In my view as an engineer, the correct order of priority in delivering a safe building is fire prevention, fire containment and escape. Yet somehow the design criteria of our tall buildings is dictated by the extreme limits of fi re and rescue service (FRS) capabilities. Rescue is the last of those three resorts, and is not the primary objective of functional requirement B4.1 of the building regulations (B4), of which we are so often reminded:
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