Comparative analysis of façade regulations in the Nordic countries

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of Nordic fire safety requirements of facades. A reference building was chosen as a four-story residential building. The requirements were analysed with focus on what fire safety objectives they represent, and what type of pre-accepted solutions that were used. The results reveal large differences in the Nordic building regulations concerning facades. The differences occur both with regards to performance objectives, criteria and acceptable solutions. Current European methods are not sufficient to characterise the requirements needed for fire safety of facades. There is a need to develop new common verification methods, as well as better data and research, to improve requirements and to reach conformity. INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND Fire safety in facades has been under the spotlight in recent years due to several significant fires. Also, new facade designs challenge the traditional pre-accepted fire safety solutions and therefore call for new verification methods. In the European perspective, several countries have used large-scale methods to evaluate facades, whereas the European standardization has not yet agreed on a common verification method. This paper demonstrates the lack of commonly agreed verification methods by comparing the building legislation and regulations in the Nordic countries. The Nordic comparison is interesting because of the many similarities, with yet a great spread in resulting regulations. In this context, current practice in Sweden is discussed. The Nordic countries share a history of collaboration for the area of building regulations. This goes back to work done by NKB (Nordic Committee on Building Regulations) that started in the sixties. However, there are still large differences in the regulations. These differences can present a barrier of trade for products and services. The construction products directive (CPD), and now the construction products regulation (1), CPR, and the resulting European harmonization of testing and classes for fire safety has mitigated some of these differences. However, the testing and classification methods do not cover all fire safety aspects relevant to facades. It would be reasonable to assume that climate, occupant behaviour etc. would be quite similar in the Nordic countries, which also would give ground for similar regulation of fire safety of facades (and other areas). By identifying differences and analysing these from a fire risk perspective, further steps may be taken to adequately regulate fire safety of facades. In 2008, another Nordic project analysed differences in classifications in the Nordic countries but no deeper studies of facades were conducts. The conclusions in the final report still revealed that there