Development of a Framework for Quality Assurance of Performance-based Fire Safety Designs

Abstract

In this paper, some fundamental problems concerning the verification of fire safety engineering designs based on performance-based building regulations are discussed. It can be questioned if the approach taken by many practitioners today is sufficient to fulfil the requirements laid out in the building code, i.e. society’s demand for fire safety. Examples of this deficiency are that interdependencies between safety measures are not addressed and multiple purposes of safety measures are not recognized when trade-offs are evaluated. This poses a threat to the quality of the fire safety system. At the same time, there are few tools available to address these issues in a practical way. In this paper three tools are suggested as a means of addressing these issues. The tools have also been applied to a simple example to demonstrate their capability.