Fire Safety in Tall Timber Building: A BIM-Based Automated Code-Checking Approach

Kristina Kincelova,Christian Dagenais,Conrad Boton,Pierre Blanchet

doi:10.3390/buildings10070121

Abstract

Fire safety regulations impose very strict requirements on building design, especially for buildings built with combustible materials. It is believed that it is possible to improve the management of these regulations with a better integration of fire protection aspects in the building information modeling (BIM) approach. A new BIM-based domain is emerging, the automated code checking, with its growing number of dedicated approaches. However, only very few of these works have been dedicated to managing the compliance to fire safety regulations in timber buildings. In this paper, the applicability to fire safety in the Canadian context is studied by constituting and executing a complete method from the regulations text through code-checking construction to result analysis. A design science approach is used to propose a code-checking method with a detailed analysis of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) in order to obtain the required information. The method starts by retrieving information from the regulation text, leading to a compliance check of an architectural building model. Then, the method is tested on a set of fire safety regulations and validated on a building model from a real project. The selected fire safety rules set a solid basis for further development of checking rules for the field of fire safety. This study shows that the main challenges for rule checking are the modeling standards and the elements’ required levels of detail. The implementation of the method was successful for geometrical as well as non-geometrical requirements, although further work is needed for more advanced geometrical studies, such as sprinkler or fire dampers positioning.

Highlights

To encourage the interest in Canada for mid-rise and high-rise timber buildings, different organizations and initiatives take place at federal and provincial levels, including the Wood First Act in British Columbia [1] and Wood Charter in Quebec [2]
The aim of the research presented in this paper is to propose a building information modeling (BIM)-based automated code-checking approach, to improve fire safety in tall timber buildings, by reducing the time dedicated to checking architectural models during the design phase
The literature review approaches the general challenges of code checking in terms of software needs or regulation classification

Summary

Introduction

To encourage the interest in Canada for mid-rise and high-rise timber buildings, different organizations and initiatives take place at federal and provincial levels, including the Wood First Act in British Columbia [1] and Wood Charter in Quebec [2]. The Wood First Act requires, since 2009, to use wood as a primary material in all provincially funded buildings. The Wood Charter is an initiative of the Quebec government containing measures, which aim to encourage the use of wood in all aspects of construction. The prescriptive provisions of the Canadian and provincial building codes, continue to limit this type of construction to buildings of no more than six stories in height, with the exception of the province of Quebec where up to 12 stories of mass timber construction is allowed [3]. Tall buildings need to provide very strict fire safety conditions; it is necessary to provide efficient tools for designing and verifying compliance of the fire safety regulations.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion