Future codes for fire safety design

Abstract

Whilst the move to functionally based fire safety regulations provides greater opportunities for the use of fire safety engineering design of buildings, there has been little advancement in the acceptability of this approach. The majority of the applications of fire safety engineering are restricted to the solution of problems associated with a part(s) of the fire safety design rather than addressing the global design from a fundamental basis. The paper looks at some of the difficulties in gaining acceptability of fire safety engineering and examines the need for future fire safety design codes to be of a framework nature. Essential components of framework codes are listed, and the Code already being developed within BSI, which is very similar to the work underway in ISO/TC92/SC4, is illustrated as a good example. The paper concludes that a framework code is the cornerstone in gaining further acceptance of engineering approaches to fire safety in buildings.