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Since the inception of modern performance-based fire engineering, the fire safety engineer (fire engineer) has become an increasingly influential and vital member of the design team, enabling architectural design intent. Fire engineers must navigate approvals pathways and provide design flexibility as building codes, and legislative requirements become more complex.
This note provides an overview of the fire engineer’s role within the design team, with a focus on the contributions of fire engineering professionals to construction industry design teams.
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The role of the fire engineer in architectural projects
Performance-based fire engineering has been part of the Australian construction industry since 1996, when performance-based solutions were first permitted by the Building Code of Australia (BCA). At that time, fire engineers looked at buildings from first principles and delivered a holistic fire safety strategy that sometimes had little to do with the BCA.
Fire engineering in Australia is now closely tied to the National Construction Code (NCC) Deemed-to-Satisfy (DtS) Provisions. A competitive market and legal liabilities have moulded the fire engineering profession to the point where most projects are undertaken based on:
The design complies with the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, except for these areas of deviation where the deviations are addressed by a Performance-Based Solution.
The role of a typical fire engineer in an architectural project is to review and consider the DtS deviations, and prepare a Fire Engineering Report (FER) that addresses these items and facilitate a building approval.
In preparing their FER, a fire engineer’s activities will include liaising with the fire brigade and consulting with the architect on what the best project solution will look like.
When they are engaged early in the design process, a proficient fire engineer can assist the architectural team in shaping the design from first principles to deliver a successful fire safety outcome. This outcome is the delivery and championing of a holistic fire safety strategy that is less bound by the prescriptive DtS provisions, yet still able to achieve an appropriate, and sometimes superior, degree of safety.
A fire engineer’s primary concern is to consider life safety. However, fire engineers can also have a role in providing solutions that more appropriately meet other objectives, such as:
- Justifying the use of new products and technologies that deliver improved sustainability and environmental outcomes.
- Advising on fire safety enhancements (above the minimum requirements) that deliver greater degrees of property protection or business continuance.
- Advising on risk mitigation measures to protect intangible assets such as branding and corporate reputation from the adverse media reports that can result from a fire.
- Justifying solutions that have fewer ongoing maintenance requirements or deliver lower insurance premiums to building owners.
The Australian Building Codes Board and fire engineering
In the NCC 2019, a Fire Safety Verification Method (FSVM) was introduced as a pathway for demonstrating compliance with the fire-related Performance Requirements. The approach stipulated by the FSVM requires fire engineers to consider, model and assess several crucial fire scenarios for the building under consideration, and for a nearly identical DtS compliant building.
However, the requirement for comparison with a DtS compliant building limits flexibility in design. Because FSVM is only one option to demonstrate compliance with the NCC Performance Requirements, it is not particularly popular in the industry. Fire engineers rarely adopt the FSVM, and most prefer to use the methods that were in use before its introduction.
Impact of legislative change on the role of the fire engineer
Following the Lacrosse fire in 2014 and the fatal Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017, the Federal Government commissioned the landmark Shergold Weir report (Shergold and Weir, 2018).
The recommendations of this report are gradually being implemented through legislative changes across all Australian states and territories. However, legislation directly related to fire engineering has not yet undergone significant change. A process is underway to bring each state and territory into alignment with the requirements of the others. The majority of recent legislative changes relate to professions and trades in the fire safety industry such as Fire services engineers and builders.
In NSW legislation requires that for certain buildings (residential and aged care), all key practitioners must agree on and certify a design as being fully coordinated with the designs of other consultants on the project and certify the design as complying with the NCC (either by way of the DtS Provisions, a Performance Solution or a combination of both). This process must happen before a construction certificate can be issued in NSW.
One other significant change that has occurred (or is upcoming for states and territories yet to adopt the change) is in the legislated role of the fire engineer during the construction process. There is (or will be) a legislated requirement for a fire engineer to undertake progress inspections and provide signoff for a construction project to verify that the intent and conditions of the Fire Engineering Report have been correctly implemented.
This is particularly important for large projects, with many different fire safety systems that must operate collectively in the event of a fire. In this case, the fire engineer’s role is overseer to verify that each fire safety system operates as it should and does not interfere with the workings of another system.
Fire engineers who have championed higher standards have long promoted the benefits of this system as it streamlines the approvals process and mitigates against future defects as the building ages. Architects, builders and project managers with similarly high standards have already seen the value in engaging a fire engineer to perform these services despite not yet being mandated in some jurisdictions.
Further resource
Australian Building Codes Board (2020) Upgrading existing buildings handbook, Section 4.1 Fire safety
Reference
Shergold P and Weir B (2018) Building Confidence – Improving the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement systems for the building and construction industry across Australia.
About the author
Mathew Freeman, MFireSafetyEng, BEMech (Hons), NER, CPEng, Technical Director, Holmes Fire, kindly prepared the content of this note.
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