NDY Fire Safety Engineering - Performance Based Fire Design

Traditionally, the fire protection requirements within building developments have been governed by the requirements of national Building Regulations and additional prescriptive requirements of Local Government bodies and Fire Brigades. This has resulted in a prescriptive approach being applied to the fire protection provisions within new and existing buildings.

The prescriptive requirements have been recognised as generally being conservative and are often applied on a discrete systems basis without taking into account the effects and benefits of other passive and active fire protection measures.

By adopting a fire engineered approach as an alternative to the prescriptive requirements of the Building Codes, all fire protection provisions are considered in a totally integrated manner resulting in more cost effective design solutions for the equivalent level of life and property protection.

By working closely with Architects and Structural Engineers at the early stages of a project, building concepts can be developed and presented to the relevant Authorities for their endorsement prior to proceeding with detailed design.

Issues that are addressed by NDY Fire engineers as part of an integrated fire engineered package include:

• Building compartmentation and fire ratings for fire and smoke containment
• Egress provisions, egress times and travel distances
• Occupant behaviour in fire situations
• Fire detection and alarm systems for early detection of smoke and activation of alarms.
• Emergency warning systems for early warning to building occupants
• Smoke hazard management systems for control of smoke within the building
• Assessment of anticipated fire loads
• Probability analysis and risk assessments
• Active fire protection systems such as fire sprinklers for control of fire spread and products of combustion.
• Fire Brigade access and fire fighting provisions.

These issues are considered in an integrated manner by NDY Fire Engineers and are discussed and agreed with the Authorities at various stages in the conceptual and detailed design process.

To effectively address each of the above life safety and property protection provisions, NDY Fire utilise various computer modelling software packages ranging from zone model software such as "Hazard", "Fast" and "Evacnet" to field modelling software utilising Computational Fluid Dynamics principals.

The resultant performance based designs produced by NDY Fire tend to be more cost effective from both a capital cost and ongoing maintenance cost viewpoint, and provide equal or greater levels of life safety when compared with traditional prescriptive designs.

For further information read our Fire Services Overview , contact us online or contact us in person.