Challenges of Fire Fighting in Fire Engineered Built Environment

Performance based fire engineering design, as opposed to the traditional approach of satisfying highly prescriptive rules, is increasingly being taken up by clients and their professional advisers, including architects and engineers, because the performance based design approach can be used to offer a more attractive design through cost saving and greater design flexibility. However, fire engineering solutions make different assumptions on fire services intervention and are based on a number of engineering and management assumptions. These assumptions have implications on activities of the fire authority, in particular, fire fighting activities and these should, at the design stage, be addressed by the fire engineering design team. It is also important that the fire authority works closely with the fire engineering design team so that the fire engineering assumptions are not invalidated by fire service intervention. This paper identifies a number of challenges facing both the fire engineering design team and the fire authority and discusses how some of the challenges may be tackled.