The principle of fire compartmentation is easy enough to understand, so why are there still so many examples of deficiencies in this area? Bill Parlor takes up the cudgels on behalf of better built-in protection.

Recent fire incidents, together with media reports on the widespread lack of fire risk assessments for local authority tower blocks, strongly suggest that we have conveniently forgotten the underlying principles for effective fire compartments and fire prevention strategies in buildings. Government departments usually ask for evidence of this. Officials come and go, but in the process it seems that the recorded evidence leading up to the ASFP publication entitled Ensuring Best Practice for Passive Fire Protection in Buildings, has been forgotten.

The publication of the ASFP ‘best practice’ document in 2000 was not an incidental marketing exercise. It was preceded by a detailed three-year Partners in Innovation (PiI) Project, partly funded by Office of the Deputy Prime minister (ODPM) and the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), where independent research on fire safety provisions was collected on a wide variety of nominated types of buildings.

In one case, it was recorded that not one of 400 premises in a business acquisition met Building Regulations/Approved Document B. The research repeatedly showed that the misplaced reliability on fire compartment walls and barriers is a real problem. In some complex buildings, detailed drawings were missing and occupants had no knowledge of the location of essential defences, such as compartment walls. A high percentage of compartment walls were either defective through poorly installed fire stopping of penetrating service systems, or invalidated by incompetent maintenance.

In the foreword to the publication, the then minister of state for energy and construction, Brian Wilson, stated that “Research has shown that passive fire protection in many buildings is either badly installed or inadequate. As part of our best practice programme, this guidance fills a major gap in a vital area of construction safety and focuses the minds of the industry on a neglected area”.

Emerging issues
So what has changed since then? Around 12 months ago, readers of the London Evening Standard and trade press were aghast at the widespread lack of built-in fire safety provisions in the multi-storey Pacific Wharf development. On 30 July 2009, the government’s chief fire and rescue adviser, Sir Ken Knight, published his report on the emerging issues arising from the fatal fire at Lakanal House, Camberwell. (The full report is available here). The report reminds us of the fundamental principles intended for the construction of larger buildings, including:

Advice to occupants: “There is a long established principle that the design and construction of high rise buildings enable the occupants adjacent to the immediate fire area to make their way to a place of safety, while other occupants can remain safely in their homes. These principles do require that a satisfactory level of passive and active fire safety systems are installed and maintained.” So, we might conclude that if fire compartments are not properly installed and/or maintained, then this principle is undermined by those responsible for the building.

Internal and external fire spread: “The principles of fire safety and firefighting in the UK are based on containment of the fire within a compartment. It is therefore important...to ensure that this principle remains sound.” So, nine years after the ASFP report was delivered, the main concerns have reappeared again, and any government actions meanwhile appear to have been unsuccessful.

Passive fire protection: “The protection incorporated into the design and fabric of the building is the fundamental basis for reducing the spread of fire and loss of life” and, “In undertaking major changes and refurbishment work in such buildings, the significance of the passive fire protection is required to be clearly specified and understood by the main contractor for the work, as well as those installing or altering the protection.” So, no ‘ifs or buts’ here – the vital issue for other actions is clearly stated, alongside recommendations that fire safety products are installed by suitably competent people who recognise the significance of the fire safety measures being installed.

Fire Safety Order 2005
There is a clear duty under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order that a fire risk assessment must be made and maintained by those who are liable to do so. There are other issues on the competency of those who assist in undertaking preventative and protective fire safety measures, as well as in making a suitable and sufficient risk assessment.

Nonetheless, investigations made by BBC London in the wake of the Lakanal House fire, revealed that hundreds of tower blocks had not been assessed for fire safety, and that the local authority which seemed to be the worst offender had only carried out risk assessments on two of its 112 tower blocks. It’s a bit puzzling that despite the request for completed fire risk assessments, government has still not acted to repair the damage that’s clearly widespread around them, not just in central London where they can see it for themselves!

Insurers are quite clear and have clearly stated objectives including twelve essential principles for buildings, including residential buildings over 20 metres high. The key objectives are listed in the RiscAuthority document Essential Principles published by Fire Protection Association:

• To minimise the effect of fire on a business
• To minimise the effects of fire on business interruption
• To ensure the business can be trading within 24 hours of a fire incident
• To protect the buildings within a business.

Why is it that government cannot see that the well-being of UK buildings is a national business we should all be attending to? Do it right first time is a proven mantra towards best value for money and echoed recently by a Communities & Local Government (CLG) publication The Future of Building Control. Yet many businesses and local authorities still use in-house labour to carry out specialised tasks that they are not qualified to do, including fundamental fire safety provisions in buildings. Then later, we have to spend the money all over again, to clear up the mess they have made. This is not a sustainable strategy.

Room of origin
The simple view of the purpose of a fire compartment is to ensure that any fire that occurs is kept in the room of origin. But it goes a bit further than that, because the fire will try to escape by whatever means are available and we need to ensure that we can indeed catch this tiger by the tail, before it escapes. Make no mistake, it will try to evade our efforts.

 In this context, some spread of fire on the linings of the compartment can be tolerated and we take different steps to minimise that risk, based on the behaviour of materials for their reaction to fire. The European classification system EN 13501-1 is based on selection of materials to avoid flashover completely, or within different time periods in the Room Corner reference test. However, UK fire safety guidance still allows flexibility and for any amount of [toxic] smoke to be generated, as long as the lining is European class B-s3d2, broadly equivalent to the outdated Class 0 contrivance from the 1960s, which can clearly be bettered. This unrestricted smoke can cause devastating damage in adjoining spaces by passing through the smallest of gaps. I recall that this was good reason for a now retired director of the Fire Research Station to be the very first to move whenever an alarm is raised, because toxic gases will invariably be let loose well before the alarm is sounded.

So the key action – reaction to fire included – is to ensure that the perimeter elements of our fire box can defend people in adjoining spaces for nominated periods of test time, regardless of whether this is real time or not. Fire test periods are for comparison of tests data and not real minutes of available time. Any fire will try to escape through the walls, floors and ceilings of the fire compartment. It will also attempt to infiltrate junctions and imperfections of fit along service penetrations out of the compartment and via cavities in the structure; hidden or designed in. Some core materials in sandwich panels can change state in fire to form cavities that were not there in the cold state, so an awareness of materials behaviour is important too. All and any such cavities can provide the escape route for fire – the tiger will do anything to flee and we should be thorough in our preparations.

Failure in fire
How does ‘failure’ in fire occur in practice? In some cases it is a gradual process giving occupants plenty of time to react. In other cases, failure can be very sudden and dramatic with little warning of impending doom, as gases may be invisible to the eye. Fires also cause darkness and noise, yet we tend to limit our expectations to less dangerous experiences with familiar materials like timber, which is much more predictable in fire.

Structural engineers tend to talk about avoiding collapse of the structure, but fire resistance of walls can be lost through only minor distortion. The load bearing ability of a structure is one thing, but the loss of integrity or insulating nature of a fire wall is something quite different. We are often reminded of successful large scale tests on steel structures at Cardington, but ignore the deformation of steel and composite decks that featured in many of the tests. These deformations can cause fire compartments to fail and let the proverbial tiger out of the cage.

The research undertaken for the DTI and ODPM as a prelude to Ensuring Best Practice estimated that over 80% of all buildings have deficiencies in their existing fire stopping, where services pass through compartment walls or fire separating elements. Any fire will take full advantage of such neglect. Often, these defects are caused by mixed trade contracts where accountability is lacking, or when follow-on trades cause damage to the excellent work they inherit. Most frequently, the subsequent addition of new services – IT cables included – directly damages the fire stopping provisions originally provided. Building managers must be vigilant.

Management effectiveness
BS 9999 provides a new opportunity to design buildings in a manner that falls between simpler routes to compliance via official guidance, and the more complex fire safety engineering solutions. Interestingly, the risk profile of the occupants and users of the building are key elements in the design process, but so is the level of fire safety management available through the lifetime use of the building. Management competency is considered at three different levels that differentiate between the poorest level (based on reaction to events as they unfold) or at the best level (dependent on proactive management decisions before a fire occurs), and so directly impacts on the fire safety provisions available. There is no such thing as a ‘standard’ BS 9999 building, nor a ‘standard’ BS 7974 fire engineered building. The designs assume key provisions are always present, that the products do the intended job and that they are well installed and maintained. But the London tower block evidence suggests that such assumptions are not only inappropriate, they may not be attainable in practice.

Government clearly expects that the duties under Building Regulation 16B – where the building user or owner is fully informed about the adequacy of fire protection provisions in the building – will be reliably provided when the building is first occupied, and that the same reliable fire safety provisions will still be available five, 20, or 30 years down the line. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires that any fire risk assessment is dynamically revised and maintained throughout the life of the building. The problem is that compliance with Regulation 16B rarely occurs! This means that the basis for any risk assessment is forever flawed.

Building control
We’ve been reminded by Sir Ken Knight’s report that the actions and assumptions taken by firefighters are based on fundamental expectations from fire compartments in buildings. These assumptions are no longer valid.

The demise of the Clerk of Works role is symptomatic of how, piece by piece, we have stripped away our systems to deliver excellence in construction. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been told: “We’ve got a fire certificate from the fire brigade” even after the law was changed by the Fire Safety Order and the enforcement rules were amended! The last demise was instigated when ‘cheapest price’ building control was caused by competitive bidding between local authorities and approved inspector bodies. John Ruskin’s warning about being unwise to pay too little comes to mind here!

Nowadays, the usual retort to an obvious deficiency is along the lines of “building control has passed it”, even though the building control process is to check designs against regulations, but not to carry out detailed checks on installed works, or whether they have any chance of providing the fire performance that is still required. I choose my words carefully, in full recognition of the words in the CLG publication The Future of Building Control – Implementation Plan. That ‘vision’ is for a building control system that ensures that buildings are safe, healthy, accessible, sustainable for current and future generations and includes provisions such as:

• To ensure that the level of inspection is appropriate to the risk and need
• To provide a checking service to help achieve compliance with building standards
• Not be a substitute for professional design and construction advice
• Help with aspects of quality … but not where they affect compliance
• A new procedural handbook is planned for 2012.

It’s also planned to reflect the differences between approved inspectors and local authority building control, and to ensure that neither is unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged. It is not the intention for building control to be responsible for compliance – that is the duty of the person carrying out the work, who could ultimately be prosecuted or held liable.

Whenever I’m asked to give advice on a difficult situation, I’ve often replied: “What do you plan to say in court?” It’s a good way of making us think about a situation again, away from the pressure of the immediate situation. It is also good advice.

The Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004 allowed for the appointment of a single person to act as interface between building control and the developer. He/she would be responsible for facilitating building regulations compliance on site.

This may well be helpful for medium to large construction projects where there is an apparent lack of on-site responsibility for compliance with building regulations, and would complement the CDM coordinator for health and safety issues. Sadly, government has already said that they do not intend to use the available powers to regulate for ‘appointed persons’ at this time. Demonstrative government action, together with prosecutions, are long overdue if fire safety is ever to sit at the top table where it belongs.

The ASFP suggests that the honeymoon is over – it’s time to act now. The required evidence for action exists and has been made available to government. We must all fulfil our common duty of care before things get even worse.

Bill Parlor is Technical Officer for the Association for Specialist Fire Protection. He would like to acknowledge Professor Rosemary Anne Everton for her concept of the ‘fire tiger’.