Reflections: Fire safety conference in Poland

About 200-250 polish fire profesionals attended the conference in the
winter capital of Poland, Zakopane.

This week I've participated at a big Polish fire safety conference in Zakopane. I presented myself about the Swedish experience of FSE, and also about the development in Europe. There is a strong development in Poland now, and it's interesting to see that we share some problems too. Poland is in another stage than Sweden is, but there's still plenty of areas where collaboration is possible. With a common European market for products and also services, this becomes even more important. Some accounts and reflections follows here.

Warehouse fires is one of the themes of the conference. Fires in warehouses in Poland has been a big problem due to property losses mainly. There has not been many fatalities. Some causes are that buildings are used in other ways than they were planned to. When using sprinkler systems, these may be designed for certain fire loads. In reality this may be deviated from by storing higher than supposed or other fire loads. Fire walls and other fire safety systems have been badly constructed in some cases. Also, for buildings with low fire rating of the structural fire safety, it is not safe enough for the fire brigade to conduct operations to extinguish the fire. Usually, the rating should be R60 or higher but roof structures may be of R15. A problem causing more svere fires has been the use of combustible insulation. Retail buildings are about 5 % of total fire losses, about 15 M€.

From a Swedish point of view warehouse fires is a very hot topic as well. In a national project we're currently gathering designs of commercial warehouses and other one story buildings that are public (with more than 150 persons). The goal is to produce guidance on how structural fire safety of these types of buildings may be conducted. One big question is if, how, and under what circumstances, the structural fire protection may be lower than R30.

Matthew Ryan presented the experience of London Fire Brigade's Fire Engineering Group. London fire engineering group consists of 9 persons primarily working with approval of fire engineering designs. Other groups handle other approvals and tasks. The geographical responsibility is the London area with a population of 8 million. Almost like Sweden's 9 millions. The group was formed in 1990 when for engineering was put into focus. FSE was deemed to be needed to grow world class cities and keep up with technology. The experience is that buildings usually are partially fire safety engineered approach. They also ask themself if we will ever see completely fire engineered buildings. From my own point of view, I agree. It mirrors the Swedish experience. Prescriptive solutions will probably be used for a long time for many parts of the fire protection systems - but FSE will be essential for certain solutions and for certain buildings.

For good fire engineering it is important with good communication between design team, building control team and the fire brigade. The building control body is the approver of design. Fire brigade takes an impartial role and is not paid by the developer. The fire engineering group act as consultants within the fire brigade. The London group primarily looks at fire safety plans, questions from building control body, fire safety strategy and supporting documents such as CFD calculations etc. They are always having early meeting when certain issues are relevant, for example when using CFD, other computer simulations, smoke control, complex fire brigade accessibility. In the assessments they ask what-if questions, practicality questions and they also use a lot of the experience from the investigation team. A close connection to experiences of actual fires in therefor possible. The whole process is documented and followed up. Accountability and transparency is essential.

For example, for the Shard (310m tall) the fire brigade were involved eight years before completion. In that case they looked especially at evacuation by lifts, the reduced fire resistance of structural part (90 instead of 120 minutes), complicated fire brigade access and special technical systems for them. 

The brigade is also witnessing that the testing of fire protection systems in practice works in the finished building. Mainly the process is working. However, there are problems with delayed consultations - decisions are already taken when the brigade is involved. There may be lack of knowledge at times. That the designed building is actually complying to the design in practice is not always ensured. 

They see that there are some challenges. Saving money by using fire safety engineering is increasing. De-regulation of building control process might lead to decreased quality of control. Maintaining skills of the local authorities is hard due to cost savings. Also, longevity of the buildings may be discussed - will try be maintained properly? And how can fire fighters to interact with the buildings, it's getting increasingly complex. There's also limited real fire evidence of the new types of buildings.

The London fire brigade account of fire safety engineering is very interesting. I belive we phase the same challenges in Sweden, and many other countries as well. It's also different to see the fallout of other control procedures. It would be very interesting to see  how national control procedures, and other circumstances, affect the actual fire safety in buildings - especially in fire engineered buildings.