Fire Safety Engineering on the Rise in Portugal

Portugal is in an interesting phase where they consider introducing and allowing fire safety engineering to a larger degree. As I pointed out in my presentation at their national conference, FSE (and performance based design in general) is necessary to develop the built environment to facilitate innovation, sustainability and modern architecture. There is a great opportunity - but also risks attached - by allowing fire safety engineering.

Me and three others was fortunate to be invited to present perspectives on FSE in UK, Sweden, Spain and Portugal respectively. The conference was in Estoril and organized by APSEI (www.apsei.org.pt), the national security association.

Room with a view of Estoril which has a nice beach promenade

 UK and Sweden share a long history of allowing FSE and are both in the forefront of PBD. However, there are some differences. As Adam Crowley from TAEC pointed out when presenting FSE in UK, the licensure system and review is different with dedicated building control bodies talking responsibility for design. Sweden has a more liberal control & review system, but there is a system for licensure of FSE reviewers. Also, UK has more comprehensive regulations and guidelines whereas Sweden, while having less, also prescribe more with regards to design fire scenarios and other input parameters.

Adam Crowly from TAEC and you see the originally (?) Nordic PBD triangle
in the backgorund that I also used in my presentation.

Intentions of the code is well described in the UK where this does not exist in Sweden. Recently the Swedish Fire Consultancy Company organization started a project to document the intentions of the Swedish regulatory requirements. A great initiative that I think will be valuable. In the future it would be great to get national such documents issued by the Swedish regulatory authority, Boverket.

My own presentation

Swedish law for buildings in English

Swedish fire safety regulations (will be updated to latest version by early 2017)

Swedish national guidelines for fire safety engineering is to be published by Oct 2016 at www.boverket.se

Gabriele Vignettes, director of JAVA in Madrid, have his perspective on the situation in Spain. FSE is slowly being accepted and it is necessary to allow unique and safe buildings. However, there's a lack of technical knowledge, non homogenous approach across the country, lack of engineering judgement and these factors lead to the risk of getting unsafe buildings.  

Gabriel Vigne presenting the situation in Spain. Too many empty rows in the front
but soon we'll see a PBD boom in Portugal I hope :)

I'm also happy to hear that Paolo Ramos of Order dos Arquitectos is aiming to create a Portuguese SFPE chapter soon. That sounds  great! SFPE may give good input to Portugal when developing the infrastructure needed for FSE.

Asking where Portugal will be in 5 years gave me a mixed answer. José Oliveira of ANPC (Autoridade Nacional de Protecão Civil) LINK mentioned that goals, objectives, requirements and tools need to be developed. They will look into other countries experiences. Paolos Ramos was a bit pessimistic about getting a fully PBD code, saying it could take 10-20 years due to resistance and distrust to FSE among parts of the authorities. However, some progress would be made still. 

Paolo Ramos on the Portuguese situation where he says that the main problem is to convince authorities.

SFPE Denver Conference Wrap-up & Workshop on Research Agenda

The second half of the SFPE Denver conference was also great. The technical program followed and also the recognition of prominent members of the society and much more. Not least, a workshop on SFPE's research agenda which is an important step to set a direction for research that support our mission and our members.

Fellows such as Tony Militello were recognized for great service to our society.

Ralph Foster chairs the Outreach and Advocacy Committee
and he is one of our many volunteer leaders who we rely on.

SFPE Technical Director Chris Jelenewicz at the Fellows Reception - one of the
many hard working employees in SFPE Staff, and he also led the research workshop

The day after the conference ended there was a research workshop where we worked on the SFPE Research agenda. There were several interesting topics, and one that was close to me that I've mentioned before was how we may help the developing world. There was several good suggestions:

• Recognize developing countries "path of development", i.e. that the solutions needed today must be simpler and here were may learn from our own fire protection history.
• Risk identification and classification of risks could be helpful to engineers working in foreign countries, i.e. knowing the limitations and assets when working abroad.
• Simple solutions are needed - we may even cherry pick the best and most cost-efficient solutions from our own experience in the rich world and adapt it to the local environment.
• A good starting point for SFPE could be to initiate a case study to get into the action, but also to create a model for future such projects. For example, aiding Bangladesh fire safety in industries is one known area.

Nils Johansson holding his award speech for the crowd.

Guillermo Rein was awarded the Peter D Lund award and I'm glad to
see good representation from the international fire safety community.
And it's worth to note that award recipients are unusually
well represented on Twitter too.

No conference is complete without some mischief - in my opinion. In Brisbane, we had the gnome spooking us and in Denver the SFPE Staff set up these new ribbons at registration. Registration this year had a fun addition, crazy new ribbons (and I've been asking for them for years!) and I quickly added a trouble maker ribbon to my name badge. Fun things apart, the conference also brought in fresh perspectives from other industries. 

I loved the new fun ribbons, such as the Trouble Maker. And this year is my last
as part of Alliance of Young Engineers (AYE).

My compatriot Nils' budget conference lodging.

Within SFPE, we have a great group for the younger crowd, Alliance of Young Engineers (AYE) LINK. To be a part of the AYE you have to be under 35 years or young and roughly 20 % of our members are eligible for this group. It's a great initiative to help those new to the industry. Now, it's soon time for me to leave this group as I'm closing in on the 35-mark. It was refreshing to see some of the younger crowd at the evening social gathering, playing pool and so on. It was a good thing Daniel Nilsson wasn't there as he owned me big time in 2013 at the SFPE Austin Conference ;)

Next year the SFPE North America Conference is going outside the US for the first time in quite some time. The destination for #SFPE2017 is Montreal and it will be great fun, I'm sure. My twittering and blogging also made sure that I definitely will join as I was awarded the SFPE Denver Twitter Award and the prize is a ticket to the Montreal conference which I am grateful for! Regardless if I'm on the board or not next year I'll surely be there.

The SFPE chapter officials hosting the #sfpe2017 Montreal Conference
that we all look forward to.