CONSTRUCTION CODES
PERFORMANCE-BASED DESIGN IN FIRE ENGINEERING—FRIEND OR FOE? The Shergold–Weir Building Confidence report exposed widespread non-compliance in constructed buildings, and failures by authorities, designers, and government regulators. Performance-based design solutions were a specific concern. Many facilities have complex performance-based fire safety strategies that require certain maintenance and testing procedures, but inadequate documentation and insufficient operation and maintenance practices have led to poor understanding and significant compliance problems. MARCUS ROYLE A.G. Coombs Advisory
The performance-based Building Code of Australia (BCA) was introduced in 1996 as macroeconomic reform to building construction, delivering millions of dollars of savings each year. Now known as the National Construction Code (NCC), it allows designers to choose between using Deemed-to-Satisfy (DtS) Solutions and/ or Performance Solutions to meet the Performance Requirements of the Code. Through fire engineering, a designer can consider all the features in a particular building—including structure, fire systems, and building management—when assessing its fire safety, to deliver customised and costeffective building solutions. But at what cost to maintenance?
What is fire engineering?
Performance Solutions can be applied to new and existing buildings, but in the latter (e.g. major building refurbishments, tenancy fit outs, etc) there is an added layer of complexity. A fire engineer first assesses the building’s performance to identify potential deficiencies, before preparing a design that delivers the most appropriate fire safety for the existing building. The Performance Solutions from this strategy are detailed in a Fire Engineering Report (FER).
The Shergold–Weir report— exposing the truth about the construction industry
Events such as the fires in the Lacrosse tower and Neo 200 tower, and the structural problems with Opal Tower, have raised many questions of the state of the Australian construction industry. The 2018 Building Confidence 36
FIRE AUSTRALIA
ISSUE THREE 2023
report, written by Professor Peter Shergold AC and Bronwyn Weir, highlighted major compliance failures and underperformance by authorities, designers, and government regulators. The report made 24 recommendations across a variety of issues to improve construction and deliver better quality buildings for consumers, including: the approval of documentation and amended documentation throughout the construction process (Recommendation 16) the independent third-party peer review of a Performance Solution design (Recommendation 17) mandatory on-site inspections of building work at identified stages of the construction works (Recommendation 18) a process for the approval of Performance Solutions for constructed building work (Recommendation 19) a comprehensive building manual for commercial buildings (Recommendation 20).
the relevant building surveyor or certifier. As there is often little to no input from the relevant fire safety engineer to ensure the proposed Performance Solution is suitably amended to keep pace with the evolving building and services design, this can lead to discrepancies between design documentation and the finished product, due to fire engineering requirements either being misinterpreted or not implemented at all. The FER is essentially the bespoke Building Code for the structure—if its requirements are not implemented during construction, the final building is likely to be non-compliant. This, in turn, can lead to operational and maintenance issues and the inability of systems to meet annual performance assessment targets. Ultimately, it can make it very difficult for practitioners to endorse essential (fire) safety measures for the building, which may lead to the building owner receiving infringement notices from the local council or the fire authorities.
The rise of D&C contracts: what could go wrong?
Is there a disconnection between theory and reality?
Over the past 15 years, there has been a growing emphasis on design and construct (D&C) projects. These contracts minimise the consultant engineer’s involvement in the design stage, shifting design responsibility to the contractor. Typically, in these projects, work gets tendered to the lowest bidder, with little regard to their ability to understand and successfully install the fire engineer’s solutions. Whereas previously the consultant engineer ensured that the fire engineer’s requirements were included in the design, now this has fallen upon the contractor to implement, ensure it works, and provide a compliance statement for
This is not to suggest that the problems flow only one way. It is increasingly becoming evident that some fire safety engineers have very little understanding of what systems may be required for a building and how they work. This can lead to a reliance on active fire safety systems for use in certain applications (e.g. hot layer smoke control system on a commercial office floor) that were never intended for those purposes. If the fire safety systems proposed are not fit for purpose or are unnecessarily complex, it can negate the Performance Solution and undermine the safety of the building. For example, some smoke hazard