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Integrated Fire Mode Testing — Fundamental to Building Fire Safety & Compliance Modern fire protection systems are now often integrated into other building systems and require a comprehensive testing approach to assure they will operate in line with the building’s fire safety strategy when required. In the past, fire protection systems in buildings were relatively straightforward and generally operated independently of other systems. Over the last 20 years, due in part to the introduction of performance-based design (e.g. fire engineering), these systems have become increasingly integrated with other building systems, in particular mechanical services (e.g. smoke hazard management). Alteration to the National Construction Code (NCC), Deemed-toSatisfy (DtS) smoke hazard management system usually results in more complex systems that have a higher susceptibility to failure. Often these systems are poorly documented or if adequately documented by the designer, the documentation is not retained. There is currently no regulatory requirement for an integrated fire mode matrix to be provided at project handover stage. As such these systems are frequently not well understood by the building operations team.
In responding to these circumstances, installation and maintenance standards have had an increasing focus on integrated fire mode testing. It is important to understand the extent of testing required by these standards and the level of integrated systems surety it provides:
• Testing of individual fire systems confirms the operation within the system but provides only limited confirmation of system interfaces that form part of the holistic fire safety strategy.
• Typical interface tests in line with the requirements of Australian
Standard AS 1851 Maintenance of Fire Protection Systems, confirms interfaces between a detection zone and a ventilation system zone or sub system level. This may not confirm the successful operation of all items of equipment (e.g. door operations) under alarm conditions or multiple alarm zones within a building zone.
Importantly, the failure or mis-operation of a highly integrated system can have the potential to escalate the impact on the fire safety strategy. For instance, an air conditioning system operating incorrectly in fire mode could create large pressure differences that impede the ability for occupants to evacuate, or limit smoke management. The 2018 ‘Building Confidence’ Report1 observed: “Most Commerial buildings include complex fire safety systems that require maintenance and testing to ensure that they will operate as intended in the event of a fire. Many key stakeholders believe that the standard of maintenance of fire safety systems post-occupancy is poor.” Furthermore, the report stated, “It is widely reported that the standard of documentation supporting performance solutions is poor. There is a lack of basic information on matters such as the relevant performance requirements and the assessment methods applied.” Integrated systems can be challenging and time consuming to test and maintain to the level required to provide a high degree of surety of operation and adequately discharge duty of care obligations.
Building Confidence – Improving the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement systems for the building and construction industry across Australia; Peter Shergold and Bronwyn Weir; Feb 2018; Commonwealth of Australia. 1
Complex integrated systems need a clear framework for testing from project handover stage in order to avoid costly remedial work in future building operation. Integrated Fire Mode Testing (IFMT) is a comprehensive approach to the testing of integrated systems and involves the operational testing of the functional interfaces between systems in fire mode.