PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATION UPDATE

ASFP Technical Officer Dr Andrew Taylor gives an update on the new ASFP publications. The ASFP continues to update the best practice advisory and guidance documents published on the website. Already this year we have published three new documents and updated another three. The contents of these six documents are explained below.

The first new publication, Advisory Note 27 covers the structural fire protection of steel beams with corrugated webs. These are a type of fabricated section, recently introduced to the market. One of the benefits of corrugated webs is that a thinner steel plate can be used in the web. Whilst this saves weight and cost, the performance of these sections in a fire resistance situation is not fully understood, so the advisory note warns against use of plain section data in support of a corrugated web section without extra testing.

Advisory Note 28 concerns the firestopping of metal pipes where flanges are located close to service penetration seals. This new advisory note has been developed by TG3, and covers a topic initially raised by the group that wrote the joint industry guide covering best practice in the design of service penetrations. The key conclusion of the joint industry guide was that earlier involvement of passive fire specialists could prevent the construction of untested service penetration arrangements. One key area that could be avoided is the presence of flanges within the secondary insulation zone (typically within 500mm of the wall). Arrangements of flanges can be covered within the scope of BS EN 1366-3 testing, although this is not commonplace. For the avoidance of issues with certification and installation, it is simplest to keep the flanges more than 500mm away from the wall. However, this detail is not always considered during the spatial coordination of services.

The final new publication, Advisory Note 29 covers planned maintenance. This document originally comes from TG7, operable fabric curtains, where maintenance and servicing is important. It draws upon advice from within The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, BS 9999 and BS8524 to ensure that a competent person conducts that maintenance.

One of the revised documents, Technical Guidance Document 15 covers the Installation and Inspection of spray applied PFP. The document has been updated to align the film thickness measurement criteria for these material to ASTM E805. The document has also been updated looking at the implications of Brexit and the consequent changes to UK Construction Product regulations.

We have also had to revise Technical Guidance Document 20, which covers the CE marking of fire-resisting and smoke control duct sections. The changes to UK Construction Product regulations and introduction of the UKCA mark mean that we need to review many of these documents. We also took the opportunity in TG6 to amend some of the wording for clarity.

Finally, we have also updated Advisory Note 21, a document covering the phenomenon of coatback to secondary structural steel preventing conduction of heat into a primary structural member and consequent early failure. This document will probably be updated again in the near future, as we have some new evidence to consider. In fact, this highlights one of the key issues for ASFP’s technical information. Our knowledge and understanding is constantly developing, and the as the regulatory framework evolves, we continue to keep our guidance as current as possible.

You can see all of our publiations by scanning here.