A NOTE FROM ASFP IRELAND 14

The Irish legislative framework

The Building Control Act 1990, in effect since July 1991, established: • A system of self-certification • Clear legal standards – Building Regulations and Building Control Regulations • Technical Guidance Documents – TGD B – Fire Safety • Statutory responsibility for professionals to design and contractors to build in accordance with the building regulations.

Building Regulations require a Fire Safety Certificate (FSC) to be issued for all new construction, other than single unit dwellings, or material alteration of existing buildings. The FSC is issued by a local authority approving an application submitted by the designer. As part of the planning process, designers are required to develop a fire strategy for a proposed development, demonstrating compliance with Building Regulations and to submit this to the relevant local authority for approval. The relevant parts of this application are: • A Compliance Report – sets out the fire strategy for the proposed design, demonstrating compliance with the requirements of

B 1 – B 5 • Drawings – showing locations and specified fire resistance ratings of fire compartment walls and floors.

This ensures ‘a written fire safety strategy, with a plan that details all building work and integral fire safety processes’, the fire safety strategy is designed by competent professionals and approved by their counterparts within the local authority building control system.

The Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (BCAR) Code of Practice for Inspecting and Certifying Buildings and Works, ’allow a certificate of completion to be issued when the works are satisfactorily completed according to the plan’. It also delivers the additional requirement, ‘No building should be handed over to the owners, or clients, or be occupied without an appropriate and valid completion certificate accompanied by the background material used to assess completion including as built plans etc’.

Fire safety management

Fire safety management comes under the Fire Services Acts 1981 and 2003, probably the least understood of the three legislative strands. The National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management (NDFEM) Fire Safety Task Force report, published in 2018 in the aftermath of the Grenfell Fire Tragedy, stated that fire safety in buildings is generally seen as a function of four aspects: passive fire safety, active fire safety, management and behaviour. Recognising improved construction standards under BCAR, it sought to extend this progress into managing fire safety in the built environment and promised new direction and guidance including: • Code of Practice for Fire Safety Assessment of Premises and Buildings, published in March 2022 • Draft Fire Safety Guide for Building Owners and Operators (Guide for persons having control under Section 18(2) of the Fire Services Acts 1981 and 2003). Following public consultation, publication is due before the end of 2022

The need for culture change

Core to implementing new Building Control (Amendment) Regulations (BCAR) in 2014 was the desire to change culture and practice in the Irish construction sector. Irish Building Regulations recognised this need when referencing ASFP’s 2003 Best Practice Guidance in the 2006 revision of Technical Guidance B – Fire Safety. This calls for a change from confrontation to a more collaborative approach, something echoed in many of Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations following the Grenfell fire in London.

Great strides have been made in delivering higher construction standards. The next challenge is to extend this progress into fire safety management, quoting the FSF whitepaper ‘prevention and control from inception until closure, or in the case of a building: demolition’. Designers need to be cognisant of the competence, knowledge and experience, of installers and maintainers of specified systems.