Passive fire protection: Cladding
Implementing compliance in cladding During 2022 FIRE Middle East featured a series written by abhish e k ch h a b r a , Market Development Manager, Thomas Bell-Wright Consultants introducing compliance in passive fire protection. This year, he will continue to build on the same, aiming to act as a guide to managers and leaders alike.
if watching the videos of NEOM in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and looking at how they are drawing ‘The Line’ is getting you excited, then you need to take a couple of steps back to see the bigger picture. The era of giga-projects is what will define the region’s construction in the coming years. As engineers and architects across businesses are scuttling to work on longer on the ‘design-phase’ of projects, this is an opportune time for industry to take a better look into how (fire) compliance gets implemented.
20 Fire Middle East Magazine • April 2023
As the UAE, who revised the Fire & Life Safety Code of practice in 2018, is considering some revisions, the Saudi Building Code which continues to drive regulatory framework decisions will also evolve in the next couple of years. While the exact boundaries of acceptance criteria may evolve, the compliance regime will always becoming stricter over time. Before delving into implementation systems let us understand the driving force behind the need for ‘Compliance’. U N D E R S TA N D I N G L I A B I L I TY Fire accidents are known to occur. Humanity has all too frequently suffered and witnessed loss of life and property. We have also realised how the future changes when a fire accident happens. And one of the big shifts is the change in understanding of what was considered safe. There is also (re)defining and (re)quantifying what is unsafe and how in the future, deterrents are redefined. These drive what was mentioned earlier, “evolving boundaries of acceptance criteria”. But the real change is driven by the defining deterrents. As they continue to be redefined there is clearer link being established between what used to be done that can lead to a fire and what should not be done in the Future. Now the main deterrent to drive change in the future is the fear of liability.