Opinion
www.promat-glass.co.uk Article By: Promat UK Title: Assured passive fire protection needs a complete system approach Author: Cath McLean, Segment Manager for glass
Considering how many stages are involved in the design, manufacture and installation of fire resistant glazing, how confident can we be that the end result lives up to the original design intent? Any building element that is designed to provide protection – be it fire, thermal or acoustic – will only be as effective as its weakest point, so the scope for mistakes, misunderstandings and incompetence needs to be eliminated right along the supply chain. In terms of fire protection, this is more than just good practice, it is a matter of life or death. The many fire safety standards out there give specifiers or contractors a useful starting point to indicate if a product or system will provide the fire protection they need. However, herein lies the first major problem – the variety of standards covering fire protection measures in buildings makes it difficult to know if the ultimate installed products will deliver as intended.
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ISSUE 4 2018
At the top of the list is Approved Document B, which helps to determine where fire protection measures should be incorporated into a building, and the level of protection required. Unfortunately, it is not specific enough to be more than a guide, which leaves the fire safety requirements open to interpretation and puts the onus on the specifier to get it right. But even if you do arrive at some clarity in terms of standards, how do you know that all the component parts and materials have been manufactured to a consistently high standard, tested together as a complete system, and installed by competent engineers who are all singing from the same hymn sheet? Eliminating the margin for error The solution is to have a ‘complete system’ approach when specifying and procuring fire resistant glazing, in which everything is under the control of one responsible supplier. Promat UK is the first fire glazing specialist in the UK to be able to offer exactly that service with the SYSTEMGLAS® range.