ENSURING YOUR BUILDING ACHIEVES FULL FIRE SAFETY

摘要

When it comes to fire safety performance in buildings, architects and designers need to take into consideration the full envelope design from the outset, rather than simply relying on the standalone performance of specified materials. It is strongly advocated that a fire safety engineering approach should be adopted to achieve satisfactory levels of fire safety in the truest sense. Take rainscreen cladding systems in buildings more than 18m tall; there is often much focus on the performance, in isolation, of the insulation component. If you follow the prescriptive route to compliance outlined in Approved Document B, B4 Section 12 Construction of External Walls for England and Wales (ADB4), and Technical Handbooks, Section 2 for Scotland (THB2), all components are required to be of limited combustibility or non-combustible respectively. An alternative allowable route to compliance, however, would be to demonstrate performance via large-scale testing, ie BS 8414 Fire Performance of External Cladding Systems via BR 135 Fire Performance of External Thermal Insulation for Walls of Multi-storey Buildings.