Regulatory Framework of Fire Engineering Affects - Essay Example

How Fire Engineering Affects the Legal and Regulatory Framework Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Date of Submission How Fire Engineering Affects the Legal and Regulatory Framework Introduction Construction law is an arm of law that concentrates on issues relating to construction sector and other related fields. This law is a combination of a number of laws including environmental law, land law, health and safety, intellectual property law, tort, contract law, employment law, planning law, and commercial law (Boswell & Walker 2004). Construction law affects a number of players in the construction sector including planners, construction workers, engineers, builders, architects, surveyors, and financial institutions. Any type of construction has to conform to the legal framework governing the construction sector (Ramsay 2007). These include obligations made during the construction process and governmental regulations in relation to construction sector. An innovative or creative design is a design which partially or completely different from the acceptable designs. Creative designs present methods of abiding with the building regulations that are different from the specifications contained in the acceptable designs. They may be a distinctive solution for a particular construction or be a solution which expresses a construction type that is duplicated in different locations or buildings (Ramsay 2007). A creative design solution may simply meet the requirements or be considerably better than the minimum requirements. Innovation or creative ideas in construction are heavily limited by building regulatory systems supported by a prescriptive strategy, where one or a couple of solutions are offered as ways to conform to building regulations. This has resulted to creation of a design and construction sector that is circumscribed to designs that comply with specific regulations (Boswell & Walker 2004). The main purpose of this paper is to highlight how fire engineering innovation has affected the legal and regulatory framework in building industry. Fire Engineering Overview There are normally two types of fire engineering namely fire protection engineering and fire safety engineering. The difference between fire protection engineering and fire safety engineering is that in fire protection engineering, the engineer is in charge of designing fire systems such as automatic fire detection and fire suppression systems, while in fire safety engineering, the engineer is in charge of designing fire strategies including designed structural fire protection procedures, smoke control regimes designs, and number of stairs and location (Wilkinson 2013). Fire safety engineering is an acknowledged approach of attaining sufficient fire safety in a construction. It puts to consideration the whole fire safety engineering package and is in certain cases the only workable method of attaining a sufficient standard of fire safety in complex or large structures. Hence not only is it understandable that it is not a must to follow the guidelines published in the various building regulations but, for some structures, it is important not to conform to prescriptive codes (Plumis Ltd 2014). Generally, there are normally three key fire safety engineering approaches. They are equivalency or comparative approach, deterministic approach, and probabilistic approach (Plumis Ltd 2014). In equivalency approach, it is proven that the design offers a degree of safety as good as that which could have been achieved by conforming to prescriptive codes. The objective of deterministic approach is to demonstrate that based on the initial assumptions (normally ‘worst credible case’), a number of defined group of conditions will not arise (Plumis Ltd 2014). Whenever there is some uncertainty about the reliability of the input data, it is advisable to adopt the conservative approach. This might necessitate the use of definitive safety factors to make up for doubts in the assumptions. The objective of probabilistic approach is to demonstrate that the possibility of a particular event to occur is tolerably insignificant (Baker, et al. 2013). This is normally presented in terms of the yearly likelihood of an unwanted event to occur. One thing that must be understood while applying the three approaches is that, whatsoever measures are used, it is not possible to eliminate risks completely. Otherwise stated, it is not possible to reduce risks to zero. Impacts of Fire Engineering on Building Regulations Fire engineering approach has impacted the legal and regulatory framework as currently there two methods of showing compliancy with building regulations. The first method is to follow the guidelines provided in the prescriptive codes and the second one is to apply a fire engineering approach, which could be actually detailed or not subject to the building project. It is not possible for the guidelines provided in building regulations documents to put into consideration the uniqueness of each and every building. It is very difficult and costly to ensure that the designs of more complex and large building structures meets the recommendations provided by guidelines of the prescriptive codes (Bergeron 2003; Tsui 2007; Wilkinson 2013). It would be even impossible to construct some building designs using the guidelines of prescriptive codes. On the contrary, fire engineering approach can help tailor the design to accommodate the use of the building; reduce operating and construction costs; and increase design flexibility, making it possible to achieve ‘unimaginable’ designs (Iwankiw & Beyler 2013; Plumis Ltd 2014). Some of the benefits achieved through the use of fire engineering approach include: stretching out travel distances in structures; removing and reducing exit and staircases widths; maximizing usable floor space; improving flexibility and additional open provisions; justifying the usage of non-conventional safety valves routes; enabling greater freedom of using the materials of choice; maximizing non-fire rated frontage regions; reduced fire protection to buildings; justifying increased sizes of compartment; showing alternative methods of attaining compartmentation; optimizing fire service access facilities; reducing water storage rations for firefighting; minimizing fire safety application, requirements, and designs; and optimizing the use of the existing fire safety facilities (Plumis Ltd 2014; Singapore Civil Defence Force 2013). The important advances in fires safety include detecting, containing, and suppressing fires; performance-based building design; changes to building design and regulation; and a new class of design consultancy ( Singapore Civil Defence Force 2013). Prescriptive building regulations have been used for a long time as the main instrument that assist in enhancing the level of safety in buildings. Although these regulations function very well for ‘typical’ building design, they can deter innovative designs and regulatory authority may be poorly fitted out to handle alternative designs (Bergeron 2003; Ramsay 2007). This may results to problems when rapid changes take place in the construction industry, including development of unique structures, taller and complex buildings. As a result, many development countries have acknowledged the necessity for regulation reform. In other words, a number of countries have revised building regulations to shift from material-based to functional-based requirements in order to rejuvenate innovation and competitiveness in the building industry (Enright 2014; Iwankiw & Beyler 2013). The main aim of such reforms being to reduce the regulatory burden, lower building costs, increase levels of safety in buildings, lead to greater innovation and increase the flexibility of building design options (Tsui 2007; Hurley 2009)). Industrious efforts to enhance fire safety have led to development in technology for designing and assessing fire safety for buildings. These developments have also assisted in facilitating the transition to performance-based design method and building regulations ( Singapore Civil Defence Force 2013; Boswell & Walker 2004). Traditional prescriptive based building regulations are normally based on experience and judgment instead of being based on engineering and science. On the other hand, performance-based building regulations require engineering principles and scientific knowledge (Hurley 2009). Through the performance-based approach, designers are free to provide any solution that can be shown to stratify the functional requirements of the regulatory enforcement authority. The functional nature of the building regulations offered great opportunities for the acceptance of fire engineered approaches to fire safety. Generally, traditional prescriptive design techniques may prevent creativity and innovation, and are difficult to apply in buildings with special functions such as transportation termini, high-rise developments, and sports stadia (Iwankiw & Beyler 2013). The prescriptive design technique clearly specifies that a minimum of fire serviced equipment and installations should be set up for use. Such straightforward guidelines are comparatively easy to conform with but they may deter creativity. In performance-based design approach, there are no precedents guidelines to conform with and this allows the designers to think out-of-the box as they have freedom to come up with creative architectural designs. Performance-based enables planning fire protection from an “entire building” perspective, as it necessitates that interfaces between every fire protection system with the building and its occupants be taken into account (Boswell & Walker 2004; Singapore Civil Defence Force 2013). There are some instances where creativity to enhance sustainability in fire engineering may seem to be inhibited by the prescriptive fire safety building regulations. For instance, modern building materials can conflict with the recommendations in the building regulations; however, building regulations nowadays are flexible and although the guidelines offer one method of satisfying the regulations’ functional requirements, more alternatives are provided. Solutions offered by fire safety engineering may help innovate building designs to satisfy the building regulations using a performance-based approach instead of following the guidelines provided in the regulations ( Singapore Civil Defence Force 2013; Baker, et al. 2013). This means that legal and regulatory framework and fire safety engineering can complement each other, instead of being in conflict with each other, if the two fields engage in meaningful interaction in the design process. Conclusion Increasing innovation and creativity in construction, design and the use of modern building materials has resulted to a situation whereby it is at times very hard to fulfill the building regulations functional requirements by only using the provisions given by the approving body. As a result, a number of authorities have acknowledged that fire safety may only be improved through the adoption of engineered or analytical approaches. In other words, fire safety engineering may offer an alternative methodology to fire safety (Iwankiw & Beyler 2013). Through the adoption of a performance based approach to structural fire engineering, it is possible to achieve more economic designs as well as construction of more complex and innovative buildings. In other words, performance-based fire engineering design methods have supported creative construction and facilitated architectural design freedoms. Since many building regulations have moved from prescriptive requirements to functional requirements, it has boosted the development of fire engineering. As a result, most of the creative and complex constructions now use an engineering approach to fire instead of depending on the prescriptive provisions of the approving body (Baker, et al. 2013; Iwankiw & Beyler 2013; Enright 2014). Use of prescriptive building regulations is too restricting to innovation in fire engineering and that is the reason why functional requirements or performance-based approach in building regulations is preferred. Fire engineering, as a method of fulfilling the building regulation requirements, is a technique which has granted freedom to building design, while all together providing appropriate levels of safety. A number of exciting modern buildings have engineered fire safety and it could have been very difficult to build them under the traditional prescriptive regime. Fire engineering is at present working on new challenges which need a greater breadth and depth of experience. Fire engineers have long recognized that conforming to prescriptive regulations often does not support establishment of a successful building and the main driving force of fire engineering has been to allow buildings increase their commercial value and flexibility, open up, and consequently improving the safety of the occupants (Enright 2014). Reference List Read More