IMPLICATIONS OF 10 FIRE SAFETY PRINCIPLES
Sprinklers present a significant benefit for property protection, and in accordance with the 10 Fire Safety Principles, a competent fire engineer will have considered what happens were they not to activate or fail to control the fire for any reason, and incorporated mitigations against such an event in their design. The same applies for any other fire precautions, safety systems or aspects which the designers have disregarded as part of their due diligence, including fire service intervention, etc. It is anticipated that insurers and underwriters will view this positively.
The proposed 10 Fire Principles have set a framework to enable the demonstration that reasonable standards of health and safety can be achieved in the event of a fire in commercial buildings with mass timber structures. The table on the following page sets out many of the likely implications of following the principles herein.
INSURANCE CONSIDERATIONS OF FIRE PRECAUTIONS
The competent designer of a commercial mass timber building should demonstrate that, in the event of fire, reasonable standards of health and safety are achieved. For higher consequence classes, this will likely be through a performance-based approach, which may follow the principles proposed within this Guidebook (as applicable), or by defining project-specific principles as part of the QDR process. It is noted that designing for life safety may not directly address project-specific property protection or business continuity goals, but fire precautions that are included in the fire strategy of commercial timber buildings introduce robustness to the building would be considered by insurers and underwriters. A key precaution is the provision of sprinklers. Sprinkler protection is adopted in fire strategies of commercial timber buildings to mitigate the prospect of uncontrolled fires, with the expected outcome being control/suppression of the fire by the sprinkler system, possibly without ignition of the exposed timber structural elements. Nevertheless, it is expected that the competent designer charged with developing the fire strategy will assess the design and demonstrate adequate safety if fire precautions (such as sprinklers) fail. Designers should consider ‘what if?’ scenarios. That generally means mass timber commercial buildings will be designed not to withstand a realistic fire scenario (ie one controlled by sprinklers), but will instead be designed to withstand a reasonable worst- case scenario (when subject to an uncontrolled fire). The resulting design will typically be more conservative and add significant robustness regarding property protection and business disruption.
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