How far are you prepared to go?

[tmprojects]

Just visited a very interesting premises. one that, i think, polarises the order and the codes.

A public building. occupancy potential in the hundreds. Over three floors B,G & 1 (all open to each other). There is no detection, No means of giving warning. no comparmentation, single direction of travell of up to 45m. some of which is via a helical staircase that is of insufficient width. as far as code compliance goes its as bad as it gets.

Heres the twist. Its internal environment is cavernous and is permanently controlled to be very very humid. everything you see is covered in water, pretty much dripping wet.

The F. Engineer wants to put in all kinds of control measures and upgrade certain aspects to acheive some kind of compliance. He looked completely gobsmacked when i said why are you recommending all that. I think its unnecessary.

From a fire safety order perspective. i can't see a justification for the work being recommended. This is probably the least likely place a fire could start. So where is the risk of fire?
If there is (virtually) no risk of a fire taking hold, because its environment acts as a permanent fire suppressant, then why should we enforce the order to a code standard?

I said to him that my view was any fire engineer could easily demonstrate what was the likelihood of a fire occuring, whether it could develop and to what extent. and as such easily justify the current arrangements. He looked at me like i had just probed him.

Does anyone else think i'm a borderline nutter for saying its ok. or do any of you see it from my point of view?

[SamFIRT]

environment is cavernous and is permanently controlled to be very very humid. everything you see is covered in water, pretty much dripping wet

Sounds like a simulated tropical environment. Something like a butterfly enclosure or zoo exhibit ?

Rhetorical question….. Do fires occur (and spread) in the tropics? 

And if it is a public building.....what about other emergencies that the public have to be warned about and evacuated from? I.e. terrorists.

[kurnal]

I am sure you are right TMP if thats what you think. Many of us who have not seen the premises will be asking questions as to whether the environment is natural or artifically created and whether there are any areas that are of higher risk such as plant rooms.

Clearly to do the job right consideration has to be paid to the nature and size of any fire that might ocurr, and the RSET and ASET.

If there is a likelihood of a fire in such an environment would we expect fire fighters to enter and for business continuity how would the smoke be cleared?

These and similar cases eg show caves (I once found one which constituted an inner room off a visitor centre/ shop  with a dead end condition of 1/4 mile), and perhaps the highest risk of all warehouses in underground former armaments bunkers are special situations which the guides were never intended to cover. 

[Galeon]

Could have been a crown property at some time , ergo thats why theres nowt in there .
Bear in mind unless you are made from asbestos most thing burn very well .
I wouldnt say you are a borderline nutter , you may have b*lls of steel , just make sure you are well insured .

[BLEVE]

Tend to agree that if artificially created there is the potential for failure. Also as pointed out fire and fire products can be generated within plant rooms AHU etc. Plus we should consider hotwork and all too frequent arson

[colin todd]

Ask yourself why it is the practice to sprinkler water cooling towers.

[kurnal]

I dont know the answer to that one. I have only been inside one of them and it wasnt sprinklered. It was just an open chamber with tiers of hardwood timber slatted decking at the lower levels over which water was cascaded.  Absolutely nothing to burn except saturated hardwood. And no ignition sources or plant. Please enlighten us Colin.

[colin todd]

I am surprised you are not aware of large fires involving cooling towers when the timber dries out during maintenance works, the latter of which start the fire.  Perhaps it rains so much in Derbyshire and the farms dont have cooling towers that this is outside your vast wealth of experience.

[kurnal]

OK thanks. Seems an expensive risk control measure to cover what would appear to be a lack of control over hot works. For life safety, and using the principles of prevention I dont think I would have suggested that one. Clearly theres an important business continuity issue. But then as you infer there is not a great call for life safety fire risk assessments on cooling towers. When I went it was to make an operational assessment on behalf of the brigade rope rescue team which I managed at the time.

Relating this to the original posters question it seems to me that there could potentially be a very significant life safety issue in his case.

[Midland Retty]

Hi TM

As everyone else has stated we would need to see the premises to be able to give an accurate analysis to your scenario.

Something that immediately sticks out is the lack of seperation between floors and you need to be sure that if a fire did occur, for whatever reason, people could evacuate quickly and safely. Consider human behaviour because it is a big factor in places of public assembly.

The other is the means of giving warning and/or detecting a fire in the building.

As others have asked - what are the possible consequences of the environmental systems failing?

You're right of course, why should you upgrade the precautions for the sake of upgrading? We are in the days of fire risk assessment afterall. But it would take a brave person to suggest you could never ever possibly have a fire.

And don't forget a good risk assessor / engineer will consider building protection / business continuity as well as life safety factors.

[tmprojects]

I had a feeling when i posted that it was too vague to get proper feedback my appologies for that, i was mindful of the premises confidentiality.

To try to be a bit clearer the 'Tropical environment' suggestion is not far off.

To me failure of the environmental controls would not changes the scenario immediately. it would be progressive, like thawing a freezer. it would probably take days.

I looked at it from the perspective of RSET and ASET, As has been mentioned, but i could not envisage a scenario (short of a terrorism/natural disaster) where MofE could be compromised before safe evac.

In essence my post was to share what i found to be very interesting. That a premises so 'non-compliant' with respects to Standards, could be, in my view, compliant with the FSO

[Fishy]

With the standard: “...haven’t seen the premises and would need to do so before providing definitive advice...” caveat;  an issue with basing a risk assessment on “there’s nothing to burn / it’s too wet to burn” is that this might be OK whilst the current conditions and configuration exist, but risk could increase significantly if the environmental conditions alter, e.g. during extended maintenance or even unplanned failure of the environmental controls (which could take days or weeks to fix).  Also, if you’ve got any non-hygroscopic fire hazards such as flammable liquids or thermoplastics that melt and flow when they get hot then the fact that the environment is dripping-wet humid might not make much difference, once they’ve ignited.

This might just be my natural “never assume that you won’t have a fire” caution but I’d find it hard to convince myself that at the very least some sort of means of giving warning was not reasonably practicable.

Detection in the open circulation spaces I’m not so bothered about; after all there are plenty of premises which have multiple levels open to each other; potentially populated by 1000s of members of the public and with single direction means of escape 100s of metres long which have no automatic fire detection in the circulation spaces.  They’re called underground railway stations!   Requires very good levels of management though.

Would also be interesting to know what the Fire Engineer’s brief is; if we are talking about building works then whether it complies with the RR(FS)O, whilst important, is incidental – it’s whether it complies with the relevant Building Reg’s or technical standards that’s the key & these might set the bar higher.

[tmprojects]

Fishy. thanks for your comments.

1. extended maintenance - in my view that would constitute a significant change, and a review of the FRA. thus a change of circumstances and appropriate control measures.

2. Flammable liquids and thermoplastics. There are none. an inclusion would invoke the above.

3. Underground network - although they're very different. this comparison isn't.

4 F engineers Brief.  it is not as a F engineer there is no building works.  But is to comment on the existing FRA's and to document theirt current position. 'but with a view to winning the subsequent contract of advisor role'.