2022 www.firenz.org NEW ZEALAND SEPTEMBER 2022 | ISSUE 19 THE FORUM OF FIRE PROTECTION, FIRE SAFETY AND FIRE ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS
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4 Issue 19 | September 2022
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New South Wales rolls out firefighting drone technology 35
Emergency monitoring centre opened to keep New Zealand safer 26
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IFE President’s Message 9
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The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Fire Protection Association New Zealand, Institution of Fire Engineers (NZ Branch) or the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (NZ Chapter).
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A System of Systems: Integrated Systems Code of Practice 36
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Charles Clifton: Earthquake, Fire, and Durability 28
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Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings
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Nick Dynon, Managing Editor
Mother and Son Feature in 2022 IFSEC Global Influencers in fire safety News from the Beehive
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Where are we at now?: The latest Fire Alarms Standard revision 12
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FireNZ welcomes articles and letters from our readership. These can cover any aspect of fire protection, fire engineering (performance and design), legislation, fire safety practice, fire industry product development, fire fighting operations, techniques, equipment and case studies and technical news. All articles will be assessed by an editorial panel prior to publication who, at their discretion, reserve the right to either decline use of the article or seek amendments. Articles should inform, debate, educate and help our readership through sharing of both knowledge and expertise.
FPANZ Passive SIG Update 17
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We face several challenges as life returns to normal after two years of Covid disruption. One area that has been particularly impacted upon by the pandemic has been industry training.Historically speaking, training was arguably at a better place 30-40 years ago when the industry’s expertise was generated by the small number of companies operating back then. As the industry has fragmented, the level of technical expertise has continued to decline and that’s something we’re really concerned about.
6 Issue 19 | September 2022 Fire Protection Association New Zealand
room to flash over it can now take as little as 2-3 minutes.
When I look at industry on this side of the Tasman, I believe that the professional knowledge that we have on how to correctly design and install sprinkler systems, for example, is superior to what I see over in Australia, yet Australian technician training is superior to ours. What I think what we need to do is have a very, very close look at what the Australians do to train their technicians, make it better, and bring it We’vehere.currently got NZQA qualifications in fire protection, but we need to complement these with real skills-based training, including block courses, and ensure that the Polytechs are delivering this. I believe that this is a real problem in New Zealand in many trades, and we need to work hard to fix it, either with the government or despite the government – no matter what.On the positive, despite Covid, I am pleased that we managed to role out a number of Getting it Right Seminars in three of our sectors, sprinklers, alarms and passive fire. We will be placing emphasis on improving these seminars over the coming year.
Fire protection systems have become a lot more complex over the years. Previously, an alarm system would make noise and tell people to leave the building, a sprinkler system operated and put out the fire, but now buildings have gotten more complex. Atria in buildings which cause smoke issues, evacuation time, changes in fire loads in the buildings, and where 50-60 years ago it would take 20-30 minutes for a
Integrated Systems Code of Practice
Part of the issue is that within the building industry people tend to look at their own system in isolation rather than looking at the building as a whole. Where building fire safety might rely on an alarm system, a sprinkler system, and an aircon system, etc, the sprinkler system needs to be tested properly, the alarm system needs to be tested properly, the HVAC system for smoke control needs to be tested properly, and so on.
Testing that a smoke detector is operating, for example, should include testing that the relay that connects to the smoke control fans is actually working, and that the smoke control system actually functions as intended.
Driven by the Fire Protection Association, the Integrated Systems Code of Practice has been the product of input from several other organisations. We are hoping it will be a useful document to help ensure that buildings remain safe.
Training
Chris Mak, President of the Fire Protection Association New Zealand
Although the Association is supportive of the current paper-based qualifications, we’re concerned that on-the-job training is probably not as robust as it could be. After a three-year hiatus thanks to Covid, we want to put some real emphasis over the next few years into upskilling and getting effective skills-based training into our technicians.
President’s Message
In this update, Chris Mak, President of the Fire Protection Association NZ (FPANZ), talks training, Integrated Systems Code of Practice, passive fire protection, and emerging from Covid.
Quite a number of years ago we tried to get a standard up and running to address this and at that stage the government regulator decided it was not necessary. Over quite a number of years, the Fire Protection Association came to the thinking that if we weren’t going to get funding through standards we’d write our own Code of Practice and hope that it would ultimately be adopted as a New Zealand Standard.
The moment you open a building it starts deteriorating. Tradesmen inevitably attend the site and make changes and probably don’t realise what impact those changes might be having on other trades and the systems (or parts thereof) that they’re responsible for.
7Issue 19 | September 2022
And lastly
We all know about leaky buildings and the remediation of weather tightness issues. When they’re ripping these buildings to bits, they’re finding that there are problems with the passive fire protection, which is designed to stop smoke travelling through the building. Assuming the sprinklers are operating the fire won’t spread through the building, but passive measures provide a level of redundancy – if the sprinkler system does fail for some reason the passive fire protection is there as a backup.
The Association really started from the sprinkler and fire alarm industry, and under Scott Lawson’s watch as CEO we’re gaining quite a significant change in our membership through the passive fire protection industry. It’s been an industry that’s been fraught with problems over the years.
despite the impact on industry and our ability to run training programmes that generate revenue, we’ve been generating a surplus and are in a financially very sound position. We can therefore start putting money back into the industry where it’s needed to improve our support for industry.
As an Association, we’ve been very financially prudent throughout Covid. We’ve cut down our expenditure and
Passive Fire Protection
So, it’s the fastest growing sector of our Association and we’re actually expecting the next president of the Association to come from the passive sector, which is an interesting development.Alotofwork has been done to develop the passive sector codes of practice and training and to ensure that the sector is recognised as a distinct trade, which starts with things like ensuring that fire collars are correctly installed and selected. Over the past 2-4 years the sector has developed really positively, contributing to increasing the safety of the built environment.
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Carol Caldwell, President NZ ChapterSociety of Fire Protection Engineers
As always, a very big thank you to the many volunteers that support SFPE and encouragement to others to join in. The volunteering can be anything from doing the background work for one local meeting to preparing comments for an MBIE submittal to leading a working group to write a Guide! It is rewarding to participate and make a difference in Engineering a Fire Safe World.
Another area that SFPE is working on is to develop better relationships with affiliated organisations so that we have regular contact and the opportunity to discuss technical issues and trends that are appearing. Working towards better communication within the fire engineering community.
There is a bit of a theme with timber buildings so that will be interesting to learn about calculating the fire load in timber buildings from a NZ perspective. In addition, there is the opportunity to understand the code development in the USA for tall mass timber buildings. Hopefully, we can learn from others and add appropriate criteria to NZ Acceptable Solutions and Verification Methods.
New Zealand
New Zealand
case study course to increase the student enthusiasm for the course. Hopefully the incentive will drive extra investigation and research. To be appreciated by the future company hiring the new graduates!
8 Issue 19 | September 2022
The SFPE Construction Monitoring Guide was published August 2021. That was a significant milestone after a number of years of hard work by Working Group. They consulted with associated professional organisations to ensure a broad spectrum of participation. Hopefully you are using it and noting down items for the next revision!
There are also some other up and coming hot topics: electric vehicle fires and hydrogen use as a fuel.
There is a Career Fair later this year and SFPE will participate in collaboration with FPANZ. We will be looking to expand the outreach activities and awareness of fire engineering careers .
President’s Message
Carol Caldwell, President NZ Chapter - Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), provides an update on the Chapter’s activities, including a new prize for University of Canterbury students and publication of the SFPE Construction Monitoring Guide.
There was another submittal in response to the MBIE consultation on changes to the consenting process. That was submitted the beginning of September.Following on the timber theme – SFPE provided funding for the Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide. forfreeorg/10.1201/9781003190318https://doi.forthedownload.SFPEhasalsoprovidedaprizetheUniversityofCanterbury
Sooooooo looking forward to FIRENZ 2022!!! It is wonderful to be out and about again and meeting in person. There is a fantastic line up of speakers – it is a great opportunity to get some CPD hours in and to catch up with the exhibitors and see the latest and greatest in products. Remember those Friday workshops as well!
All was fairly quiet for SFPE over the last two years similar to other organisations. As with most other organisations SFPE has learned to adjust to the changing times and the silver lining is the ability to have meetings remotely. This has enabled us to better respond to a number of activities.SFPEhas been active behind the scenes in responding to MBIE. We have responded to the MBIE on the proposed changes to C/AS1 and C/AS2 that was the consultation document in June of this year. The C/AS1 changes were quite significant so it will be interesting to hear of the progress.
New Zealand Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers
Comprising a diverse and professional membership base from fire services and the private sector, the IFE is focussed on improving fire safety through the gaining and sharing of knowledge, promoting the understanding of fire science and engineering, and promoting collaboration between government, industry and academia in advocating for best practice.
Formed in 1918, the IFE is a global professional membership body for those in the fire sector that seek to increase their knowledge, professional recognition and understanding of fire through a global discourse.
Commencing at the end of October and then monthly from 2023, IFE New Zealand are intending to offer free webinars on key and current topics of interest such as Lithium Ion battery fires, Hydrogen safety, and the fire safe use of wood in buildings.
9Issue 19 | September 2022 Institution of Fire Engineers (NZ Branch)
Jason Hill, President of the Institution of Fire Engineers, NZ Branch, provides an update on the local activities of the global professional body, including a new webinar series kicking off in October.
The Fire NZ Conference is a key platform for our organisation as we aim to serve fire industry professionals by focusing on current and relevant issues, promoting best practice, sharing of knowledge and providing networking opportunities.Withaconference hiatus due to Covid-19, IFE New Zealand has continued to be actively involved in the fire industry including supporting a number of webinars, working with Engineering New Zealand and MBIE on various consultations impacting the industry as well as continued involvement with Standards and industry guidance documents.
President’s Message
We also hope to conduct more of our popular one-day live fire programme for fire engineers and people who work in fire related industries or who have an interest in the fire safety design of buildings. This programme was developed to give participants the opportunity to gain a better understanding of fire and smoke behaviour and firefighting techniques by involving them in a series of real fire simulations. All participants are able to gain first-hand experience of real fires in building enclosures, including fire initiation and development, fire and smoke spread, flashover, the use of firefighting equipment, firefighting and search and rescue techniques, and more.
Jason Hill, President Institution of Fire Engineers New Zealand Branch
Fire Engineers and IQPs taking part in the Firefighting for Fire Engineers information day at FENZ’s National Training centre in Rotorua.
Our first presentation will be from Inspector John McDonough. John is an operational Duty Commander in charge of 14 stations in the busy inner west zone of Sydney. John is a recognised expert in compartment fire behaviour training, firefighting tactics and as co-author of 3D Firefighting – Training, Tactics and Techniques.
• C2 Prevention of fire occurring
• C3 Fire affecting areas beyond the fire source
Achieving quality building and quality fire safety outcomes
The purpose of the Construction Monitoring Guide is to achieve quality fire safety outcomes for buildings during the construction stage. It
A purpose of the Building Act 2004 is that people who use buildings can do so safely. Achieving this means buildings need fire safety features that will permit people to escape from the building if it is on fire.
• C4 Movement to a place of safety
The purpose of construction monitoring is to confirm that the building work has been completed in accordance with the building consent
SFPE MonitoringConstructionGuide
that the construction work meets the Building Code to the extent required by the Building Act. Finally, sufficient documentation should be recorded on the building’s Compliance Schedule, including inspection, maintenance, and reporting procedures, to enable ongoing compliance and certification of any building safety systems or features (Specified Systems).
This document considers how designers should monitor construction work undertaken by the contractor. It focuses specifically on fire engineering issues, which typically relate to the following Building Code clauses:
At the completion of these stages, the BCA should grant a Code Compliance Certificate (CCC).
• C5 Access and safety for firefighting operations
It is also relevant to the following clauses to the extent they relate to ‘means of escape from fire’:
• F6 – Visibility in escape routes (e.g. emergency lighting systems)
• C1 Objectives of Clauses C2-C6
The Engineering New Zealand guideline is general, covering all types of engineering services, and providing a way to define the appropriate level of construction monitoring (CM) service. It suggests the CM service will be influenced by the size, the importance and the complexity of the construction works, as well as the experience and demonstrated skill in quality management of the constructor.
This level of safety requires building owners, designers, contractors, and BCAs to work together. Buildings must be designed, constructed, and maintained throughout their life in a suitable way. Key to achieving this is having a complete and coordinated building design that is fully implemented by the contractor(s).
Three years in the making and published in August 2021, the SFPE Construction Monitoring Guide has been written by an SFPE (NZ) working group comprising representatives from several experienced fire engineering practitioners.
While these existing guidelines are useful, the building industry lacks specific guidance to support fire engineering construction monitoring.
• D1 – Access routes (e.g. escape route design)
• F7 – Warning Systems (e.g. fire alarm systems)
documentation (e.g. the fire engineering design). This gives the client and the BCA independent verification on reasonable grounds (to the extent of the consultant’s engagement) that the works by the contractor have been completed in accordance with specified requirements.Existingguidance on undertaking construction monitoring activities in New Zealand has been published by Engineering New Zealand and the New Zealand Construction Industry Council (CIC).
A CCC provides assurance, on reasonable grounds, to the building owner (and the building occupants)
• F8 – Signs (e.g. EXIT signs, fire door labels etc.)
10 Issue 19 | September 2022
The CIC Guidelines seek to enhance the quality of our built environment by providing general checklists and benchmarks to define the design and construction process for all design disciplines.
• C6 Structural stability
suggests detailed actions for the fire engineer and highlights clear and reasonable expectations of other people who may influence these outcomes.
Construction relies on many people with various skills, knowledge, and experience. Factors such as timeframes, commercial pressures, labour shortages, and climate further complicate the constructionConstructingprocess.abuilding of the necessary quality, which meets Building Code requirements, requires each member of the team to do their job well and work together.
Figure 1: The Pathway towards a Completed Compliant Building
The NZ Chapter of the SPFE encourages all participants in the fire safety industry and built environment sector to inform themselves of their obligations during the construction phases of a project. This new Guide provides a fantastic resource for gaining a better understanding, and some useful tools for planning and documenting construction observation
It is important to remember that even a simple building is a complex system comprising many elements.
Thework.Guide is available for FREE at www.sfpe.org.nz/resources .
New Zealand
11Issue 19 | September 2022
Third party construction monitoring (e.g. by a designer or BCA) is not intended to check every element onsite. It is a ‘spot checking’ task where random samples of critical
A further layer of quality control relies on the actions of the BCA in inspecting the construction works as they exercise their responsibilities under the Building Act. BCA officers must obtain necessary evidence to satisfy themselves that the construction works are compliant, and a Code Compliance Certificate can be issued.
Achieving a quality building means ‘quality’ is embedded throughout the construction phase, from start to finish. Beyond having skilled and competent builders, this expectation includes the administrative and procedural activities of the construction company. Assigning construction monitoring to an impartial third party like a designer (e.g. architect or engineer) contributes to the quality of the project.
work are checked. The quality of these third-party checks is limited by the quantity and duration of inspections and the number of work samples checked.Thismonitoring is not intended to replace the contractor’s responsibility to continually monitor the quality of the construction work undertaken. The contractor’s quality processes are to span from their project planning stage (before beginning work on site) through to their final day on-site.
One of the purposes of the Building Act is that people who use buildings can do so safely. This means completed buildings need to be compliant with the safety provisions of the Act. This is only possible if quality is integral to both the design and construction stages (see Figure 1).
Building Code Acceptable Solutions
12 Issue 19 | September 2022
Other requirements will, however, be more challenging to the industry, especially the new provisions for seismic resistance, labelling, 003 key access, service accessibility and weather protection, power supplies, Type 5 alerting, earth fault monitoring, and alerting circuit fault tolerance. It should be noted that some of these have a 4-year lead time, to allow for product modifications.
New Provisions
of duct smoke detection and wireless detection systems (though the latter are far from simple to deploy reliably). Other routine adjustments involve aspirating smoke detectors, search zone areas, detector and MCP location and spacing, and the installation of line-type heat detectors. There are few barriers to adoption of these changes.
VADs are widely used overseas. With advancements to LED technology are far more readily available and affordable than was the case 10 or 20 years ago. Familiarity within the fire industry is still developing, hence the extensive direction and guidance provided by the new clauses and Appendix L in NZS 4512:2021. However, the Standard cannot specify which buildings require both audible and visual alerting devices – that is the responsibility of the Acceptable Solutions and Consenting Authorities.
According to Google, fewer than 10,000 New Zealanders are profoundly deaf, however more than 700,000 (about 1 in 6) of us have some degree of hearing loss – an effect which increases with age. People with hearing aids often neglect to wear them, and certainly don’t use them when they are asleep (when most fatal fires occur).
Where are we at now?: The latest Fire Alarms Standard revision
It does not seem to be well understood from a compliance standpoint that NZS 4121:2001 Design for access and mobility: Buildings and associated facilities is the “Acceptable Solution for requirements of persons with disabilities” by virtue of section 119 of the Building Act 2004. This has been the case for nearly 20 years.
NZS 4121 requires visual (as well as audible) alerting devices in many public buildings. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, VADs are neither widely used nor routinely specified for fire alarm systems. Some of this will be because of the cost (8-15% extra on what is already considered to be a “grudge” purchase), some will be ignorance of the requirements, and some will be laziness or habit on the part of industry or Consenting Authorities.
Prior to including any VAD requirements in the Acceptable Solutions for Fire Protection, MBIE’s Building Performance division has resolved to undertake a wider review of all building provisions around accessibility. Like Hamlet, I sincerely hope this doesn’t take forever. Accessibility is a fairness issue – lack of it is discrimination – and delay simply prolongs the unfairness.
Firstly, some good news! MBIE’s Building Performance division proposed in their 2022 review of the Fire Documents to cite NZS 4512:2021 (without modifications) as the Acceptable Solution for fire detection and alarm systems from 3rd November 2022, with a 12-month transition window.
Visual Alerting Devices (VADs)
NZS 4512:2021 Fire Detection and Alarm Systems in Buildings was published over a year ago. David Prosser reviews the progress of its implementation, and discusses some of the challenges the new standard will present to the fire industry.
As discussed in another article, increasingly other building systems are
As chair of the Standards NZ revision committee for NZS 4512:2021, I can’t help but have a personal interest in its implementation. Fire protection is an action-oriented industry, so, as with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the “law’s delay” can test us. But I am confident our collective patience and perseverance will be richly rewarded over time.
David Prosser, a member of the FPANZ Board of Directors.
Some of the new provisions are routine – for example the inclusion
Integrated Systems
Access to comprehensive and accurate documentation is critical if fire alarm technicians are to know what a system is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. Without accurate and up-to-date documentation, there can be no confidence that the consented design has actually been implemented, validated, and is being maintained in compliance.
Documentation System documentation is at heart about quality assurance. NZS 4512:2010 covered (if you can call it that)
The newly completed FPANZ Code of Practice for Integration of Building Fire Safety Systems with other Services is intended to work alongside NZS 4512:2021 to provide assurance that systems interfaces will work correctly, as defined by a “cause and effects matrix”, to preserve life in the event of a fire.
somehow the documentation needs to be accessible to and update-able by all who will work on the system throughout its lifetime. How this happens in practice is still both a challenge and an open question.
At present, some fire alarm systems are being thoroughly documented, while others receive the bare minimum of attention. I suggest that contractors need to improve their capability, the cost of adequate documentation needs to be included in projects, and
Inspections and Inspection Bodies
It will take time to fully bed-in, and some of the enhanced or clarified requirements may be tough for a few to accept. My hope is that will ultimately underpin easier compliance and safer buildings for the collective good of all New Zealanders.
documentation in the 11 lines of clause 505: the 2021 revision, by way of a whole new section 8, devotes threeand-a-half pages to the subject.
being interfaced with fire detection and alarm systems to provide an integrated life safety “system” for a building. Prior to the 2021 revision of NZS 4512, the requirements for routine testing of such interfaces were unclear, and each trade tended to test only their own subset.
13Issue 19 | September 2022
While previous revisions of NZS 4512 had comprehensive requirements for monthly and annual testing, the requirements, responsibilities, and procedures for commissioning and independent testing were less clear. Again, the previous six lines of section 506 have been expanded to almost four pages, including a clearer differentiation between substantive and “minor”
Thesealterations.clarifiedrequirements
are already being embraced and implemented by Accredited Inspection Bodies. The onus for comprehensive commissioning testing is shifting back to the installation contractor, where it belongs.
Product certification and Listing
It is encouraging to report manufacturers starting to submit products for listing to the 2021 revision of NZS 4512. This is a process that will take time due to product design and production cycles. Much of the transition is expected to occur by way of annual revalidation declarations. For a few technically difficult transitions, NZS 4512:2021 explicitly allows a 4-year transition period.
Conclusion
While certainly not perfect, the 2021 revision of NZS 4512 is an incremental step along the path to enhanced fire protection, and clearer requirements for Thecompliance.revision committee made every effort to balance real-life experience, practicality, and the need to plug gaps in the existing regime.
Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide
This recently published Open Access book is the first of its kind, being a set of global guidelines for the fire-safe use of structural timber and wood products in buildings. The book provides guidance on the design of timber buildings for fire safety with reference to Eurocode 5 and other international codes.
With timber being used to construct increasingly large and complex buildings, Ed Claridge, FPANZ National Council Associated Industry Group Representative, writes that the recently published Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide is a timely world-first reference.
Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings
14 Issue 19 | September 2022
There is a renewed world-wide interest for using timber as a structural and architectural material for many types of building with incentives for using timber including aesthetics, prefabrication, construction speed, economy, seismic performance and increasingly sustainability.
Modern engineered wood products can now be used to construct large and complex timber buildings. Contemporary engineering techniques are enabling construction of timber buildings that were once only possible using concrete and steel, and this is pushing the boundaries of modern fire codes and the basis on which they were founded.Concern about the fire safety of timber buildings is understandable because it is well known that exposed wood surfaces can contribute to the early stages of a fire and can add to the fuel load in the later stages of the fire. There are also questions around issues such as fire separations, flaming from windows and extinguishment of smouldering wood as the fire goes out. Despite these concerns, well-designed timber buildings can be just as safe as buildings of traditional materials.
Chapter 6 – Fire separating assemblies gives design principles for timber used as fire-resistance-rated separating assemblies to provide compartmentation for life safety and property protection, including walls, floors, and roof constructions.
Chapter 12 – Robustness in fire describes general approaches and design guidance to achieve structural robustness in the fire design of timber structures.
Chapter 8 – Timber connections is an introduction to connection typologies, potential failure modes and structural design methods to provide fire resistance to connections in timber buildings.
Chapter 14 – Firefighting considerations for timber buildings describes firefighting practices that may differ in timber buildings compared with other structural building systems and addresses concerns of fire services specific to timber building
Chapter 7 – Load bearing timber structures provides guidance for the structural design of load-bearing timber members exposed to a standard fire, with an overview of the principles needed to predict the effect of charring and heating. Simplified design models include design models from the proposed second generation of Eurocode 5.
Organisation of the Guide
Chapter 3 – Fire dynamics introduces the fire dynamics of burning wood, moving from basic physics to compartment fires, and calculation methods for assessing the contribution of exposed wood to the fuel load.
Chapter 10 – Active fire protection by sprinklers covers the effects of active fire protection systems on design of timber buildings for fire safety.
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Chapter 5 – Reaction to fire performance describes the systems used for compliance with prescriptive regulations in different regions for internal and external wood surface finishes.
Theplatform.FSUW
The chapters in the guide can be individually downloaded and are summarised as follows:
is a global network of experts focusing on the fire-safe application of wood in construction and can be found at fsuw.com.
Introducing the behaviour of fires in timber buildings, it describes strategies for providing safety if unwanted fires occur. It also provides guidance on building design to prevent fires from spreading while maintaining the load-bearing capacity of structural timber elements, connections, and compartmentation.Alsoincludedisinformation on the reaction-to-fire of wood products according to different classification systems, as well as active measures of fire protection, quality of workmanship and inspection as means of fulfilling fire safety objectives. The book concludes with a discussion on firefighting considerations for timber buildings.
Chapter 1 – Timber structures and wood products gives an overview of wood-based materials and construction techniques.
Chapter 2 – Fire safety in timber buildings gives a summary of design principles for providing fire safety in all buildings, with particular attention to timber construction.
Chapter 4 – Fire safety requirements in different regions gives a summary of international regulations for the fire safe use of structural timber elements and visible wood surfaces in interior and exterior applications, presented in tables and maps.
Chapter 11 – Performance-based design and risk assessment introduces performance-based design of timber buildings, with a summary of possible risk-based design methods.
Chapter 13 – Building execution and control provides guidance for design and construction processes to ensure that the fire safety of timber buildings is maintained during and after construction.
guide was developed by the Fire Safe Use of Wood global network, a network of leading fire and timber researchers from Australia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, United Kingdom, and the OpenUSA. Access content has been made Available on Taylor & Francis eBook Book
Theconstruction.462-page
Chapter 9 – Prevention of fire spread within structures gives recommendations for design to prevent fire from spreading into, within and through timber structures, including detailing of construction joints and penetrations.
Along with NZQA Level 4 inspection qualification and the Open Polytechnics Diploma in Fire Engineering there is a genuine career path for the likes of school leavers, those retraining or existing people within the industry. This is a massive achievement for the industry delivered by the industry.Passive
2 - Intumescent Coatings Code of Practice - Version 2.0
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FPANZ Passive SIG, Update
its first review and is now proudly being released for the wider market. This iteration has closed out some details and refined expectations, roles and responsibilities.
A huge success for the industry in recent years has been the development and implementation of the NZQA Level 3 Passive Fire installers qualification. This has delivered 100 qualified tradespeople into the industry.
Fire is now one of the key participants on any construction project and existing building compliance. It is a mature and recognised trade across the country. The future of FPANZ Passive SIG is exciting as we can put our efforts into really developing the maturity of the industry as opposed to dealing with the distractions and bad news that once plagued us.
FPANZ Passive SIG has front footed the problems with deliverables such as the Passive Fire Products register, Intumescent Coatings Code of Practice, Position Statements, NZQA Qualifications, Get it Right seminars and we’ve also been busy with iterations to these over the past 2 years.
We make fire alarm monitoring simple –let us show you how easy it can be!
From problem child to industry leader the Passive SIG has been busy over the past 5 years working on fixing the issues that once plagued our industry.
In this update, Justin McEntyre, Chair of the Passive SIG writes that the group has come a long way, evidenced by the recently released Passive Fire Product register (online filterable version) and Intumescent Coatings Code of Practice.
For FireNZ we are pleased to showcase two of our latest efforts being:
We continuously monitor your building’s fire alarm system and automatically pass the fire alarms directly to the Fire Service and the system faults to your alarm service agents. This ensures that fire alarms will be acted on as quickly as possible by the Fire Service, but also that your fire alarm systems remain reliable and responsive.
The work behind the scenes to get the Passive Products Register to the new online filterable version has been an immense project over the past 2.5 years. This has involved various working groups, customer trial & feedback sessions, product development and manufacturer engagement.
Version 1.0 was greatly received by the industry and the compliance of design & application of Intumescent coatings in NZ has already increased greatly. We believe the continual improvement of this document will be greatly accepted by the industry and continue to develop the maturity of the Intumescent coatings industry.
The new online register is designed specifically with an end user in mind to assist the likes of councils, contractors, specifiers and Engineers in their quest to ensure buildings are compliant. This is accessed via the FPANZ website and is up and ready for users to register and start using.
The Intumescent Coatings Code of Practice underwent
1 - Passive Fire Product register - online filterable version
FNZM: Tell us a bit about the presentations you’ll be delivering at Fire NZ.
Our current acceptable solution doesn’t really acknowledge this, so in the absence of any other information there’s a risk that these kinds of buildings designed according to the acceptable solution are not going to perform very well in fire. The joint paper presented by Andy and I provides a high-level overview of this, and how this new book can help.
the modelling of post flashover fires in mass timber enclosures.
CW: The two presentations are closely linked. Andy [Buchanan] and I along with a whole lot of other experts around the world have been involved in writing the new book Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide. We’re taking the opportunity at the event to give it a bit of a profile.
It’s important to understand whether the timber elements in a compartment can withstand a burnout situation in the absence of any intervention, i.e., where the fuel runs out and the fire decays, the design should ensure that the charring also ceases. If you can do this, you can calculate what the final char depth would be after the fire and then have some confidence that you can then design the structure to carry the loads.
Dr Colleen Wade discusses the differences between the fire behaviour of timber and traditional building materials, the danger in applying current Acceptable Solution settings to mass timber, and issues with current fire ratings.
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differences between the fire behaviour in these timber buildings compared to buildings made of traditional noncombustible material.
My presentation gives an overview of what’s in the Fire Dynamics chapter, and then the latter part of the presentation presents a methodology for working out what the char depth would be in real fire scenarios as opposed to standard furnace tests. We’re also trying to flag that we need some changes to the acceptable solutions and verification method to take these things into account.
The reason we helped write the book was that there is big demand for mass timber buildings due to the drive to reduce carbon emissions, etc, but there is little comprehensive guidance for their fire design given the extensive research done around the world on the topic in the past 5 years or so. There’s also a danger in applying our acceptable solutions, which were written with non-combustible structures in mind –buildings out of concrete and steel – to mass timber. The difference with mass timber is that in a fire, where panelised cross laminated timber (CLT) panels, floor plates, beams and columns are being used without protection, the timber contributes to the fuel.
The problem with the current situation is that if you simply apply, for example, a 30 min fire rating from the acceptable solution, which is determined in a standard fire resistance test where the decay phase isn’t considered at all. The gas gets turned off at the end of the fire test, when the timber might still be performing structurally and as a barrier, but 10 or 30 minutes or three hours later it has continued to char and collapsed in a heap. In this case, it hasn’t really performed in terms of withstanding the structural loads and achieving fire separations that perform during and after the fire.
Meet the Speaker: Colleen Wade
Dr Colleen Wade , Director – Fire Research GroupDr Colleen Wade is a fire research specialist with interests in fire modeling, flame spread, risk analysis and fire dynamics in mass timber enclosures.
This chapter also covers methodology for determining charring, taking into account realistic fires with a growth period, a burning period and a decay period.
One of the chapters in the book (Chapter 3) that I was the lead author for is about fire dynamics. It goes into some of the characteristics of fire in timber buildings and it draws out the
Colleen Wade is a fire research specialist with more than 30 years’ experience. Her interests include fire modelling, flame spread, risk analysis and fire dynamics in mass timber enclosures.AttheFire NZ Conference, Colleen will be speaking on the topics of “Fire Safety Engineering in Mass Timber Buildings - issues and solutions” (along with Prof Andy Buchanan) and “Calculating fire load and charring of timber in mass timber buildings”.Adirector at Fire Research Group and a co-author of Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide (2022), she is also the developer of the fire zone model B-RISK. She is convenor of SC4 WG6 (design fires) in ISO Technical Committee 92 and a Fellow of Colleen’sSFPE.PhD in Fire Engineering (University of Canterbury) focused on
FNZM: One of your qualifications is from the US. Can you tell us a little about that?
Another issue is the avoidance of a single point of failure. Sprinklers are obviously something you’d want to see, but sprinklers aren’t infallible. Even though their failure rates are relatively low, when the consequences of failure are very, very high as they are in a high-rise building then you’d still want to have a good balance of fire protection measures – both active and passive systems. They need to work together.
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the progression of charring you have to protect the timber in the building. You might be able to expose some of the timber, but in many buildings you can’t expose all of it. It’s a balance, and part of the calculations the fire engineer needs to perform is around finding out how much of the timber can be safely exposed.
Building Codes around the world have traditionally been regulation by disaster. In some cases, we’ve waited until something goes wrong, and we’ve then changed the Code to fill that gap. It would be better to be proactive and not wait for that happen. If we get a bad fire, it could turn out to be a setback for all the benefits of building in timber.
CW: Tall timber is one and related to that the other area I have concerns about is general fire resistance requirements in tall high-rise buildings.Ourfire resistance ratings in New Zealand are very low by comparison to most other countries – sometimes three to six times lower. For example, we have 30-minute ratings for situations where other countries would have between 90 and 120 minutes and sometimes even threeThishours.may be because there’s a lack of appreciation of the risk. Most counties, for example, would have increasing fire resistance ratings as buildings get taller. They don’t have the same fire rating requirement for a two-storey building that they would for a 20-storey building because the consequences of failure of very different, but in New Zealand we treat them pretty much the same. I think there’s just a failure to match requirements with some of the potential consequences of failure. We could do better in this regard.
compartment fire modelling and flame spread, as well as contributing to building code and standards projects.
Because there’s this strive to build taller timber buildings that we’ve never really had to worry about before, it’s important that our acceptable solutions are revised for those taller buildings. We need to be more conservative for new technology and because we don’t currently deal with mass timber very well from a fire point of view.
I then returned to my job at BRANZ and continued as a researcher especially working in the areas of
CW: That was fairly early on in my career when I was with the Building Research Association, I was a fire scientist there. At that point I had a Building Science degree from Victoria University, and after a few years at BRANZ I went and did a master’s degree.Atthat time – the mid-1990s – there were actually very few postgraduate programs around the world (when I went to the US the Canterbury one was in its first year). I went to study at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts. They had quite a well-established program there and it was a great experience.
FNZM: From the point of view of your area(s) of specialisation, what do you see as the key big issues facing fire protection?
CW: Timber is a lighter weight construction material, so for example, a timber building’s foundations don’t need to be as extensive as they might be for a concrete building. There are benefits from that point of view.
In around 2013 I decided to do a part-time PhD at Canterbury in the mass timber area modelling fully developed fires, graduating in 2019, which got me working in the mass timber area. I left BRANZ in April 2020 and cofounded Fire Research Group with three other colleagues doing specialist fire research and advisory work.
Aesthetically, architects want to build out of timber, and they generally want to display the timber rather than cover it up. This creates a bit of a conflict, because in order to prevent
FNZM: What are the drivers for building in timber?
AB: I graduated in 1970 from the University of Canterbury with a degree in Structural Engineering, which was mostly concrete buildings and earthquakes. When I went to California to do my master’s degree, to my surprise I was offered a project on fire safety – I had no idea that there was any such thing as fire engineering backAlthoughthen! this introduced me to fire engineering, I didn’t think it was a career, so I stored it away, came back to New Zealand and worked for a big consulting firm doing structural engineering – more steel and concrete. Nevertheless, I slowly got interested in wood, initially from conservation of a renewable resource, then as an engineering material. I then went off to Canada where I did my PhD in timber engineering.
Having completed a masters degree in fire engineering and a PhD in timber engineering, I came back to New Zealand and did some consulting. I was then offered a position at the University of Canterbury in 1987, where I was given the freedom to develop teaching and research in both fire and timber engineering.
Dr Andy Buchanan talks about the need for an updated Building Code to address timber structures, the challenges of encapsulation for mass timber structures, and how a structural engineer discovered wood and fire.
AB: A visiting Canadian professor was giving a talk to the Canterbury structural engineers about timber engineering. I struck up a conversation, and he said why don’t you come over
FNZM: Why Canada?
I established the fire engineering masters programme at UC 30 years ago. It’s a fantastic programme. It was one of the first in the world. It was started in collaboration with the Fire Service Commission who provided funding, and we hired fire engineer Charley Fleischmann, who came to New Zealand from the US to set up and run the program.
to Canada? So off I went with a young family to study in Canada for four years.Canada is a bit like New Zealand, it’s got lots of forests, and forestry is a huge part of the economy. The Canadian government still owns many of their forests and even now is investing to add value to them.
Andy Buchanan is a structural engineer with a career spanning over five decades with the timber industry, the fire engineering community, and the structural engineering profession.
Andy holds a B.E. with Honours from the University of Canterbury (1970), a masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley (1972), and a PhD from the University of British Columbia, Canada (1984). He was previously Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury.
At the Fire NZ Conference, Andy will be speaking on the topics of “Fire Safety Engineering in Mass Timber Buildings - issues and solutions” (together with Dr Colleen Wade) and “Encapsulation for mass timber structures”.Aprincipal at PTL Structural Consultants, Christchurch, He is the co-author of Structural Design for Fire Safety (2017) and the New Zealand Timber Design Guide (2007). He is also a co-author and editor of the just published Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide (2022).
Meet the Speaker: Andy Buchanan
FNZM: Where did your structural and fire engineering journey begin?
FNZM: Timber really appears to be ramping up as an area of focus.
Prof Andy Buchanan Principal – PTL Structural Consultants
It’s been a fantastic collaboration with the fire service extending throughout the past three decades. I’ve lost track of how many hundreds of graduates there are.
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AB: I’ve had a professional career as a structural engineer where my expertise has been in fire engineering and timber engineering, and ultimately those two interests came together, for obvious reasons.
The problem is that architects and building owners know people love wooden buildings and want to show off all the wood. In contrast, the fire engineer wants to cover up all the wood – the more the wood is covered up the safer the building. So there’s a tension there, and that’s what my paper is about.
FNZM: So the current setting of the Building Code are needing to be changed. What’s required for the regulatory changes to happen?
The next hurdle in New Zealand is to get the Building Code authorities to realise that all these timber buildings are coming. The Building Code, and especially the fire part of the Code, was written decades ago when the authors had no idea that there were going to be all these buildings built of stuff that could burn. The Building Code is out of date.
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The Building Code documents need to provide guidance to allow the tension to be balanced off, taking into account the height and size and use of each building.
Most countries in the world say that if you have combustible building materials you can only build to a certain height. But in New Zealand there’s no such limit. Other countries say the taller you go the more fire resistance you have to have. In New Zealand we don’t have that.
FNZM: Your other talk is on “Encapsulation for mass timber structures”. What’s that about?
If you cover up the wood with several layers of board then you remove one of the big concerns with timber buildings, which is the problem of timber adding fuel to the fire.
AB: It’s never easy to make regulatory changes. It’s particularly difficult in New Zealand because some of our fire
AB: If you read the literature about all of the wood in timber buildings contributing to the fire load, well, you cover it up, you encapsulate the timber with Gib board. But then, how much of the wood do you have to cover up? How many layers of board do you have to cover it up with? And how do you calculate that? It’s not simple.
I’ve been part of an international group, the Fire Safe Use of Wood Group, that decided three or four years ago to collate all the international research and publish some guidelines – Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings: Global Design Guide. It was published this year, and although it doesn’t provide all the answers, it does give the current state of play.
FNZM: How do you get around that tension, or is it always going to be there?
It’senough.easyto relax Building Code requirements but it’s not easy to make them tougher. Nevertheless there are going to have to be some changes.
There are going to be more and more timber buildings as the climate crisis crunches. Just as we’re moving from petrol cars to electric cars we’re moving from steel and concrete buildings to timber buildings. Wood burns, and that raises all sorts of questions about fire safety.
It’s not going to be an easy transition out of this because as soon as you start saying we need to toughen up on these requirements it puts everybody in an awkward position. We see it in what’s happening in Wellington now with the increased earthquake requirements. It creates the impression that the previous designers weren’t doing their jobs well and that all the existing buildings aren’t safe
safety requirements are very permissive compared to regulations in other countries, especially for tall buildings.
In my semi-retirement I am working towards the creation of an environment where we can provide adequate fire safety in the large and increasing number of timber buildings and do it in a rational sensible way in which we balance the risks.
AB: It’s always going to be there. The answer really comes back to performance based design. When there are rules in the Building Code for fire safety there are two approaches: a prescriptive approach and a performance-based approach. In terms of the latter, the Building Code states the performance requirements and then the fire engineer can use whichever method he or she likes to meet those performance requirements.IntheBuilding Code environment the prescriptive solution is called an ‘acceptable solution’ and the performance requirement uses the ‘verification method’ or an ‘alternative solution”. To use performance-based design requires a lot more calculations, so the fees are going to be higher and it’s going to be a much bigger effort. You don’t need to do that for every garden shed, but if you’re designing a skyscraper you certainly do need to.
FNZM: Where did you start your journey professionally?
FNZM: What brought you to New Zealand?
rare phenomena,” he says. “At this point we believe that smoke explosions are separate phenomena that can be classified as “Rapid Fire Progress”, a term used in categorising firefighter fatalities.”Withover 100 publications, he is an accomplished presenter and is regularly invited overseas to teach and present his research. In 2019, he spent three months at the Underwriters Laboratories Fire Safety Research Institute as a visiting scholar researching smoke explosions and teaching fire dynamics.
CF: All Hollywood did was give a backdraft a public reputation. The physics in there are atrocious. In fact, there’s one scene where you see the fire come under a door and roll across the floor, but the problem is that fire is buoyant. You cannot shoot fire across a floor, it doesn’t stay down, it rises.
CF: Prior to my arrival, Dr Andy Buchanan at the University of Canterbury secured funding from the Fire Service Commission to start a fire engineering program. This had come about due to the introduction of the Building Code in 1991, which prompted the need for more fire engineers. Andy went looking to see who he might be able to find internationally. One thing led to another, and I ended up taking that position.Mywife (also a fire engineer) and I came here with the idea that this would be an adventure for three to five years, and we stayed.
Professor Fleischmann, University of Canterbury Fire Engineering program
Meet the Speaker: Charles Fleischmann
of Maryland, where I finished my undergraduate degrees in fire and civil engineering and lived in a fire station as a resident firefighter. Wanting to get more involved in fire research, I went to the University of California at Berkeley and put myself through a Masters and then PhD. I was in California for about seven years before moving to New Zealand.Since coming to NZ, I have had the pleasure of helping to build a quality fire engineering program at UC. We’re growing in terms of getting academics here, and the program is internationally recognised in the fire engineering community. When we started, our main goal was that the program survives and thrives as an academicStudentprogram.numbers are strong, and our graduates are in demand both in NZ and overseas. About 30% tend to go overseas depending on the market and their interest. Yet this is an advantage for NZ because many of our graduates also tend to return home and bring with them a wealth of experience.
CF: I grew up in Washington State and became a volunteer firefighter in 1977. In 1982 I went to the University
Professor Charles Fleischmann talks about the challenges in researching the littleunderstood phenomenon of smoke explosions, or ‘backdraft’, and why fire safety needs to start in the home.
“We are still in our infancy in terms of understanding and developing guidance concerning these relatively
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Professor Fleischmann has been a part of the University of Canterbury Fire Engineering program since it started in 1994. He regularly teaches Fire Dynamics and Advanced Fire Dynamics to the Masters students. His research interests include fire dynamics, compartment fire modelling, performance-based codes, backdrafts, and smoke explosions.
FNZM: It’s been 31 years since Hollywood drew our attention to the issues of rapid fire progress in the film Backdraft, so how come our knowledge in this area is still in its infancy?
At the Fire NZ Conference, Charley will be speaking on the topic of ‘Smoke explosions, the unexpected and unexplained hazard on the fire ground’.‘Smoke explosion’ is often used synonymously with the more publicly known phenomena of backdraft. Popularised in the 1991 Hollywood blockbuster Backdraft, both smoke explosions and backdrafts, says Prof Fleischmann, are still poorly understood topics.
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Smoke explosion in the lab at the Fire Safety Research Institute, 2019.
In another scene, we see a civilian open a door, there is an instant explosion, and he’s blown across the front yard into the windscreen of his automobile. The problem with a backdraft is that they typically don’t happen immediately. If they did happen immediately, firefighters could just bang open a door and then step out of the way, letting the blast happen before entering. But that’s not the way the phenomenon works. So, Hollywood didn’t really help the situation any by making a movie out of it.
There was one explosion recently that we started to look into that was reported as a smoke explosion sort of event. But when we started looking into it, what actually happened was
So, what did the filmmakers do? They flipped the room and its contents upside down, flipped the camera upside down, and shot the flame across what was now the ceiling!
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that the apartment was being rented out to somebody who was a floor refinisher, and they were using the space to store some of their product. So, it was really a flammable liquid event caused by the improper storage of a flammable liquid that led to an explosion. It was a number of days before investigators pieced everything together, but the media had already reported it as a smoke explosion.
A lot of the time all you see is a thirty second video from one camera angle and somebody says gee can you tell us what happened. There’s so much missing information. The incidents just don’t get well investigated in most cases unless somebody gets seriously injured or worse.
In firefighter training, they take a compartment and let the fire build up really well. Then they close off the ventilation and leave it for long enough to stop the flaming. The fire then transitions into a smouldering state. This results in the build-up of unburned fuel gases which ignite and explode when they open the door. This helps train firefighters for backdrafts, but it’s not what typically happens in a real event. In the real world, the fire service doesn’t just sit there and let a fire build up, close the door, and then open it and watch it go boom.So, although we can create training scenarios, the situation is very much contrived. What we’re working towards is identifying the realistic conditions that may lead to a smoke explosion. Then we can experiment with the actions that can be taken in certain circumstances to prevent the event fromThat’shappening.wherewe’re heading. I want to say that in my career, I’ll be able to write a manual about how to stop smoke explosions, but I’m not sure we can necessarily do that. There are a number of challenges still to work on!
If we were to, dare I say it, have a lot of fatalities involving firefighters from smoke explosions or backdrafts, then there’d be more research on it. Fortunately, they are a relatively rare events, in fact a lot of the time, an incident that may be reported as a smoke explosion or backdraft may end up being some other type of explosion.
We’re starting to see, for example, a potential for problems if the ventilation is interrupted, but we’re not at a point yet where we can draw definitive conclusions. One of the difficulties is that when we see a smoke explosion type event on the fire ground, we don’t know what somebody may have been doing on the other side of the building. Did they open a door? Did they close a door? Did they close and open a door?
We’ve got to a point where we can recreate a smoke explosion in the laboratory under certain conditions, but it’s not as consistent as we’d like it to be. The next step is to do a few more experiments so that we can recreate it consistently. We think we know what we’re doing, but it’s a matter of consistently repeating it inside the lab so we can take away some of the uncertainties. Then we’ll start looking at what actions could make it worse or more likely to occur.
From a research point of view, smoke explosions and backdraft are separate phenomena. For a backdraft to occur, there has to be a change in the ventilation that precedes the explosion event, such as a firefighter opening a door or a window breaking. There is also a measurable time delay for the air to enter the compartment and reach an ignition source. A smoke explosion occurs without any change to the ventilation and the explosion takes place without any obvious warning.Thething is that backdraft and smoke explosions are rare events. The difficulty is that it’s not like you can look at an incident (postfire) and identify that the space experienced a smoke explosion, backdraft, or flashover. You only know that it occurred when people witnessed it. As such, it’s not something that’s received a lot of attention in terms of research.
FNZM: How do you approach research into a phenomenon that’s not so common, unexpected when it happens? To what extent can you model a smoke explosion scenario?
FNZM: You spent three months at the Underwriters Laboratory Fire Safety Research Institute as a visiting scholar. How valuable was your time there in terms of researching smoke explosions?
CF: In the first instance, the approach we’re taking is to be able to consistently recreate a smoke explosion in a laboratory so that we understand what leads up to the event. We focus mostly on wood-based fires in a noncombustible enclosure, where we understand the burning reasonably well.At the Fire Safety Research Institute in the US, we’ve studied plywood compartments using a small crib to get the fire going. We know that when we work with certain compartment configurations, we’re likely to get a smoke explosion. We’re at the point now where we’re saying, ‘let’s play with it a bit more to understand this configuration and see when we get a smoke explosion or when we don’t get it.’
CF: They have some excellent facilities. Having started in 2013 with a few people, they now have more than 50 people in research, training and amplification. The Director of Research at FSRI, Dan Madrzykowski, is a former PhD student of mine from UC.
25Issue 19 | September 2022 1543Sika
PERFORMANCEHIGH
CF: By and large, our buildings in New Zealand are of a reasonable standard for fire safety, but if you look at where fire fatalities occur, it’s still in their own home. People say “safe as houses” but those places are pretty dangerous – not only from fires but other hazards such as slips, trips, falls, etc. If you’re going to die in a building from a fire, it will most likely be in your own home.
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PhD student here to focus on smoke explosions.TheFSRI has all this tremendous expertise and funding, and hopefully, smoke explosions will bubble up to the top and become a more active area of research. The challenge is that they have more ideas than time and personnel.
FNZM : What do you see as the big fire safety priorities for NZ on the horizon?
the useful lifespan of the smoke alarm, and it’s less likely that a resident will remove the battery because they can use it for another device.
In addition to their facility in Columbia, Maryland, which has a small-scale laboratory, they’ve got a very good relationship with Delaware County Emergency Services Training Center in Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, where they conduct various large scale fire experiments.
Smoke detectors help. It also helps that we are replacing the annual replacement of the nine-volt battery, and we’re now putting in long-lasting battery devices. A homeowner can now be expected to pay attention to
I had time during my sabbatical to go over there and work with them on smoke explosions. It was a great experience working with talented people on large-scale fire phenomena. Right now, research on smoke explosions fits around everything else they’re doing. I’m hoping to get it a bit more ‘on the schedule’ and potentially do more at UC with their feedback and funding, and I hope to get another
It’s not unusual for them to build something on the scale of a house. When I was there in July, they had two identical houses side-by-side that had different heating and ventilation systems. They’d been studying the effect the two heating, and ventilation systems can have on fire development, the survivability of the occupants, and the resulting fire patterns.
JOINTING SYSTEMS
Since the late 1970’s we’ve made huge strides in home fire deaths, reducing fire fatalities by more than 50%. However, from a socioeconomic perspective, there’s still sectors of our society and building stock we need to work
Fromon. an operational point of view, we can always do more in terms of firefighter training. In the last decade, there’s been a lot done on the firefighting operational side, personal protective equipment, and prevention. There’s more training available on best practices around PPE, such as laundering, and best practices for removing PPE, which is an area of significant improvement.
SEISMIC
The challenge is getting the message out there and motivating people to do the training. For example, FSRI offers free on-line courses on most aspects of fire firefighting and cancer exposure reduction. These courses are available from https://training.fsri.org/.
“In an emergency, every second counts. In the event of an emergency or natural disaster the MAR Centre will provide fast and accurate alerts to the Government and New Zealanders about what’s happening and what to do.
The MAR Centre will connect with other agencies and the wider emergency sector so that in the event of an emergency, CDEM groups, local authorities and communities will have the support they need at a national level. They will also get consistent messages about the actions or precautions they can take.
Staff at NEMA’s new Monitoring, Alerting and Reporting (MAR) Centre monitor, assess and report on potential hazards 24/7, and they provide situational awareness when emergencies arise.
“Particularly where there is a tsunami threat, we need timely and geographically accurate warnings, and the MAR Centre will provide these.
“Aotearoa New Zealand experiences many hazards, and the MAR Centre will provide fast and accurate information so that New Zealanders know what to do.” Director of Civil Defence Gary Knowles says.
26 Issue 19 | September 2022
The MAR Centre replaces NEMA’s previous Duty/Oncall arrangement with a 24/7 “awake” approach. It is staffed by teams on a rotating roster, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a “Today’syear.launch of the MAR Centre marks another step towards keeping families and communities in Aotearoa New Zealand safer from natural disasters and other emergencies,” Mr McAnulty said.
“Today’s launch is part of our comprehensive plan to strengthen the emergency management system and support inclusive, community-led responses, which has been supported by $46.6m over four years in Budget 2021.
Emergency monitoring centre opened to keep New Zealand
“Until now, NEMA operated on an on-call duty system, and so this new centre will make a massive difference to how quickly NEMA can respond to rapidly escalating events, and the ability to foresee and prepare for other emerging risks.”
The new centre’s mission statement is to inform our partners, the government and the New Zealand public of emerging and imminent natural hazard risks to support a safe and resilient Aotearoa New Zealand.
safer
“Our watch teams will monitor threats, alert the public when it’s needed and report to Government on unfolding situations.“Itwill also help regional Civil Defence groups and first responders respond to emergencies in their communities, and provide advice to local and central government.’
Thefire.2018
The MAR Centre also brings increased situational awareness of emerging risks, better information sharing with CDEM groups and other 24/7 centres, and faster responses to tsunami alerts.
Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty launched the new Monitoring, Alerting and Reporting (MAR) Centre at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on 28 June. The new centre is in response to recommendations from the 2018 Ministerial Review following the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake and 2017 Port Hills
Ministerial Review into Better Responses to Natural Disasters and Other Emergencies recommended establishing a round-the-clock operation for monitoring and alerting emergencies enabling more rapid distribution of alerts – particularly in the case of tsunami warnings.
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research has generated over 50 new data points for preparation times and evacuation speeds. The preliminary result of this research shows that ICU and PACU patients might require more than three minutes and more than
Figure 1: Schematic of ICUs and PACUs evacuation timeline.
Towards a Database for Hospital Evacuations in New Zealand
To date, many new models have now expanded their algorithms to allow assisted evacuation, such as Pathfinder, buildingExodus or game engines. Further several preliminary studies have been carried out to generate data for preparation times and evacuation speeds for evacuees with reduced mobility. However, there is still a lack of data on the inputs to enter into these new assisted evacuation algorithms when simulating PACUs and ICUs.
Simulating hospital evacuation for fire engineering design is still a major challenge. Given the impermeant of the patients in Post Anaesthetic Care Units (PACUs) and Intense Care Units (ICUs), these simulations require to simulate assisted evacuation processes. The process of evacuating the units is visualised in the conceptual model proposed by Rahouti et al. (2020), as shown in Figure 1.
A reliable simulation of assisted evacuation requires inputs on the preparation time of each simulated patient. The preparation time can be defined as the time required by hospital staff to get a patient ready to be evacuated. Hospital staff use this time to perform several activities, including informing patients about what is about to happen, unplugging patients from non-mobile equipment, and plugging patients to mobile equipment.
To address this engineering challenge, a research team at Massey University I have been leading has started recording and analysing evacuation exercises carried out in Auckland hospitals to measure preparation time in PACUs and ICUs in 2019. To date, the research team has already collaborated with many District Health Boards across the country, and it has collected data from eight evacuation exercises that have taken place in the Auckland City Hospital and the North Shore Hospital.Thispreliminary
Another set of experiments is instead planned in the final months of 2022 at Taranaki Base Hospital and Hāwera Hospital in collaboration with Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand and Evacuation Now. As such, by the end of 2022, the research team aim to develop the biggest database for hospital evacuations to be presented at the next IAFSS conference in 2023 in Japan.
Dr Ruggiero Lovreglio, Senior Lecturer at Massey University’s School of Built Environment, provides an update on new preliminary research into preparation times and evacuation speeds for hospital evacuations.
two staff to move them toward a safe place, depending on their condition. Further, the results indicate that evacuation speeds while moving patients on beds can be well below 1m/s and these speeds can be drastically reduced when these beds are moved through complex geometries.
I would like to thank all the organisations who have supported his evacuation research with funding and time: SFPE-NZ chapter for the 2019 starting grant, FRG for its 2021 Micro Grant, Evacuation Now, WDHB and ADHB for their support in kindness and time.
A lot of work had been done – led by the University of Canterbury –on developing new seismic resisting systems in concrete, and that had strong government support, which dates back to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Structural steel had been used in New Zealand in multi-story buildings before then, but by that stage it had become a bit more expensive, and there was also the very high-profile case of the BNZ Centre in Wellington in the early 1970s that had ran into intense problems with the unions.
Earlier this year, University of Auckland Associate Professor Charles Clifton was made a Distinguished Fellow of Engineering New Zealand in recognition of 39 years of research making steel and composite steel/ concrete structures and buildings in New Zealand safer from fire and earthquakes.Describing himself as “an engineer who works at a university rather than an academic”, Dr Clifton says that a significant part of his career has been about sorting fact from fiction. Along the way, his career has helped grow the use of structural steel in multi-storey buildings and made buildings of any material safer.
The BNZ Centre involved a new form of steel construction that nowadays is reasonably commonplace but at the time was rather high tech, and it stretched the capability of the industry. They also had problems with poor quality steel, the job was badly managed, and it required a lot of onsite welding. It became embroiled in a simmering dispute between the Boilermakers’ Union led by Cornelius Devitt, which covered welders, and the National government of the day, led by Robert Muldoon. Those two were very strong and opposing personalities.
CC: When I started out, the three barriers to the use of steel were earthquake, fire, and durability.
you are nominated for by others. When the President of Engineering New Zealand phoned to give me the news, I was very surprised and delighted.Essentially, the recognition was for my work in providing the technical foundation to build the market share for structural steel with an emphasis on multi story buildings. That was my job description back in 1983 when I set up the New Zealand Heavy Engineering Research Association’s (HERA) structural division.
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Charles Clifton, University of Auckland Associate Professor
CC: There was effectively no steel used in multi-storey non-industrial buildings by 1983. For non-industrial buildings by the beginning of the 1980s, the market share for steel in buildings more than two storeys high wouldn’t have even been one percent. There might have been the occasional building that used it, but it was really rare.
FNZM: You’ve said that there are three advantages to steel: in relation to earthquakes, in relation to fire, and in relation to durability…
CC: Now it’s about 65% nationwide. It varies geographically. In Auckland it’s around about 50%, in Wellington and Christchurch it’s around 85-90%, and in most of the seismic reactive areas it’s around 90%. There are some pretty cost-effective solutions for concrete in medium rise buildings that you can’t do in a high seismic zone that you can do in a lower seismic zone, which is why the market share in Auckland is lower.
FNZM: Congratulations on your award – a significant achievement.
CC: It was a much bigger award than I realised when I got it. I didn’t apply for distinguished fellow; it is something
FNZM: What’s the market share these days?
In this extended interview with FireNZ Magazine editor Nicholas Dynon, Associate Professor Charles Clifton discusses the development of structural steel in New Zealand and the many challenges still facing the development of fire resilient buildings.
FNZM: You mention that much of your work has been around sorting fact from fiction…
Charles Clifton: Earthquake, Fire, and Durability
This dispute came to a head when the Government deregulated the union, which brought a whole lot of other unions out in support and pitted the unions against the government. Muldoon issued a directive, through
the government, that no more government buildings were to be built using steel, and this effectively killed the Byindustry.thetime
Then there was the issue of fire. It was considered that if a steel building was exposed to severe fire and the steel got heated above 550 degrees, the members would fail. Because fires
And then the universities asked, if we’re not going to use steel for seismic resisting systems, how are we going to build these in concrete? Concrete had some known issues with earthquakes that needed to be resolved, so a lot of money was given to the universities and the Ministry of Works to develop seismic resistant reinforced concrete solutions. Seismic resistant systems for concrete were developed, and they were seen to offer better performance than anything that could be built in steel.
typically burn at over 1,000 degrees, if steel got into a fully developed fire, it would certainly fail unless it was insulated. In the building code at the time, NZS 1900 Chapter 5 made it a requirement that if you were building in city areas you had to build in reinforced concrete and masonry – so steel wasn’t permitted to be used.
we got to the end of the ‘70s the BNZ Centre was still sitting there unfinished [it wasn’t finished until 1984], and it became the symbol of this political battle. Effectively the use of steel in multi-storey construction stopped at that time.
We also had the first couple of highrise buildings in Auckland in steel go up extremely quickly, and that showed people that it could be done. One of those, which was in front of what used to be the Sheraton Hotel, was project
perception was well founded. It took a long time to make the many necessary changes.
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FNZM: What were the key turning points?
And then there was also the fact that because steel rusts when exposed to air and water it wasn’t considered suitable for use in an external environment. Because New Zealand’s environment was at the time considered to be “uniquely corrosive” – which was a perception that was fostered by the concrete roofing industry who were looking at pushing concrete tiles as a solution to New Zealand’s “uniquely corrosive” environment – it was seen that steel was not suitable for external applications.Thesewere the three big issues that I had to look at and figure out what was perception, what was reality, to look at how to change the perception where it was technically wrong, and to look at what to do to rectify it where the
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CC: By 1985 we were starting to make some progress. In August 1985, we held the Pacific Structural Steel Conference, where we brought in keynote speakers from around the world to contribute to the first-ever technical conference in New Zealand relating to steel. In November of that year, the structural steel seismic working group of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, produced a set of papers on the current state of the art around the world in seismic design and steel. I was starting to get a feel of the job and assemble enough information to start publishing some useful things.
pass that to the consultants for their consideration. They took great care to make certain that their designs were always robust, and that was the basis on which they operated.
Another turning point was in 1994 with the start of what is now Steel Construction New Zealand. The competition amongst consulting engineers to bid for clients and secure design projects is fairly fierce – a lot of us in the profession would say too fierce – with fees being pushed down too low to allow consultants time to properly explore alternative materials and means of construction.Thissituation had arisen in the early 1980s when developers started to come in as major clients for high
In 1995 we had the Northridge Earthquake in the USA in which a building with hollow core concrete floors and thin toppings partially collapsed. This was the typical floor system that had been incorporated into the modern, multi-storey reinforced concrete buildings since around 1980. In this case, the floor system was built on a steel frame, but it was the floor system that collapsed, not the frame. Several academics at the engineering schools had started to really worry about how resilient these hollow core floor systems would be in earthquakes, and when this happened, they got concerned about the vulnerability of the many buildings in New Zealand being built using these systems.
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At the time, the concrete industry claimed that the collapse only occurred because the floor system was built on a steel frame, and the academics said; well, we don’t think so, if you look at the pictures it wasn’t the steel frame that failed, it was that the floor fell out of the frame, and we think the same thing would happen in concrete, and probably the way concrete behaves in earthquakes might well make the situation worse!
managed by an American contract manager who was used to the US methods of steel construction, which does go up very quickly. The industry was starting to pick up a bit then, so opportunities were arising.
We decided we’d adopt the same thing. The Steel Structures Analysis Service (SSAS) was set up by the then market development manager for NZ Steel and myself through HERA and supported administratively out of HERA House. We seconded a very experienced steel designer, at that time a senior consulting engineer with one of the big consulting firms, to run the new service, and it started to work very well. He and I wrote the HERA Report R4-76 – Seismic Design Procedures for Steel Structures, which was published in 1995 and is still widely used. That was the first generation of new structural steel seismic solutions and built on excellent research into seismic resisting steel frame system solutions being developed from the mid 1980’s at the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland. Things took off from there.
rise buildings. We were starting to get technical guidance together on how to set out, develop, and implement good cost-effective steel frame with composite floor solutions for high-rise, but the problem was that the consulting engineers didn’t have time to invest in all the new learning involved to implement these solutions, and to implement them with confidence.Welooked around the world at what others in similar situations were doing, and the Canadians had this organisation called the Project Analysis Service (PAS). If a consulting engineer had a new job, they could go to the PAS and the PAS would do a really effective steel design for them to consider –often with costing information – and
designing these floor composite floor systems to be able to leave at least half of the total supporting beams without any insulation by using two-way action in the slab instead of one-way action –which actually increases the resilience while decreasing the cost.
We then published the work I’m singularly most proud of because it was a completely new design procedure, rather than adapting a procedure or concept developed from overseas: the guidance on durability. As far as I am aware it is also the first fully New Zealand developed engineering design procedure which has been adopted by another country and adapted for use there (Australia).
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I had spent quite a bit of time around the country over the previous 20 years looking at how fast steel rusted and what caused it to rust.
Through this, we were able to show that in some cases people were seriously underestimating how corrosive the environment was, but also that in many cases people were seriously overestimating. So, there were solutions where far too much coating material was being put on, and other solutions where far too little was being put on.
So, in 2000, they set up a landmark large scale test of a full-scale part of a storey of a modern steel building with long span precast floors. It was an impressive test, and sure enough at about a quarter of the deflection that would be expected in a severe earthquake, the floor started to crack up, and shortly after it actually fell out of the frame and landed on the floor of the lab. That really got people worried as to how resilient these floor systems were going to be.
This provided the demand side of things, so you could go through a process and work out a demand and you could then determine what the corrosion conditions would be on a particular steel surface being designed. With that information you could go back into the painting standard and determine the appropriate coating system for each steel surface.
We also kept publishing design guidance for fire. We published the slab panel method, which was a way of
BRANZ had done a study in 1981 monitoring the rates of corrosion of test samples at 183 sites throughout New Zealand. Working with the then manager of Steel Construction New Zealand (SCNZ), we linked these rates of corrosion to various climatic effects,
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enabling us to develop corrosion maps for structural steel in New Zealand and then publish a detailed design guide on how to determine the surface-specific corrosivity category for any piece of steel in New Zealand.
That meant that the New Zealand Transport Agency (Waka Kotahi), for example, were able to feel much more confident using steel in bridges, which
The solutions that the precast sector developed in response increased the cost of building these floor systems by 10-15%, removing the cost difference between precast floors with toppings and concrete slab on steel deck on steel secondary beams. Consequently, more people started to use composite systems and as that happened then the consultants got familiar with designing them, the contractors got familiar with building them, and so the steel market share went up.
By 2010 the market share for steel and concrete multi-storey buildings nationwide was pretty much 50/50.
For example, in an apartment building we design for a fire rating typically of 30-60 minutes, which is based on a fire load energy density of 400 Megajoules per square metre. This is actually pretty accurate if you take all the fire load in an apartment, and you average it over the total floor area. But in practice, you get things like walkways, bathrooms, and toilets that have no fire load in them, and then kitchens and bedrooms that have double the design fire load.
work has been done since the mid ‘70s to understand whole building performance in earthquake and turning that into design and detailing guidance so that, when implemented properly, one can build a building that performs in the way that it’s intended to, preserving life safety and increasingly with emphasis on post-earthquake return to service.
CC: Yes, there is a lot on the wish list. The two extreme events that really test a building are severe earthquake and severe fire. If you look at the severe earthquake, going back to the 1970s we started to look seriously at how do buildings perform in earthquakes? Why do they perform the way they do? What are bad performance characteristics that you have to overcome? And what are good performance characteristics enabling the building to ride out the earthquake without collapsing and killing everybody?Alotof
Typically, the way that fire resistance is built into a building is that somebody comes up with a fire resistance rating either by a Deemed to Comply document (acceptable solution) or by taking C/VM2 (verification method) and doing a design. They come up with a fire resistance rating (FRR), then either the architect or structural engineer looks at each element of construction and determines what they need to do to make certain that this element –whether it be a beam, a column, or a wall or a floor – can meet the FRR prescribed (which was determined from that element’s performance in the standard fire test).
The same thing has not occurred in fire. In fire it’s quite the opposite, because in fire traditionally everything is tied back to the fire resistance rating of individual building elements in the standard fire test.
Then you assemble everything together, and the inherent assumption is that the performance of the structural system will be at least as good as the performance of the worst performing element in the standard fire test.So, firstly there’s an assumption that your fire resistance rating does actually represent the fire severity from the burnout of a real fire, and the second assumption is that if you apply the fire rating to every element independently and join them all together the overall system will perform better than the worse performing of the individual elements. In many ways both assumptions are incorrect, which is reflected in the poor performance of multi-storey buildings in severe fires, which we will return to later.
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FNZM: You mentioned that there is a lot on the wish list in the fire and steel area…
Then we had the Christchurch earthquakes. In the Canterbury earthquake series, the steel framed building systems all performed better than expected, and the concrete systems performed worse than expected, especially the pre-cast floors with thin toppings. Once again, the precast industry came up with solutions to solve the problems, but they were more expensive and pushed the cost up another 10 to 15%, and now the composite systems that had performed excellently in Christchurch were generally cheaper. This change in cost coupled with the excellent overall performance of the structural steel framed buildings with composite floors, further increased their use and brought the market share up to its currentHERAlevel.had been funded principally by a levy on steel via an act of parliament in 1979. About six or seven years ago that levy was finally renegotiated, and before that Steel Construction New Zealand (which had started off as the SSAS in 1994, funded initially by New Zealand Steel) needed to find a long-term funding solution. The industry recognised the value SSAS was providing and the need to support it financially long term. After several years of negotiation, a voluntary levy based on per tonne of steel used was agreed and implemented, giving SCNZ significant, secure long term funding.These organisations and the industry haven’t looked back. We now have a very strong technical support base for steel, very strong industry organisations in HERA, SCNZ, and the National Association of Steel Framed Housing (NASH) working together to support the industry, and with support from the
universities’ engineering schools, which was historically Canterbury and Auckland, and now also AUT and Waikato. The fabrication industry is now a world leading industry, and all major contractors are experienced in structural steel multi-storey construction.Theoriginal model that we set up at HERA to increase the use of structural steel was based on a framework established by British Steel for promoting structural steel in England, and we followed this. In this model there was one technical organisation looking after turning research into design guidance and another technical organisation looking after the fabrication industry commercially. Whereas in England, there are four separate organisations, in New Zealand HERA does technical development and industry development, and SCNZ does fabrication, erection, and design guidance, and produces technical guidance (supporting documents for the use of codes and standards).
meant that steel use in bridges started to slowly increase. The original procedure was peer reviewed by a senior consulting engineer with an international reputation in corrosion protection and further development of the guidance on durability is continuing under his protégé.
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Modern engineered timbers also burn more readily than solid timber on
In fire we haven’t. There’s been no attempt at all to build toughness into buildings in fire so that they will sustain a fire that’s more severe than what has been designed for.
Some of the solutions that have been developed, especially around concrete floor systems, for improving their performance in earthquake may well decrease their performance in fire. BRANZ has recently done a test on a hollow core concrete with thin topping solution in the furnace, which was rated for 2+ hours in the standard fire, and it started to fail after 29 minutes.
The Americans – I’m on the expert advisory group for NIST’s fire research lab in Washington (the largest fire testing laboratory in the world) – can do full-scale tests of two stories with complete control over the additional loading and complete control over the fire, which nobody else can do. They built this facility because of the urgent
Theconducted.otherthing is that well designed concrete floors on steel decks on steel beams are very deformable in fire without failure, so if you get a very severe fire locally the system will deform and shed load into the areas that are less effected. The same thing doesn’t happen with other floor systems.Inearthquake there’s a recognition that while you design a building for a specified level of earthquake, in practice the demand could be quite a bit higher than what you designed for. You want the building to be tough enough so that the behaviour is essentially the same if the earthquake’s more severe than you expected. We’ve done a pretty good job of achieving that.
In New Zealand, we’re significantly hamstrung by a lack of funding for fire engineering research. We haven’t had a severe fire in a multi-storey building that has led to the sort of damage that we’ve seen in some of these fires overseas. Since 2000, over 30% of the buildings overseas that have had severe fires have collapsed either partially or totally. If the same thing had happened here, then I’m sure there’d be no shortage of questions being asked and research money thrown in. Of course, it is much more preferable to develop a good understanding of building response to severe fires and appropriate design solutions before such a scenario happensSo,we do what we can with the funding that we’ve got. That’s where being part of this group at NIST is really helpful because it gives access to facilities and the ability to have some influence on what’s being tested in those facilities that we would never have been able to achieve in New Zealand.
Given this, you’re going to get a fire of varying severity across an apartment as the high fire load areas will experience a much more severe fire than the low fire load areas. That means that your building has to be able to contain a fire of severity that might be double what you designed for, and it’s got to be tough enough and deformable enough to remain standing and prevent fire spread – and to not collapse.Ifyou look, for example, at a steel frame system, the floor system has much higher inherent fire resistance than the individual floor slab or beams have in a standard fire and has the ability to undergo controlled deformation without loss of integrity or load carrying capacity. The columns potentially have less fire resistance in a real structure than they do in a standard fire test, because the loading conditions on the column are quite different.Andthe other thing that the standard fire misses out on completely is connections. There’s no standard fire testing of connections because you can’t actually do it. The issue of connection performance in severe fires is a significant unknown in all multistorey structural systems.
which much of the furnace tests have been
One of the things that we’re looking at now is developing solutions that will give a similar reserve of toughness to a more severe fire than you expected to what we currently have in earthquake. We’re getting well down the track of being able to provide guidance on that for composite floor systems supported on steel frames, thanks to our understanding of their whole structural system behaviour in severe fire, which is better than that for any other structural system.
need to understand whole building response in fire, which necessitates the need to be able to test full scale with control over the structural fire severity and the imposed loading on the test building.They’ve been doing a series of tests on composite floor systems – composite floors on steel beams on steel frames – and in the first test they used the very lightly reinforced composite slabs which are typical East Coast USA construction. The system was designed to achieve two hours of standard fire exposure, however it failed integrity at about 75 minutes due to severe slab cracking.Irecommended to them that they follow some of the design and detail requirements that we use in New Zealand slabs, and so in the next test they changed the slab detailing to what we do, with increased slab reinforcement, and that achieved twoand-a-half hours. They then turned the fire off and kept the applied load on while it cooled down, so we were able to show that just a change in the amount and positioning of the reinforcement in the slabs actually hugely improves the performance of the overall system.
The standard fire test also doesn’t treat materials the same. It is based on a standard fire prescribed timetemperature curve in a purpose built fire testing furnace, so if you do a standard fire on a concrete or steel element, which absorbs heat and doesn’t burn, to generate the prescribed time-temperature curve you’ve got to pump quite a bit of fuel into the furnace in to keep the gas temperature up while the heat’s going into the structural system that you’re testing as well as into the walls of the furnace.Timber, on the other hand, burns, so you basically have to turn the fuel load down so that you don’t overheat the furnace, and you end up with quite a different severity of fire for timber compared with for steel and concrete. This affects the charring rate of timber in a furnace test.
Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) crews from 25 regional areas across New South Wales are being trained to use state-of-the-art drone technology to assist in firefighting operations and other emergencies.
The drones can be used to assess bush fire risk, assist in hazard reduction operations and find people missing in dense bushland, and have already been deployed to the Northern Rivers region to assess flood-damaged infrastructure, identify hazardous materials and find leftover debris.
New South Wales rolls out firefighting drone technology
NSW Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke said the RPAS are being rolled out as part of a $5.4 million investment by the NSW“TheseGovernment.dronesare being deployed to 25 regional areas, giving FRNSW crews an eye in the sky to help them better fight fires and keep our communities safe,” Ms Cooke said.
The RPAS are equipped with thermal imaging cameras and laser technology that can detect variable heat temperatures, identify people or animals under threat in a fire zone and measure the size of an area impacted by fire.According to FRNSW Bushfire and Aviation Unit Commander Scott Donohoe, the drones can be activated at an emergency scene within minutes.
Equipped with the latest technology including thermal imaging and laser technology, the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) will help firefighters keep communities safe.
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The Northern Rivers deployment saw two teams of drone operators from FRNSW’s Bushfire and Aviation Unit in the Northern Rivers to identify and map the location of dangerous debris. It was the first time that the drones, purchased with funding in response to the Black Summer bush fires, had been used in the flood recovery effort.
This follows the purchase in 2016 of two new drones are part of a multimillion-dollar technology rollout to FRNSW that also included two custom-built mobile command centres and the installation of more than 180 mobile data terminals in fire trucks acrossTheseNSW.drones were intended to provide firefighters with real-time images of areas too dangerous to access and enable rapid damage assessments.
“The drones are connected to FRNSW’s wireless and satellite communication networks, allowing images to be viewed and analysed in real time at the scene of an emergency which helps firefighters make quicker decisions and act faster.”
“The drones are stored in our vehicles and ready for immediate use, providing FRNSW commanders with aerial images that can help determine the safest and most effective places to position fire trucks and crews,” said Superintendent Donohoe.
“We are planning to have around 200 firefighters trained to pilot the drones. The available training over several tiers includes sessions on night flying, situational awareness, ‘live’ streaming, rapid mapping, aerial incendiary use and 3D panoramic skills.”Around 200 firefighters will be trained to pilot the drones through a range of sessions on night flying, situational awareness, live streaming, rapid mapping, aerial incendiary use and 3D panoramic skills.
Having served on Industry advisory groups for the development of NZQA standards, Nicky has been the technical expert on the committee for the rewrite of New Zealand Standard 4503 on portable fire equipment, advised on
the development of various codes of practice involving fire protection and contributed to the redevelopment of the Sprinkler Standard published in 2013 and 2020.
NM: It kind of fills a hole really. The Building Code documents say that it needs to be done but they don’t really outline how to do it, who should beNicky Marshall, a member of the FPANZ Board of Directors.
This was identified by Standards New Zealand as a project that needed to be done several years ago, but it got put on hold at that time and hadn’t been picked up again.
Now we’ve got a code of practice that will walk people through the whole process from design right through to construction, installation, testing, commissioning, and then once the building is in use, ongoing testing to make sure that for the life of the building those integrated systems are going to remain integrated and do what they should be doing.
In this interview, we ask Nicky Marshall, Chair of the group responsible for the development of the Integrated Systems Code of Practice, what brought about the new CoP and what it aims to achieve.
That’s why the FPA decided to progress it, and we got together a group of representatives from not only the fire industry but from all the industries involved, such as the lift industry, the mechanical industry, electrical, facilities management, commissioning engineers, territorial authorities, the fire engineers, and others.
She serves as the FPANZ representative on the FP003 joint AS/ NZS fire protection committee as well as the FPANZ representative on the NZ Standards Hydrant committee for NZS 4510, which has just been published (2022).
Building fire safety systems are regularly interfaced with other building services to address the life safety needs of building occupants in the event of fire. In 2020, the Fire Protection Association New Zealand gathered a voluntary group of organisations and industries to develop an Integrated Systems Code of Practice to address the issues arising from the integration of building systems through various stages of design, construction, testing and maintenance.
Nicky will be presenting the ‘Launching the FPANZ Building Interface COP and Q&A session’ at 1.15pm – 2.15pm on Day Three of the Conference, and she’ll also be convening the Building Interface CoP & Workshop at 2.45pm - 4:00pm on Day three.
Having brought together such a large group of people, it’s inevitably taken a bit of time to produce a Code of Practice and achieve agreement on it. The document has just been endorsed by the FPA Council and so it’s gone to publishing, which is a milestone we just reached last week!
Chairing this group is Nicky Marshall, who has recently been appointed to the FPANZ board. She is also a trustee and board member for the Fire Protection Charitable Trust.
A System of Systems: Integrated Systems Code of Practice
FNZM: Can you provide a brief introduction to the Code of Practice and the journey to launch?
NM: Around two years ago, the FPA decided there was a need for a Code of Practice to address issues that we were seeing with integrated building systems. In some cases, systems weren’t being integrated as they should, which meant that they weren’t doing what they were supposed to do in the event of a fire – and that can result in life safetyAnissues.example is mechanical air handling systems not shutting down, which on sprinkler activation can cause heat to be blown away from a fire so that the right sprinkler heads are not operating. In such cases, sprinkler heads away from the fire are being operated by the heat and so water is not then getting to where it needs to go.
That’s a big issue because the water can run out, the fire’s not being controlled, and people’s lives are being put at risk.
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FNZM: What is the Code of Practice’s relationship with regulatory requirements; where does it sit?
that the people who are maintaining it can ensure that everything is working as it should.
FNZM: What’s the plan in terms of raising awareness of the Code of Practice?
FNZM: Given the multiplicity of sectors involved, I imagine there’s a hefty requirement to keep on top of things as they change across a broad spectrum of areas.
The Codes of Practice provides a prompt for what to be thinking about and the types of things you should be including in a matrix.
NM: As a Code of Practice, it is a voluntary document, but it could be that a number of parties or bodies start to call it up as a “this is how you shall do it”. A territorial authority might say, for example, that it wants to see you following this process and that it expects to see a fire matrix submitted for consent and at the completion of the Theproject.Code of Practice closely follows the new fire alarms standard NZS 4512-2021, and because it introduces – or clarifies – requirements around integrated systems, it will help people meet those requirements.
FNZM: As it stands, it’s a voluntary document. Will FPA members ultimately be required to comply with it?
37Issue 19 | September 2022
While some buildings will be so simple, others, such as rest homes, start getting a bit more complex because they have managed evacuation processes and zones that have to do different things. Other examples might be data halls or refrigeration systems where there are systems and equipment that the client doesn’t want to turn off – and therefore lots of things that might need to be worked through.
The document focuses on something that we’re calling a fire matrix. This is a chart that lists causes and effects. A cause might be a smoke detector operating. As a result of that, what other systems does it effect, what reactions do you want from all the other systems that are integrated with it.
The document includes a range of examples, including matrices for small buildings, apartment buildings, and more complex buildings, lists of what different standards and documents require, and things that you should be thinking about. It’s a process whereby a user can end up with a fire matrix that is of value, which starts off as a design fire matrix that is then reviewed by the people installing it – so it ultimately becomes a construction matrix.
NM: Once it’s published, the Code of Practice will go up onto the FPA website and we’ll be launching it officially at the Fire NZ Conference. We’ll then get it out to all the other industries that have been involved in its development, and the representatives who were on the development group we will be talking with them about the different ways we might achieve that, such as newsletters, andWe’remagazines.alsolooking to make resources available for people to use to help things along, such as example templates so that they can create their ownAlongmatrices.with Covid and busy workloads, it’s been a big effort, and all the people who have contributed have done so on a voluntary basis. We really appreciate their help and input to get us to where we’ve got to – we couldn’t have done it without them.Lastly, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a living document that will be regularly reviewed, and feedback is important – and welcomed – so that we can keep it relevant and improve it.
NM: Things shouldn’t change a lot over the life of a building. Some buildings are just very simple. They will have a manual fire alarm system and the only thing it does is call the fire service and release your security locks. That might be the whole matrix.
involved in doing it, and all of the things you should be thinking about.
Things sometimes change a little bit during construction, or more information needs to be added, so it then becomes an as built at the end of the job because you’re using the matrix for testing as well. It then goes on file as a record of how the building is supposed to perform and how the integrations are supposed to work so
38 Issue 19 | September 2022 Floor Plan 2022 E XHI B ITI ON FO YE R LO ADING DOCK CathedralEntranSquarece Oxford Terrace Armagh Street Entrance Te Pae Office Entrance Back of House Pack in access to halls LoadingDockExit
DoLoadingckEntry
LevelRAIKAOne FIRENZTRADESHOWHALLE3HALLE4 Bealey34Bealey TRADEENTRY/SHOWEXIT BOOTHREGO ENTRANCEMAIN
39Issue 19 | September 2022 The Exhibition. 2022 ENTRY/EXITVENUE 20 19 18 1716 15 3533 08091014131211070605222126232425 03 04010227 302834323129 38 3940 4142 43 44 4546 4748 49 COFFEE CART CATERING CAFE SEATING CATERING TEA/COFFEE 50 BOOTHREGO 41 Alan Wilson Insurance Brokers 47 Alarm NZ 6 Allproof Industries 11 Altex Coatings 30 Ampac 10 APC Techsafe 23 Bastion Systems 14 Beele Australasia 44/45 Bensan/Safeworld 13 BRANZ 27 Certifired 2 Clarinspect 1 Dulux Protective Coatings 34 Fasteners Direct Global 03/04 Fire Protection Technologies 49 Fire Safety Equipment 8 Fireshield Coatings Ltd 5 Forman Building Systems 12 Hilti 19 Hydroflow Distributors 35 Johnson Controls 7 Kingspan 46 Kiwi Pipes & Fittings 24 Konnect Fastening 39 Notifier by Honeywell 15 Open Polytechnic 32/33 Pertronic 25 Potters Interior Systems 18 Preformed Line Products 9 PSL Fire & Safety 48 Reliable Fire Sprinkler (Australia) Pty Ltd 42/43 RyanFire 31 Sika (NZ) Ltd 38 Steel & Tube 26 Tank Vision 21/22 Tech Coatings 40 Tenmat 50 Uptick 20 Victaulic Australia Pty Ltd 16/17 Viking Sales & Service 28/29 Winstone Wallboards FIRENZ 2022 EXHIBITORS
1.15pm - 1.45pmQA for fire safety systems
11.30am - 12.15pmInferno: Through the eyes of a firefighter
Keynote Speaker
Registration & Trade Show opens 7.00am
9.00am - 9.40amHydrogen safety: Not if, but when
Saskia Holditch & Kevin Frank
2.10pm - 2.50pm
4.00pm - 4.30pm
Akshat Malhotra
Day one
2.50pm - 3.15pm
8.50am - 9.00am Andrew Sharrad, IFE International President
2022
Keynote Speaker
12.15pm - 1.15pm
Performance Based Structural Fire Design in NZWhere are we now and whats next?
Speakers
4.30pm - 5.00pm Caution - the contents in the building appear to be moving. Design Fire Stopping accordingly
Opening by MC 8.20am Brett de Hoedt
MORNING TEA 10.20am - 11.00am
8.35am - 8.50amChris Mak, Carol Caldwell, Jason Hill
40 Issue 19 | September 2022 Programme
Opening address by FPA, IFE, SFPE Presidents
Opening Note
11.00am - 11:30am
5.30pm - 6.30pm Event for FireNZ Delegates and Exhibitors only
LUNCH
Speakers
Dr Klementina Gerova & Jeremy Gall
Conference Close / Recap
Speaker
Frank Kang
Dr Claire Benson
Emma Sutcliffe
Load-bearing timber-framed gypsum plasterboard walls subjected to two-sided fire exposure
Speakers
Keynote Speaker
Wednesday 21st September
Inspector John McDonough
AFTERNOON TEA
1.45pm - 2.10pm
Speaker
9.40am - 10.20amWill my Electric Vehicle Catch Fire?
Review of Code Development Efforts for Tall Mass Timber Buildings in the US
Raymond O’Brocki
3.15pm - 4.00pm
Prof Andy Buchanan & Dr Colleen Wade
Fire Safety Engineering in Mass Timber Buildingsissues and solutions
Speaker
Keynote Speaker
Dr Jeremy Chang
A holistic comparison of the design guidance between the NZ and UK Building Regulations
5:10pm - 5:20pmBrett de Hoedt
Drinks and Canapes
Raymond O’Brocki
The Importance of Fire Testing in the Code Development Process
Speaker
AFTERNOON TEA
4.40pm - 5.05pm
Keynote Speaker
3.00pm - 3.25pmUsing water. The right amount in the right format.
Keynote Speaker
Saskia Holditch
Thursday 22nd September
Environmental impacts excluded from current building design considerations
8.30am - 9.00amLithium-Ion batteries - What’s the problem?
Keynote Speaker
Identify, Immobilise & Isolate; EV ERGs & emergency response best practice - discussion about ISO & how EV manufacturers can help with responder safety Conference Close / Recap
3.25pm - 3.55pm
3.55pm - 4.15pm
Michael Belsham
2.05pm - 2.35pm
Keynote Speaker
“Fire Drawings – “This is my picture!” - bringing a Fire Report to life.
Prof Andy Buchanan
Day two
Tania Morgun
Fire Safety in mass timber apartment buildingscase study and design sensitivity
Speakers
2022
41Issue 19 | September 2022 Programme
6:30pm - 10.30pm
Speaker
George Hare
5.05pm - 5.10pmBrett de Hoedt
Drinks and Canapes
2.35pm - 3.00pm
Emma Sutcliffe
Calculating fire load and charring of timber in mass timber buildings
5.10pm - 6.30pm Event for FireNZ Delegates and Exhibitors only
12.10pm - 12.35pmUpcoming changes to C/AS2 in the ‘22 BC Update
Speakers
Grant Haggett & James Firestone
1.35pm - 2.05pmNew edition of C/AS1 in the ‘22 BC Update
Speaker
11.15am - 11:45amEncapsulation for mass timber structures
Close of Day Two
11.45am - 12.10pmFire design challenges of modular construction
10.30am - 11.15am
10.00am - 10.30am Smoke explosions, the unexpected and unexplained hazard on the fire ground
Speaker
Inspector John McDonough
Speaker
Prof Charles Fleischmann
LUNCH 12.35pm - 1.35pm
MORNING TEA
Speaker
9.30am - 10.00am
4.15pm - 4.40pmPractical barriers to industrial hydrogen safety
9.00am - 9:30am
Registration & Trade Show opens 7.30am - 8.30am
Dr Claire Benson
Speaker
Opening by MC 8.20am Brett de Hoedt
Speaker: Dr Jason Barden
Daniel Pau & Dr Dennis Pau
GALA DINNER
Dr Colleen Wade
2022
Speaker: Matthew Wright
FPA LlewellenWorkshopMudrovcic, Rob Holland 1.15pm - 2.15pmSafety In Fire Design Bealey 4
Intumescent Encapsulation Coatings for Engineered Timber Products
MORNING TEA 10.15am - 11.00am
Speaker: Shane Wyatt
AFTERNOON TEA 2.15pm - 2.45pm Afternoon tea served ourside Rakaia room
Opening by MC 8.40am Brett de Hoedt
42 Issue 19 | September 2022 Programme
11.00am - 12.10pm Emma Sutcliffe, Dr Claire Benson, Raymond O’Brocki and Insp John McDonough
SFPE Workshop: Peter Whiting (BRANZ), Jason King (Stephenson & Turner), Greg Baker (Fire Research Group 1.15pm - 2.15pmFire testing for Code Compliance Bealey 3
9.15am - 9.45amSmoke and Mirrors
GIB Workshop 2.45pm - 3.45pm Rakaia room
Conference Closes 4.00pm
Q & A Panel discussion with MC and Keynote speakers
Friday 23rd September
Understanding key components of product conformity - the foundation of compliance and safety objectives
9.45am - 10.15am
LUNCH 12.15pm - 1.15pm
Site Visit/PresentationBiswadeep Ghosh, Luke de Schot 1.15pm - 2.15pmPresentation & Site tour Rakaia room
8.45am - 9.15am
Formal conference closing address 12.10pm - 12:15pmBrett, Chris, Jason, Carol
FPA NickyWorkshopMarshall 2.45pm - 3.45pmBuilding Interface CoP & Workshop Bealey 3
Day three
Registration & Trade Show opens 7.30am - 8.40am
Tradeshow Closes 1.15pm
Speaker: Paul Ryan
FPANZ - Industry achievement FPANZ – President’s award IFE – President’s award SFPE - President’s award
Lifetime Achievement Award Martin Robertson Russell Gregory
Competenz Fire learner of the year Jodie Spence-Ord Sudiksha Lal
Also being presented at the awards dinner are the following awards:
Young Professional Award Joakim Olander Jonathon Beardmore Josh Gibbons Raymond Qiu Tristaan Govind
Please note that due to demand we are already close to capacity for the Gala Dinner.
FIREFINALISTSINDUSTRYAWARDS
announced at the FireNZ Gala Dinner held at Te Pae on the 22nd of September 2022.
43Issue 19 | September 2022 THE FORUM OF FIRE PROTECTION, FIRE SAFETY AND FIRE ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS www.frenz.org 2022
Akshat Malhotra Martin Taylor Simon Hemmings
On behalf of the FireNZ committee, representing the partners FPANZ, IFE and SFPE, we wish to update you on the 2022 FireNZ industry awards which will be announced this year at the FireNZ Gala dinner.
NEW ZEALAND TheAWARDSFIREDINNERINDUSTRYwinnersoftheawardswillbe
Te Radar, MC for the Awards Dinner
Outstanding Engineering Achievement
This year’s finalists were selected from nominations we received by the closing date for each category. Following a careful selection process by a panel of industry judges, we would like to announce this year’s finalists.
Congratulations to the 2022 FireNZ industry awards finalists.
After a couple of years absence, this is the industry networking event and dinner you will not want to miss. Our MC for the evening will be Te Radar.
Andrea White, MSc BSc Hons IEng FIFireE C.BuildE MCABE MIFSM CMIOSH, an independent Fire Engineer, is an Incorporated Engineer via the IFE (UK), a Chartered Building Engineer via CABE and an IFEregistered Fire Risk Assessor.
Andrea White, Managing Director, A W Fire Ltd
The awards are divided into two categories: one for the whole industry, and another – ‘Ones to Watch’ –designed to recognise up and coming individuals making a difference in the sector, but who have been in the profession no longer than five years.
In a household double, a UK mother and son take out separate awards in the 2022 IFSEC Global Influencers in Fire and Safety, and raising awareness of shortcomings in the UK fire alarm standard for people with sensory sensitivities.
44 Issue 19 | September 2022
Chosen based on nominations judged by a panel of highly respected judges, the IFSEC Global annual influencer awards are designed to generate positivity by recognising and highlighting the talent and efforts of some of the leading individuals tirelessly working to develop the fire safety
• Someone who has played a key role in driving technological innovation
the submission of nominations from the IFSEC Global audience and beyond, a panel of judges assigned points to each nomination based on the persuasiveness of the nomination, their research into the nominee and their own knowledge of the nominee’s contributions to their field. The judges were also permitted to submit a limited number of nominations themselves.
Andrea is Chair of the Women in Fire Engineering Networking Group, as well as a Lead Interviewer and Panel Member for the IFE’s Fire Risk Register. With a background in fire safety enforcement, consultancy and the insurance industry, she has a particular interest in timber construction and also in appropriate fire safety measures for those with invisibleSonnydisabilities.Whiteisan enthusiastic 16-year-old fire alarm designer in the making, Having spent the last few years turning the log cabin in his mum Andrea’s back garden into a fire alarm training centre, he has taught himself how to wire and operate different types of commercial fire alarm systems, as well as gaining an in-depth knowledge of relevant Frustratedstandards.thathis school’s fire alarm was causing many of his peers to react adversely and get upset,
Followingmedia
• Someone who has helped to raise the industry’s profile or been an influential voice in the national
Sonny White, Fire Alarm Designer
• Someone whose insights/opinions are widely respected and which are influential in shaping debate around industry issues
Mother and Son Feature in 2022 IFSEC Global Influencers in fire safety
IFSECsectors.defines
‘influencer’ in the following ways:
• Someone who has been a driving force in changing standards/guidanceregulation,orbestpractice
• Someone who has been instrumental in the success of the organisation or business they lead or are employed by
This year’s awards were made somewhat unique by the winning ways of UK mother and son Andrea and Sonny White. Among the 12 awardees, mum Andrea took out second place in the general category, while son Sonny was identified as ‘one to watch’.
A winning family
“With his GCSE exams imminent, Sonny presented via a pre-recorded video message, highlighting the need for fire alarm systems to cater for those with autism or sensory sensitivities, who may panic, hide or freeze when an alarm sounds,” wrote IFSEC Global editor James Moore in an article for the online news portal.
45Issue 19 | September 2022
“Those with hypersensitivities are highly likely to have an extreme emotional reaction to sudden loud noises or bright/flashing lights. Behaviours in response to becoming overloaded can include screaming, crying, running, freezing or hiding. In this state, individuals may not be able to respond to direction or instruction. Emotional upset can last for hours after an event.”Thedocument is intended to provide guidance to those involved in the specification, design, and application of fire alarm systems in premises where occupants have sensory sensitivities. Examples of such premises include special schools, units and resource provisions for autistic students within mainstream schools, as well as some types of day centres, residential care premises and supported housing.
A special interest group was consequently convened by the FIA to develop a guidance document to cover situations where fire alarm warnings are intended for people with sensory sensitives.According to the introduction of the new Guidance Document, “Whilst BS 5839-1 addresses the needs of those who have a hearing impairment and those with photosensitive epilepsy, the code does not address the needs of those with other sensory sensitivities who may not behave as designers expect during an evacuation.
While the document aims to identify the considerations that should be taken into account for certain fire alarm systems, it does not offer any recommendations for any specific situation. “Employers and service providers,” it states, “have a responsibility for ensuring that all people, including those with disabilities, can evacuate safely from the building they control in the event of a fire.”
Sonny believed the topic had not been fully addressed in the UK Code of Practice for fire detection and fire alarm systems BS 589-1, and contacted the FIA in mid-2021 about suitability of fire alarm warnings in special schools.
“This is the last thing you want in a fire drill,” Sonny told IFSEC Global, “especially if it is a real emergency.” The impact of the alarm on some students with sensory sensitivities, explained Sonny, included causing them to miss out on Sonnylearning.conducted a study of his own school and a special needs school and he explored the various solutions on offer from fire alarm companies.
“His efforts come in the context of 700,000 people in the UK with autism spectrum disorder and suffering from sensory sensitivities to noise and light,” wrote Moore. “The reaction to the fire alarm from some of these students, therefore, potentially impacts upon 1,500 special schools in the UK and on special needs units in mainstream schools and on child and adult day centres, or simply on individuals in mainstream schools or workplaces.”
Sonny researched and authored a Fire Industry Association (UK) Guidance Note on fire alarm sound levels and how to make them more appropriate for those with sensory sensitivities. Guidance Document – Fire alarm considerations for people with sensory sensitivities was launched by the FIA at FIREX 2022 in May.
Meeting the needs of those with sensory sensitivities
An agreement signed on 09 August between New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will strengthen global emergency management capability, says Minister for Emergency Management Kieran
on the Pacific and our commitments under the United Nations and regional frameworks.
News from the Beehive
46 Issue 19 | September 2022
“The Memorandum of Cooperation will formalise information and data sharing between our two countries, and boost opportunities to engage in joint research, as well as conferences, workshops, and exercises.
“Today’s agreement is part of NEMA’s work as an internationally recognised leader in emergency management. NEMA supports Emergency Management initiatives in the global arena with a specific focus
Firefighters and Defence Force personnel receive Australian awards
Both Ministers Tinetti and Henare acknowledged the service of all the New Zealanders who travelled to Australia to support our Australian counterparts.
Emergency strengthenedcooperationmanagementwithUS
The Australian National Emergency Medal is awarded by the Australian Government for sustained or significant service during national emergencies in Australia. The medal has been awarded to Australians for five specific emergencies since 2009, the first being the 2009 Victorian Bushfires.“Theaward of this medal is recognition for the efforts of all these personnel in an arduous and often
In recent government announcements, NEMA has signed an agreement with US counterpart FEMA, and firefighters are among the largest ever NZ contingent to have been awarded the Australian National Emergency Medal.
Jan Tinetti, Minister for Internal Affairs Peeni Henare, Minister of Defence
This is the first time personnel from Fire and Emergency and the NZDF have been awarded the Australian National Emergency Medal, with the only previous occasion it has been awarded to New Zealanders being to nine New Zealand Police who assisted with victim identification in response to the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
Minister for Internal Affairs, Jan Tinetti, and Minister of Defence, Peeni Henare, announced on 28 July that 150 Fire and Emergency New Zealand personnel and 145 members of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) had been awarded the Australian National Emergency Medal, with Bushfires 19/20 Clasp, as part of a group of 384 New Zealanders who travelled to Australia to fight the massive bushfires over the 2019/20 summer.
“NewMcAnulty.Zealandand the United States have a lot in common in regards to the hazards we face, our emergency management structures, and the important role indigenous communities play in emergency response and recovery,” said Minister McAnulty.“Thisagreement will allow the sharing of best practices and lessons learned from past emergencies which will contribute towards building a more disaster resilient global community.“Overthe past two decades, disasters have increased in number and severity, requiring greater international cooperation and stronger international relationships – in this changing global environment it is crucial New Zealand builds and maintains effective engagement with the rest of the world.
dangerous environment,” Jan Tinetti said.“Their outstanding contribution to fighting the massive and catastrophic fires that engulfed many thousands of hectares of bushland from late 2019 reflects the quality of our people and their“Ourtraining.Fireand Emergency team were accompanied by 89 others from longstanding partners that are so important to international and domestic wildfire deployments, including 27 personnel from the Department of Conservation and representatives of more than a dozen forestry companies.
SECURITY TECHNOLOGY RELIABILITY Loktronic Limited Unit 7 19 Edwin Street Mt Eden Auckland P O Box 8329 Symonds Street Auckland 1150 New Zealand Ph 64 9 623 3919 Fax 64 9 623 3881 0800 FOR LOK mail@loktronic.co.nz www.loktronic.co.nz For expert advice and assistance with your security locking needs, trust in Loktronic, call us on 0800 367 565 fire door holding electromagnets *Standard terms & conditions of sale apply. GUARANTEE A) B) C) FDH40S unbreakable universal mounting • Low power consumption - low operating temperature • One product suits floor and wall mounting • Universal armature - offsets to 55º to suit doors opening past 90º • Wall mount extensions available • 12 & 24 VDC selectable • Push off button with no residual magnetism • Oversize armature for easy alignment • Emergency release button • Electroless nickel plated armature and electromagnet • Stainless fastenings • Full local support and back up FDH40S/R Surface and Recess mounting This device enhances an outstanding range of unbreakable products which conveniently hold open fire doors. When a smoke/fire alarm is activated the magnet instantly releases the door to the closed position to prevent the spread of smoke and fire. These units feature a choice of 3 covers for optimum aesthetic appeal and durability. The installer can utilise one device for surface mounting or for recess mounting. unbreakable! 21556/1/18 10 YEAR GUARANTEE* 10 YEAR GUARANTEE* Designed, tested and produced in New Zealand to AS4178 A) Wall mounted,126mm extn. tube (overall 202mm) B) Wall mounted, 156mm extn. tube (overall 232mm) C) Wall mounted, 355mm extn. tube (overall 431mm) Satin Aluminium Gloss Black Gloss White 12 & 24 VDC selectable Option A – Surface Mounted GUARANTEE Option B – Recess Mounted Standard, floor mounted, wall to door distance 114mm NZ made
Pertronic Industries Limited www.pertronic.co.nz The Pertronic F220 Simplifies Fire Incident Management FIRE ALARM SYSTEM Lower Hutt 17 Eastern Hutt Road, Wingate Lower Hutt 5019 Phone 04 567 3229 Auckland 3 Gloucester Park Rd, Onehunga Auckland 1061 Phone 09 633 0226 Scan or call today to find out more about Pertronic fire alarm systems • Analogue addressable technology identifies the source of each individual alarm activation • 7-inch colour display presents information in big, easy to read text • Separate keyboard with large buttons for user-friendly operation • Three second network response keeps large F220 networks updated MORE ABOUT THE F220 FIRE PANEL The Pertronic F220 is FPANZ listed under NZS 4512
