The LWF Blog
Fire Safety Engineering for Design – Fire Suppression – Part 212
December 2, 2024 11:52 amLWF’s Fire Safety Engineering blog series is written for Architects, building designers and others in the construction industry to highlight and promote discussion on all topics around fire engineering. In part 211, LWF began to look at fire suppression. In part 212, we continue discussing fire suppression, beginning with what comprehensive fire protection for a valuable building or contents might comprise.
While the aim of the majority of installed suppression systems is to suppress fire growth until the Fire Service can attend and extinguish the source, some circumstances will require more. Where the building or contents are especially valuable, business critical or irreplaceable (as in the case of works of art, for example), a particularly comprehensive protection scheme may be required. This is likely to include passive fire protection measures, such as compartmentation and Fire Service access, along with fire detection and alarm systems, active protection systems such as sprinklers or gaseous extinguishing and potentially smoke ventilation too.
An example of adopted measures for a ‘zero damage’ project follows:
1) Enhanced awareness and management procedures, including:
- Security access control for personnel, visitors to be escorted at all times
- Personnel induction including fire risk management, with refresher inductions
- Works control permits including risk assessments and method statements
- Limitation of storage and local combustible consumables
2) Aspirating smoke detection system, which provides the earliest possible warning of fire, intended to initiative investigation and action by security staff and not full evacuation or activation of suppression systems (at this stage).
3) A point fire detection and alarm system installation, to provide warning, initiate evacuation and summon the Fire Service.
4) An automatic inert gaseous firefighting system installation with a coincident smoke detection system to ensure two smoke detectors are triggered prior to release of the agent into the area.
5) Automatic ‘wet’ sprinkler system with sprinkler heads protected from mechanical damage.
6) Two hours duration fire resistant construction of the risk areas from adjacent areas on the same floor and adjacent floors (compartmentation).
Any system of fire protection, no matter how comprehensive, can fail. To help avoid failure, a system of testing and maintenance must be implemented for each passive and active system.
Of course, most buildings and contents do not require this level of protection. The engagement of a qualified fire engineering service at an early stage can help to identify the needs of the organisation/ building in question and design protection based on that.
In part 213 of LWF’s series on fire engineering we will begin to discuss sprinkler protection in more detail. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this blog, or wish to discuss your own project with one of our fire engineers, please contact us.
Lawrence Webster Forrest has been working with their clients since 1986 to produce innovative and exciting building projects. If you would like further information on how LWF and fire strategies could assist you, please contact the LWF office on 0800 410 1130.
While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information.