One doesn’t have to look beyond a few newspaper headlines from London’s Grenfell Tower to Auckland’s SkyCity Convention Centre to understand the risks to life, property, economy, and reputation from fires. The extent of issues in the industry is far deeper and considered a ‘ticking time-bomb’, with experts estimating the systemic issue of non-compliant passive fire stopping in more than 98% of buildings worldwide. A retrospective fix cost is touted in the hundreds of billions to building owners (and taxpayers) and poses a serious life safety risk for building occupants, firefighters and an increased risk of fire spread & property damage. Fundamentally, fire (and smoke) separations are used to form ‘compartments’ in buildings which restrict the spread of fire and smoke within the building, allowing occupants to escape. Many fire separations will have openings formed within, for doors, windows or the passage of building services such as cables, pipes, ducts; requiring an appropriate passive fire stopping product to maintain the penetration’s integrity.
These elements are often not visible and concealed above ceilings and a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ but are a key component in the building’s fire and smoke spread control strategy under the National Construction Code; more than just squirting some ‘gunk’ around penetrations. Unlike the ‘active’ fire protection systems like sprinklers, smoke alarms, fire extinguishers etc., the ‘passive’ fire protection is designed into the fabric of a building providing fire separations in the form of floors and walls with penetrations for the passage of building services. These elements are normally concealed and not visible in the occupied areas of the buildings and often separate areas of large fire loads (electrical rooms, diesel storage areas etc) from critical fire egress routes. This session will present the methodology developed by Beca for design automation and construction record AI defecting mobile application, and present some examples / case studies from projects Beca has worked on.
