FIRE AND SAFETY CRITICAL WORKSTREAM MEETING 21-11-2024
CLIFF KNEALE This is a working group and the purpose of the working group is identify things that need to be worked on by the workstreams. (shares screen). We last met on 19/09 and the meeting focus was to address issues relating to managing fire critical assets across the different building types with an emphasis on safety, compliance and ensuring proper asset management from design all the way through to operation. So, the overview of the discussion, some headings that came up was documentation and sign-off issues, that seemed to be a bit of a concern which were raised about the inadequate documentation at sign-offs, the fire critical systems in high-risk buildings leading to potentially unsafe conditions.
There was a bit of discussion about Regulation 38 and it seems to be something that not a lot of people knew about, but has now come to the surface. And that’s mostly to do with Regulation 38 which are fire critical assets and they need to be handed over and signed for by the client and handed over in such a way that they actually are understandable and not buried somewhere. There was an emphasis on the need for third-party verification of fire critical assets and standardised compliance practices. So, I think that’s all part of the commissioning, once it’s been installed it’s not always signed-off by a third-party so some people are actually just checking their own homework.
So, fire safety compliance and competency, there’s discussion on the competency gaps in the safety management, particularly understanding and verifying fire critical assets like fire doors, dampers and smoke control systems. And I think that’s quite a big area, the competency part, because you might have a lot of experience and you have been doing this all of your life but maybe just don’t have the certificate. So, you might actually be more qualified than someone that’s just been on a one week course and now is going around signing off fife critical assets. I think that’s something that can be looked at, what do we actually mean by competency? And from a legal point of view as well if you ended up in the dock, would you actually need the certificate or not?
Then there’s the proposed creation of standard guidelines for supervisors, facilities managers and others to ensure compliance with fire safety regulations. I think that that’s something we hope as an output of this working group is that we would have some guidance on BIM for AM which takes you right through from the considerations when you’re designing these assets, right through to installing them, signing them off and then actually during operations and maintaining them and just inspecting and checking and making sure that they are all operating correctly. So this is what we’re trying to get to is actually a document, it will be all three phases from design, construction to FM, all in one document.
We don’t want to have a separate document for each because that would just establish silos. And this is all one thing, if you don’t design it right and install it right you’re less likely to be able to operate it efficiently. Interoperability and information exchange, what we’re looking for really at the end of this whole process is the right information at your fingertips. And that doesn’t necessarily mean onsite with a handheld device, it could be back in the office if you’re doing a desktop study. So, obviously for information to flow, it’s better if it’s in a standard format and you use things like naming conventions and classification. So that brings in COBie and IFC and there are other standards for managing information.
So then there is the asset management process itself, the group discussed the importance of managing fire critical assets, starting from the design phase ensuring that records are maintained, inspections are done regularly and any changes are documented. So when it comes down the management process, not just the management process but everything above, we’d also need to identify what standards and guidelines we are adhering to. The next point is identified the need to create checklists for Regulation 38 compliance and improve communications between designers, installers and activities managers. And the next steps, participants to gather and share a list of fire critical systems and their associated products.
Can you put your hand up if you’ve done that? We’re not sure whether that got circulated, but we did start off a list which we pulled down from the NBS, the Uniclass classification of products and systems. Develop a simplified asset management process focusing on the entire lifecycle of fire critical assets from design to maintenance and continue refining standard checklists for compliance and inspection processes.
BEN EVANS I’ve been covering some of this stuff in sort of a parallel working group with the Infrastructure Projects Authority who are left to PFI and PPP projects. It’s a reasonable sized working group working through fire safety elements such as the appointment of a fire safety engineer for fire safety condition surveys. One particular facet is the fire based data which kind of chimes with these interoperability and information exchange piece. But a lot of it is existing buildings that are 15, 20, 25 years old, so there was an element of existing information going back 20-25 years and we’re currently producing a check list which won’t be too different from Regulation 38.
But it will be a lot longer, it’s running to about 190 rows at the moment in terms of information that we should be handing over now and that project expiry. So, I’m trying to work out how that fits in with this which appears to be more of a new build and new design.
CLIFF KNEALE No, this is about existing buildings and new buildings, but it’s more focused on buildings. You mentioned infrastructure, probably a slightly different…
BEN EVANS I’m talking social infrastructure, so hospitals, schools, blue light facilities, government buildings. So yeah, buildings based.
CLIFF KNEALE There is an overlap then…this is for all buildings, hence the offer at infrastructure like roads and waterways and things like that. Yeah, if you’re willing and able to share that list that could be a good start for us, it sounds like you’ve got a head start on it.
BEN EVANS Yeah, it’s going through a review process, there’s quite a lot of input into it. We haven’t shared any information with the supply chain and the supply chain in our world is large FM outfits like Mighty, Equans, Sodexo, Circo. But at some point we will, so we’re still in the kind of developing from a principle point.
PAUL WHITE Ben, it’s interesting what you say, there’s a lot of work going on in different areas. I think everybody’s realised the need for schedules of this, that and the other and one of the key things that we’re looking at here is that everything needs an asset reference, and that’s the starting point for all of the records. And I think what we’re trying to generate here is how we define each of those records for each of the critical products. So actually it doesn’t really matter which type of building they go into, we’re just trying to make sure that we’ve nailed all of the critical fire assets that we’ve got. As I say, we’re not necessarily looking at the wider picture yet in terms of everything, but obviously there is a few other things that are critical in different buildings that we may not note as critical here.
But the point is, and this is the point of the workstreams, what does each area need for each type of critical asset. So, it becomes building independent it’s the point, if you have one of these this is the information you should be keeping.
CLIFF KNEALE Everyone can see the screen, the NBS list of products. So what we thought for this working group, a bit like yourself Ben, you’ve started off with identifying what is a fire critical asset, we had the same idea. I’ve gone through it quite crudely and I’ve literally just done a word search on this for things like alarm, panel, smoke, fire, penetration, just to get a very crude list of what is a fire critical product. If I sort this according to that we then have a couple of thousand rows, we’ve got fire critical products here, so we’ve got a list here. So we wanted to set up a workstream to do the same, but in a little bit more detail. And so these products go to make up systems, so I’ve done the same on the systems tab, gone through and basically applied that same logic, and then we’ve got a list of systems as well.
So the good thing about using NBS is it has actually gained a lot of traction, a lot of people use it and it’s being used globally. And it’s also got an NBS code, this is the classification, it’s got a COBIe as well quite often, and sometimes (but not always) NRM, you’ve got IFC as well, IFC 2 and 4 and so on. So, we can see how they’re thinking, how this is going to be built out. And these NBS tables are updated every three months, so they are regularly updated and a lot of people have started to contribute to them. So we were wondering whether everybody here thinks that this is something that we should be using, or if there is something better out there that we could go with. Has anybody got any suggestions?
As I say, this needs to come from the group everybody needs to review this list and we need to work out a way of reviewing the list and coming up with a list of defined fire critical assets. And then what we were going to suggest was that from there we go away and look at what standards are involved with each of those, what competency do you need to install those, to design those and the process, until you actually get to the FM team.
BEN EVANS Essentially you would have an O&M linked to each of those assets, digital format.
CLIFF KNEALE We weren’t thinking, we haven’t really got that far, we’re literally open to suggestions. So, the group is titled fire critical assets, let’s identify what they are, what they need to do during the design, construction or installation and the operational phase. So that’s identifying any standards, methods and procedures that are out there and the competency of the designer and the installer and the FM team that are operating them. What do you need to do to make sure that ultimately the building is safe for the users and it can be maintained safely as well, that’s what we’re trying to get to at the end.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think the point is, Ben that these are systems and in the O&M they have probably been compiled by work package, but you don’t have a work package for every system. So, you might have a work package for electrical services or something like that. I think to some extent it’s a two-way thing where you’ve got a section in your O&M and you’ve got some content in that O&M which will be documents which relate to these things, but it’s a matter of relating the classification against that particular set of information. The other thing that’s worth mentioning, we’ve spent years trying to look at how we can use classifications more effectively and about five years ago NBS asked us, me and Active Plan and BIM4Housing, to see whether we could help with mapping Uniclass against SFG20 and Uniclass that work had already been done to map NRM against Uniclass and SFG20 which is the maintenance standard.
One of the challenges with that is that classifications are done for a particular purpose and NBS, for example, principally is put together for specification management, whereas NRM is more looking around cost management and procurement. And SFG20 is more about maintenance tasks, so you can’t do a one to one mapping between them. In fact, SFG20 have just launched a new tool, we’re partnering with SFG20 as Active Plan and we’ve got access to the API. And one of the challenges is actually being able to relate it to the right SFG20 standard for that particular asset type or system and it’s not easy because it’s not a one to one relationship.
So, the expertise that we’ve got in this group is really important because we need to be able to use people’s knowledge to actually draw that out. SFG20 have used some AI, but the problem is with AI is that unless it’s got the right training material behind it, it can very easily feed you in the wrong direction because it can make assumptions that aren’t valid.
BEN EVANS Yeah, SFG20 isn’t as granular as Uniclass code or what have you.
GEORGE STEVENSON Well, they’re fundamentally different things, that’s the point. The SFG20 references is a library of tasks, it’s a library of work instructions that need to be applied to an asset type or a system, so they actually are two different things. Within Uniclass there are also a dozen tables, what you’re looking at here is the systems table, but there’s also the products table, there’s project management, there’s a whole range.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah, there’s even one for ? 18mins 27secs layers as well, there’s one for building types, so typologies, and project management, that’s really to do with all the roles across all of the construction sectors, they’re all in there as well. George has very well described some of the problems just with the classification and we’ve also noticed that in building the golden thread that when you get information, depending on who you get it from, different teams, the design team will have a different way of classifying things and a different folder structure and a different naming convention. Because they are in multidisciplinary teams and they’re designing the buildings, so theirs will be based on the scope of work.
That’s then given to the contractor and they’ll quickly want to package it up so that they can give it out to subcontractors. And then it ends up with the FM team and then it has to be restructured again. And when you think of it really it would be great if there was some alignment between all three, it’s almost like the Holy Grail to try and get that. But ultimately when the building is being run and you’ve got the system, one system is compartmentation for example, the inspections of the penetration seals and the fire dampers and the doors may all be carried out at a different time. Because ideally they should all be done within the same week because you might have a problem that takes months to solve.
So, some kind of alignment with inspecting a whole system at the same time, rather than through different components…this is where we’re trying to get to. If we could start again, how would we do it? And we are starting again because we’re going digital, so that’s a great opportunity to think outside of the box.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think the other thing, I was talking with Paul White last night and one of the challenges…Paul do you want to talk about fire walls?
PAUL WHITE If I just share my screen, we’re actually releasing a document on fire dampers today which is the best of DW145, I’ll show you a page from that. We’re looking at the whole fire damper thing and because the trade association mainly deals with installers we’ve written it from the install point of view, then the design point of view, but the key point is at the design point of view we have a schedule that will actually be more comprehensive than this because there is other things that we want in it. And so this is where I was saying earlier that we start off with the asset reference, whatever that number happens to be. We have a location, we then have the type of wall that it goes in and this is what I was talking to George about yesterday.
The wall itself is an asset because we have to start with that for pretty much everything that goes through it, so if we’re putting pipes and cables through it or dampers in it or fire resisting ductwork in it, a lot of the walls have different structural capabilities, so they might be able to take cables but they may not be able to take dampers. And then we select the type of fire damper and then this is a very simplified classification for a fire damper, but we’ve got the time, we should match the wall, we’ve got whether it is vertical or horizontal in case it’s a floor. Then we’ve got the type of it, the size, we’ve got all of this before we even get to the size and then potentially a manufacturer, and that could end up being something different at some point in time.
But the key other point is we have an installation drawing reference so that if somebody goes and inspects it later, yes, it matches that installation drawing and it’s the right damper. Or this damper is from a completely different manufacturer and this is an install instruction from another one. And then as the installers go through this they add to this horizontal list, yes, I installed it, I installed it correctly, we checked it etc. And then the end stage of that is the inspection, so one year on you can have a pre-handover inspection or a one year on inspection. And then after that we looked at a legacy building inspection which is almost like a handover inspection and then we’ve looked at a this has been completely inspected before so it’s a lesser level of inspection and we’re just checking that there is no holes and that the damper operates.
So, if this schedule goes on and on what I think we’re looking for, and the difficult one as I was talking with George about yesterday, is the walls because at the moment walls aren’t seen as being an asset. However, they’re the critical part of everything that is put through them and an asset would be linked to a wall type because if you went to inspect a penetration seal or a fire damper then you’d expect a link to the wall that it was in so that you could check that the two matched. Which indeed you should have been doing at handover inspection, but we haven’t done that properly up until now. So, we’ve got a big transition but it’s how we capture all of this information for each and every product. And this is what I was saying to Ben earlier, it doesn’t matter where it’s going in, what we’re doing is how the designers select it and do bits and pieces match up and then is it inspected regularly and correctly at later stages.
BEN EVANS Yeah, and have tech screws been installed.
PAUL WHITE I have two major problems in my life at the moment, one is smoke shafts and the other one is tech screws.
BEN EVANS I believe they were going to send out some more guidance on tech screws.
PAUL WHITE Yes, it’s all in that document I just showed you, it’s being released today.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah, I think following on from what Paul has been saying, what’s needed is a way of linking these products together so that a door, you have a system compartmentation, but really in a tall building there might be several different compartmentations. So each compartment needs to have a unique number and then that compartment is made up of products and those products themselves are made up of products. If you take a door, for example, the door may have a fire rated letter box, or it may not if it’s not a front door, so that’s a product that needs to be checked or installed correctly.
When we talk about classification we’re talking about actually tying everything together, so that if you were able to pick up that particular compartmentation everything that is hanging off of it will all come together. So when it’s inspected you know that the whole compartment has been inspected in the last six months and not just some of it, because otherwise you’re wasting your time if you’re just inspecting the doors when you’re not inspecting the fire dampers.
PAUL WHITE We have to be careful with that, Cliff, because the experiences for each of those is completely different and the competency is both, so I think how people schedule it we kind of have to leave to them. But people do have to realise if one piece of the compartmentation is compromised then it all is. But this is an issue anyway, fire safety isn’t really a maintenance issue but under law you probably don’t have to fix it for a year, but it’s just a bit weird like that.
CLIFF KNEALE Moving forward, has everybody got a good understanding of what we\re trying to achieve in this group? Or, if there is anything else that you think the group could be addressing, let us know.
AFAM UNAKA I do understand what you mean by the classification, but are we going to take it down to the level of detail one it comes to being LOD 1, having a visual image of what we’re doing to see where we’re heading for?
GEORGE STEVENSON When you talk about LOD that sounds as though that’s a level of detail from a modelling point of view.
AFAM UNAKA Yeah, from a modelling point of view because is it going to be visual at the end of this process? Like, we can have a visual image of what the fire protection has to be, the walls to be compacted, where the sprinklers are going to go, what’s gonna protect the sprinklers or sprinkler system or stuff like that. Can we visualise it before we get onsite?
CLIFF KNEALE I think that that would be covered for buildings that are under construction or in design, it wouldn’t cover for the existing buildings, I double there would be a 3D model because in essence the building is the 3D model and hopefully it would be clash-free. But for the design part, we could certainly consider adding that in to the LOD, but that would need to become part of the EIRs, the exchange information requirements and the project information requirements. So yeah, we could make sure that the output could be, if you were trying to create a NIM model at RIBA stage 1, 2, 2 and 4 you could go to BIM in AM to see what would you need for that stage to be shown in the model.
AFAM UNAKA For the user buildings…usage of digital twin, remodel the old buildings so that we can actually get to know what we’re doing before we get there because most of the times most contractors don’t know what they’re doing, until you get to site and this is wrong, that’s wrong.
CLIFF KNEALE That’s a really good point and perhaps part of the output that we have is that you have earlier engagement, even if it’s speculative from the contractors. But they are invited in to look at the design and make some comments before it actually gets to them. That could be speculative, they might just want to join those meetings in the hope that they’ll be invited to tender.
GEORGE STEVENSON The other thing, Afam, is that there are two elements in a BIM specification. There’s LOD which is the level of detail of the 3D model and there’s level of information. So, the level of information I think from this group’s perspective, because remember this is part of BIM In Asset Management, our principle focus I think should be on the information rather than the 3D modelling. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be supporting the 3D modelling and as Cliff said feed that into the way the models are being created, but we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we need the information. For example, in lots of cases and certainly if you’re looking at social housing you’re probably not likely to get the fire dampers modelled.
You might have a generic object in there for a fire damper, but the different information about that fire damper is probably going to be at a data level rather than in the model. In my experience, because there is seldom enough money in the project to get it done it that level of detail. If it’s a data centre or something like that then the level of detail becomes much stronger. Does that make sense?
AFAM UNAKA Yeah, it does make sense but if we look at social housing as well it’ll find it difficult to manage databases. So, if we can get them to understand the importance of having these things visualised and also documented with information will go a long way on educating people on what they should and how they should work around whatever asset that they are working on. Because the job I’m in currently in, when I got there, the data centre where everything is just dumped, it wasn’t organised, there was no structure to it. So we’ll have to start putting it together start giving the codes, giving it shape to make sense. But before it was a dumping centre, nobody knows what it is used for, just to put in the FRE? 33mins 32secs reports.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, definitely, I would agree with you.
PAUL WHITE I think, Afam, that this specific project that you’re working on is probably, or the people who are doing it don’t understand their new responsibilities under the revised law. So, everything in the industry is changing, the key point that the government actually wants is you design the building, you have it approved and then you build it. Whereas what we’ve been traditionally doing over the last 20 years is well, we’ll give you a little bit of a guess and we’ll build this bit and then you can solve all of our problems for us at the end. And the government has realised that this isn’t working and they’re seeking to change it. So I think that the key thing is things will change but it may not be changing on the project that you’re on at the moment, or ever possibly the next one from what I see. But I think things will start to change when people realise that they have responsibilities under law now and not just under contract.
CLIFF KNEALE I think also you’ve raised the point on the difference between information management and that’s the level of information needed in order to build the model. And the reason that’s been introduced is because people get carried away when they’re modelling, they start putting plants in the model and fridge freezers and the level fo detail becomes just too much. So the level of information needed is really important to make sure that the models don’t become too big to share. But running parallel to that, very much so, is design management. So, you have information management and you have design management. Design management is about the activities that each consultant undertakes at each stage in order to make sure that the other consultant has the right information to be able to continue their design which is an iterative process.
So really the level of information needed should be driven by the design activities, so we could cover that as well. What are the design activities in the design stage? What are the construction activities? And then what are the operational activities? Once you know what those activities are you then know what information is needed in order to make the informed decision. And that is the level of information needed, but without a design activity no information will be created anyway. I think that’s a good starting point.
PAUL WHITE That is the point, we’ve fundamentally got to bring this data back to design because somebody makes a decision about an of the assets and that decision needs to be recorded and the reasoning given and then everything that then becomes associated with that starts to follow on down the chain. And if you don’t have that then people are filling in the blanks as they think fit, but they’re then taking on a design responsibility without realising that they’re doing it. And if they don’t really know enough about it they could stick the wrong pipe through the wrong penetration seal and get it all wrong by taking a design decision.
So a lot of this, and certainly an FMs point of view, if you come across something that you’re trying to install and you can’t you’ve got to go back to the designer and you’ve got to ask them. Because with the design & build you can quite simply end up with something that needs a solution that you have no solution to because the building is the wrong shape, there is no space to do what they want you to do.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah, so perhaps we should minute that, that if we focus on design activities and those activities give you the level of information needed which helps the models (for new buildings) ensure that the building is clash-free. And that is incredibly important because a lot of the reason that things are swapped out on site is because they don’t fit because nobody has thought about that and nobody has really modelled it properly, modelling is incredibly important. So, I think we’ve got two main situations here:, one is existing buildings, as Ben has been saying they’re 20 years old and most of the buildings are already there, if you look across London there are very few cranes up at the moment, so there’s not that much getting built,
And I think we’ve got two main areas of focus and maybe we need two different groups of people, one focusing on new buildings and another focusing on existing buildings. Does anybody agree or disagree with that? Or could they both be done concurrently by the same group? So, one group would be looking at existing buildings and new buildings during design, mind you there wouldn’t be any design on an existing building.
PAUL WHITE I think it’s the same, but the problem that we’ve got is that if we have all of the fields that you need for a new design then for older buildings you can start to populate those bits. And as you start to populate them you can see what’s missing and then maybe you find an expert to come and help you out to fill the gaps or make an assessment for you. And this is what I was saying about what we’re doing with the fire dampers, the type 3 inspection which is that you turn up at a building that nobody has been round before, you have to know about design9 because you’ve got to look at the products that are there existing to make a judgement to say that they’ve been installed properly or they’re safe.
Or, as Ben said, you’ve got to take all of the tech screws out, or whatever it is that you need to do, because that inspection actually needs the most competent people who actually know how a fire damper has been installed properly or not. So, I think we’re still looking for all of the same fields, it’s just that we need to understand that on legacy buildings it’s going to take time to fill those in, or it’s going to be a guess and we have to make sure that it’s shown up as a guess. But the point is that all of the fields are still the same.If you can’t generate the information you’ll just have to leave a blank and write I have left a blank because.
BEN EVANS You’re quite right because in existing buildings after 20 years we undertake major works as well which requite design work etc.
PAUL WHITE So if you’re doing a refurb, actually that’s now a new building so you will be filling this in from scratch at that point. So unless you’re claiming that it’s the same as it was when it was built, which is getting more and more grey, you wouldn’t necessarily need to determine what was there before because you’d be reinstalling it to the latest standards. But I’d say that if you’re doing a refurb you should know what is there first and if you can’t fill the blanks then guess what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to start from scratch again. That gives a good demonstration of that.
CLIFF KNEALE Following on from what Paul said, even if you’re not doing a refurb if you’re doing a survey of an existing building’s PFI handback I think we need a process for that as well because quite often they’ve been knocked about quite a lot, once they’ve been in occupation. And you’re handing it back and you’re supposed to be creating a digital record of what’s there.
PAUL WHITE It’s still the same fields and I think that’s right and this is probably a good basis for that and it will potentially show up the fact that that things haven’t been maintained for a long time, but again that’s a different issue.
ALAN ELDER I just wanted to agree with the points that Paul made, I think they sounded quite logical in terms of the overarching list for both existing and new buildings. But I think one thing that I would imagine would be useful with that, I don’t know if a lot of people would want to have, is actually having that kind of long form list on existing buildings and just making it clear what you actually have in the building and what you don’t have available for it. But I do imagine that there might be some instances where people feel a bit hesitant or cautious about putting that clearly on a bit of paper in black and white saying we do have this or we don’t have this.
Because I know certainly then the concern might be that a risk assessor will come round and say well, you need every single thing that’s missing off that list. And obviously that’s not really helpful for anyone because with some historic or existing buildings you just can’t do some of these things or it’s possibly not a good use of resources to try and come up with a strategy for that building, maybe the person is better off actually spending money repairing fire doors or life safety critical assets. But yeah, I do agree with the overall principle of having that kind of long form list for both existing and new buildings and making that something that’s really clear and available so that people know from the start even when they’ll be looking at the building, what’s available and what’s not available. I think that would be useful instead of trying to guess and find out all of the time.
PAUL WHITE I think that becomes part of the risk assessment process, it’s the fact that somebody has actually got to say this was as it was required at the time, but somebody still really because of the responsibility and the duty holders and the appointed person, they have to be satisfied that their building is safe. And this is the ongoing problem that they may need to have somebody in, in a risk assessment type role, that isn’t just a pure risk assessor who comes and says you haven’t got the right information. Well, you haven’t got the right information, but this risk is mitigated by the fact that you’ve got very good maintenance processes and this, that and the other because ultimately this is looking at people taking responsibility for buildings being safe.
There’s a quick example, a lot of people with smoke control systems say well, my system is old and all of the ventilators open on every floor at the same time if an alarm is triggered. Now, that potentially might have been allowed in the past and that s how it was designed, however it is known to be unsafe so change the software slightly and make it work on single knock. You can’t avoid the safety issues just by saying it was OK at the time if you know fundamentally it’s unsafe.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah that would be in the fire risk assessment I suppose, as a recommendation.
PAUL WHITE But again, then you’re looking at different levels of fire risk assessor who know that they can actually make a fire risk assessment and determine a risk rather than just saying it’s wrong so that they’re covered, and those are the things that fire risk assessors are developing.
GEORGE STEVENSON Just picking up on the point that you’re making, a lot of people have said to me who are fire risk assessors that one of the challenges that they’ve got is that when they are procured often it’s just have we had a fire risk assessment done. And nobody is actually, it seems, specifying adequately what that fire risk assessment needs to do, so therefore the fire risk assessment is often based on price. And if, for example, you’ve got a fire risk assessment and you’ve only allowed £100 for a building then obviously you’re not going to get the same quality of fire risk assessment as you would if you’re doing it properly.
The other point is that the way we need to hold the asset information needs to be sufficiently granular that it can be presented in a variety of ways for different purposes. So if, for example, you want to look at all of the elements that go to make up a compartment wall you do need to have each instance of those assets as unique items that can then be grouped together. That doesn’t mean that you need to manage them in that way because it may well be that you decide to issue a work instruction to maintain all of the fire dampers, for example, that’s not uncommon. But you need the information to be sufficiently granular so that that particular inspection can be recorded against that asset.
So when somebody is coming along and saying right, I know what to look at the status of all of the elements that go to make up that compartment wall, irrespective of who’s done the inspection, that needs to be sliced and diced in that way. And that’s a reason this information needs to be managed in databases and not simply in BIM models because BIM models are designed largely for coordination purposes. If you want to break up, for example, people that are using BIM for doing cost management, they actually create a new model because the models aren’t actually created in a way that splits up easily from a cost management point of view, so in principle that’s what they’re doing.
And increasingly what’s happening is that people aren’t using the 3D model at all, they’re using reality capture. They’re using things like OpenSpace and Disperse and Buildocs and things like that. So, it’s a matter of looking at what the purpose is as to what you actually need in terms of information and then how you get there.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah that should definitely be considered as one of the outputs. I was going to say about the fire risk assessments, am I right in saying that they can be quite subjective? One fire risk assessor may be a lot more lenient that another and if you keep recommending that all of the hinges on the doors are in place, for example, you might not be invited the next year to come and do the fire risk assessment. So, in the end you’ll just appoint the fire risk assessor who is going to give you the fewest recommendations.
PAUL WHITE Yeah, I think we need to be a bit careful about that because I think that’s what’s gone on in the past and there’s lots of work and standards being worked on for fire risk assessments at the moment. So the whole point is that everybody will be, you can do a fire risk assessment to this level and you should know that if you turn up to do it that you can do it or you can’t. Everything in life now is about SKEB (skills, knowledge, experience and behaviour) and behaviour is probably one of the most important ones where you’ve got to know what you can do and what you can’t do. Because the top level of a fire risk assessment is you end up writing a fire strategy and if the risk assessment requires a revised fire strategy then you’ve got to be a fire engineer, not just a risk assessor.
There’s quite a lot of discussion going on about all those levels at the moment. I think we’re getting a little bit off our topic, to bring it back to that is what we’re looking for from the whole group is a list of what we all see as being the fire critical products, which is the first thing. And then within each workstream what’s important for each product at design, installation, commissioning and handover. And the handover bit is the full basis, the golden thread starts at the design stage and gets through to the handover stage and then obviously goes into the FM stage and lives with the building forever. A lot of this is all about if you do it right at the start and you get all of this lined up, it’s a lot easier in the future. And I think everybody is still looking at this at the moment of we’ve never had any of this information what we’re thinking about.
I think that’s the next bit, we want the groups to go and make sure and feedback to everybody what they think the critical fire assets are for each of those stages and we may need to feed an expanded list back to the other groups because that’s all there. But then we need to be looking at what people want from each of those stages.
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah, I believe so, that’s what we’re proposing, unless anybody else has something to suggest is that we break it up into those three main areas, design, construction or installation, commissioning and then FM, but we look at it from a design activities, construction activities and FM activities point of view. You might want someone to go in and do something on all of those assets so the output would need to make sure that they can be grouped according to a purpose. And so from there you’ve got what standards we are using to design and construct and inspect and with handover what standard are we using. We’re quite fortunate that BG6 is quite detailed in all of the activities at each stage, so I’d recommend that as a good read and also there’s RIBA, they’ve recently updated (within the last 5 years) their plan of work and it includes fire related activities as well.
So, I’d recommend that the working groups look at those documents because they start at high level and some of those activities do say for this activity you should be using this standard. And if it doesn’t say that then perhaps we would identify the relevant standard. And then by the end of hopefully 2-3 months’ time we’d have a list of all of the design construction and FM activities and that would then inform the level of information that’s needed from one party to the next. So that when you have the handover information and it goes to FM they’ve got the information structured in a way that’s useful to them.
And not in packages, because at the moment contractors are handing over packages to the FM. Maybe they should be handing it over in a different way, a way that they want to receive it because then it all has to be peeled apart again and put back together again. And then that doesn’t get done and then the building doesn’t get maintained properly, for a while.
BEN EVANS Just touching on the information exchange before we need to cover missing documentation and solutions. A classic one might be a fire strategy documentation, going way back, if that can’t be found how do we mitigate that? What’s the solution?
PAUL WHITE Again, you can get those, you can get a fire strategy that’s applied to the building but also obviously if it’s struggling to meet what it needs to meet you may have work to do and I think that’s the point. I have a colleague who does that regularly, but won’t tell people what they want to hear which doesn’t help them, but he can’t do anything other than say bit it’s wrong.
BEN EVANS But complied with the standard back in the day kind of thing.
PAUL WHITE He would look at that, but if it was patently unsafe he would point that out. And again, what we’re talking about here is safety, we’re not necessarily talking about compliance because the responsibility of the appointed person and the responsible persons is the building has to be safe. And much as that might be expensive, you can’t walk away from the fact that something there is unsafe. Cliff, you or I have now got to ask the difficult question which is who would like to volunteer to lead these groups. We really could do with some names in the frame today to start taking this forward and obviously Cliff and I and George are available outside the meeting if we want some help, but we’re looking to coordinate this and provide some help, but we need some people to do the work.
GEORGE STEVENSON Martin, do you mind me asking, is there something you’d like to get engaged with?
MARTIN OATES It was something that I was conscious that I wanted to remain within the group for input, but my role at SE is very much limiting my ability to lead these kind of things and take this work on and I apologise for that. But my point is that I’m happy to assist and contribute, but perhaps not lead and take that on.
RICHARD FREER If you don’t want to lead the group you could still be part of that.
MARTIN OATES My kind of role within SE as a specialist smoke vent contractor of course is to provide input from out perspective into this process.
SHARON McCLURE I can contribute, I can’t lead but `i’m happy to get involved. Unfortunately with the current workload overstretched and over committed at the moment, but happy to contribute where possible.
GEORGE STEVENSON Arash, do you think what we’re doing here is useful?
ARASH RABIE Regarding the responsibilities of the fire risk assessor, what the fire risk assessor is doing is just checking the overall building, the overall systems, the fire safety assets. For example, checking not all of the details, all of the assets within the building and if they can quote the recommendations in the reports saying that some of the hinges on fire doors should be replaced. And a fire doors surveyor is needed to complete this work for all of the fire doors and it’s the same for the fire dampers. And this can be done for any other assets within the building.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, but what I’m saying is…what’s your job?
ARASH RABIE I do the fire risk assessment for the projects for existing projects and buildings.
CLIFF KNEALE would you be prepared to lead one of the groups?
ARASH RABIE Yeah, I think it’s useful.
CLIFF KNEALE That’s great, do you have a preference for design, installation or the FM group?
ARASH RABIE I’m not sure about the FM group, but for the design I usually use the NFA codes and BSS standards, mostly BS9999 and in Ireland we use the technical TGD fire safety for buildings for completing their fire risk assessments.
CLIFF KNEALE OK, that all sounds very useful, are you saying it would be the design stage that you would prefer to lead?
ARASH RABIE Yeah, I’m involved in the design stage and, for example, doing the general risk assessment and fire assessment for buildings.
CLIFF KNEALE Afam, can you lead?
AFAM UNAKA I don’t mind, but I’m quite committed to some studies so I have a lot of writing going on, so adding to my workload it will be a lot, but it’s something I’d like to be involved in. But `i’ll contribute whenever I can. As an FRA…manager on fire mitigation action plan I get to get my hands dirty a bit with the reputation? 1hr 3mins 24secs of the FRA action plans. So, I’d have been in a good position to do that, but I have some academic commitments.
CLIFF KNEALE Ben, you’re already in another group, aren’t you? The infrastructure group.
BEN EVANS Yeah.
DLIFF KNEALE Can you shed any light on how that group is structured and how far down the road you’ve got and whether or not you’d be prepared to lead one of these groups.
GEORGE STEVENSON To be honest, we need Ben to be able to do the PFI group, so that’s a critical one, Cliff, that we should feed into this, but it’s a particular perspective, isn’t it Ben?
BEN EVANS Yeah, it is, I’m also under an NDA which doesn’t help with information sharing. In terms of the point I made about the checklist earlier in terms of information exchange, sometimes it takes a while for something to come out because of the restrictions on confidentiality because we’ve got other stakeholders that are quite sensitive to some of this in the PFI market.
GEORGE STEVENSON But in the PFI group I’ve been talking with Richard and also with Andrew Perry from AMY? 1hr 5mins 8secs. I think we need to get more of the other SPVs engaged, that’s a different matter.
BEN EVANS We’e got Clive on the FM side and Joe from Sodexo, but we’re pretty thin on that ground I think.
PAUL WHITE In terms of the fact that I think you said 25+ people had signed up for this, do you know any of them individually that you might be able to lean on to help us with this?
GEORGE STEVENSON Probably, I can take a look at that.
PAUL WHITE Outside of this meeting we maybe need to look at that because I think we were perhaps hoping for more people who might have more time than have been able to attend today. We haven’t solved any problems at the minute so I think we maybe need to take it offline and look at it outside of the general meeting.
GEORGE STEVENSON Sure, in general terms I really think that what you’ve learned today has been useful.
RICHARD FREER George, you always ask that question and you always get the same response which is silence.
PAUL WHITE I think as usual, whenever we have these meetings it’s very interesting because it’s an interchange of ideas. I think what we actually need is we’ve got to progress the project and I don’t think that necessarily we’ve done that greatly today, but to move it on we need to not necessarily wait for the next meeting.
GEORGE STEVENSON In some ways I think that the interrelationship between the different working groups, one of the ones that we’ve got is I’m with Waites today and we’re talking through the whole digital handover process. Because what we’re trying to do is put in place standardised technical submittals on new projects to be able to pick that up. And also, Cliff has been working with Origin on the O&M side of things to standardise the way that O&Ms are done. Cliff, is it worth showing the tracker that you’re doing with Origin at the moment?
CLIFF KNEALE Yeah, I’m just looking for it now.
GEORGE STEVENSON What this is, it’s a matter of looking at the fire safety information and doing an audit on what’s being handed over. This is a new scheme that Origin have just taken on. It’s early days, but what we’ve been able to do is by managing this in a structured way we’ve been able to identify what’s missing, and there’s a lot missing. But that’s not a problem, it’s a matter of just going through and finding it.