Issues of a fire engineered approach:
Fire engineered solutions, particularly computational can be prohibitively expensive, so only go down that route once all options are considered.
Claims of inflexibility regarding existing standards are questionable. The guidance on regulations including codes of practice are only guidance, which encourage competent alternatives.
Claims of inaccuracy when proposing an alternative approach, are also generally unsubstantiated, bearing in mind, all fire safety guidance was developed from some form of fire engineered approach.
Justifying extended travel distances for example can often be substantiated with alternative standards.
Most guidance is rooted in empirical data collected over decades. Having witnessed and studied some full scale fire tests, complete house fires, or a full-scale section of in-rack storage. These are in fact typical of the methods by which most alternative solutions are verified.
Fire Risk Engineers Ltd approach is to apply existing tried and tested guidance whilst adopting engineered solutions where guidance is unable to prove appropriate risk reduction.
Advancements in aerodynamics, aerospace, meteorology and oceanography as well as the modelling of fire and smoke demonstrate the advantages and flexibility of computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
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A number of methods are available to the fire engineer to predict fire development in realistic fire scenario analysis.
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Whether calculating the effect of increased fire load, the consequences of extended travel distances, estimating egress times, or checking tenability limits, modelling tools are available, from the use of simple spreadsheets to complex CFD calculations.
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Having an advanced qualification in CFD, and experience of first principle calculation, zone modelling and field modelling, Fire Risk Engineers Ltd can recommend the most suitable direction to proceed after assessing the specific conditions, and liasing with interested stakeholders.
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It should be noted there exists an expanding array of software, with notable variations in levels of accuracy and verification. FRE only use software with a high level of validation and verification.
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The use of these more complex programs often requires considerable resources, knowledge, and experience, and even allowing for recent advances in computational capacity, large detailed simulations can require days of computer processing.
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