FSE in Europe is progressing

For the The Malmö University building Orkanen,
fire safety engineering using risk-based methods were
 used. Rougly 2M€ were saved by this approach. 

Several projects for fire safety engineering going on in Europe and the indicators point in the same direction - fire safety engineering is progressing. The experience of PBD of fire safety in Europe now has a history of about two decades in some countries. Most notably in the UK (1989), in Sweden (1995) as well as Denmark and Norway. Manybuildings wouldn't have been feasible for functional or economical reasons if not performance-based design (PBD), using fire safety engineering methods, would have been possible. And several other countries wants to follow today, not least in Europe. I've written about this before, when I worked at the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (in Swedish).


In March SBR in the Netherlands hosted an expert meeting on fire safety in high rise buildings. The Netherlands are in need of a more modern approach to fire safety and thus wanted a discussion. I moderated the session where four representatives from different european countries presented one high rise each. While some things differ regarding fire safety approaches, we also do have a lot in common. The most progressive design was done in the UK and in Sweden - where fire safety engineering is allowed to full extent. Germany, on the other hand, have prescriptive regulations for high rise buildings which means a more rigid design.


In the european standardization work is going on to establish standards on fire safety engineering. One of the  things we are looking right now is how fire safety engineering is used in connection to prescriptive regulations. This is the primary method being used in Sweden and we will be presenting this approach in the SFPE Conference on Performance Based Design in Hong Kong in June. 


The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) is the largest international community gather fire safety professionals. A European group has recently been formed and two new national chapters has newly joined, namely the Benelux Chapter and the Polish Chapter. Since before, we have chapters in France, Spain, Italy and Sweden. And the door is open for more chapters. With SFPE Europe, it will be easier to find common ground on important aspects such as education, certification, policy-making and regulation.


With all these signs, all these projects going, I'm confident that an interesting road lies ahead of us. We've seen the big eurocodes project on structural safety of constructions being implemented after thirty years of collaboration. Hopefully it won't take that long time for the area of fire safety. With a common european approach we will eventually be able to have a more open market with regards of fire safety products and services. It won't be easy, of course, but that's where we're heading.


Both the european standardization, SFPE Europe and national chapters needs active members - feel free to contact me if you're interested and I'll tell you who to talk to. Grab the opportunities ahead and be part of the action!


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