Fire Safety

Performance indicators for fire safety

A subject that requires a lot of attention on every project is fire safety. Not only because a building has to be fire-safe, but also because it has to comply with laws and regulations. It is therefore important that fire safety information is carefully recorded, maintained and reviewed so that each party involved knows which performance indicators apply to the building components.

Resistance to fire penetration and spread (FireRating)

The property FireRating indicates the value for resistance to fire penetration and spread . At project level, all parties involved need to have an insight into the fire separations between different (sub) fire compartments. Processing the correct value of the property FireRating is therefore necessary.

Resistance time to failure (FireRatingR)

Resistance time to failure is a measure of the time that a construction has before it collapses due to the effects of a fire. Structural instability does not guarantee the integrity of fire barriers, but it does affect the duration of the integrity of structures.

Processing

When completing the theme fire safety, therefore, at least two properties are required: one for FireRating and one for structural fire safety. In the future, this can be supplemented with properties such as fire criteria and flammability.

Example

A possible interpretation could be: assigning two properties (instead of one):

• FireRating is processed in the property FireRating. This is an official property from buildingSMART. Enter here only the value in number of minutes: 30, 60, 90.
• There is no official buildingSMART property for resistance time to failure. It is possible to create your own property, for example: FireRatingR.

TIP: Guide to Fire Protection Requirements

Fire protection requirements may differ within one element. Consider a wall which partly separates a corridor from a dwelling (FireRating = 30) and partly separates two dwellings (FireRating = 60). The Guide to Fire Safety Requirements in Figure 4.5.1 provides guidance on how to deal with this.

[Note: contents (+ graphics) not yet completed for BBI2! Follow link in image for original document, input to come from BIM-team]

Figure 4.5.1 Guide to Fire Safety Requirements