Short-term
Fire protection often missing
in rational building designs
MARCEL WOOD,
Head of Risk Improvement Services in the
Hollard Group and Hollard Broker Markets
A shift in building design
practises is omitting portions of
legal fire compliance regulations
that leave assets and property
unnecessarily vulnerable to
destruction by fire.
This is causing great concern in the
short term insurance industry. The
motive is short sighted and uninformed
cost-cutting in current building designs.
The result is totally inadequate fire
extinguishing systems required by
law to protect assets and property.
In rational designs the focus is
quite often on cheaper to install life
safety measures like: smoke control;
evacuation of people and signage
which is fantastic but not at the
expense or neglect of obligatory asset
preservation.
It is a major concern that this is
happening in spite of the fact that the
need to extinguish fire adequately
is specifically mentioned as a legal
requirement in the list of building
design requirements.
This challenge to legal fire compliance
in building designs is becoming a
problem which delivers major financial
impact to buyers of short-term
insurance involving their buildings
and major assets as well as brokers
and the short term insurance industry
as a whole. All are caught up in this
frustrating development.
This problem has entered the built
environment through the use of
rational design practises which are less
prescriptive than the deemed to satisfy
rules. Some designers are taking
advantage of this flexibility by providing
less than adequate extinguishing
systems, contending that it is life
safety which is the only objective of
the rational design; a claim that allows
their designs to be cheaper to build
and therefore more attractive. The
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problem is that the decision makers are
attracted by the short term cost saving,
unaware that that initial cost-saving in
construction will have to be spent in
the future to make their building and
assets insurable.
One of many reasons why asset
and property protection is vital is to
minimise business interruption as
well as extensive delays necessary if
manufacturing equipment has to be
imported. This impacts negatively on
business continuity and is likely to cause
market share loss. Companies need to
return to functionality and profitability
as quickly as possible which is a key
reason why minimum fire protection
is vital and why rational designs are
failing building owners dismally.
EFFECTIVE FIRE COMPLIANCE
I would like to appeal to intermediaries
and advisors to arm themselves with
this knowledge below so they can
proactively warn their clients who are
building or extending. At Hollard Broker
Markets our specialisation is insurance
for businesses and we hate ending
up being the baddy after a building
or extension has been inadequately
completed.
There are two ways to achieve legal
fire compliance and both are described
in The National Building Regulations.
1 A designer can follow the strict and
precise deemed-to-satisfy rules.
2 A design can meet the requirements
of the functional regulations or, in
other words provide a rational design
which is more flexible and is supposed
to meet with or exceed the above but
in fact leaves room for manipulation.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The overarching,
and probably most important aspect
of fire compliance, is that whichever of
these two design methods is chosen,
the completed design must meet or
exceed the requirements of (all) the
functional regulations.
THE FUNCTIONAL
REGULATIONS ARE:
Any building shall be designed,
constructed and equipped so that in
case of fire:
(a) The protection of occupants
or users, including persons with
disabilities, therein is ensured and
that provision is made for the safe
evacuation of such occupants or users;
(b) The spread and intensity of such
fire within such building and the spread
of fire to any other building will be
minimized;
(c) Sufficient stability will be retained
to ensure that such building will not
endanger any other building: Provided
that in the case of any multi-storey
building no major failure of the
structural system shall occur;
(d) The generation and spread of
smoke will be minimized or controlled
to the greatest extent reasonably
practicable; and
COVER SEPTEMBER 2015

(e) Adequate means of access, and
equipment for detecting, fighting,
controlling and extinguishing such fire,
is provided.
THE MISSING (E) = EXTINGUISHING
The rational designers claim to offer
an alternative fire compliance solution.
But these designs generally meet the
requirements of (a) to (d) because
that is cheaper. They fall flat on (e),
specifically extinguishing of fire,
because that adds to the cost and goes
beyond fire alarms and hanging a few
extinguishers around a building.
This is why short term insurers
often have to ask for minimum
by insurers that causes frustrations
in business owners who have already
invested financially in a design only to
find, upon completion, that the design
ignored minimum asset & property
protection regulations.
When additional capital has to be
found to bring the premises in line with
minimum legal fire protection everyone
is frustrated: not only the broker and
their client but also the insurance
company who is believed to be
unreasonable. But the real truth is the
short term insurer needs to have the
absolute minimum legal fire protection
in place which should have been part
of the original design.
HOW CAN WE ALL HELP?
By informing clients why it is to their
own financial advantage that every
single fire compliance sub-regulation is
included in a building design. Explain
why, if a tender design is cheaper, e
might be incomplete. Any client who
is building or extending needs to know
that extinguishing fire directly links to
asset and property protection. Hollard
fire extinguishing protection to be Broker Markets Risk Improvement team
installed to become compliant with is on hand to give specifics and expert
sub-regulation (e). It is this insistence information.
WHAT FILLS THE MISSING E
What, specifically, is often left out of rational designs?
sprinkler systems for buildings
drencher systems for flammable gas installations
electrical systems and gas suppression systems
for data centres and sub-stations (often
replaced by mechanical smoke ventilation or
fire detection systems in rational designs)
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