Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Building regulations are in a state of transition, from a traditionally prescriptive approach, to performance based regulations. Fire regulations for buildings are still predominantly prescriptively applied but there is an international move to performance based design and regulation. The use of performance regulations will mean that the regulatory authorities will need to come to terms with a new way of assessing the suitability of proposals for approval. As a result of research involving a literature review and interviews with approval authorities in Australia and internationally, issues relating to the use of fire engineering, performance based regulations and computer models are raised and explored. Implications for the approval authorities include the need for appropriate expertise of the approval authorities, lack of data, performance levels and verification methods, providing faster and cheaper approvals, science setting the level of fire safety and litigation. One of the principle objectives in undertaking research into fire is to improve the fire safety provisions in building regulations. There are problems in relation to the transition of fire research outcomes into the building regulations.