At a meeting in Edinburgh between 7-8th November, the European Association for Passive Fire Protection (EAPFP) invited a selection of European and global fire organisations to come together and discuss the challenges facing the fire sector.
The key discussions were aimed at improving fire safety standards of build quality and education, with representatives from each organisation keen to share knowledge and experience from their own countries. Construction Products Europe; the Confederation of Fire Protection Associations Europe; the Society of Fire Protection Engineers; and the Institution of Fire Engineers met with EAPFP members and provided an overview of their organisations’ activities.
Guests were welcomes by EAPFP President, Miroslav Smolka, who highlighted the organisation’s mission of enabling European building owners to access and install reliable passive fire protection products effectively. EAPFP aims to explain and facilitate the use of European legislation and standards, as well as to inform, educate and develop the market to promote best practice.
Miroslav commented: “The EAPFP would like to thank all of our guests for joining us for this interesting and enlightening meeting, which has highlighted many areas for potential collaboration. There are clear synergies between all of our organisations, matched by an overwhelming desire to develop stronger ties to improve the understanding of fire science, as well as advancing the competency of all involved in the fire safety sector.
“I look forward to building on these first introductions to identify some key opportunities for future collaboration. By bringing together representatives from the construction industry, the passive sector and national fire safety organisations, as well as fire engineers, the research community and insurance, we hope to ensure that the EAPFP’s aims can be achieved, resulting in improvements in the safety of our future built environment.”
Christophe Sykes of Construction Products Europe explained that the association brings together over 50 national and EU associations to lobby on the internal market legal framework and EU sustainable construction initiatives. He highlighted the implementation delay that characterises most of our updated CE marking standards as a result of legal arguments. The organisation is calling for a common agreement to improve the EU standardisation process. Christophe also discussed other issues and opportunities for improved collaboration, such as the regulatory framework (EU – Member States) for the fire assessment of facades methods; the enhanced integration of Extended Application (EXAP) standards in the harmonised system; and test methods and classification updates from CEN/TC 127.
Tommy Arvidsson of the Confederation of Fire Protection Associations Europe explained that CFPA Europe linked national organisations working with fire prevention and protection; safety and security; and natural hazards. It produces technical guidelines and aims to harmonise training, offering a CFPA Europe Diploma which is fire safety qualification recognised across Europe. CFPA Europe supports a range of fire safety campaigns in many European countries and is also gaining interest for its guidelines and training from other areas of the world.
Steve Hamm of the Institution of Fire Engineers described the IFE as a professional body which aims to enable people to demonstrate their competence in fire engineering. He declared that the IFE is recognised internationally as a benchmark for chartered fire engineers, with over 620 Engineering Council registrants. It offers third party accreditation of engineers and also operates a Register of Fire Risk Assessors. The IFE is a qualifications awarding body and administers over 6,000 examinations each year, including Level 3 and Level 2 qualifications in passive fire protection.
Within the meeting, Jose-Louis Fernandez of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers outlined the SFPE mission to define, develop, and advance the use of engineering best practices; expand the scientific and technical knowledge base; and educate the global fire safety community to reduce fire risk. The SFPE offers a wide range of education in the form of webinars, seminars, magazines and technical guides. It also aims to enhance the scientific understanding of fire through the SFPE Foundation which identifies relevant research, provides student research grants and seeks long-term funding resources for such activities.
Just a day before the conference, the EAPFP joined forces with the SFPE to host an interactive workshop on The Vital Role of Passive Fire Protection for fire engineering students and staff at the University of Edinburgh. The event featured a discussion on opportunities for academic research to support the PFP sector, poster presentations from students and was designed to highlight the challenges faced in testing, design and installation.
Attendees were welcomed by Professor Luke Bisby, Chair of Fire and Structures at the University of Edinburgh. Noting the need for knowledge-led design in fire engineering, he added that standard product fire tests could never replicate the performance of actual buildings in real fires. Declaring that all fires are different, he said that to improve understanding and research there was a need for feedback from real fire experiences to be supplied for research.
Following this theme EAPFP Technical Officers, Andrew Taylor and Kees Both, described a number of large loss fires and near misses highlighting the need to gain data and understanding from real fires in order to understand how and why fires spread and to explain ‘unexpected’ fire spread as experienced in a number of recent fires. They noted that the reasons why fires do not spread are also key to understanding the behaviour of modern buildings.
Discussions followed on the suitability of current fire tests and the need to understand and investigate test results and challenge the assumptions of standard fire tests. The lack of meaningful statistics was also highlighted as a key challenge, particularly when looking for data on incidents where compartmentation worked successfully and contained fire spread.
Development of new product solutions was also discussed. With recent examples of products such as cavity barriers being missed or installed incorrectly, there were questions about how such products could be engineered out or improved to ensure correct installation.
The event concluded with a series of poster sessions by the students who provided details of their research work before Professor Grunde Jomaas BRE Chair of Fire Safety Engineering brought the seminar to a close, thanking all for their active contributions and engagement in the discussions. To view the seminar presentations and posters visit: www.eapfp.org.uk.
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