Question

Which would you choose as a Fire Protection Engineer, performance-based design or prescriptive-based design? Justify your answer ADDRESSING current codes and standards in the United States.

Answer 1

Because fire protection engineering is a unique profession that focuses on protecting people, property, and the environment from the ravages of fire, many fire protection engineers find job satisfaction knowing they are making a difference.

According to a survey conducted in 2012 by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the average compensation for fire protection engineers is $113,748.

Fire protection engineers gets the opportunity to work on a wide range of important projects, ranging from protecting nuclear power plants, to designing a fire protection system for a significant part of history in a well-known museum.

The performance-based codes attempt to provide clearer guidance than the prescriptive codes taking into consideration the actual growing complexity of the architectural designs, which introduces more fire risks. Which is one of the main reasons why most of the mentioned countries are in an advanced stage of development and implementation of performance-based codes.

The performance-based design introduces a need for increased understanding, not just of design professionals but the entire supply, installation, routine service and maintenance chain.

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Engineering

Performance-Based Design: Benefits and Pitfalls

by Scott Williams  June 23rd, 201611,710 Total Views

Performance-based building codes are dedicated to allowing industry to tailor design solutions to achieve requirements and boost productivity.

They allow us greater flexibility in terms of what we can build, leading to more interesting and/or efficient designs and allowing us to increase our overall building output.

For the uninitiated, performance-based regulation is simply an approach that allows designers to demonstrate via analysis of known risks and design environments that construction will meet certain performance requirements (energy efficiency, load, fire safety performance and the like) without prescribing exactly how these outcomes are achieved.

Performance-based design has slowly emerged across the Australian building and construction landscape since it was introduced into the national Building Code in 1996 (the first Building Code of Australia was introduced in 1990 but contained only prescriptive DTS options).

Today, many new buildings feature some level of performance-based design (documented as ‘Performance Solutions’) and the NCC allows designers to demonstrate that their design complies with either traditional deemed to satisfy (prescriptive) elements or has been assessed to include appropriate elements to meet the performance requirements, or a combination of both.

On the surface, we have every reason to believe the current regulatory approach is contemporary, progressive and working well.

As the economy transitions from mining and resources, building and construction is poised to take its place as our major driver of economic growth. An Australian Industry Group study found that construction accounted for eight per cent of our gross domestic product (GDP). It comprises more than 330,000 businesses nationwide and directly employs over one million people (around nine per cent of the total workforce).

When applied correctly, performance-based design can deliver buildings that are more aesthetically pleasing faster and at a lower cost than might be possible under a paint-by-numbers or “deemed to satisfy” model.

So what’s the problem?

The problem with performance

It should come as no surprise that the use of performance-based design introduces a need for increased understanding, not just of design professionals but the entire supply, installation, routine service and maintenance chain. With performance, a gradual increase in the competence of practitioners involved in design through to implementation of such designs is necessary in order to achieve compliance.

Let’s start with the designers. Of all the engineering disciplines, fire safety engineering is considered to be adolescent. We know a lot about fire science and strategies, techniques and technology used to apply it to commercial projects are evolving rapidly.

Performance-based solutions for fire immediately require expertise from a fire safety engineer, who must make value judgements about the validity of design decisions and their relationship with occupant safety in the event of fire.

The Life Safety Code, NFPA 101, devotes a full chapter to performance-based design as an option for design teams, and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, SFPE, has also published the “SFPE Engineering Guide to Performance-Based Fire Protection.” Both outline the process by which a design team would go through to develop a performance-driven solution, whether for an entire building or a specific code requirement. The process includes concepts like establishing measurable performance criteria to compare to the outcomes, developing design fire scenarios, evaluating the design with iterations as needed, and documenting the design.