Hello,

What is Fire Safety Engineering?



The objective of theBuilding Code of Australia(BCA) is to ensure new and refurbished buildings achieve minimum performance requirements relating to various matters includingfire and life safety.



TheBCAnominates a number of prescriptive building design techniques which are Deemed to Satisfy these minimum performance requirements, which are called DTS solutions. In the case offire and life safety, there are variousDTSrequirements, including those relating to fire compartmentation & separation, fire resistance levels, access & egress, fire services & measures, and smoke hazard management.



These fire safetyDTSsolutions are intended to cover around 10 basic building categories on a one size fits all approach, so they can be cumbersome, inadequate and/or inflexible from the perspective of



architectural design (such as for innovative, unusual and even heritage buildings), or



property and content protection, and business continuity,



DTS solutions can also be expensive and disruptive to retrofit into existing buildings, in particular sprinkler and hydrant systems.



Fire Safety Engineersare accredited to develop alternative performance-based solutionswhich are demonstrated to meet theBCAminimum performance requirements without usingDTSsolutions.



To do this, they use various statistical information and analytical tools, to develop alternative fire solutions which can preserve the architectural design and deliver practical and cost effective outcomes by providing fire prevention and protection measures where the real risks are, and reducing over-specification of fire measures elsewhere.



What is fire protection engineering?



Fire protection engineeringis the application of science andengineeringprinciples to protect people, property, and their environments from the harmful and destructive effects offireand smoke. It encompasses engineering which focuses onfire detection, suppression and mitigation and fire safety engineering which focuses on human behavior and maintaining a tenable environment for evacuation from a fire. In the United States 'fire protection engineering' is often used to include 'fire safety engineering'.

I hope this would help you. For further queries please feel free to write me down in the comment box.