The law has recently changed and is continuing to change regarding the smoke and ventilation, and fire safety aspects of construction projects. Is your project complaint?
The Building Safety Act 2022 will affect building owners/managers and the built environment industry. The Building Safety Act 2022 includes those who commission building work and participate in the design and construction process, including clients, designers, and contractors. And will see the implementation of two key roles – Building Safety Regulator (BRS) and Accountable Person.
The London plan requires designs to be developed at an early stage. Scheme designs need to be created that can be developed and installed. Many companies involved in scheme design do not have the ability to do the detailed design and design for an installation that is also compliant with the many areas these projects now must comply.
A typical system design will involve key stages.
- Develop a concept for the system to meet the specific project requirements.
- From the concept, identify any challenges in fitting the required solution into the existing or planned building.
- Create a feasible, fit-for-purpose solution that will be signed off compliant and can actually be installed.
- From the above, your provider can establish an accurate budget.
Our objective at Fire and Smoke Solutions is to ensure that all parties involved in the development of dwellings comply with the laws and best practices to create suitable safe environments. While supporting all parties responsible for these projects in making pragmatic, feasible, and compliant decisions throughout the project’s lifecycle, it doesn’t mean that budgets need to be increased; quite the contrary.
A concept can be developed into a practical solution that can be installed. Challenges can be highlighted at an early stage. This means you will save time and costs in delivering the overall project.
Be aware of designers that do not have practical installation experience that can cut and paste a standard design as opposed to designing a system from first principles and producing scheme designs that are theoretically correct but cannot be practically developed and installed. Insist on working with professionally qualified design engineers that can design any type of system, not just simple code-based solutions.
Cost-effective design can be built in at the beginning of a project.
Budgets can be developed to include all aspects of the required installation. For example, smoke control & ventilation and fire engineering solutions, so there are no hidden or re-design costs of the building and the systems rebuild at a later date. In addition, a solution can be presented to and agreed upon with building control and the fire brigade, so there is no problem at handover.
Fire and Smoke Solutions are leaders in their sector with expertise built on 30 years of experience working with and for fellow market-leading companies and as experts in the design, installation, commissioning, testing and maintenance of all types of smoke ventilation systems.
We pride ourselves on being able to identify and correct project issues. However, we prefer to be called upon at the initial stages of design, not at the building control stages, where we are called upon to provide strategies and solutions to fix issues that could have been avoided and are now adding time and money to a project.
Working at the concept stage with architects to add specific information and insights to help design a compliant feasible, and costs effective solution rather than having to be called in to fix an issue, re-design, re-engineer and re-implement.
Do you have a current project that may not be compliant, looks good but is not suitable to build or looking at future projects and are at the concept stage?
Then feel free to call FASS (fire and Smoke Solutions) so we can have a no-obligation conversation, provide some insight and help you deliver a fit-for-purpose compliant solution that you or your customer require.