Fire safety design
Fire safety engineering is primarily about establishing a fire safety conceptual design that best meets the customer’s vision for the use of their building. In addition, the conceptual design must ensure fire safety in a good way while meeting the authorities’ requirements.
Fire safety design is an accredited professional task in the building application process. This means that only people and companies with a documented level of competence can undertake assignments as responsible fire safety designers in construction projects.
The fire safety design can be established in the following ways:
- Design based on analysis
- Pre-accepted design according to the guidline to the building regulations
- Pre-accepted design with analysis of individual deviations from the guideline to the building regulations (mixed solution)
When must a fire safety design be prepared?
The following measures are examples of when fire safety design must be carried out:
- Construction of a new building
- Expansion or add-on to an existing building
- Change of use of a building or parts of a building
- Utilization of a cold attic or basement from an additional part to the main part within a dwelling unit
- Change of fire compartments or escape routes in an existing building
- Change of other prerequisites for the building’s existing fire safety strategy
- The fire safety design must be available before an application for a building permit (IG) is made, but the earlier a fire consultant is involved in the project, the easier it will be to find the best solutions.
Please contact us for clarification on whether a fire concept must be prepared for your project or not.
Project classes
The building’s use, size and number of floors define which hazard class and fire class the building or project is placed in. The hazard class and fire class in turn determine which project class that applies to the project. The division into project classes is provided by the Building Application Regulations (SAK10) §9-4.
In general, project classes are divided as follows:
Project class 1
Project class 1 covers, regardless of function and field, projects or tasks that are not very complicated or have a low degree of difficulty, and in which deficiencies or errors in the project will have minor consequences for health, safety and the environment.
Project class 2
Project class 2 includes projects or tasks that, regardless of function or field: a) Are simple or low-difficulty, where deficiencies could moderately impact health, safety, or the environment. b) Are moderately difficult, where deficiencies could have minor to moderate impacts on health, safety, or the environment.
Project class 3
Project class 3 includes projects or tasks that, regardless of function or field: a) Are moderately difficult, where deficiencies could have major consequences for health, safety, or the environment. b) Are highly complicated or difficult.
PiD Solutions AS has central approval in all three project classes. Accordingly we can undertake fire safety design for all types of assignments regardless of size and complexity, including the most complicated and demanding construction projects.
What types of buildings are we familiar with at PiD Solutions?
At PiD we are versatile and enjoy working with different types of buildings and businesses. Examples of projects we are involved in are residential houses, apartment buildings, townhouses, office buildings, warehouse and production buildings, schools, kindergartens, sales premises, shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, and combined buildings that contain several different activities.
Tools for documenting deviations
Evacuation analysis:
An evacuation analysis can be used in assessments related to deviations from pre-accepted performance in the construction project, or as an assessment of desired changes in the operational phase. We use Pathfinder for these purposes.
Examples of deviations that can be documented using evacuation analysis:
- Occupant number calculation and requirements for the number of cm of free width per person in escape routes
- Number of escape routes and exits and their location
- Distance to and in escape routes
FDS, fire modeling:
Simple FDS models can be used, for example, to investigate how smoke will spread in different geometries where this is unclear and when dimensioning smoke ventilation (number of hatches, location, etc.)
