Author: Tori.Waddell

In response to the public’s growing uncertainty and trust in the residential sector, the NSW government has introduced new legislation and regulations aimed at improving the quality of building and construction work.

From the 1^st of July 2021, the Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021 (DBP Regulation) came into effect in NSW. The new regulations include a registration and certification scheme that supports the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (DBP Act) enacted last year on 10^th June 2020. The DBP Regulation has been designed to increase accountability in key stakeholders of the building including designers, developers, builders and professional engineers as well as establish a process requiring compliance declarations at multiple points of the building works.

On each residential apartment building project that adopts Performance Solutions, the Fire Engineer will be required to declare that the design meets the Performance Requirements and that the Fire Engineering Report integrates the designs of other key consultants such as structural, mechanical and fire services. These key consultants will also be required to declare that the requirements of the Fire Engineering Report have been incorporated into their design documentation.

Holmes Fire views the DBP Regulation as a welcome addition to the building industry and supports the inclusion of the design intergration process as a positive step towards a higher quality of building construction.

To streamline the process of integrating designs, Holmes Fire offers documentation review services – to put the magnifying glass over the drawings and specifications provided by key consultants to verify that the fire engineering requirements are correctly documented. Though the DBP Regulation and its requirements are new, Holmes Fire has an existing process to undertake documentation review services and have been offering this service to our clients for over 2 years.

Our team has found that reviewing documentation at the design stage results in issues being identified much earlier, when such issues only exist on paper. The time and effort taken to amend a drawing is relatively minimal compared to resolving a construction issue that has been built and has other completed building works surrounding it. This design documentation review process will reduce the number of issues that are discovered during construction works and fewer ‘patch fixes’ being used to resolve those issues.

Since offering design documentation review services 2 years ago, our team has developed an efficient process to review all relevant documentation and help the project proceed in a timely manner.

While the industry navigates its way around these big changes, it’s important to remember that it will take all affected practioners and businesses some time to adjust to the new norm for residential apartments. The DBP Regulation will lead to changes to our regular processes but the identification of errors at earlier stages will create opportunities for collaboration and innovation while also providing builders and developers with cost savings due to reduced rectification works during construction.

Australasia’s largest fire protection event, Fire Australia 2021, returns to Sydney this year with three days of the latest, leading fire safety content with key industry experts. The event features an intensive Conference Program with high profile speakers, breakout sessions, CPD seminars and off-site tours. The Tradeshow Hall will be open for all three days showcasing market-leading products and services from over 80 local and international exhibitors. FPA Australia will also be announcing their Award winners at the Conference Dinner held on Wednesday 12^th May.

First held in 1965, the conference is hosted by Fire Protection Association Australia (FPA Australia), a not-for-profit organisation and national peak body for fire safety. The Association is made up of members from manufacturers, suppliers, installers and servicers of fire protection products and services, firefighters, building owners, insurers, designers and building surveyors, government and legislators, educators, bushfire consultants and anyone else working as part of the fire protection community to provide a safer environment for all Australians. The Association’s vision and purpose is a safer community where loss of life, injury and damage to property and the environment are eliminated through effective fire protection.

Join our very own Sarnia Rusbridge, Project Director in our Sydney office, and Nate Lobel, Principal Fire Safety Engineer at Performance Based Consulting, for a breakout session after Morning Tea on Day 1. They’ll be diving into a contentious topic, “Fire Safety Engineering – Did we drop the ball?”, where they’ll look at how fire safety and the role of fire engineers has developed, what the industry is currently achieving and what’s being done in the background to accommodate and prepare for the expectations of the building and construction industry. Be prepared to leave this session asking yourself – are we doing enough – through legislation, education, research and in our role as fire engineers within a project team.

Don’t miss the opportunity to see Sarnia in action and engage with industry professionals from around Australia, register now at fireaustralia.com.au.

The International Fire Engineering Guidelines (IFEG) has been the go-to handbook of Australian fire engineers for years but this could all be changing soon.

Engineers Australia has formed a team comprised of leading fire engineers to provide guidance on the content of the new Australian Fire Engineering Guidelines (AFEG) at the behest of the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB). This team features our very own Sarnia Rusbridge, Project Director in our Sydney office. She has been working alongside Kjetil Pedersen from Warrington Fire, Jonathan Barnett from Basic Expert, and Tobias Salomonsson of RED Fire Engineers since mid-2020. Between the four, the team has decades of fire engineering experience internationally and in Australia under their belt and are well known within the industry for their specialist knowledge of fire safety practices and research.

The release of the AFEG will be welcomed by existing and incoming fire engineers who are focused on providing the best solutions for a project. Holmes looks forward to when the AFEG is completed and the clarity it will provide the Australian Fire Engineering industry.

Following the paths of Queensland and Victoria, NSW Parliament recently passed a new law under the Design and Building Practitioners Bill that will require professional engineers to be registered to practise from July 1st.

The new law will require that anyone wishing to provide professional engineering services in the fields of civil, structural, electrical, mechanical and fire safety engineering be registered themselves or be working under the direct supervision of a registered engineer. The law aims to lift the professional standards of the engineering industry within NSW, to meet the legislative standards of our neighbouring states and to provide the community with a level of confidence in the engineering industry.

Future regulation will dictate the minimum requirements to be registered and the process for individuals to register. Engineers Australia (EA) and other professional bodies are pushing to allow anyone who is registered on the National Engineering Register (NER) or is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) with EA to use their status as a pathway to statutory registration.

With 30% of our engineers currently holding a NER and/or CPEng status, and accreditations in Queensland and Victoria, Holmes welcomes the changes the new legislation will bring to the industry and look forward to meeting the higher levels of scrutiny and responsibility.

CEO Australia | Project Director

Branch Manager BRIS | Senior Fire Engineer

Project Director

Senior Fire Engineer

Branch Manager SYD | Senior Fire Engineer

Branch Manager MELB | Technical Director

Technical Director

Senior Fire Engineer

The Holmes Fire team is celebrating together with the Australian Building Code Board (ABCB) to mark 21 years since the release of the first performance-based building code in Australia.

After a long era of only prescriptive based building codes, the ABCB launched the performance-based BCA (BCA96) in October 1996, introducing overarching Performance Requirements, enabling bespoke building solutions to be implemented, as long as they could be demonstrated to satisfy the Performance Requirements.

Holmes Fire has been undertaking performance-based fire engineering in Australia throughout these 21 years and actually even prior to the release of this code. One of our founders, Hamish Maclennan, was providing alternative designs to the prescriptive building code well before 1996, through applications to the NSW Land & Environment Court.

The introduction of BCA96 has been a great development and advancement for the industry allowing a change to the approach in how buildings are designed and constructed. And, in a 2013, an independent report estimated that 70% of the $1.1 billion per annum productivity gains delivered by ABCB reforms were derived from the performance-based code. This same report identifies that the productivity gains could potentially double with an increased use of Performance based design.

Holmes Fire believes that the performance-based BCA has achieved its intent to lay the foundation for an industry to advance design, encourage flexibility, improve efficiency and facilitate aesthetic architecture, whilst maintaining the safety, health and amenity requirements of the code.

Holmes Fire is one of the few fire engineering consultancy firms who has been practising with this code since it was first introduced, and consequently, a countless number of our clients have benefited from the opportunities performance-based design has offered in adopting new technologies and materials, reducing construction time and costs, and providing architectural flexibility.

ABCB is committed to progressing the code 21 years on, whilst maintaining an approach that increases compliance, efficiency and productivity, including quantification of the Performance Requirements, capacity building and engendering a performance mindset.

Happy 21st Birthday to the performance-based BCA, let us celebrate the growth in our industry, promote many more years of innovative design and continue to allow a performance mindset across Australia’s building and construction industry.

From October 1^st 2017, new fire safety and building certification amendments to the Environmental Planning & Assessment Regulation 2000 will come into effect. These reforms aim at improving fire safety within new and existing buildings by requiring fire safety practitioners involved in a given project to be ‘competent’, which was previously not the case. There was previously no minimum qualification or experience that a practitioner needed to have in order to design, install, commission or maintain fire safety systems such a smoke detection systems, sprinkler systems, hydrants and hose reels, and even smoke exhaust and stair pressurisation systems.

For over 10 years now, the EP&A Regulation has required that for large projects, the nominated Fire Safety Engineer be suitably qualified and accredited as a C10 Fire Safety Engineer, which is essentially a formal recognition that a fire engineer is ‘competent’. Holmes Fire has five C10 Accredited Fire Safety engineers (Sydney based), all with a Masters degree or higher. Additionally, all Holmes Fire engineers have, or are undertaking, a specialist tertiary qualification in fire safety. This enables our team to provide sound fire safety advice and Performance Solutions that harmonise client and architectural objectives, whilst still maintaining acceptable levels of life and fire safety.

The amended EP&A Regulation also includes a number of additional checks and balances for fire systems designers and Certifiers to action, and Holmes Fire can assist the project team in achieving these to facilitate a smooth development approval process:

• Plans must show, and Specifications must describe, the physical aspects of any Performance Solution (Clause 130 and Clause 144A). Holmes Fire can provide documentation review services to verify that the requirements of a Holmes Fire Performance Solution have been incorporated into building plans and specifications. This also serves as a secondary review to identify any BCA anomalies that may be overlooked by the Certifier.
• Fire & Rescue NSW must be given the opportunity to inspect the fire safety systems that are installed, extended or modified within a Class 2 or 3 residential building before an Occupation Certificate is issued (Clause 136AA), regardless of whether a fire engineered solution has been applied. Where fire safety concerns of non-compliances are raised by these Fire & Rescue NSW inspections, Holmes Fire may be able to provide fire engineering advice or a Performance Solution to assist in resolving the issue.
• The format of annual fire safety statements is to be improved and made consistent (Clause 181). These statements will also now be required to list all Fire Engineering Reports and Performance Solutions that apply to the building. This represents an excellent opportunity to verify the fire safety schedule for existing buildings to ensure that the schedule correctly lists the installed systems and their standard of performance. Holmes Fire can assist with this process and since we are an independent firm that do not install or maintain fire services, our review will never be accompanied by a quote for rectification works.

The new Regulations introduce a new compliance method for fire safety system designs to incorporate minor deviations from the requirements of Australian Standards and BCA Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions (Clause 164B). Where such exemptions are sought, Holmes Fire can assist in determining whether the operational performance of other fire safety systems may be impacted by the proposed exemption. Holmes Fire can also assist in determining if the proposed exemption may have an impact on any existing or proposed Performance Solution for the building.

Overall these changes will greatly increase the level of robustness within the fire safety and construction industries and Holmes Fire are excited to work alongside Certifiers, builders, fire services engineers and our clients to continue to deliver a high standard of fire safety solutions.

Holmes Fire has been shocked by the devastating events of the recent fire that raged the Grenfell Tower in London. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their friends and family.

When events like this occur a lot of questions are raised and the community looks to experts such as Holmes Fire to provide insight, and more importantly, surety that similar events are not likely to occur closer to home.

Our International CEO, Stuart Harris, who is also a volunteer fire fighter, was invited onto The AM Show in New Zealand to provide comment and answer some key questions about the incident and the potential implications for the New Zealand building industry.

You can see the full interview here (staring at 4:44).

The NSW Coroner recently released the findings of the investigation of a fatal fire that occurred in a Bankstown Apartment building in September of 2012. Sadly a promising young woman, Connie Zhang, died from injuries sustained when she jumped or fell from the window of her Level 5 apartment whilst trying to escape the fire. Her housemate Ginger Jiang jumped from the window, and miraculously survived, but will be wheelchair bound for the remainder of her life. The building suffered extensive smoke and fire damage, resulting in a large number of residents displaced for up to a week after the fire. The local community was shocked and demanded answers as to how such a tragedy could occur. The Coroner’s report provides some of those answers and sets out a number of recommendations for key stakeholders in the building industry to minimise the risk of such a tragedy reoccurring. A few of the key issues and recommendations were:

Sprinklers

Based on the expert evidence presented, the Coroner was convinced that if the building had been provided with a sprinkler system, Connie would not have died. Sprinklers provide a multitude of fire safety benefits, most importantly, by automatically applying water to the fire and cooling smoke and fire gasses, sprinklers can avoid the fatal flashover scenario. Much of this Coroner’s investigation centred on whether the building was required to have a sprinkler system installed under the Building Code of Australia (BCA) Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions (issues of effective height and the building containing an atrium), however this discussion has little bearing on the actual fire safety risk within the Level 5 apartment that day. The fundamental issue is that the life safety benefits of sprinklers are not fully taken into account in the BCA Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions and the cost of installing sprinklers cannot be recovered by savings in other areas of the building design such as reductions in passive fire ratings or increase in travel distances to exits. These kind of concessions, based on the provision of sprinklers, are common in other building codes around the world and result in sprinklers being far more common in these jurisdictions. The Coroner has recommended that the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions be reformed to require the installation of sprinklers in all residential apartment buildings and similar concessions to be permitted, but building codes are slow moving beasts and such change will likely be a number of years away.

Maintenance

The Coronial investigation revealed there were potential issues with the ongoing maintenance of the building’s fire safety systems. Apartment buildings in NSW are required to be certified once a year by a ‘suitably qualified person’ as having fire safety systems that are maintained and will perform as per the standard of performance they were installed to. Over the years of the Bankstown building’s life, two different companies had provided such annual certification, despite the building allegedly having significant deficiencies in the fire detection and alarm system, stair pressurisation system and exit signs. The Coroner highlighted that there is an industry wide problem were those who certify building fire safety systems are often not suitably qualified to do so, but due to the lack of any accreditation requirements, do so anyway. Furthermore, whilst many companies claim to follow the maintenance schedules of AS 1851, there are presently no requirements for them to do so. The Coroner’s recommendations seek to rectify these systemic issues, however maintaining adequate fire safety will always be reliant upon the expertise of the individual.

Fire Safety Star rating

One of the Coroner’s more controversial recommendations was that a star rating system for fire safety be developed such that a building’s fire safety can be ranked. This highlights a critical nuance that is often overlooked: the building code sets the minimum standard for fire safety, there is always the option to go above this minimum standard and provide additional fire safety features, however this rarely occurs. Providing additional fire safety systems can not only afford occupants a higher level of life safety, but also provide an increased level of property protection, minimising the potential damage to a building in the event of a fire, and reduce the extent of ‘downtime’ where the building is not able to be occupied after a fire. The problem is that presently there is little motivation for a developer to provide more than the minimum required level of fire safety. The Coroner proposed that a star rating system
for fire safety would provide motivation for additional investment in fire safety (similar to the way Green Star ratings provide motivation for investment in sustainable building design) and highlights that “members of the public are entitled to know whether the building which they occupy is compliant, but minimally so, of safer than the minimum standards”.

A copy of the full Coroner’s report can be found here.

Holmes has not been involved with the subject development, this article is provided as an interest piece only. Holmes sends our sincerest condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.