Fire Safety Is Not a Tick-Box Exercise

Fire safety has a reputation in some quarters of the property industry as a compliance exercise — a set of boxes to be ticked at planning stage and building control stage, managed by the cheapest available consultant and then filed away. The Grenfell Tower fire demonstrated, at catastrophic cost, where this attitude leads. This article identifies the most common fire safety misconceptions in the property industry — and explains why they matter.

Misconception 1: Fire Safety Is a Late-Stage Design Add-On

Perhaps the most damaging misconception is that fire safety can be addressed towards the end of the design process. In reality, fire safety is embedded in the fundamental structure of a building. The position of escape stairs, the layout of compartment walls, the specification of the structural frame, the design of the facade — all of these are shaped by fire engineering requirements. Adding a fire engineer at Stage 4 to a design that was developed without fire engineering input is the most common cause of expensive late-stage redesigns.

Misconception 2: Any Consultant Can Produce a Fire Strategy

The fire safety consultant market includes a wide range of practitioners with very different qualifications and capabilities. At one end are Chartered Engineers (CEng) with IFE membership, years of project experience, and the professional accountability to put their name to complex fire engineering decisions. At the other end are individuals with limited training who produce templated fire strategy documents for a low fee.

For most development projects, the cheap option carries significant risk. Building control bodies and the Building Safety Regulator are becoming increasingly rigorous in scrutinising the quality of fire strategies and the qualifications of those who produce them. A fire strategy that fails this scrutiny creates programme delays that vastly exceed the fee saving.

Misconception 3: Fire Safety Is Only About New Buildings

The Building Safety Act 2022 has made clear that fire safety is an ongoing obligation throughout a building's life. Existing higher-risk residential buildings require building safety cases. Fire risk assessments must be maintained. External walls must be assessed. The golden thread must be kept up to date. Property owners and investors who treat fire safety as something that was dealt with when the building was built are increasingly exposed to regulatory and liability risk.

Misconception 4: Fire Safety and Design Don't Mix

Some in the property industry believe that fire engineering requirements constrain architectural ambition — that compliance with fire safety requirements means accepting a lesser design. In our experience, this is only true when fire safety is left to the end of the design process. When a fire engineer is involved from RIBA Stage 1 or 2, fire safety requirements become part of the design vocabulary rather than constraints imposed on a finished design. The best buildings are those where fire engineering and architectural vision have been developed together.

Misconception 5: The Fire Risk Assessment Covers Everything

The fire risk assessment — required annually for occupied buildings under the RRO 2005 — is sometimes treated as the totality of fire safety obligation. It is not. For higher-risk buildings it is one element of the building safety case. For buildings without a fire strategy, it cannot substitute for the engineering documentation that establishes the fire safety of the building's design. For buildings undergoing refurbishment, it does not substitute for a fire strategy addressing the refurbishment works.