Episode 35 – Part 2 – Comprehensive Insights into Internal Fire Safety with Jay Ridings TFT Consultants

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally: Welcome back to part two of fire safety with Jay Ridings from TFT Consultants. So yeah, internal fire safety, I suppose the opposite of external fire safety. And probably gets less airtime. There’s obviously been a lot that we mentioned that has been discussed around cladding. I think there’s lots of things I can think of in my mind that are probably more basic things like, it’s quite easy to walk around a supermarket and that a pallet’s been conveniently placed in the fire safety, fire exit.

Because it’s out the way of the main aisle, there’s those types of basic things, but I imagine there’s a hell of a lot more to it with, fire breaks and party walls and yeah, all sorts of different things. I suppose as a starting point, should we look at the, or discuss what the risk assessment process that you follow when you’re going into a building to look at What type of things are right and wrong and how that ties between the internals and externals.

I imagine it’s all you have to look at, as a whole. So is that a good place to start?

Jay Ridings: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a few different key points to cover here. One is I mentioned it before the importance of documentation. So when we come to a property, we always want to see a fire risk assessment.

In fact, I’ll just jump back one step. Actually, we always want to see a fire strategy ideally for a building which sets out how, how is fire safety addressed in, in that building, both internally and externally in terms of the external walls and how they tie together. So that’s really important.

Then we want to look at the fire risk assessment. For the building, which is needed in accordance with with legislation going back to 2005, I think, and before that there were fire certificates and it was done slightly differently. In 2005 the regulatory reform Fire Safety Act 2005, or words might be in a slightly different order, but that came in and it required a duty holder to carry out a fire risk assessment of a building.

Like you said, when you’re looking at that fire risk assessment, You’re looking at things, as you mentioned, like combustible materials being stored escape routes being blocked. And so all of that stuff is important. Emergency lighting all of that good stuff. So you’ve got that.

Then obviously, more recently, we’ve then had Grenfell June 2017. And then legislation has changed subsequent to that. So you’ve got a new Fire Safety Act and what’s then being a requirement from then is for residential property to then actually consider the risk associated with the external walls as part of the internal design.

Fire risk assessment. Okay. So it’s quite, you can see it’s quite it’s quite complicated, but I’ll definitely see

Matt Nally: why they’ve done that. Cause obviously the external clouding issue is causing the fire then to spread up and in in a way you wouldn’t expect normally,

Jay Ridings: Exactly. And obviously it’s quite very impactful in terms of the fire safety of the building.

And the important point is that fire safety is. Again, I’ve used this term word again, interrelated. So it’s all in, it’s all interconnected. So what fire engineers tend to do is they use a PAS 9980 methodology appraising the fire risks relating to the external walls and. That assessment of the external walls looks at the building holistically and considers the internal fire safety provisions.

How many escape routes are there? Is there a sprinkler system in place? What’s the fire alarm system? Is there mechanical ventilation and and opening vents, letting smoke out? How does it all work? So that is specifically the PAS 9980 methodology is specifically for blocks of flats.

But what we do see is. It tends to be applied to commercial buildings as well because it’s a useful methodology just generally for assessing risk and whether external walls are tolerable. So that fire engineers tend to use that not just as part of residential accommodation and assessing the fire risk assessment, but it’s used more generally where there are concerns with the external walls.

Matt Nally: Interesting. Okay. And is that because on other buildings that there isn’t the same level of requirement to to, understand that the fire risk elsewhere and so people are trying to be more mindful of it by using that methodology.

Jay Ridings: Residential property where you’ve got sleeping risk is always.

Has always been the focus. That’s what Grenfell was that those are the higher, highest risk of buildings that there are. So that has been the focus. I’m not sure whether this is just to manage it to keep the problem manageable, solvable in the first instance. And I’m sure we’ll come on to the future.

And what will happen there. But, it, That’s where the focus has been. If you start looking at commercial buildings you may not have sleeping risk. People aren’t sleeping there, so there are always people that are active around spotting, arguably spotting the danger. You also then look at buildings like hotels, which are excluded.

from the high risk buildings regulations. Those are buildings where you’ve got 24 hours security and management typically, so you haven’t just got a building where everyone’s asleep and no one’s going to be spotting problems. So I they’re viewed lower risk and it doesn’t, you, you don’t have the same requirements currently for those buildings.

Matt Nally: Yeah. That makes sense. I was just funny. As you said it, I was like, that’s a bit odd. And then just as you’re about came on to saying why I figured obviously you’ve got, the concierge downstairs or reception desk or whatever it might be. And there’s people monitoring what’s going on.

I suppose from your experience of doing different risk assessments, what are the biggest issues that come up with the common issues that come up? When you’re looking at building out, has it changed over time or is it, does it tend to be the same thing over and over? So

Jay Ridings: there’s two parts to this.

I’d say which are of interest. One is that. A lot of the fire risk assessments that we see often actually don’t pick up the biggest issues. And I think this probably ties into the cultural point that we picked up on before. This kind of legislative compliance type world may not maybe it’s given slight lip service.

I might be getting into trouble for saying that, you need to have a competent person undertaking a fire risk assessment. And. And it’s a slight check checkbox tick box exercise, I think. And so you, a lot of the time you’re seeing fire risk assessments that they may pick up some of the easy stuff, but maybe they don’t pick up some of the more complicated points.

So there are, but there are points that are pretty much always going to come up on buildings. You’re always going to have wear and tear. Impact damage, to fire doors, smoke seals or intermittent strips peeling away ironmongery being changed to doors and maybe, is that adequate?

Is that door set then a fire rated door set, you’re going to have tenants coming in and out of buildings, doing alterations, going through compartment walls, maybe not putting back fire stopping or putting in fire stopping as they’re required. So those are the type of issues that you always see.

I think it’s getting better. It is getting better. But if you think of a 50, 000 square foot office, 100, 000 square foot office, or a 250, bedroom hotel. There is a lot going on in those buildings. I don’t know if you’ve ever been back of house in a hotel, but they they’re not, they don’t look as good as the front areas.

And I imagine for those businesses, it’s a difficult challenge to maintain. All areas, including the ones that are non income generating is it’s a challenge to keep those up to speed. So you typically see problems with those areas and maybe some of these issues, these fire safety issues, which in isolation are quite small, but cumulatively become quite large.

They’re not all that they tend to be present and are not always. rectified immediately or ever. I think internally as well, a bit like external wall systems, it can be quite complicated. You can get more subtle, complicated shortfalls. And I’ll just quickly say, An example of two. One is compartmentation of walls and and whether walls and doors are fire resisting to the, to, to the required levels in the required places.

And that’s why I mentioned fire strategy reports. How do you know that building provides. the fire resistance and the protection and the compartmentation that it was designed to provide. It’s not always obvious and I’ve been on a lot of surveys. And I’ve dealt with the TFT, working with colleagues and wider teams, a lot of instances where you could turn up to a building and think someone’s obviously built this and it’s all okay, but that’s not the case.

And it goes back to, we talked about the external walls and cavity barriers not being fitted either at all or adequately. That’s a common problem. Then looking at compartmentation, has that compartmentation been properly designed and constructed often? It hasn’t. And a lot of projects when they’re doing the projects correctly they they really need to go into the detail of is that fire strategy and is the fire stopping, for example, around services, is that designed correctly?

If you’ve got however many cables going through, or if you’ve got a cable tray or ductwork or what conduit is that fire stopping there has someone just come and done it or has an engineer from Hilti or Rockwell actually approved that design, that is actually going to last 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes.

Matt Nally: Someone’s just punched a hole through to put some new services in and just undermine it all then.

Jay Ridings: Yeah, it’s exactly. It’s a mixture of stuff. That’s quite complicated with also. Stuff that’s really crude, like a contractor just coming in and ripping through a wall, which has been thought about for, it’s probably delayed a project by six months while the design’s been finalized and someone’s just come and burst through it.

So it, yeah, it’s, it can be complicated.

Matt Nally: I love that. Yeah. And I can imagine, I can think of a few examples where someone’s just come cut a massive section out, put something into patch it afterwards. And is it the same material and same same standards? Yeah. How much of your Review in the fire assessment focused purely on the fabric of the building being correct and set up the spec and whether the spec is right and so on and how much focuses on, practical use because one of the biggest problems is going to be people, the users in the building, we’ve got the fire doors in place, we’ve got I don’t know what do you call it?

The smoke detectors and someone’s put something over the smoke detector, or they’ve got the fire door wedged open because they want a breeze. How much does it focus on incorrect use versus just being actually correct as long as people are using it in the right way?

Jay Ridings: That’s a good, that’s a good question.

The. The use of the building, I, I tend to, and hopefully I’m not getting myself into trouble here. I tend to be less concerned with that because it’s an operational point. Work for lots of funds, lots of large investors, and the focus Here is what is the impact on life safety?

Obviously we need to, if you look at the TDD, commercial building surveys, guidance, no life safety is absolutely key and we’re not going to walk away from a building that we think is an absolute hazard. But if you’re looking at this, from a funds perspective and an investment perspective, the concerns of the complicated costly issues, such as replacing the cladding.

200 fire doors being incorrect. The fire stopping and like I mentioned with the external cladding, internal fire stopping can be very costly to survey. To identify the remedial works and then implement the remedial works. You can often look at something and think, Oh that’ll cost a few thousand, but actually by the time you’ve got a, the right people there, and you’ve looked at all the areas and you’ve done in some instances, intrusive investigations, it can really quickly spiral out of control.

So that’s the type of stuff that. I tend to focus on for, from an investment perspective, the operational stuff, of course, it needs to be right and someone needs to fix it. But you’d expect that to be picked up by the property management team by the fire risk assessor. And it’s a more kind of day to day maintenance issue rather than a fundamental problem with the building.

Matt Nally: Yeah. And you can’t be, you can’t be trying to put every. Caveats the wrong word, but potential use case in the buildings. You’ve got to know that, yes, it’s been set up correctly for use. And this

Jay Ridings: goes back to that point, Matt, when I said you’re only there for a day, a point in time, these are large complex buildings.

You can’t you’re not surveying. Noting every screw, every cable, you’re identifying the high level principles, really, which, which are impacting that building from a sort of condition and statutory perspective. Now that makes complete sense. I suppose my,

Matt Nally: my, my final question comes on to, older building versus newer building.

So where do you find the biggest challenges? Because it’d be easy to assume when it might be the case that older buildings, are more likely to be non compliant or have bigger issues on the basis that they were built before loads of more modern regulations were brought in and therefore a newer building should be in theory quite easy to turn up to and go yes it says material x on the sheet and it looks like it’s material x on the building is that the case or actually is it can it be just as complicated a new build versus a 200 year old castle again, quite extreme there on my example, but is it, yeah.

Cause I imagine you get a range of things, but yeah

Jay Ridings: I like that question and it might be one that I can’t absolutely nail the my, my personal preference. And I think your natural instincts right there is that the newer. Buildings are easier to survey not from fire safety perspective, but other in other ways as well.

They are more complex. They tend to be more complex. But they also tend to be simpler, more fit for purpose for a modern day occupation. And also absolutely key is that you tend to have, particularly now that Grenfell’s happened, you tend to have, we’ve got better, we’ve improved our systems.

You tend to have better information, a better audit trail there. So those tend to be. Slightly easier just generally, and they’re easier to get around. They tend to be open plan. You’ve got there like a concrete frame or a steel frame. They’re open plan. They’re easier to get around.

If you go to a building that’s 150 years old, that has had alterations all over the place and it hasn’t had arguably possibly, it hasn’t had that specialist construction development team in place. in the recent past with the highest level engineers involved. And it’s also then had deterioration of the fabric.

It’s potentially got asbestos in there. It’s got, other problematic materials. It’s got doors, which are hundreds of years old, that I think that is a, That is that, that can be more difficult from my perspective and a bit slightly more bitty, but but then the fire strategies, with, if you’ve got the flip side to that is the forms of construction there can be much more straightforward.

You’ve got non combustible stone walls, you don’t have any insulation, you’ve got masonry internal walls, it’s subdivided To a big, great, big, greater extent. So in so it’s not a completely black and white answer that, but my, my, from my experience, the more modern buildings are easier.

Matt Nally: Yeah, I can understand why because they’re, they’ll be built with modern regulations from the start, in mind and and that aspect, that makes complete sense. I think that’s been really interesting. There’s a lot, loads of different aspects around. Yeah, the internals of the property.

So I think one of the key things that we’ll look at next is regulations and the future of fire safety. So tune in for that.