The Building Regulations and Structural Fire Resistance
The Approved Document approach to satisfying regulatory requirements in England and Wales in the mid 1980s began a recognition of modern practice that continued into the ’90s with the introduction of the structural codes for fire resistant design embodied in BS5950 Part 8, and the draft Eurocodes 1991-1-2, 1993-1-2 and 1994-1-2. This has further developed with the publication of BS7974, the Code of Practice for Application of Fire Safety Engineering Principles to the Design of Buildings
Even the basic shape of structural sections, substantially unchanged for over 100 years, is now being enhanced with a shape specially developed for optimum performance in fire in the form of the asymmetric beam. The pace of change will continue through this decade as increasingly sophisticated methods are developed to allow design for fire to move away from consideration only of simple elements towards whole building behaviour in fire.
This website is a guide to the latest thinking in the field of fire safety. It is concerned primarily with solutions to structural fire resistance issues in steel-framed buildings. It will be updated frequently to ensure its relevance as a source of information on the fire resistance of buildings.
England and Wales
Provision for structural fire resistance of buildings is embodied in Part B of Schedule 1 of the Building Regulations 2000 as follows: “The building shall be designed and constructed so that, in the event of fire, its stability will be maintained for a reasonable period”.
Other sources of information
DD9999 is a Draft Development published by the British Standards Institution. The intention behind the development of the document is to provide a more transparent and flexible approach to fire safe design through the use of a structured approach to risk based design.
Scotland
The Scottish Building Regulations underwent a fundamental change in 2004 following the introduction of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003.
