 Hello, everyone and welcome to the fire safety verification method webinar for architects and building designers. We appreciate you all logging in and attending this session. My name is Alexander Armstrong. I'm here on behalf of the Australian Building Codes Board. And let me just I'm just here for some introduction and I will run you through the working self today. So we have myself running today's seminar. We have Paul England who is representing the Australian Building Codes Board from a fire engineering perspective. And he's providing us an introduction to the fire safety verification method. And we also have Mark Warbur from the AFAC, who is looking at providing a fire authorities perspective on the fire safety verification method. Following that, we will have some questions and answers. We would appreciate if you could log your questions throughout the presentation so that we have a chance to have a look through them and find common trends and answer any of those common questions that are coming through. And we will get through as many as we can. Today's presentation, we're looking at achieving a few learning outcomes for yourself. Firstly, it's gaining a better under technical understanding of the fire safety verification method for architects and building designers and how that will impact your job, your day to day job. Also to just gain a better understanding of how architects and building designers can be involved in the fire safety verification method process. And finally, as always, looking to increase everyone's confidence in working on projects using the fire safety verification method when it transitions into becoming a valid method within the Code on 1 May. Now I'll pass to Paul England, who will be looking at running an introduction to the verification method. Thank you. I'm going to just give you a brief overview and then run into a little bit more detail on a few of the critical areas. First thing to note is that the fire safety verification method is provided in Schedule 7 of the NCC 2019 and it's due to become active on 1 May this year. It provides a process for verifying compliance of fire safety performance solutions with the NCC. It's worth noting that other options can still be used, but the fire safety verification method does provide a robust method with the benchmark being deemed to satisfy building. So what is the purpose of the fire safety verification method? Well, essentially it's to ensure the minimum level of safety required by the NCC is met using the concepts equivalence. And to do this a similar or reference building is defined that complies fully with the DTS provisions. And then the level of safety for that building is checked against the proposed building solution. And if the proposed building solution is equivalent or safer, then you've complied with the NCC performance provisions. It sees a practical approach pending for quantification of the performance requirements. Currently the performance requirements are specified in qualitative terms, which is a challenge to convert that into acceptance criteria. So the fire safety verification method helps that process. It's not a new system or a new approach and the NCC currently does permit the equivalence concept to be used to demonstrate compliance. If you go back to the early 90s, the risk assessment and comparative approaches were used by Bourn-Beck of VUT to evaluate and compare requirements for developing new deemed to satisfy solutions for the NCC. And some of you may be aware of CSERISC, which came out of that work. Early in the 2000s, a code of practice was prepared by the Society of Fire Safety relating to fire safety design certification and peer review. And that was also highlighting the use of a comparative approach. More recently, 2005, the IFEG also incorporates the equivalence approach. And the equivalence approach has been used for some landmark buildings such as the 140 Williams Street project, which some of you may well know quite well. That was undertaken in Melbourne and involved some major reductions in fire resistance levels as well as other variations and some mitigation measures that were added. So that was a very landmark project dating from like 90s to early 2000s. There have been a number of questions asked about whether the DTS provisions are an appropriate benchmark. It should be borne in mind that the deemed to satisfy provisions have a rigorously tested rationale that has been through public comment and also scrutiny by all the states, territories, fire authorities and various others through the BCC process. The BCC, which is now the NCC, was originally derived from state and territory regulations. And these were reviewed and consolidated into the first BCA in 1988, but the first broadly adopted version of that was the 1990 version. Detailed review of the 1990 version was undertaken by the Fire Code Reform Centre, leading to a revised document which included a performance-based approach. And that was the BCA-96. The NCC is regularly updated based on detailed analysis and goes through a public comment process. And it's open to suggestions, so it's reviewed on a three-yearly cycle. And if you do have any suggestions for improvement, they should be submitted to the ABCB. There are a number of supporting resources that have been published to help with the use of the fire safety verification method. These include a handbook, and that provides detailed guidance on applying the fire safety verification method. The information is to assist all stakeholders, not just fire safety engineers, that are involved in the performance-based design brief process. And it identifies other relevant technical documents such as IFAG, international fire engineering guidelines, and national and international standards where appropriate. That's essentially a procedural document, it takes you through the big picture stuff. And there are additional information provided in data sheets which accompany the handbook. The data sheets are written in a form that can be regularly updated, so it's particularly easy to update. The handbook can also be updated if there's a need, but the data sheets are individually dated and have revision tables in them. They provide data and details of analysis and methods that would be useful where more relevant information isn't available. They can be progressively updated, as I've said before, as more relevant information becomes available. And they cover such things as development of design fires. There's a lot on effectiveness, which is the reliability and performance of fire safety systems that are commonly looked at in performance solutions. And also address issues such as occupant response and evacuation. Architects should really be aware and building designers of these documents. Some of them are a little bit technical, but others are more general. Okay, I'll now run through some of the highlights of the FISET safety verification method that makes it a little bit different from routine equivalence approaches. So the first thing is that there is guidance that's provided in the handbook on the selection of reference buildings. And this is really to limit what I've called BTS wrangling when defining the reference building. One of the most important aspects of the verification methods is making sure that an appropriate reference building has been defined. And some of the principles that should be applied in the selection process, there are more in the handbook, but I'll just run through some of the main ones. The reference building should fully comply with the NCC DTS provisions, including relevant state or territory variations. So if you're building in a particular state, you make sure that reference building complies with the relevant state variations. It should have the same footprint floor area and volume as the proposal. This has caused a fair bit of angst, but there are comments that the verification method and equivalence approach is really limited by the determination of an appropriate reference building. And by requiring a similar footprint floor area and volume, it takes out a number of the issues that could be, shall we say, manipulated to give an outcome. And depending on the perspective of the various participants in the performance based design brief, there could be lengthy discussions in which I'm called wrangling to be polite about whether it's positive or negative and whether it makes a fair comparison. So these principles are clearly defined to try and limit that flexibility. Similarly, you should have the same occupant numbers and characteristics as the proposal. This is an interesting one because if you stop playing around with occupant numbers, it has a massive impact on societal risk, which I'll talk briefly about a little bit later, and therefore makes comparison that can give some quite unusual results, which are valid, but it's easier to keep the same occupant numbers, shall we say. You should have the same fire brigade response and arrival time. Obviously, the building is going to be in the same location. And unless you're playing around with alarm times, the fire brigade would be expected to show up at the same time. Where there are options for fire protection measures adopted in combination or a combination of measures based on sound engineering principles should be adopted. This occurs. There are a number of places, even though it's deemed to satisfy in the NCC provisions that give you a large number of options as to what you may wish to use, especially in relation to smoke hazard management. It's therefore important that the whole of the performance based design brief team are satisfied that a reasonable approach based on sound fire engineering principles has been adopted to define an acceptable level of safety. And finally, last one I'll run through is if appropriate include additional features that may not be addressed or fully addressed through adoption of the current NCC DTS provisions. A couple of examples here. The DDA requires provision to be allowed for evacuation of people with disabilities. The NCC acknowledges it but doesn't really provide a clear deemed to satisfy advice. So obviously you're going to make provision for the evacuation of people with disabilities in both the reference building and the design building. Also, if you choose to use lifts for evacuation, that is something that you may also consider for the reference building, depending on the context. Okay, moving on. There's also, and this is a big strength of the verification method. It defines a minimum range of scenarios to be considered to reduce the risk of critical scenarios being overlooked. This doesn't preclude the addition of other verification methods where it's considered that they may well be more critical, but you have to consider these. And the word consider doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to do a massive detailed analysis. Some of the outcomes with these scenarios would be self-evident from a preliminary review, but that review needs to be documented and clearly articulated. Looking at some of these scenarios, there are some that maybe commonly haven't been used in the past for some performance solutions. Things like the first one which is blocked exits where a fire blocks an evacuation route. This is obviously very critical, especially when there's a single evacuation route or things like that. So it really makes you think about the layout of the building and is quite important. Another one of interest is fire starts in concealed spaces. Again, not always looked at in the past, but a fire breaking out of a concealed space that may not have a detection or alarm system or the operation of that may be deferred, again, can have a significant impact. Fire brigade intervention, and that's more, I'll leave that for the fire brigade to talk about, but that's very critical and should be considered. Both from perspective of firefighting, but also evacuation and the safety of firefighters. Common one from previous approaches is a worse credible scenario. That is generally reasonably well understood, but there's also a robustness check which looks at the reliability of systems and looking at failure of systems. So these are very important because not all fire safety systems have the same reliability. So they could perform and have the same efficacy, i.e. they achieve the safety if they actually operate in accordance with their design perspectives. But some systems might have a reliability of 50%, where others may be closer to 90%. So you've got to make sure you're comparing light with respect to reliability as well. Things like structural stability and other property protection are also considered. So it's an interesting list, but it's not exclusive, so you can always add to it. There are also some procedural requirements that are addressed in detail in the handbook. A performance based design brief process is mandatory. So it's not an option, it has to be done. Some participants are mandated, so clients or clients representative. And that may well be the architect or designer in some cases if they've been asked to act on behalf of the client. The architect or designer you're pleased to be note must be involved. Various specialist consultants are generally derived from a stakeholder analysis and it depends what the issues are, complexity of the building. So that's one that could be varied, but he's looked at. Fire brigade emergency services are definitely mandated and I'll let them talk to that later, but they have to be part of it. And obviously the appropriate authority subject to state legislation, which could be which would be a building surveyor or certifier serving a statutory role. That and their degree of involvement will vary from state to state. The performance based design brief team involved in is involved in defining the reference building as I've said before, and that's a very critical part of the process. The fire safety verification method does adopt an holistic approach and this has been identified by current Warren Center and others has been quite critical. So that means that you consider all the performance solutions interacting together as one performance solution or one performance design building, and that's compared to the reference building. So it's a holistic analysis of the interaction of all those variations and tenability criteria are specified in the fire safety verification method. If you are using a set the asset type analysis, although the sensitivity to those things is not as great as it could be in an absolute analysis because you're using a comparative analysis. And as I alluded to earlier, individual and societal risks should be considered. Individual risk really means looking at the risk of it to an individual where a societal risk means looking at, in simple terms, the risk of multiple fatalities from a single incident. Okay, we'll move on now. Okay, so now I'll just go through a little bit on the application of the fire safety verification method. So looking at the design process and obviously this is very close to your hearts has effectively been the chief designers of these buildings. The stakeholder input is critical to that and there are two boxes shown here. One is the NCC, what are called drivers and constraints, which are things like safety, health, amenity, accessibility, sustainability and protection of other property to the degree necessary. But there are additional drivers and constraints as you'll be well aware in relation to the design of a building. So you've got things like the usability of the building, aesthetics, costs, speed of construction, building flexibility, operational continuity, corporate image of the building owner, environmental protection, heritage protection, workplace health and safety, any other legislation that's relevant. And you may well have enhanced NCC drivers driven by wishes from a client, for example. So the role of a designer is to consider all these and the architects building designer has a critical task of identifying all these drivers and constraints that may impact on fire safety in addition to just the NCC provisions. So the NCC requirements are minimum required levels for career and based on critical societal drivers. When you've looked at that overall design process, you come up with a proposed building design and the bit we're focusing on is the NCC compliance determination. But you will also have to determine whether you've complied with the other additional drivers and constraints that lies outside the scope of this presentation. So moving on, selection of assessment method. This is a key role for the performance design brief group. And the first part of this process is to check NCC compliance. And the first question you have to ask is does the design satisfy all DTS requirements? If it satisfies those DTS requirements, then there's no need for any further performance solution development or analysis. However, if those DTS solutions aren't satisfied, then you have to go to performance solution path. And the next question is, is the fire safety verification method applicable? If it is, then a decision is made to progress down that path. If not, then you look at other permitted NCC assessment methods. So moving on now to assuming the decisions being made to follow the fire safety verification method. And we then get heavily involved in the performance-based design brief process. Core stakeholders, they're listed here. Fire safety engineers, it's obviously got to be involved. Building surveyor certifier, and that's the statutory certifier. Emergency services, fire brigade, client owner or delegate. In some instances, those requirements may be delegated to the architect and our designer. And then architect and building designer. So those are the core members of the performance-based design brief team. But there are other members depending on what you're looking at as part of your process. So you could have fire safety practitioners such as emergency management consultants, looking at evacuation issues, active and passive fire protection company systems. You may be looking at a performance solution that involves them, active and passive fire protection, and also the designers or installers of those details. You might wish to specify a high level of performance out of say a sprinkler system. You need somebody to tell you whether that's practical and achievable on your project. Various specialist consultants, structural engineers, services engineers, acoustic access consultants, consulting building surveyors. The main person with all the access to these people is the architect and building designer. So they need to be identifying, along with the fire safety engineer who should be involved. Material suppliers, these may not be fire safety practitioners, but with issues such as combustibility to be considered, they may need to be involved. A peer reviewer, if it's a complex fire safety design, could be required. You may have tenants representative building operations reps for looking at the implementation stage, a builder insurers. All those should be considered for potential membership. And the issues that will be addressed during that brief are description of proposed building solution and the implementation plan. So that implementation plan is again critical. The building has to be buildable and built at the end of the day and comply. Define the reference building and then you identify variations between the reference building and the DTS provisions. Identify relevant performance requirements. All this is currently required by the NCC, but the process is better defined in the fire safety verification method. Identify relevant scenarios. There's a helping hand there. And then identify analysis methods, inputs and criteria. The FSVME is quite open about analysis methods. So it's not prescriptive, not overly prescriptive. But the use of those methods should be justified. Moving on to the next slide. So the architect building design as well. Just a highlight. Architect building designer appointed at the start of a project. So you're there from the start. So you should be fully involved in the performance based design brief right from the very start and be driving it. You may be the only person with a broad coverage of all the drivers and constraints that need to be communicated to the design team. And that includes the fire safety engineer. You may also be delegated by the client owner to act on their behalf. So you need to have a broad understanding of the NCC along with other drivers and constraints. But you may need to be supported by a consultant building survey. So where the statutory building survey as well is limited to just a yes or no regarding certain things with compliance with being to satisfy. If you want a consultant building survey that's going to get involved in the design process, they could be involved in the design team. But they do need to be independent of the statutory building survey in most states. So the architect or building designer will tend to coordinate consultants if no project managers are involved. And your important role is to continually check all drivers and constraints have been satisfied. And then the fire safety engineer is made aware of any potential changes even outside the fire safety area that could impact on the fire safety engineering design. And finally, you go through a review of the analysis and sign off. So the building survey, peer review and fire brigades will be particularly interested. But you need to review the final design documentation implementation and maintenance plans to again determine independently if all the drivers have been satisfied. You want to review the documentation to check if there is adequate information to facilitate compliance at the end of the construction program. Projects and through the building life. And also look at the responsibilities for design and implementation. Who is going to be responsible for that? As the lead designer, you have some exposure in this area. So if you haven't allocated somebody to fulfill the role of overseeing the design, noting that a building surveyor does have some responsibilities, but that's generally an audit process. So you really need to consider that and potentially a good way of doing that is to consider the extension of the performance based design brief post the design verification. That's where the fire safety verification method ends unless there's any further design changes, but the implementation is critical. So moving on to just the last slide. And as I've indicated, this really isn't relevant or specific to the fire safety verification method, but the reliability of the system should have been considered. And therefore this process needs to have been considered to some degree. And if you look at this diagram, it is complicated. If you look at the orange areas, you've got things where products supply chains come in. You might need product designers involved in the performance based design brief, but they're definitely going to be involved in the installation. And you've got to look at how any specific design details that are relevant to the performance based solution are communicated to those people. Obviously, the builder has a coordination role, but so does the architect and building designer. And moving through the construction process, you've also got building use and occupation. There's no point in making assumptions about how occupants are going to behave and what cues they're going to be given if the system isn't established to provide that. And you have to maintain your inspection and maintenance procedures throughout the life of the building. So again, that comes into the handover from the architect. So you have an involvement extending the role of the performance based design brief team may help you in this and delegating certain tasks. So that's a brief summary of the verification method and just a little bit more on the end. So thank you very much. Thank you, Paul. Now we'll pass across to Mark Warbara from AFAC to provide a fire authority perspective on the fire safety verification method. Thank you, Alex. And thank you to the Australian Building Codes Board for allowing me the opportunity to be involved in these webinars. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Assistant Commissioner of Community Safety for Fire and Rescue and New South Wales, but also the Chair of the AFAC Building Environment Technical Group. So obviously a key stakeholder in the FSVM. As we've heard from Paul, the National Construction Code will now have a requirement that the solution provided by the FSVM must now be compared to the same type of building with DTS provisions. That's an important point and an attractive point for fire services who like certainty in design. The FSVM must be equal to or safer than the DTS result. And we do appreciate, fire services appreciate that this will require additional work and reviewing, but it will also enable a more informed holistic safety comparison and therefore expected to be a better result in terms of safety for both the occupants and fire services. And that's an important point because fire services, our responding firefighters have this building as our place of work once an emergency occurs. So any design using the verification method will still have to go through the same approvals process that's in place within each state and territory. That exists for performance solutions in New South Wales, my jurisdiction. Any performance solution comes through a courtesy of the EPA legislation. It's not an automatic acceptance and it does not have the same acceptance as say code mark, for example. It is a requirement of the FSVM to use all relevant sections of the verification method and that if any stakeholder has a contrary view or does not approve of the design or process etc. Then this must be documented and attached to the proposal when submitted for approval. That means that any, there's a declaration that there's been a disagreement or a difference of opinion over certain provisions. As well as that in terms of the process under which we operate, AFAC welcomes the review by ABCB of I think International Fire Engineering Guideline and will be collaborating closely with the ABC in that review. Paul touched on the Fire Brigade Intervention Model and now AFAC is currently reviewing the FBM, Fire Brigade Intervention Model and this is scheduled to be ready for release of the FSVM and its implementation from the 1st of May. The fire safety verification methodology is supported by all AFAC agencies. There were certainly some internal debate and there were comments about things in relation to such things as data. But AFAC believes that with good will, good faith by all parties, any varying opinions can be sorted out in the fire engineering brief process that we'll be going through with you. The fire services are a key stakeholder in this process and are expecting to be involved as per the NCC provisions. The extent of the fire services involvement however will be decided or determined once the proposal is reviewed. Fire services do understand that the use of the VM is not mandatory and that there are the paths and methodologies and approaches to show compliance with the NCC, particularly around performance provision. Regardless of the methodology used there, fire services are expecting to be involved as a stakeholder. Currently the fire services around Australia and New Zealand are reviewing their approach to regulation and their regulatory role. What is the future of fire services? In some respects comes out of the Shergoll-Wear Report, the Building Confidence Report commissioned by the Building Ministers Forum. That starts to look at what our role should be. Certainly there's been criticism in the past of fire services, their performance, their timeliness, their cost. What we're looking for is definitely national consistency and we see the VM as one approach to ensuring better consistency in fire services input into making buildings safer. However, due to the different regulatory regimes that we work under in each state and territory, there will understandably be some differences, some variants. It's important to note that it's expected that the VM will require a degree of competency. And the Warren Centre project that some of you may be aware of, professionalising fire safety engineering, has certainly highlighted the fact that not only the industry has to raise the bar on its performance, but fire services do as well. And we're a key stakeholder, a key contributor to the Warren Centre's project. One last point, and it was one of the selling points to have AFAC's approval or endorsement of the FSVM when it was proposed, is around the fact that there has been limited acknowledgement of firefighters as occupants of the building. But the VM actually introduces that in terms of the scenarios against which we're going to test the performance of the building. And that includes the unexpected catastrophic failure. Certainly we don't want firefighters entering a building that then falls down on. So thank you again for allowing me to be involved and I'll hand back to Alex. Thank you, Mark. We'll now move into the question portion of today's webinar. Please feel free to continue to send through any questions if you have them based on today's continent. But first off, I will direct a question to Paul, which is, will the architect be expected to produce a set of drawings for the DTS reference building? I think this will depend to a large extent on a case by case basis. And the level of detail in the drawings will also vary depending on obviously on the stage of the project as well. I think if you start talking about a whole set of drawings involving a detailed design stage or final design, I think a full set of drawings probably wouldn't be appropriate. Normally the fire safety verification method and most performance solutions should be undertaken. Probably a schematic design stage leading into design development and then the details are carried on. So theoretically you would need a building that's got a clearly defined layout and the details that are pertinent to the actual study and the analysis that's been undertaken. Whether they're fully developed drawings for all purposes is a matter of debate. But probably the easiest way, depending on the similarity of the buildings, is to use your existing buildings and then just change them as to what you would do for DTS compliance in accordance with what was agreed at the performance design brief stage. Thank you, Paul. The next question I will answer, which is if proposing to use the fire safety verification method and other methods, could this be incorporated into the fire engineering brief rather than two separate reports? So this is a terminology based question. Traditionally in the fire engineering world, the fire engineering brief has been the documentation terminology used. The ABCB has started to introduce the term performance-based design brief. The intention that is these are two similar processes. The key differentiator being that the performance-based design brief is used commonly across the entirety of the code. The fire engineering brief is the same process, however, is specific to the fire engineering brief. They can be used and will likely be used interchangeably as the FEB or fire engineering brief term is currently used throughout the fire engineering area. But either or is basically the same process. Next question is I will push to Paul. Is the reference building considered to be a hypothetical building? I'm not too sure what is meant by a hypothetical building. I think, again, it ties in with the previous answer I gave. It's a building that should be able to be built. It's a building that is very similar to the proposed performance solution, but has the variations from the thing to satisfy provision change so that they do comply with the DTS provisions. So it should be potentially a real building, but it's not going to be built necessarily unless when you go through the process you decide that the thing to satisfy building is easier to build than your performance solution. It wouldn't necessarily be a first time. So basically it has to be really enough that it can be built, but obviously the intention is that it's not going to be built. I don't know whether that's helping. Thanks, Paul. Look, I'll pass this next question to Mark, specifically reference to AFAC. Do AFAC agencies expect to have an increase in workload or reviewing fire safety designs as a role of the commencement of the fire safety verification method? And then following on from that, do they expect any additional work as part of their submissions towards them as a result of this process? Thanks for the question. Yes, short answer, yes. We expect more buildings to come our way. We expect, I mean, it is also dependent on the take up of industry. The FSVM, as I mentioned, is going to impose a little more additional work, a bit more rigor around proposals, and therefore I'm not sure whether the industry may shy away from that. However, certainly between the FSVM and some other developments in the building environment space, the regulatory space, we're expecting more work to come fire services way. Some of that is being driven by the BMF and the implementation of Sure Gollawere. Some of it is certainly being driven by community and government expectations. In preparation for that, my technical group put up a briefing to the AFAC Council, itemising some of the expansion of our role that could be coming our way, and flagging the fact that we need to be resourced properly to be able to meet that demand. Thanks, Mark. I'll pass this question, next question on to Paul, which is, should architects and building designers be involved in the performance-based design brief? Absolutely, you couldn't have a performance-based design brief without your lead designer involved. They have to give input into all aspects of the design, and essentially they're responsible for coordinating the outcomes as well. They are an integral part and should always be involved in a performance-based design brief. Thanks, Paul. I'll lead this next one on to yourself as well, which is, will the fire safety verification method apply to all building classes? Well, the version that it's in, or the part of the NCCC it's in, relates to class 229 buildings, and as such it can be applied to those class 229. The decision whether it applies to class 1 buildings and 10 buildings depends on whether it's ever inserted into that document. That's my perspective on it. So it's really a matter of the scope. There's no reason why the procedures couldn't be applied to a class 1 building, but whether it's practical is perhaps another matter. Thank you for that, Paul. And our next question, which is, will the fire safety verification method apply to new or renovating buildings? I might get Mark's response to this one first. Okay, my understanding is that if it involves a performance solution, it will come to us. So if the renovation of the building, a major renovation, has significant performance solutions involved in the design, then the FSVM could be used in that pathway. Thanks, Mark. And look, I will just extend on that and say the other regulatory response that is also, is the fire safety verification method can be applied to any building which is considered to be new building work. And that is defined by your state and territory regulations, and does vary across all states and territories in Australia. So you'd have to go to reference of your appropriate authority, be that your building certifier or surveyor or your local council, and they will let you know whether what is being done is considered new or renovating building, new works or renovating, and whether something like the fire safety verification method is an appropriate method for that piece of work. And then look, thank you. That is the last question that we've got coming in currently. We appreciate everyone logging in. And I think that will bring an end to today's webinar. Thank you.