 Hi. Welcome, everyone, to the Fire Safety Verification Method webinars for fire safety engineers. We're happy that you're all attending this afternoon's session. It's a new piece of work for us, which we're looking to do in the education space and hopefully provide practitioners with a bit more of an understanding on how to use the fire safety verification method as we move closer to 1 May, where it will be a—where all the states and territories will be picking it up to be used. So today's session is—we have a few presenters. So I have myself, Alexander Armstrong from the Australian Building Code, forward. I will be doing a brief introduction. We've also engaged Paul England as a fire safety engineer to provide the main content from today's presentation to provide a bit of a further understanding on the technical details of the fire safety verification method and how to use it. We'll be finishing up for the presentation session with Mark Wybrow from AFAC to give us a bit of a fire authority perspective as we move closer towards a date where it is a valid pathway for a performance solution. And we're finishing off with hopefully about half an hour of questions. So for a bit of housekeeping, participants can log questions through the question and answer function that should be available on the bottom of your screen. If you open that up, you can type your questions in. They'll come through us. We will review them and get through as many questions as we can. Otherwise, questions will be taken on notice and we'll be looking through them to develop further tools and resources to support the fire safety verification method. So please feel free to put in any question you'd like. Apologies, we won't be able to provide much technical support throughout the process for this. So if you send those questions through, unfortunately, most likely not going to be answered. That's it for myself. I'm now going to pass across to Paul England and I'll let him run with the presentation from now. Thanks Alex. Okay, I'm going to give a quick introduction to the fire safety verification method. Okay, the fire safety verification method is provided in Schedule 7 of the NCC 2019. It becomes active on the 1st of May 2020, which is just around the corner. It's a process for verifying compliance with the fire safety performance solutions with the NCC. Other options can still be used, but the FSVM does provide a robust basis for the assessment of performance solutions. What is the performance of the FSVM? Well, essentially it's to ensure that the minimum level of safety required by the NCC is met using the concept of equivalence. A similar reference building, compliant with the DTS provisions, is defined. This provides a useful benchmark for the comparative analysis. The analysis then is required to check whether the level of safety of the proposed building solution is greater than that for the reference building. So you're trying to be at least as safe as the reference building, but in most cases probably a little bit safer, which is a good conservative approach. Comparative risk-based approaches have been used for quite some time from the early 90s in Australia, initially based on the work of Womback and the development of an early risk model called CISA risk. There were also some landmark analyses done about that time on quite complex buildings. Many of you will know of the 140 Williams Street project where there were significant reductions in FRLs offset by enhancements to sprinkler systems, amongst other things. That was undertaken using a multi-scenario analysis, as well as some real fire burns. The Engineers Australia Society of Fire Safety released the code of practice in 2003, which has probably got overlooked with time, but that looked at the code of practice for fire safety design, certification and also peer review. In accordance with the BCA, it recommended an equivalence approach to be considered and defined a process reasonably similar to the current fire safety verification method, except that it didn't include the specific scenarios that I'll address a little bit later. Also, I peg from 2005 indicated that comparative and equivalence approaches were an appropriate means of assessing compliance with the performance requirements. The FSVM can be considered to be facilitating quantitative approaches for multiple variations. You can address multiple variations with it. There has been a little bit of information going around that you have to consider each individual variation independently, and it's not very flexible for complex buildings. The reality is that you nominate a reference building and compare it to a performance solution that incorporates all those variations from the dean to satisfy. It applies an holistic approach to evaluation, which is one of the major attributes for it. Moving on to the next slide. The next thing is are the NCC DTS provisions an appropriate benchmark? Again, there have been questions raised about whether the DTS provisions actually satisfy the performance requirements. The dean to satisfy provisions have been regularly tested going through a very rigorous process of public comment. The BCA, which is now the NCC in its original format, was derived from state and territory regulations, which were then reviewed to form the original BCA 88, and the first one that was fully adopted, which was the BCA 1990. Following from that, there was a detailed review of the building code undertaken by the Fire Code Reform Centre, and they actually pulled the whole code to pieces and then built it back up again, and that led to the developments of a performance-based BCA in 1996. That's gone through numerous iterations, being regularly updated based on detailed technical analysis and public comment. Realistically, the NCC DTS provisions are well tested, and that process is ongoing, and it's open to suggestions for improvement on a three-year cycle. If there are any cases where limitations with the DTS approaches are identified, the best approach is to raise it with the ABCB and perhaps suggest some improvements. Moving on, there have been a number of supporting resources that have been developed to support the verification method. The main one is the humble, and that provides detailed guidance of applying the Fire Safety Verification Method. It provides information to assist all the stakeholders. You have a large number of stakeholders involved in a performance-based design brief team, and I'll go through that in a little bit more detail later on. The humble identifies other relevant technical documents such as IFAG, national and international standards, where appropriate that can be made use of. It supplements Schedule 7, its focus is procedural, and it really defines the expectations of how the FSVM should be applied. It doesn't prescribe specific method of analysis, models or input data, that's for the Fire Safety Engineer to propose, and the Building Certifier or Building Surveyor to agree along with other key stakeholders. It has been issued as a preview document, and again, if there are any comments, they should be forwarded to the ABCB. The handbook references data sheets, which are addressed on the next slide, and the data sheets have been separated from the main volume to facilitate easy update, so they can be rapidly updated if better information becomes available. They provide data and details of analysis methods that are useful, where there's no more relevant data. As I said before, it's up to the Fire Safety Engineer and the Building Certifier and the other stakeholders what's used, but where some guidance is being looked for, it's provided in these data sheets. Just briefly going through the list, the B group look at design fires, says overview looks at characteristic input data, looks at them in probabilistic terms, as well as a prescriptive fire, a deterministic fire. There are also a number of data sheets that look at the effectiveness of various fire protection systems. This is an issue where it's been identified that there is a lot of missing data in Australia, very little data from Australia, but there are some sources, and these have been put together with the available information. So as an interim measure, these are useful resources, but again, if more information, better information is available, it can be used and they can be easily updated on an ongoing basis. So if there is more information, make it available to the NCC. Finally, the D group of data sheets are all consolidated because they're also integrated and relate to each other, but again, they can be updated if necessary. Moving on to some of the highlights. Guidelines to limit DTS wrangling when defining the reference building. This is quite a sensitive issue. Obviously, being able to compare a performance solution against a theme to satisfy solution is a very positive thing and gives it a good sound benchmark, but the defining of the reference building can be very subjective. So a lot of effort has gone into defining some principles that should be followed when defining the reference building. Some of these, just some of the main highlights are the reference building needs to fully comply with the NCC DTS provisions, including relevant states or territory variations. So you could get a different reference building in a different state because of the state variations. It should have a same footprint floor area and volume as the proposal. It should be of the same general class, etc. as well. It's a little bit silly comparing a high-rise building with a single-story residential building. So common sense needs to prevail and there's some guidelines in relation to that. You should have the same occupant numbers and characteristics as the proposal. Have the same fire brigade response times and arrival times after notification as the proposal, unless there's some performance change that impacts that. Where there are options of fire protection measures, and there are a number of NCC DTS solutions that give you three or four different options, the combination that should be adopted should be based on sound engineering principles that would be expected to provide an acceptable level of safety. So don't go for the bottom level, go for a reasonable level. If appropriate, include additional features that may not address or be fully addressed through the adoption of the NCC DTS provisions. There are gaps that aren't addressed such as provisions for evacuation for people with disabilities. They sort of fit in other parts of the NCC, but obviously you should be considering that. If lifts are considered to be used for evacuation again, normally you'd use those in both buildings. Okay, next one. We're looking at a list of a minimum range of scenarios to be considered and this reduces the risk of critical scenarios being overlooked. So this is a real strength of the verification method in that it says that you need to consider all these different scenarios. It doesn't mean you have to do heaps and heaps of analysis necessarily, but you need to consider them and make sure that they've been adequately addressed. There are 12 main scenarios, but you can also be looking at sub-scenarios. You might have to look at fires in different places, etc. I've highlighted a few that I consider are quite significant and important. The first one is a fire blocks and evacuation route. This is quite critical, especially when you're looking at a number of exits available from an area and can have quite a profound impact and quite often gets overlooked. Fire starting in concealed spaces. Again, these are not necessarily common, but a fire breaking out of a concealed space can grow rapidly and present some hazards. Fire brigade intervention. I'm not really going to go into this in too much detail because we've got fire brigade presenting, but it's very important that the fire brigade intervention is considered, not just in relation to evacuation but also provisions for suppression and the fire brigade have to do their job safely. We've got a traditional, shall we say, scenario, which is a challenging fire or worse credible scenario. These things are quite often addressed in standard practice, but then we move on to robustness check, which is looking at failure of some of the systems. Again, this is tended to get overlooked in some cases and is very critical. Not all systems are equal. You can have some relatively high reliability systems, which use automatic sprinkle systems. In that class, when you start looking towards zone pressurization systems that are quite complex, typically, unless a lot of effort goes into them, the reliability of those is going to be much less. These are sorts of things that the fire safety verification method brings out. Okay, moving on to the next slide. Some of the procedural requirements and other features that are in the verification method. Performance-based design brief is mandatory. It should be done all the time anyway, but it spells that out. Some of the participants are mandated. Clients or clients representative, architect or designer. These are selected on the case-by-case basis, but various specialist consultants, if you're looking at structures, if you're looking at mechanical services, they should really be involved. Fire brigade emergency services are critical and have to be involved. Obviously, you need an appropriate authority, which is subject to state legislation at the stage they can be involved in a project, but you need a statutory building surveyor or certifier, depending on the legislation. The performance-based design brief team is involved in defining the reference building, and this is a key job. As I mentioned before, a holistic approach is adopted. The building incorporating all variations is compared to the reference building rather than the series of individual variations being considered in isolation. All those interactions are looked at. Tenability criteria are specified in, if you're using an asset analysis, which is helpful, although for a comparative analysis, those tenability criteria are often less critical. Individual and societal risks are required to be considered. Moving on, I'm going to go through an example, but I'll just give you a very brief, simple definition of individual and societal risks. Individual risk is a frequency at which an individual may sustain a given level of harm as a result of a building fire in the context of this fire. So, title risk is the frequency of n or more people sustaining a given level of harm as a result of a building fire. So, we're looking at cases of multi-fatality fires, and these are more sensitive to the community in a large number of ways. Okay, I'm just going to go through an example now, which will be a little involved, but it's running through a case of looking at extended travel distance, which is a good example of how the FSVM identifies issues that can get missed. So, this is looking at an extension of travel distance from an SOU door to a single stair from six meters to 12 meters. So, if you follow the principles of the FSVM, the reference building should have the same footprint of the building. The number of occupants, and hence the number of apartments, should be the same, which would effectively require the same number of apartments. So, this is a reference building, which would require two exits. So, you've got the same number of apartments, but to comply with the six-meter travel distance, you've got two exits, and you've effectively doubled the number of apartments and the number of occupants. Therefore, when you look at this proposed variation, it isn't simply an increase in the travel distance and the time to tenability in the corridor for those occupants to evacuate. It's also a deletion of an exit, and that will tend to have a significant impact, particularly on the blocked exit scenario. So, it's appropriate to expect to detail the analysis to evaluate these enhancements for fire safety designed to address the increased risk of deleting the exit. So, it's not just a simple analysis that you might think on the benefit on face value. So, moving to the next slide. But what if you look at a single stair and you've just got an extended travel distance? Well, this is an interesting case because when you look at that, what you actually do is you increase the number of apartments served by a single stair. So, instead of the previous case where you had the same number of SOUs, you've now doubled the SOUs served by that single stair, and you've doubled the number of occupants at risk. So, what that has is an effect of basically doubling the risk of ignition and also doubling the risk of or the number of occupants exposed. And Gronesco is an example, and you can download this from the web. It's openly available. I just looked at a single floor, but he came up with an estimate of the increased risk of an increase in risk of 328%, which is in the right ballpark just by back of the envelope calculations. So, again, if you did use this method, I emphasised this approach of defining a reference building is not permitted by the handbook. But if you did use this approach, you'd have to be looking at reducing the risk by about 400% to get equivalence. These are very interesting aspects that are looked at. Now, if you look at it from, and with this, if you applied the fire blocking an exit route, essentially very simple fire blocking an exit route that's very localised but quite hot. So, in front of the single stair, you would struggle to evacuate that floor. Your whole floor would be blocked, whereas with two exits, potentially anywhere between half and 90% of the occupants on the floor could get away and have access to an exit if they evacuated promptly. You've still got your asset for your corridor, but these are the sorts of issues that do get raised. And it also raises some design options if you're looking at design, because here, if we go back to the previous slide, if you have a look at the two-stair option, the best place for these stairs would be to put them at each end of the corridor so that you can travel away from the fire wherever the fire occurs. These are design details that also drop out. So, we'll move on now to application of the FSVM. Okay, I've gone into the overall construction process here to see to show how the verification method meshes with the design process. You need to be aware that the design process is much greater than just looking at the NCC. So, ideally, a fire safety engineer should be involved from day one and basically working with the stakeholders to borrow some terminology from the Warren Centre, ladies' studies, to derive some drivers and constraints from the stakeholders. And the NCC, drivers and constraints, typically are safety, health, and immunity, accessibility, sustainability, and protection of other property to a limited extent. When you look at the broader design process, you're looking at usability, aesthetics, costs, speed of construction, building flexibility, operational continuity, corporate image, environmental protection, heritage protection, workplace health and safety, other legislation, and potentially some stakeholders might want enhanced NCC drivers as well. So, the role of a designer is to look at all these issues and come up with a proposed building design. Once that proposed building design has been identified, then there is a process of checking or verifying compliance with the NCC, obviously, but all the other drivers and constraints as well. But here, I'm focusing on the NCC and the fire safety verification method. So, we'll move on now. The next is selection of assessment method. So, the first thing that happens is that the fire safety engineer would check compliance with the dean to satisfy, and if the dean to satisfy provisions that satisfy, there would be no need to consider a performance solution. The building surveyor also needs to check that at this stage, and that's a key role for the building surveyor. If that DTS solution or if it doesn't comply with the DTS requirements, then it's got to be a performance solution. The performance solution could be the FSVM if the method is applicable, which we'll be looking at later, but other NCC assessment methods that are permitted could also be considered as well. Just a note going back to the design process. A statutory building surveyor in a number of states has a very limited role in relation to design. They cannot have design input because of the risk of a conflict of interest. So, the building surveyor needs to be a little bit standoffish in these roles, but he should be at least able to give some input if the fire safety engineer claims that the dean to satisfy provisions have been satisfied, and he should also be looking very carefully at the selection of the verification method or assessment methods that have been used. Next one. Assuming you go on for the fire safety verification method, you will assemble a performance-based design brief team. The course stakeholders in that, as we mentioned before, are the fire safety engineer, building surveyor certifier, statutory, emergency services, fire brigade, client owner or a delegate and architects building designer. There should be a description of the proposed building solution and an implementation plan. Considering implementation is quite critical because you have to be able to consider the reliability system, and if your implementation plan doesn't consider all the necessary checks and balances, you should be dropping the reliability of some of the systems. So, that's quite an important stage. The next stage is to look at a stakeholder analysis and selection of other stakeholders. Depending on the extent of the variations from the dean to satisfy, you could be looking at a range of fire safety practitioners that could involve emergency management consultants, active and passive fire protection system designer supplies installers, various specialist consultants, and I've included a consulting building surveyor on this list because if you need that detailed input, you can't be using the statutory building surveyor for that. So, hiring another consultant may be appropriate. Material suppliers, peer reviewer if there's one required, tenants representatives, building operation reps if they're available, a builder insurer. So, that could be quite a long list. Going through the process, you've got define the reference building, very difficult process, got to be put a lot of effort in, identification of variations from the NCC dean to satisfy provisions, identify relevant performance requirements, identify relevant scenarios, and then identify methods of analysis inputs criteria for comparison, etc. So, moving on to the next slide, which is just recapping the fire safety engineers role. Their fire safety engineers involvement should begin ideally at the early stages as I've mentioned, and the performance-based design brief team may not be fully constituted, but it's good if it has. Once that design is adequately defined, you then move on to checking for a performance solution. A design fire safety engineer manages and documents the whole performance-based design brief process. He proposes the, or she proposes the reference building, and as a minimum all core members should be involved in confirming that that's a suitable process, and a suitable benchmark. They identify variations from the DTS, and obviously the building surveyor certifier must be satisfied that all loads have been addressed. Again, identification of performance requirements, etc. Building surveyor has to be satisfied. The design fire safety engineer identifies analysis methods, inputs, criteria. The FSVM does allow flexibility, so they can decide what they want to use, but the core members of the performance-based design team, as a minimum, should be confirming that they're happy with that, or explaining why they're not and other methods and data should be used. Once the critical parameters have been designed, the fire safety issues, the PBDB process is complete, and you progress to the analysis stage. Next slide. The next slide is analysis and sign-off. Basically, if everything's been done well on the performance-based design brief stage, this is relatively straightforward. You do the comparative criteria, make sure they're satisfied, you document your plan. If there are some things, if the comparative criteria aren't satisfied, you'll have to investigate further mitigation methods, and then update the proposed building and loop through the process. A key thing here is, if the FSE is not going to be fully involved through the construction process, responsibilities for ensuring full implementation, commissioning, verification, and maintenance of the design should be delegated to appropriate practitioners. Not really an FSVM thing. FSVM is verification of the design, but there's no point in doing a design if it's not going to be implemented properly. That has to be input. Then quickly moving on to the last slide, which is looking at the role of the performance-based design brief team post verification. Often it ends. This shows you how complicated that process is, the construction process and subsequent building occupancy. It can be split into three major processes, the compliance checking process, construction process, and building use and occupancy. Essentially, if you follow this chart in your own time, you'll see that once the compliance of the verification method has been assessed, building approvals granted by the building's surveyor or certifier, that then goes through to the builder who can start work. They rely heavily on the product supply chain. All that product supply chain is involved in providing documentary evidence and evidence that installation has been undertaken properly. That's then over viewed by a building surveyor looking at auditing that process, who has to decide whether the building is fit for occupation, which isn't necessarily compliance. There's a whole issue there that needs to be addressed. Once the building surveyor is satisfied, he can issue an occupancy permit and building documentation should be issued to the owners that indicate how the systems operate and how they should be maintained. That then spreads through to the building use and occupation. I'd better stop there. I've run over a couple of minutes. My apologies. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for that, Paul. Now, I will pass over to Mark Wybrow from AFAC, who will provide a bit of the fire authorities' perspective on the fire safety verification method as we progress closer to the one-may adoption date. Okay. Thank you, Alex, and thank you to the Australian Building Care's Board for allowing me to speak on behalf of AFAC. AFAC is the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services. My role in AFAC is the Chair of the Building Environment Technical Group. So, we're looking at fire services' regulatory roles in the building environment. I hope my points don't cover too many of Paul's, but there might be a bit of repetition there. So, we know the NCC will now have a requirement that the solution provided by the FSVM must now be compared the same type of building with DTS provisions. The FSVM must be equal or safer than the DTS result. We see that as a very good thing. Fire services, I suppose, typically are quite conservative. We see the best and the worst of buildings, I suppose, and DTS is the recipe by which we've grown up with. We do appreciate that this will require additional work and reviewing by practitioners, but Paul mentioned before the work being done by the Warren Centre in terms of professionalising fire safety engineering, and that's something that both Fire and Rescue New South Wales and AFAC support. Not only for the industry, but certainly for the fire services. We need to come up to speed as well. We need to have the same comparable level of competence as the rest of the industry to enable us to contribute to safer buildings. Any design using the verification method will still have to go through the same approvals processes that now exist for any performance solution. It's not an automatic acceptance, and it does not have the same acceptance as, say, a code mark certificate. It's a requirement of the verification method to use all sections of the VM, and that if any stakeholder has a contrary view, and that includes emergency services, or does not approve of the design or process, then that must be documented and attached to the proposal when submitted for approval. Another piece of work that's being undertaken by the Australian Building Codes Board is the review of IFEG, and AFAC welcomes that, and will be collaborating closely with the Board in that review. At the same time, AFAC is currently reviewing its Fire Brigade Intervention Model, the FBIM, and this is scheduled to be ready for release with the FSBM implementation on the 1st of May. The fire services verification method is supported by all of the AFAC agencies, and although during the process of getting this into the NCC, there were comments in relation to some of the data, some of the processes, AFAC believes that with good faith by all parties, any varying opinions will be sorted out in the fire engineering brief process. The fire services are a key stakeholder and are expecting to be involved, as per the NCC provisions, and the extent of the fire services involvement will be decided once the proposal is reviewed. Fire services understand that the use of the verification method is not mandatory, and there are other methodologies and approaches to show compliance with the NCC performance provisions, and regardless of the methodology used, fire services are expecting to be involved in that consultation. Again, work collaboratively to ensure the safety of building, and that's important. It's the safety of the occupants of the buildings, but one of the things that I like to stress is that the occupants do include firefighters. When an emergency occurs, we become an occupant of the building, and one of the great things to come out of the VM, and one of the, I suppose, determining factors in AFAC support for the VM, was around the fact that for the first time we were being considered as an occupant of the building, in scenarios such as the catastrophic failure, number nine. Currently, the fire services around Australia and New Zealand are reviewing their approach to the regulatory role as a result of the FSVM, but as well as fulfilling the recommendations of the SHIRGOG we report. Certainly, this will be focusing on the service delivery, and we're aiming for a much more nationally consistent approach, and due to the different regulatory environments under which we operate at the state and territory level, there will understandably be some differences, but we see the FSVM as a means of ensuring that consistency because suddenly some states who may not have had a great regulatory input before will become a key stakeholder and need to be consulted with. I think it's a timely, fire services generally, I think it's a timely addition to the NCC. I mean, as mentioned before, performance has been in the NCC, or the BCA, for now, well, we're in our 25th year. Up until now, there may have been the best and the worst of performance solutions. I see the FSVM as being one of those things that lift the bar for all of us, including fire services, and that's it from me. Wonderful. Thank you for that, Mark. We'll now move on to the question and answer section of today's presentation. I will work through these as quickly as I can and answer these so we can get through as many questions as we can in the last 20 minutes or so from today's presentation. I will start off with a question which I will answer on behalf of the ABCB first off, which is, the question is, who is considered as an expert to provide expert judgment as an assessment method in accordance with A2.2, RPEQ, PhD, et cetera? Look, if you're after further advice on who is considered an expert or an expert's judgment, first off, we have an assessment methods, so evidence of suitability handbook, which is available on our website, which goes through and discusses all of the requirements for evidence of suitability, which covers these sorts of areas well, as well as then looking through the code for the definitions of expert judgment, expert professional engineer and the like. They will then also provide further guidance on this. Then ultimately, it is the appropriate authorities, whoever that may be in the jurisdiction you're working in, responsibility then to provide further advice or input on who is the appropriate expert and what that expert judgment is. Paul, I'd like to direct the next question to yourself, which is, does the ceiling height and the DTS reference design need to be the same as the proposed building or can the ceiling height be considered a design feature? That's one of the many entertaining questions that you get when you start looking at a reference building. The reality is that the common sense needs to prevail. Generally speaking, you would have a ceiling that's the same height. If you wish to vary that and then claim that your building is okay because of the increased opportunity to evacuate the building, that's not quite the way equivalence to an inter-satisfied building should work because you're effectively defining a reference building that's varied from your building considerably and therefore trying to utilize that worse performance from your reference building to get your performance-based design over the line. A level of conservatism is appropriate. Like all these things under the right circumstances, you could see something, but the handbook has been quite prescriptive on these things because of the sorts of extreme interpretations that could be made. I used an example earlier of a high rise versus a domestic dwelling. It's a matter of realistically your building should be the same. You'd have to have a very, very good reason for varying that ceiling height and that being part of your fire safety strategy and all your stakeholders would have to be in agreement before you could use it. I can't give you a fixed yes or no because it depends on the circumstances. I would say 90% of the time the answer might be no. Wonderful. Thank you for that Paul. I think following on from that and you might just say that it's been answered or expanded a little bit more is the next question which is why is area and volume captured as needing to be the same in both subject and DTS reference building. This results in a scenario where larger and higher smoke reservoirs cannot be used to justify potentially slightly longer travel as an example. Okay. I don't know whether my presentation on the single stair issue and the extended travel distance necessarily got all this information across but essentially you when you increase the length of a corridor obviously you've increased the volume and you know if you do a simple asset asset analysis you'll probably get an extension in time and you can argue that that might enable you to travel that extended travel distance but the issue is when you look at the applying it to the same volume of building you identify that a stairs being deleted which is an additional variation that wouldn't have been picked by that simple statement. This is one of the real strengths of the verification method and if you think that that's being unfair and you want to vary the size of your building and the number of occupants then your risk of ignition and your number of people exposed varies considerably so you've got to be very careful with these things and the simplest way and the safest way is to have the same volume the same building you would design that as complying with the thing to satisfy and then compare it and a key issue which I really didn't mention in the presentation but when the performance based designs tend to get questioned in court and looked at the first thing anybody does is say what would happen if this building had been designed to the thing to satisfy have you made it more safe or less safe so by looking at exactly the same shape of building you're really putting your defense in place just in case the worst happens in in in the future because you've looked at the equivalent building and made it safer than a nominated benchmark by the ABCB. Thanks Paul for that answer. Mark this next question is directed at you. It is will the new FBIM be free? That's still a discussion that's going on at AFAC level. We've needed a source of revenue to continue to update and ensure that the I suppose continuous improvement of FBIM takes place. I'll certainly let everyone know through ABCB office as soon as we come to that decision. Next question is also for yourself. So do AFAC agencies expect to have an increase in workload of reviewing fire safety designs as a result of the commencement of the fire safety verification method? I suppose that depends on the amount of take up of the VM. We are expecting that I mean generally we are expecting an increase in our workload and certainly we have flagged through to the AFAC council which is the board if you like of AFAC the chief officers and commissioners that there is a growing expectation from both government regulators and the community of the fire services involvement in the building volume. So yes, simple answer to that is yes. Thanks Mark, I appreciate that answer. Next question, what options does a client have if the building survey or fire service in their area requiring fire safety verification method to be used for their building? What if the client disagrees and wants to demonstrate compliance via straight performance solution instead? Look I might open that up to both Paul and Mark just to provide a quick opinion on that question. We'll let Mark go first I think. I prefer Paul went first. So just to get it right this is the what options does a client have if the building surveyor? What if the client disagrees and wants to demonstrate compliance via straight performance? I suppose we'll have to test that when it comes in. At this stage certainly the two paths to compliance, one of which we don't see which is the deem to satisfy and the VM brings into play a more I suppose better rigor around the proof if you like that a building complies with the safety requirements of the NCC. So I think it'll be a good discussion between fire services and the building and the building surveyor. If they want to demonstrate compliance via a straight performance solution instead then that is still available within the NCC and the VM as I said before is not mandatory. So there are other paths to proving that a building is safe, a design is safe over Paul. This is an interesting question and I guess the first thing I've got to do is talk about a profession that I'm not a part of and the first thing is that the building surveyor represents the public interest and the first thing I've got to decide is in the public interest to compare a design against a deem to satisfy which has gone through various the deem to satisfy provisions has gone through various checks and balances and then decide what is the most appropriate for the particular application. So that's the first decision that ends up being made in a circumstances when a client insists on going down a particular path. The next one would be what the fire safety engineer has to say and again engineers are governed by a code of ethics and they have to act in the public interest as well so the same questions would get asked. So my comment to that would be they will be looking at which which approach is in the public interest not the client's interest. There's an order that you follow when you're looking at your applying your code of ethics so they would have to have a look at that. The tricky thing is we're not from the client says you will do it and you will do it in this way but again you know you can do something that looks very much like a fire safety verification method and it's a straight comparison anyway which is an accepted fire safety engineering approach and there's always been so you can do the same scenarios you can use the same comparative benchmark so yeah there is a bit of flexibility if your client's saying you should do it in a certain way you've got to ask the question why are they asking you that question and what expertise do they have and you go from there based on the needs of the problem. I don't know whether that's answered it for you but that's my best shot. Thanks Paul appreciate that. Next questions for Mark how will the how will fire and rescue use up Wales or the other fire authorities across the country be consulted on the initial proposal of the fire safety verification method? I hope as early as possible. We are a key stakeholder and I think it would be in everyone's benefit for both a designer, a proponent to share their ideas with the fire service but also for the fire service to set expectations about how we view the safety of the building. So I'm not sure how that will work in process in terms of you know submission of documentation or whether it is just sit down and share information with each other that helps guide the path to a safer building. Thanks Mark. Paul I think this one's for yourself. Does Table CV1 indicate that a building set out at a distance prescribed in the table is capable of withstanding the respective heat flux or does it imply that the building is required to withstand the heat flux at the prescribed distance? Okay the quick answer is I'll have to look at the NCC and look it up because I can't remember which Table 1 is and which Table 2 is and they're quite complex so just go through it and have a look and that's consulting advice, nothing to do with the fire safety verification method. But if you want I'll go away and have a look at it for a couple of minutes. No look I think we'll move on to the next question Paul which is is the use of the fire safety VM only for comparative assessments and not absolute assessments? Yes it is only for comparative assessments that doesn't mean that some of the content in the handbook and some of the content in the data sheets wouldn't be useful for other forms of analysis but the verification method is a comparative verification method. And I think this will be our final question. We'll also be reviewing these other questions that haven't been answered and letting them inform our other support material that we're looking to develop. So apologies if we haven't answered your question yet but don't threat the education team will be reviewing them and looking for gaps in our resources. So this question is please confirm the DTS comparisons being discussed are all based on the handbook content and not actually written within the BCA 2019 Schedule 7. Look I think I'll provide an ABCB response from that which is the DTS comparison or the reference building design is something that has set within the assessment methods of the NCC for quite a while now and Schedule 7 through itself is the process for developing that reference building design with further guidance provided within that handbook. I think they've captured that probably pretty well Paul but is there anything else you wish to add? I think you've answered it well. The issue is that the verification method is a process. The handbook is essentially a process which fills in some of the spaces and gives advice on how you would apply the or should apply the FSVM and you go through your checks and balances with your performance based design brief team. So essentially I'll be mine with what you said. I don't know whether Mark's got anything else to add? No I don't have anything else to add. Wonderful. Well thank you for that. Thank you everyone for tuning in and watching this webinar and look a special thanks to Mark Wildberg for donating his time to present to yourselves and provide AFAC's input into this. It's really helpful for them to be involved in this and also thank you to Paul England for providing the fire engineering analysis or fire engineering responses to these questions. Look if you're after any resources on the fire safety verification method they are up live on our website now. The link is on the screen attached. As Paul mentioned there is the handbook and the data sheets. We also have some FAQs and the video from the last webinar that was conducted around the middle of last year. If you wish to go watch that and have a look at some of the questions that came out of that and we'll also be developing some more resources over the coming months to support the fire safety VM as we come towards one May. So please keep an eye out on our social media channels and emails and they'll be letting you know as the resources come live. And finally in closing there is a seminar survey that will be popping up as this closes. We would really appreciate if you guys can all fill that out and help us collect some more information and make these things more useful to you as we keep going. Thank you.