Fire Engineering Design and Steel Standard Revision

This article gives recommendations for Alternative Design methods for fire engineering of common types of multi-storey steel structures. These are Alternative Designs because they do not follow 100% the Compliance Document for Fire Safety, (DBH, 2005). However, they meet or exceed the provisions of the New Zealand Building Code, (DBH, 1992), which is required under the performance based Building Control System (BCS) that was introduced in 1992. Alternative Designs require the design procedure to be approved by the Building Consent Authority. In many instances, the building control official responsible for reviewing the design is familiar with historical prescriptive designs and unfamiliar with new fire engineering methods that have been developed under the current BCS. The current Steel Structures Standard NZS3404 (SNZ, 2007) provides only a simplistic and element based approach to the design for fire, as this material was written for application under a prescriptive based system. These two factors are leading to significant delays in the processing of some Alternative Designs. A complete revision of NZS 3404 commenced in 2008 and the design provisions for fire are to be presented in an expanded new stand-alone part which will provide a Complying Solution directly.

FIR1001.pdf

Charles Clifton