Ensuring resilience in building design using fire engineering

As an engineering discipline within the United Kingdom, fire engineering is relatively young. It has been accepted as an alternative to traditional prescriptive means of meeting the functional requirements of the Building Regulations since the publication of the 1985 edition of Approved Document B. Performance-based fire engineering design methods have facilitated architectural design freedoms and supported creative construction. However, it has become evident that since fire engineering has become more established, significant concerns have been raised regarding various elements of the design process including the ability to consider aspects other than life safety which may result in a poorer overall response of the building to fire, while achieving the life safety ambition. In response to these concerns, this article introduces novel concepts to assist the building design team consider their client's resilience requirements by utilizing business continuity planning methods. Using business impact analyses within the qualitative design review will identify those processes which are allowing the most appropriate fire engineering strategy to be established. This new approach to fire engineering design is to be formally described within a new part of the established British Standard which defines a fire engineering procedure.