Dr Gavin Dunn, managing director of the FPA, highlights the intricacies of balancing sustainability goals with fire safety requirements and provides insights into potential solutions.
As managing director of the FPA, I’ve observed the increasing emphasis on sustainability in the construction industry, driven by the urgent need to mitigate climate change. However, alongside this imperative, ensuring fire safety remains paramount. Integrating sustainability measures with fire safety presents multifaceted challenges.
I delve into how the construction industry is navigating this transition. I’ll explore the complexities and potential solutions, defining zero carbon in terms of fire safety, addressing challenges, and emphasising the role of fire safety professionals.
Industry response to net zero and sustainability
The transition towards net zero carbon emissions has prompted significant changes within the construction industry. While there is widespread recognition of the importance of integrating sustainability into business operations, managing associated risks, particularly in fire safety, remains a critical concern.
Collaboration across professions and proactive risk management are essential for achieving positive outcomes.
Arguably, we have been kicking the can down the road for too long when it comes to integrating and implementing sustainable and net zero carbon targets in all aspects of the built environment in response to the climate crisis.
This is not something we should fight to avoid – it is important to recognise that these changes are necessary and that we simply need to get on with it.
But in doing so, we have to recognise that, moving forward, we will be doing things differently: taking on new technologies and new materials and using them in different ways.
The buildings and environments we work in will also be exposed to different climatic factors. As such, the rate of change and level of innovation needed to respond to the crisis as well as adapt to the degree of climate change that is now, unfortunately, inevitable means that changes are going to have to be driven more rapidly than we initially thought.
Zero carbon and fire safety
Navigating the definition of zero carbon within the context of fire safety involves considering competing requirements and standards.
As parameters for sustainability and fire safety are determined by regulations, legislation, and stakeholders, achieving sustainability goals while ensuring fire safety necessitates careful consideration of trade-offs and collaboration across disciplines.
The aim is to avoid compromising on the fundamentals: we need to be able to balance a more sustainable zero-carbon built environment alongside business operations in a way that manages risks, reduces the dangers to people and the environment, and also addresses the inherent dangers that may be found within new technologies, techniques, and materials so that they’re not inadvertently creating underlying consequences. Unsurprisingly, this presents many challenges.
As mentioned, by different professions working together through collaboration and integrating risk management and fire prevention techniques, we can help achieve positive outcomes that provide both a safe and environmentally friendly built environment while achieving the challenging climate and sustainability goals we have set.
Industry should be able to recognise the changing risks and new challenges around fire, as well as any other risks that may result.
Ultimately, it is about competing and often conflicting requirements based on the various management projects in this space, for example, the multiple individual requirements for buildings to achieve the desired performance in terms of both thermal comfort and fire safety. We must understand that the use of some features to improve one particular metric may have a negative effect on others.
As such, there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution for any given project or type of building. There will be no silver bullet or go-to solution that will meet all these requirements
What is more, utilising techniques such as balanced scorecards to assess the individual priorities, risks, and criteria for individual projects and assessing these considerations in parallel, gives an understanding of what needs to be achieved and how the different factors play into each other.
This allows us to make decisions on desired outcomes whilst at the same time understanding the necessary trade-offs between the consumer’s requirements and any inherent risks that may result.
Ensuring this information is then passed on to the next stage of a building’s life cycle so that the building and its services can be managed accordingly is another key aspect. Thus, these are multidimensional factors that need to be addressed in parallel, requiring collaboration between individual teams working across projects over the life cycle of a building to manage safety.
Ultimately, the minimum requirements for each individual element, criteria, or project will be decided by regulations, legislation, and potentially, clients. Alternatively, insurers and funding institutions can specify requirements on any given aspect, but achieving these outcomes will require a high degree of cooperation.
Feasibility of fire safe sustainable design
While the knowledge and understanding to achieve sustainable design exist, challenges related to siloed working practices and unintended consequences persist. Single metric policies have an unfortunate history of creating unintended consequences, where fixing one problem can create others, often at the expense of the building, its occupants, and/or the environment.
What will be required is a considerable amount of innovation, collaboration, and independent testing, which are all crucial for mitigating the risks associated with new technologies and materials.
Technologies and materials are not always new, but our way of using them, how they are built in, and the combination of techniques used could achieve high levels of performance and reduced environmental impact.
As such, there are risks, unknown factors, and unrecognised issues that can be shared across industry, offering a far more collaborative approach to the way industry can organise and deliver buildings. Therefore, a holistic approach to sustainability and fire safety is imperative for the successful navigation of this transition.
Construction materials play a pivotal role in decarbonising the built environment. Sustainable materials such as timber offer potential benefits in terms of reducing embodied carbon and promoting energy efficiency. However, the use of these materials also presents challenges in terms of fire safety. Balancing environmental goals with fire safety requirements is essential in material selection and construction practices.
We also continue to need good research, the best testing standards, and independent testing facility infrastructure to ensure what is proposed to be built does actually perform in practice. Where there are risks, these must be well understood to enable them to be managed.
Construction materials that achieve a high energy performance play a key factor in how we go about decarbonising our buildings, but will also impact the nature of the fire risks being built into them.
The materials used play an important role in two parts, firstly because buildings which operate using far lower levels of energy will aid the shift away from the use of fossil fuels and ease the demand on clean energy generation and distribution.
Construction materials also have a significant second effect through the embodied carbon associated with their production. It is no longer sufficient to only consider the operational impacts of carbon. Designers and construction professionals should be selecting from and building with materials which have a minimum carbon and environmental impact, so-called ‘embodied energy’.
In practical terms, this means many have been shifting away from materials such as traditional concrete, which is currently highly carbon intensive both in its production and transport, to more sustainable materials such as timber and other lightweight construction methods.
While these materials are significantly lower in the embodied carbon produced during construction, they present a new range of risks relating to their fire performance, as well as their performance over time, which need to be managed.
Compatibility of fire safety with net zero
Net zero and fire safety are not inherently incompatible, but achieving both requires careful consideration of competing requirements.
Challenges include optimising building performance without compromising safety standards and addressing the potential risks associated with new technologies.
Achieving a balance between life safety, property protection, and sustainability necessitates collaboration, innovation, and rigorous risk assessment, and integrating fire safety into all stages of a building’s lifecycle is crucial for ensuring safety and sustainability.
After all, the least sustainable outcome is the loss of a building due to fire.
These highly optimised, high-performing buildings also require much greater attention to design and construction to ensure the desired outcomes without any of the unintended consequences.
I do believe there is a convergence between life safety and property protection. We are already seeing this with the Building Safety Regulator and building regulations, as they increasingly use property protection methods to further life safety requirements.
Ultimately, we can achieve this requirement, but it won’t be easy and requires more time, far greater design input, and assessment prior to building, as well as increased collaboration within the sector.
It also puts far greater focus on the building that was designed and assessing the suitability of individual details, especially where there are deviations from the original design or when conflicts in the construction process arise.
Therefore, it is important to consider the flow of information across the life cycle of the building, as the new Gateway or Golden thread systems within the building safety regulations will. By ensuring that designs are built as intended and the relevant information to operate the buildings is suitably recorded it will enable future stakeholders to make decisions over its use, maintenance, and re-use.
We are already seeing these changes occur as a result of the Building Safety Act with the same approach taken around building performance, environmental considerations, carbon emissions, and health and well- being, alongside fire and structural safety.
All these processes have the potential to expand new ways of working, enabling much greater collaboration across various professions and roles over time and across the lifecycle of a building, enhancing the confidence of investors, occupants, and owners.
Likewise, an established information space which has accountability should reduce the number of people cutting corners and provide information and a better understanding for us to learn lessons from.
Ironically, while all of this takes time and cost to achieve, ultimately the prize is a higher performing, lower risk building of a much higher total value over its lifecycle. By investing in buildings in this way it enables more opportunity for innovation and productivity improvements in the supply chain. This in turn leads to higher value, better paid jobs across the sector. It will be difficult, but it is necessary, and by achieving this change in approach it will benefit everyone.
Role of fire safety professionals
Fire safety professionals play a critical role in navigating the transition towards net zero. Collaboration and integration across disciplines are essential for effectively managing fire risks in sustainable buildings.
Ensuring appropriate levels of training and competency is essential for safely implementing sustainable practices as verifiable competencies and third-party accreditation are crucial for upholding safety standards.
Regulatory interventions may further drive the adoption of rigorous training and certification processes.
I believe fire safety professionals as a sector must play an important part in how we help the rest of the built environment sector understand and manage the fire risks associated with their decisions, and we need to do so in a way that is much more collaborative and integrated into the wider construction and property sector.
A wider understanding of fire risks will, in the longer term, not only increase profits and productivity but benefit the end user of a building.
However, skills and competency within the construction sector are sadly in short supply, often unproven and unverifiable, and can be out of date when compared to the current ways of working required for net zero technologies.
Thus, similarly to all professionals within the sector, we will have to move to something that is much more about proven and verifiable competence over time, backed by individuals who have the skills, experience, and relevant training. This can then be assessed and qualified via a third party and linked to some form of registration or accreditation.
This revalidation of levels of competence and the maintenance of knowledge, along with interventions where necessary, will become normal practice. In other words, the sector and those professionals working within it will be operating in a way that is much more akin to other regulated professions, such as industries like aviation and medicine.
Indeed, some individuals, especially those undertaking critical tasks on high-risk projects, may be directly regulated.
Likewise, it is reasonable to expect further regulation and greater scrutiny, with perhaps the mandatory requirements of accreditation by third-party certification schemes becoming routine.
While these changes are challenging and will require effort, the built environment sector and the professionals within it should embrace this challenge because, as the regulator enforces the minimum standard, it allows for level competition and consequently greater industry innovation and efficiency that allows us all to build better businesses and careers.
In conclusion, the integration of sustainability measures with fire safety in the built environment presents complex challenges that require careful consideration and collaboration across disciplines.
By embracing innovation, collaboration, and rigorous risk management, the construction industry can achieve sustainable design while ensuring the safety of occupants and properties. Balancing sustainability with fire safety is achievable with proactive measures and collective effort, benefiting both the environment and public safety.
About the author
Dr Gavin Dunn, managing director of the Fire Protection Association Gavin assumed the role of Managing Director of the FPA in 2024, having previously been Chief Executive of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) for 6 years.
He is an experienced business leader and Chartered Building Engineer with a talent for bridging technical matters with effective business management.
Originally an architect, Gavin boasts a wealth of experience in the testing, inspection, and certification markets in the sectors of construction, real estate, and sustainability, both in the UK and internationally.
