Fire Regs Made Easy with Andrea White

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Greg: No one wants to talk about regulations, but if you’re on the wrong side of regulations, it can really come to bite you, and we don’t want that happening. So today we’re talking about fire regulations and how you wanna be on the right side of that. We’re gonna be talking to Andrea White, who is a fire engineer.

And you may be thinking straight away, oh, this isn’t gonna be applicable to me, Greg. I only do small builds. We are talking about every project here, all the way from loft conversions, right the way up to huge multi-story developments. Fire regulations are involved in all of that. So it’s a really good idea for you to understand what’s involved in how you can stay compliant.

So have a listen to this episode. I think you’re gonna learn something.

Andrea White, it’s great to have you here. Appreciate you coming on the show.

Andrea: Absolute pleasure, Greg. Really nice to be here.

Greg: Awesome. So Andrea, would you like to just give us a little bit of an introduction onto who you are and what you do?

Andrea: Yeah, thanks. I’m a fire engineer.

 

 

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I’ve been a fire engineer for, oh, about 10, 12 years now, but I’ve worked in the fire safety industry for about 25 years.

I’m an incorporated engineer and I’m also a fellow of three professional bodies, so I’m a fellow of the IFE, the Institution of Fire Engineers. I’m a fellow of ca, the Chartered Association of Building Engineers, and I’m a chartered fellow of iosh, the institution of safety and Health. Yeah, really love my job, love fire safety.

And not only that I’m very proud to be an expert witness for the courts in terms of cladding post GR fell as well in the uk.

Greg: Awesome. All right, thanks for that intro. So for this podcast then, why should people be listening to this podcast? What, why are they gonna be interested in what a fire engineer does, Andrea?

Andrea: I’m not sure how many people in the construction industry really know what we do as fire engineers.

 

 

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And, I contacted you because I think it would really benefit your listeners to to hear what we do and hopefully change that that lack of understanding maybe in the industry.

Yeah.

Greg: Great. So I didn’t know what a fire engineer was until I had to use one many years back on a development project. It was new to me until I’d come across it. So I think it’s definitely gonna be useful. So that’s why I wanted to get you on. Let’s why don’t you just explain for us what exactly does a fire engineer do?

Andrea: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Our role is to assist design teams, so that’s maybe architects or project managers or developers, and we help them with the fire safety design of their buildings. So we provide guidance and direction. To protect in terms of three potential fire safety objectives.

One is the one that we always do. We always protect against life safety, and then we can also help with property protection and with protection to the environment as well from fire.

 

 

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Greg: Great. So what’s the difference between yourself and maybe a fire inspector or someone from building control that might be checking something with regards to fire inspections?

What, where do you differ?

Andrea: Okay those two roles are enforcers. So fire safety inspectors tend to work for the fire and rescue service. They don’t always, but in most cases, fire safety inspectors work for the fire and rescue service, and their role is to enforce fire safety legislation. So in relation to the design of new buildings.

Everything except single domestic houses. They’re consulted on by building control. So they have statutory consultation rights to make sure they’re happy with the fire safety measures proposed in a new building. Now, they’re similar to building control in that building.

 

 

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Controller also enforces, but building control are responsible for some different legislation.

They’re responsible for building regulations. And they cover a much wider remit than just fire safety. So I believe there are 18 building regulations in England and Wales. And there are similar equivalents in Northern Ireland and in Scotland and in the in England and Wales. There they’re a to s and they cover all sorts of things, building regulations.

They might cover structure, ventilation drainage glazing. Or to make sure that the building is safe and safe to occupy and also that they’re energy efficient.

Greg: Yeah. Great. But the bit you are specifically focused on is purely what section of the building regs. What is your area that you are covering?

Andrea: Okay, so I mentioned that there’s 18 building regulations and that’s A to S part. A to part S. My building regulation is part B. Part B covers fire safety and.

 

 

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Within Part B, there are five building regulations which are creatively known as B1 to B five. And those cover things like means of giving, warning external fire, spread access for fire service.

And those are the ones that fire engineers will help and advise on.

Greg: Okay, great. So let’s just make this practical for listeners. What sort of projects is this gonna be useful for? Are we talking about, big tower blocks here or what, who, who should be considering using someone like yourself?

Andrea: So generally fire engineers will be involved with complex buildings, so maybe tall buildings, maybe residential buildings, maybe buildings where there’s some sort of high risk involved or large developments. Fire engineers are normally now part of the design team for those projects, and they’ll write a report called a fire strategy and that’ll set out how build those building regulations.

 

 

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B1 to B five that I just mentioned. Those B1 to B five requirements are set out and how they’re complied with in that report. But actually B1 to B five they apply to every single building, including even small single domestic dwellings. And not everyone particularly realises that.

What we find is that. Where perhaps construction professionals have an issue during a smaller build, they might be asked by building control to consult someone like me, consult a fire engineer in order to either justify how B1 to B five is being complied with, or to look for a solution in how to comply with one of those building regulations, B1 to B five.

Greg: Yeah. Great.

 

 

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So just something practical for listeners, and I’m pretty sure it is a fire engineer that I consulted with on this, but I did the development, a while back now, maybe five years ago maybe a little bit less, and it was a property where we were building a bungalow and it was right at the back of a plot of land and we couldn’t the driveway wasn’t very wide, so they couldn’t get a fire engine down to that property.

And straight away, that was kicked back by building control for come up with an alternative design because we couldn’t get a fire engine down there. So we had to come up with a bit of a. Sprinkler system and something like that, that, that ended up going in. Now I had to approach a consultant to do that and I can’t remember actually who I use now.

But is that the sort of thing that you would be advising on Andrea as a fire engineer?

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. So that would be B5 aspects, which is access for the fire service. And you’re absolutely right, we can extend that distance that we can get a fire appliance or a fire engine to the building.

If we can’t get it near enough, then one solution is to get a few extra meters, get 15 extra meters by putting sprinklers in a building. Absolutely.

 

 

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Greg: Great. Okay. So just for listeners to understand then, we’re not just talking about builders that are doing huge tower blocks here. You may well need a fire engineer, even if you’re doing smaller development works, or, maybe slightly unusual or complex works where you’d need to think about those regulations.

So that’s interesting. So when would a builder or developer potentially contact you? Andrea when should they be thinking about bringing you in? Is it only when. Building control have kicked back and complained that, they’ve not complied.

Andrea: You can do that. There are some downsides to doing that.

What I often find when people phone me is that they are in that situation where they’re partway through a build and they’ve got a problem and they need it sorted tomorrow. The issue is that we don’t have enough fire engineers and that means that, supply is outstripped by demand, and a lot of us have a bit of a backlog.

 

 

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So you know what I would really encourage people to do is to look at their design. At an earlier stage and just make sure that they’ve got all their fire safety measures covered. But yes we will get involved either at the beginning in the earlier stages or on a regular basis when something is, often identified by building control as being inadequate in terms of building regulations, B1 to B5. And they’ve said, look, this isn’t quite right. This isn’t satisfactory for me. I can’t sign this off and give you a completion certificate if we’re gonna continue building like this.

We need some extra fire safety measures. Perhaps you need to consult a fire engineer to to come up with that. And that’s a phone call that I get on a fairly regular basis. I had one earlier this week actually. They it, it was a loft conversion and standard one, they wanted to open up the ground floor whilst also doing a loft conversion and building controller said, hang on a minute.

 

 

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This doesn’t quite work in terms of B1, but which is means of escape and warning and, they wanted to ask for some advice. And when I said to them, okay, here are the three solutions that I can see, there was a bit of silence of, oh, some of these are going to request some quite extensive backtracking.

Greg: Yeah that’s interesting. I’d like to delve into that a bit more ’cause I, I dunno if but I originally started with loft conversions. That was my original company, ah many years back. So very familiar with, means of escape and having to put fire doors everywhere and inter interconnecting fire alarms.

But I cannot remember for the life of me what it, what was the how would you design if someone did have a completely open plan ground floor? What are some of the things they do have to consider as alternatives for that? I think that’s quite useful for listeners.

Andrea: Yeah pre grafe we probably would’ve just said put some sprinklers downstairs or maybe even some water mis, which uses a lot less water than sprinklers.

 

 

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Water MIS is a very popular solution at the moment as a form of suppression. But post grafe. We are definitely finding that everyone is much more safety conscious and in terms of that particular scenario approved Document B ask for that. So in terms of suppression on the ground floor. Plus a couple of other things.

So once the ground floor separated from the first floor in some way. And also separation of the kitchen from the lounge. So yeah we are now much more, might I say demanding in terms of fire safety measures for loft conversions than we’d probably been in the past.

Greg: Yeah, I can imagine.

And look, it makes sense, doesn’t it? If you’re up stuck in the loft conversion upstairs, and then a fire breaks out on the ground floor, you want that protection, don’t you? Otherwise you could be in a bit of trouble. So that’s really interesting actually. Yeah.

Just fascinating for me on a personal note to see how how you’re overcoming those sort of things. I think with sprinkler systems.

 

 

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I dunno if you can speak to this at all, Andrea, but I think a lot of builders or a lot of homeowners listening might panic about that a little bit and think, oh, what if what if there’s a false alarm and the, like we know we get fire alarms that go off in the house or smoke detectors that go off in the house inadvertently.

So what happens in those situations is that just gonna drench the entire floor and ruin everything.

Andrea: No, so sprinklers are a little bit different from fire alarm systems. So the fire alarm systems we put in now tend to be interlinked, and once one goes off, all of the the smoke alarms will go off in the building and make a dent.

But sprinklers are different. So they have a glass bulb in each one. And it’s basically if you imagine a pipe with a hole in it and you putting your finger over the hole in the pipe to stop the water coming out, the pipe’s full of water and you’ve got your finger over the hole. And when you take your finger off.

The water’s gonna come out of the hole. That’s the same with sprinklers.

 

 

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The glass bulbs are your finger over the hole and only the sprinklers, which have the glass bulb heated to a really high temperature by by smoke and hot gases and flames will actually break. That’s the same as taking your finger off the hole.

So when you see it in the movies and the entire floor the sprinklers activate that is not real life. In reality you’ll have one, maybe two heads that actually activate in a fire.

Greg: That’s really interesting. Yeah. Fascinating how that actually works. Yeah, good to know. And I think, and it maybe that relieves a few people who’ve considered doing that.

So you mentioned Grem Field earlier. Obviously, a real tragedy that happens in London. If any listeners in Australia listened to this, it was maybe you can explain for us, Andrew, but what happened, what was the problem at Grem Field? Just some of our worldwide listeners understand the seriousness of that.

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. Just just over eight years ago now, we had a fire in London in a block called Grenfell Tower.

 

 

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It was a small kitchen fire. It should have been easily extinguished and not affected anyone else if if fire safety measures had worked as they were intended. Unfortunately, the building had just been re clad and it had been re clad with some highly flammable material.

And what happens in a fire is that when it gets to a certain size, it starts to issue out the window. The flames start coming out the window. That’s what happened. And. The highly flammable cladding on the outside of the building caught fire, and that meant that the fire then traveled around the outside of the building and went back in through every opening, every window.

Sadly we lost 72 individuals in that fire. It was the greatest loss of life in the UK since the second World War in terms of fire.

 

 

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And yeah, we’ve now got legislation to prevent that sort of fire ever happening again. And we’ve also got thousands and thousands of buildings that in the UK now we’re remediating in terms of cladding.

Greg: Hey, can I just ask a quick favor? We are constantly trying to bring on the best guests on this podcast so we can deliver as much value as possible, but the only way we can do that is if we get more subscribers, more likes, more comments, and more reviews. So subscribe to this channel and click notifications so you know, every time we’ve got a new video coming up, give us a review if you’re getting any value from it, and give us a thumbs up.

We’d really appreciate that.

It’s, yeah, it was an absolute disaster. But one of the positives that come out of that is that obviously things, or they’re aiming to improve regulation with this, not just in the uk, but I know over here in Australia too, they’re looking at the buildings. Also, ’cause I was talking to someone the other day about that, which is interesting.

So it’s had far reaching effects for sure.

 

 

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So how has that changed regulations then? What’s I presume they’ve obviously got a lot stricter on things. How has that affected your role?

Andrea: Yeah. We’ve recently had a piece of legislation enacted called the Building Safety Act that came in April, 2022, and it’s designed to improve building safety.

It’s got a particular emphasis. Because of Greenfeld Tower on high risk buildings. And we when we say high risk, that is predominantly tall residential blocks, flats. And part of that act reforms the regulatory system. So that is the process of planning, building control. And there’s also, parts of that legislation that cover in occupation as well. So if you are now designing, building, or managing. A tall residential block of flats, we have a lot more legislation for you to comply with than we did before.

 

 

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And it also increases the accountability of individuals who are involved in any of those processes.

One of the things that, we’ve enacted is a building safety regulator. So instead of those buildings that fall under the act, those tall residential buildings going through building control, they now go through a new regulator called the Building Safety Regulator. And that’s called the BSR. We use an acronym, the BSR for the Building Safety Regulator.

And they look at. Again the design of buildings. They’ll look at the construction of buildings and they’ll look at buildings in occupation, and they’ve decided to use a process of three gateways. So we have Gateway one, gateway Two, and Gateway Three. And Gateway One is the planning stage, which is very similar to what people are used to.

Gateway two is the building control phase, although that is overseen now through the building safety regulator.

 

 

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And then we have Gateway three, which is the in occupation phase. And the challenge that we’ve got now is that those three gateways want a lot more information on the building.

And also it’s a bit like monopoly. You may not pass, go until you’ve met the requirements and you are permitted to go onto the next gateway. So you cannot progress from gateway one to gateway two until you’ve got the go ahead from the building safety regulator.

Greg: Wow. I imagine projects of that size and scale, they must be taking a long time to actually get over the line and get started on site.

Andrea: Yes, there’s a lot of discussion and yeah, you are absolutely right. We’ve got a new regulator who themselves are learning. We’ve got new processes for both the regulator and for consultants and designers and construction professionals. So it’s new for everybody.

 

 

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And yes that there are significant delays, which which are actually the subject of an inquiry at the moment.

Greg: Yeah, I can imagine. With the housing shortage that’s in the uk you can see why that would be a little bit of a problem. And I guess the problem is too, is that people just don’t wanna make a mistake now, do they with what’s happened and potentially the risk in this, I imagine a lot will be trying to cover their backs and making sure they’re following the regulations in the right way.

What just, one of the questions I did have is what is classed as a tool building now? ’cause you mentioned that. A few times, is that a certain amount of flaws or a certain height? Just our listeners know.

Andrea: So it’s any building that has two or more dwellings. So let’s think of any building that’s got two or more flats in it, for example.

And then it’s also tall. So we’ve decided to do it based on height. So it’s 18 meters or more to the top story or seven stories or more.

 

 

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So it’s anything over 18 meters to the top story or anything with seven floors or more.

Greg: Okay. Alright. And just to clarify, two or more dwellings. So it’s not necessarily if there were three dwellings, but it was under 18 meters that wouldn’t be involved in that.

No. So it’s gotta be

Andrea: No, it’s an and. Yes, absolutely.

Greg: Perfect. Okay. We talked about the benefits of potentially bringing someone in early and I can imagine you can see the practicalities of that. If you bring a fire engineer in early, if you are designing a building and then all of a sudden you’ve designed it perfectly and it doesn’t meet, the right.

Regulations, the fire engineer comes in and says, no, this isn’t gonna work. And you’ve completely gotta redesign it. It could cost a, an absolute fortune, couldn’t it? If you’ve not really thought about that at that stage. Have you got any examples at all, any examples of scenarios where people have, engaged you early and turned things around and projects that have gone well because they’ve thought things through?

Andrea: I can give you a slightly different example.

 

 

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I had one the other day where the designer solution was to throw every fire safety measure they could think of into the refurbishment of a flat. And the cost associated with that was significant. So we talked about sprinklers earlier.

They’d put sprinklers in there. They’d put the wiest fire alarm system in, they’d put. So many active fire safety measures in at potentially considerable cost. And yet building control was still saying, we don’t think this complies. And they were like we dunno what else to throw at this design.

And I said actually you don’t need these things, but what you do need is this thing over here, a little bit of compartmentation. And we need to demonstrate that. You’ve got window escape. ’cause this was a ground floor flat so people in the bedroom could actually come outta the window. And use that as an emergency escape window.

So one of the things that we found post Grand Fallon as part of this new legislation and this new regime of working for building control is that they won’t offer advice.

 

 

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If they did in the past what they’re there to do is to look at your design and say yay or nay. And therefore, if they can see something and it doesn’t comply, rather than going, okay, this doesn’t comply, but you could do this instead.

They won’t take any design responsibility, so they’ll just say no. And then they’ll point someone. The designer perhaps, or the client towards someone like me to say, look, this doesn’t comply. You need to involve someone like Andrea to to come up with a solution for you.

Greg: That’s really interesting. So as you’re saying that I guess we’ve got a lot of architects, a lot of designers out there that are, I presume, are trying to get around these regulations themselves or submit and do designs that they feel comply. And as a builder, most of the people listening to this will be.

Builders and in construction. You take what the architect says and think, oh that’s what they’ve recommended and I’m just gonna build it like that.

 

 

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But they could actually be costing you a lot of money. Inadvertently. They might be, best intentions, but they might not actually be getting it.

Yeah, I guess that shows the value of not just architects knowing what you do as a fire engineer, but also for the builders to potentially have someone on call that, they could potentially run drawings by and just say, look, hey, is this right? Or is there a better way of doing this?

Andrea: Yeah and I suppose it’s probably a 60 40 split in terms of the professionals who phone me, probably 60% are architects and then probably 40% are the builders and the construction professionals where they’re already on site and they’ve got a problem that they’re now having to overcome practically rather than at the design stage.

Greg: Yeah, that’s great. As with any industry, I imagine you get some great fire engineers, legit ones, and you get the the cowboys if you like, if we’re gonna stick to that term in construction. How does someone find a good fire engineer? Is there certain accreditations they should be looking out for?

What are some things that they should be researching?

 

 

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Andrea: Yeah. One of the interesting points is that the term fire engineer is not a protected title. So there are a few careers where the job title is protected, one of them being architect. You cannot call yourself an architect and unless you’ve gone through the process of becoming an architect but that’s not the case for fire engineer, which means that.

Potentially anyone can call themselves a fire engineer and trade. So in this new world of the Building Safety Act, post Grenfell, one of the things is accountability. And the other thing that is particularly important, not just for these two residential buildings that we’ve spoken about, but for all types of buildings is competence.

So the expectation is that whoever is instructing. A fire engineer or any other professional will actually do their due diligence, and will establish that individual is suitably competent.

 

 

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Now, I suppose that the follow on question from that is how do you do that? One of the ways is that you could look at what’s called sc, so their skills, their knowledge, their experience, and their behavior.

There are professional registrations. I’m an incorporated engineer with both the IFE and with CABE. I am, I’ve demonstrated to my peers that I am suitably competent and I’ve signed up for a code of ethics that says I won’t operate, I won’t accept work outside of my my expertise and my competence.

But there are also professional memberships. So you might have someone in my industry who is a member of the IFE, the Institution of Fire Engineers, or who might be a chartered member of iosh or who might be a member of CABE, the Chartered Association of Building Engineers. And it’s just knowing.

 

 

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What those memberships actually mean. Do they mean that they’ve been through a process that requires them to demonstrate that they have the academic requirements and that they then have perhaps a peer interview to prove themselves? Or are they just paying money for those professional memberships and it’s really important for whoever’s instructing.

Under this new regime that they establish the competence and that they can demonstrate and show that the competence of those individuals, including fire engineers.

Greg: Yeah. Okay. So yeah, potentially a lot of work to find someone who’s good. You’ve gotta do your due diligence there, haven’t you?

So it may be an easier question. Are there any red flags? Is there anything that we should be looking out for?

Andrea: With this? Oh golly. That’s in terms of competence.

That’s a really good question. I think once you understand the membership.

 

 

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Process and you’ve seen someone’s post nominals so that the letters after their name that’s one easy way to, to look at what they’ve got in terms of professional memberships or professional registrations.

And once you actually understand what those letters mean, it’s relatively easy to be able to then. Ask some additional questions to establish, okay, so you are, you’re not professionally registered with the engineering council. Are you going to have someone peer review your report who is professionally registered?

It, knowledge is power, isn’t it? So once you’ve got that knowledge that, that memberships are perhaps less about. A full process of demonstration of competence, and you understand what that individual has had to demonstrate to obtain that. You can then do a kind of gap analysis and have a conversation with them and say, look, I can see that you’re a member of the IFE, but actually, you know what’s your specialism?

 

 

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Is it firefighting? Is it fire engineering? Is it testing in a lab? There’s lots of different roles for fire safety professionals within the industry, and what you are looking for is someone who has that experience and knowledge in relation to the work that you are asking them to do.

Greg: Yeah.

Okay. That’s great. So just wrapping things up and summarising things, Andrea, some final advice for builders. If you could give a builder or, maybe an architect that’s listened to us a piece of advice what would it be? Is there one thing that you potentially want to get across or big point that you wanna get across today?

Andrea: Yeah so one of the things that the Building Safety Act has done is it has identified that fire engineers tend to only be involved in perhaps Reba stages three and four during the latter design stages. And the intention is to have fire. Fire engineers involved throughout the life of the project.

 

 

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So just understanding that you may well need a fire statement or a planning fire safety strategy at planning stage with potentially involvement from a fire engineer. That’s something I think, your listeners. Would benefit from knowing, particularly in London, because under the London plan, all projects irrelevant of size, need to have a fire statement or a planning fire safety strategy, and that would potentially involve a fire engineer.

And then at the other end of the project I think the thing that we’re not really talking about at the moment is regulation 38. So Regulation 38 is a building regulation that requires. After the construction, the build has finished. There’s a whole set of fire safety information that needs to be delivered to the client.

So the there’s as-built drawings, there’s m and e information on the systems that are in the building, and that’s the bit that we’re not doing terribly well at the moment.

 

 

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And that’s the bit that I think will become much more of an emphasis. In, in perhaps the next few years. If your listeners aren’t particularly aware yet of Regulation 38, particularly for non-domestic single houses, if you’ve got a block of flats or you’ve got I don’t know, a care home or an office building that you are working on, I would say not so much for the small dwellings but for significant construction projects. Regulation 38 in terms of. Providing a, an as-built set of information, including an as-built fire strategy.

I think that’s something that we’re gonna see a lot more demand from building control in the upcoming years.

Greg: Yeah, that’s really useful, Andrea. Look, I really appreciate your time in running through all of that. I think you’ve definitely educated us on what a fire engineer does and some of the risks and benefits there.

If people wanted to connect with you, Andrea, or find out a little bit more about what you do, or they’ve got a project that they wanna talk to you about, where’s the best place for them to find you?

 

 

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Andrea: Yeah. Thanks for that. I’m on LinkedIn, Andrea White Fire. If you Google or if you look up Andrea White Fire on LinkedIn, you’ll find me.

And I also have a website, which is very easy. It’s awfire.co.uk.

Greg: Fantastic. We’ll put them in the show notes as well, Andrea. So really useful. I appreciate you coming on, and if you’re listening to this and you’re serious about staying compliant and you wanna avoid any nasty surprises, and of course, protect your business, you don’t wanna be leaving fire safety to chance.

So get a proper fire strategy done. Find yourself a good fire engineer like Andrea, and make sure you’re nice and protected and following the regulations. So thanks again, Andrea. We really appreciate it.

Andrea: Thanks very much Greg.