The challenge
Where things stood
A developer was bringing forward a new residential building of flats rising to 50m. At that height the building is a higher-risk building under the Building Safety Act 2022, which means it is regulated by the Building Safety Regulator and has to pass through the gateway approval process before it can be built and occupied. The fire strategy is the foundation that everything else rests on and getting it wrong at design stage is both dangerous and extremely expensive to put right later.
The developer needed a fire strategy that was sound, that the design team could build around with confidence and that would stand up to the Building Safety Regulator's scrutiny.
What we did
Our approach
Our in-house chartered engineer developed the fire strategy from concept, working alongside the design team rather than reviewing their work after the fact. We set the strategy against Approved Document B and BS 9991 and designed in the measures a building of this height requires, including two separate protected staircases, automatic sprinkler protection, the smoke control approach, the compartmentation strategy and a clear evacuation strategy for the building.
Because the engineering was done in-house, we could make reasoned design decisions where a simple code comparison did not fit the scheme, rather than passing the problem to a third party and losing time. We supported the design team through the gateway requirements and made sure the fire safety information formed part of the golden thread that the building's future safety case depends on.
The outcome
What it changed
A robust fire strategy that supported the developer through gateway approval, gave the design team certainty to proceed and set up the building's safety case from the outset rather than as an afterthought.