The 2001 edition of the British Standard for fire safety engineering, BS 7974, has been significantly revised by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in a newly published version titled BS 7974:2019 - Application of fire safety engineering principles to the design of buildings.

The original document has been supplemented by a series of later guidance documents – PD 7974-1 to 8, covering each sub-system of application in greater detail.

Ant Burd, head of Built Environment at BSI, said, “As the demand for better and more innovative building design grows, the safety and protection of people, along with the asset itself, from fire remains of paramount importance.”

BSI says it has updated the existing guidance framework due to ‘major changes’ since 2001 within the fire and construction industry sector, working practices, and the regulatory framework, as well as new research.

Ant continued, “Based upon scientific and engineering insight, this framework allows for a range of alternative and complementary fire protection strategies that enable all of the design objectives to still be fulfilled safely.”

Some of the main changes include:

• the incorporation of recommendations previously contained in PD 7974-0:2002 and PD 7974-8:2012
• a greater emphasis on the competence of the fire safety engineer
• additional recommendations for the quality assurance and verification of fire safety engineering reports

In addition to these changes, terminology has also been consolidated and, while the underlying process of fire safety engineering has not changed, every effort has been made to ensure that the terms used to describe that process are consistent throughout the standard.

The revised fire engineering standard ‘sets out a reporting methodology, which allows for a design to be readily assessed by approval bodies.’

Original Source
Health State Journal