Fire Science Show
Fire Science Show
179 - Assurance in fire safety with Abhishek Chhabra
Discover the hidden backbone of fire safety with assurance industry expert Abhishek Chhabra as we unravel the essential frameworks that keep our buildings safe and sound. We explore the vital role of standards, accreditations, and testing mechanisms in fostering trust and compliance within the construction industry. It is not easy to talk about, but I assure you (pun intended) that Abhishek can talk about it in an engaging and fun way.
Gain a deeper understanding of the current landscape of fire safety engineering, where an urgent demand for robust credential assurance matches the scarcity of professionals. Delve into the complexities of establishing a comprehensive competence regime for the industry. Learn why the accuracy and repeatability of fire testing methods are indispensable in maintaining market trust and product safety. Through our conversation, we highlight the critical need for standards like ISO 17024, ISO 17025, ISO 17020 and 17065, ensuring that everyone, from designers to facility managers, is equipped with the necessary certifications.
As global safety standards evolve, the distinction between liability and responsibility becomes increasingly crucial.
At the end of the episode, we also discuss performance-based design and the potentially transformative role of laboratories and inspection bodies in developing custom solutions, addressing the unique challenges of innovative engineering projects. Join us as we explore the vital importance of testing in delivering reliable performance outcomes, particularly in an era when safety cannot be compromised.
Thank you to the SFPE for recognizing me with the 2025 SFPE Fire Safety Engineering Award! Huge thanks to YOU for being a part of this, and big thanks to the OFR for supporting me over the years.
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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. Every transaction in the world is done on the promise of some value going to be delivered. Podcasting is done based on the trust that the value is gonna be delivered. You trust me that I'm gonna deliver my content. However, compared with the world of fire science, engineering and construction industry out there, I don't really have anything to show you to prove you that the podcast is going to be of value. You have to trust me. You can assess the speaker, you can tap into opinions of others, but that's pretty much it. That's the trust, and we're not building buildings on the same promise. You're not going to pick the fire damper or fire doors based on a promise someone made that, someone bought them and someone liked them. You need something, some kind of a real physical proof that the transaction you're going to make trading money for value is going to work, and the thing I've described is something called the assurance industry. The assurance industry industry that's everywhere around us. That makes us sure that what is being purchased and delivered is something that we are expecting to get. Now we rarely think about it from this perspective. My fire safety engineering is mostly in the design stage, and I know most of the listeners of the Fire Science Show would be practicing fire safety engineers on that stage of the construction projects and we just, you know, pick solutions, we give fire resistance to the walls, we choose the indexes and stuff, and then those things somehow appear on the building and part of the fire safety strategy of the building unfolds. Now there is a very much underappreciated framework, a system that makes sure that stuff that comes to our buildings is exactly what we wanted, what we needed, meets the criteria and will last with those criteria for the expected life of that building.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In this podcast episode I am discovering this with assurance industry expert Abhishek Chhabra, who's located in Dubai and spent a lot of years in fire testing laboratories. Now he is a consultant for the assurance industry and Abhishek gives me a very technical but yet interesting description of what are the components of the assurance industry, how ISO standards create the pillars of that industry and what are the technical systems that are put in place to make sure that when you draw a line on your project, the wall that it represents is going to work well in the fire. I mean, this episode was a ridiculously difficult job because when you start talking about certification and ISO standards. There's a good chance that people will turn off after two minutes and I promise you and I don't have any assurance to cover that but I promise you this is good and this is important, and this is a holistic look on the systems that are all around us, that surround us. We're part of them, and when you look at them from this perspective, a lot of things that are happening in the space start to make a lot more sense, and for that you should listen to this episode. Anyway, I won't stop you from listening. I will spin the intro and let's jump into the episode. Welcome to the Fire science Show. My name is Wojciech Wegrzynski and I will be your host.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Ofr is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy. Its globally established team has developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and environment. Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally in just seven years, with offices across the country in seven locations, from Edinburgh to Bath, and now employing more than 100 professionals. Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society, applying the best research, experience and diligence for effective tailored fire safety solutions. In 2024, ofr will grow its team once more and is always keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on fire safety futures. This year, get in touch at ofrconsultantscom.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hello everybody, I am joined here today by Abhishek Chhabra, director for International Outreach in two organizations, afcia and FCA, and assurance expert located in Dubai. Hello, abhishek, good to have you in the podcast. Hello, hello, very, very good morning. You've proposed an interesting topic for this podcast, which are the compliance regime and the compliance in fire safety overall, but I'm more interested about you being an assurance industry expert. Let's probably start with that. So what is an assurance industry and how it relates to fire safety?
Abhishek Chhabra:So the assurance industry is the root for any buy-sell transaction anywhere in the world. Anything that is bought or sold, whether it's a product or a service, is always done so on a promise saying my product will perform in a given way, or my service or my workmanship will last for so many years. There is always a claim which arrives at, or helps to arrive at, the value of what the product is or what the service is. And the assurance industry is this ubiquitous industry that is all around us in the form of standards, in the form of accreditations, in the form of testing, inspection, certification. All of these various constructs add on to create the assurance industry, or create the framework of the assurance industry, and it is ever prevalent everywhere, and, I think, much more than in the past. Now, within the fire safety world, the assurance industry, or the tools coming from the assurance industry, are becoming more and more important. This is kind of on the back of governments, private organizations, insurance companies, property owners, businesses, all feeling a greater need to assure fire safety.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I like how you define it, because it seems I'm also a part of this industry, just never thought about it from this high-level perspective. And I especially like the words promise and value, because that, exactly for me, that's what design process is Like. We are crafting a promise, a promise of fire safety for the building, and the value is how much of that fire safety we can bring, and indeed there is an entire industry that makes sure that this value is brought to the building that's being designed. So that's quite a long path from something being designed in a building to something being built into a building. Right? Can you tell me a little bit more about this pathway from your perspective? How much of stuff is happening in the background, from design replacing a line on the drawing to something really being executed in a building?
Abhishek Chhabra:Sure, I mean, this is an intriguing and exciting and a very vast subject. You know, I had earlier thought that I will talk a little bit more about the you know assurance industry and the standards used, but your question is taking me to a jump ahead and then I'll come back to this. Let me take an example from FCIA, one of the bodies I represent, which is a 25-year-old association from North America. Originally and originally it was a fire stock contractors international association and now it has grown to become an association for the passive fire protection industry. And they prophesize a very interesting concept which answers your question, and this concept is called the DIIM philosophy, which is design, install, inspect, maintain. And this kind of quality management system-based ideology covers this whole cycle that when we are designing containment or passive fire protection in any kind of building or infrastructure, it starts with correct design, which should follow the prescriptive or non-prescriptive approach. But it has to be designed as per some standard methods and the standards, of course, have evolved based on empirical knowledge, data and analysis of past accidents, incidents, experiments, and hence these design needs to be done by people who are knowledgeable for design, who have been qualified for design, who have some sort of a credentialing mechanism for design.
Abhishek Chhabra:Again, in this element, the assurance industry comes into play Again. When we talk of installation, we need to make sure that the products, the materials, the systems have some sort of an assurance. Have they been tested? Is testing alone enough to assure? No, because testing is always done on golden samples, as we say. The assurance requires what is a higher level of assurance done by certification and listing, where there is a third party who will audit the factory of the manufacturer and make sure that the products are correctly manufactured repetitively.
Abhishek Chhabra:An installation again calls for the competence of the installer, who should be able to understand design, who should be able to understand materials and proof of assurance. Is it certified compliant to a given standard? As well, as the installer needs to be qualified to match these three things One, the design of a specific building. Two, how it was originally tested for compliance to that design. And three, the skill required to reproduce it in the given project or building and be able to have the backbone to raise a red flag and say this is not okay, I cannot install this. So this is design and install where assurance kind of views it.
Abhishek Chhabra:And then we talk about inspection, which has to be independent. You cannot have a contractor or a person who has done the installation inspect their own work. This inspection has to be done by someone who is independent of the buy-sell arrangement, so it cannot be linked with the contractor and whoever the contractor is getting paid by or paid for, and the inspector needs to have a standard-based qualification to do it. And this all of this is just till the handover of a project or a building, and the real story starts actually after that, when the users start using the infrastructure or building in their own way, in their own sense, do the modification, saying hey, I need a pipe here, I need an opening here, I need to connect internet or whatever. And that's where the maintenance bit comes in. Who is authorized to maintain? And do they have all the information from design to construction to now? So the D-I-I-M philosophy then kind of addresses your point that there is a whole broad brush range to the whole life cycle of a project.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I really like that philosophy because a lot of people would not appreciate how much happens after the design, like for many of us fire safety engineers. You know, having designed a building, that's it. We're done. We've put up the fire safety strategy, I've designed my smoke control system. I told them how many cubic meters per hour they need and I'm kind of done. But actually from that point to the point where it's executed on the building, as a whole story.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And then I'm not designing this to work on on just day one of the building, I'm designing it to to work over the life cycle of the building, which will be 50, 100, the, the tunnels that I'm designing are immortal, actually, like no one's gonna commission out a tunnel because of the, the important role they play in the society.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In germany we have a virtue age of railway tunnel over 100 years and they just get refurbished and that it's. They're never gonna be removed because they are critical, so they're immortal. So yeah, there is a lack of appreciation for that craft. I I'm very sure for that, having worked as a designer and having worked as a part of appreciation for that craft. I I'm very sure for that, having worked as a designer and having worked as a part of this insurance industry, as a part of an accredited fire laboratory, and someone who who did a few audits not not that many, but they did a few very, very interesting. I also like how often you bring the the people in that, because each of these DIIM included a specific person or a specific group of people with very, very specific competencies, can you elaborate on those competencies and the need for that 100%.
Abhishek Chhabra:I mean, let me weave in some standardization into this, which is very, very important. So there are a lot of standards which are out of the family of what we call the ISO 17,000 family, the ISO 17,000 family.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:The ones that you get audited for all the time.
Abhishek Chhabra:Yes, but even as someone who is in the industry of assurance, as you have been, you know part of the lab, part of inspection. There is some likelihood that you know some of these standards. You know the 17,000 series is managed by a subgroup which is the CASCO group of ISO, which is the conformity assessment group of ISO, which is the conformity assessment and ranging from you know 17,011, it goes up to great details 17,000, I think 50 or 60, 70, 80. I can't remember the numbers, but there are close to probably 20 standards which are very critical. These go on to define the assurance industry's mechanisms, how management systems, et cetera, etc. Etc. But I will put four today in perspective which I feel are the pillars of our industry, very, very specific to the fire safety industry and all the fire engineers who are listening or other people who are listening, which is 17,020, 17,024, 25, and 65.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So 20 is operation of bodies performed. I have a cheat sheet. Iso 17020 is the operation of bodies performing inspection. Iso 17025 is testing and calibration laboratories yes, that's what I'm getting myself audited all the time for. 17024, operating certification of people, and you said 65. Yes, that is ISO 17065, body certifying products, processes and services. So those, you would say, are the four pillars for our industry out of the ISO family.
Abhishek Chhabra:I mean very, very strong. There are others which kind of get weaved in in some of the other points, but these are the key pillars. So any designer who wants to design something that would last as long as a tunnel that you doffed off, or needs to have built-in assurance mechanisms, saying what they thought over countless day and night meetings, thinking about design philosophy, of how they will ensure that the design will have the fire safety built in If they use these four standards correctly in their documentation, referencing specifications, the assurance bumps up by so many percentage points that the insurance industry in the world would get very, very excited about because all their formulas would line up very quickly. So I will not start in the numerological order of 2024.
Abhishek Chhabra:I will start with 2025, which is a standard known to you, probably well enough. But 25 starts with calibration, which means that the method of measurement needs to be accurate. This is the starting point, before we even get into the fact that the testing methodology has to be repeatable. So 17 or 25, two key points assuring that the method of measurement is accurate and assuring that the measurement itself is not just accurate but also repeatable, whether it is a piece of a cloth or a chemical or a gypsum board or a fire door. They will always perform the tests of chemical, physical, fire tests, whatever and make sure the assurance is correct.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's very like. This conversation is really funny to me because this is something that's so fundamental, like it's so endowed in you as a someone doing fire testing in a laboratory or responsible for a laboratory. It's so obvious. But now, now, when you point this out, when when you, you know, point your finger at those standards, they realize that there must be so many people who have no clue that these systems are put in place and they're so profound. Actually, even the simple thing that you said, the method is accurate and repeatable. That's like a cornerstone. If we don't have that, how can you compare to products on the market? How can you put anything on the market? How can you put any trust in a product that you have obtained from the market and put inside of the building? So, indeed, for those who've never been a part of this type of assurance regime, focus up, because this is important and this affects all of us all the time, as designers, as fire safety engineers, whatever role you're in the industry. Sorry, I broke your chain of thought, but it was a reflection.
Abhishek Chhabra:This is most important and that's why I kind of chose to start with this one. I will move then now back to 17 or 24. It is the standard for bodies who are operating. Certification of persons and this, you know, suddenly comes into context nowadays much more in countries like United Kingdom, several other countries who worked on a very structure-based implementation of laws is when we talk of people who are to be held accountable, who will be liable by a specific number for what they do need to be certified, which means I'm talking of designers. When you have a business or a set of individuals who the businesses trust to design, they need to hold a certification which again is assured by a third party. So when the designer says that this building is fire safe for 1000 years, who is authorizing the designer to say this? It is a certification body, often coming out of trade associations, who form these standards.
Abhishek Chhabra:From a practical point of view, that what are the minimum qualifications that are required for the personnel who are practicing any given profession? You and I know that there are bodies of architects, there are guilds of various trades, people who come together who write what is the minimum requirement for you to be called a plumber, a technician, electrician, etc. But there is a need for an independent certification program. Who is a certified electrician, a plumber, a fire designer? This certification program is run as per 17024. So this is the second pillar, which is all pervasive, that whichever individual you want to talk about as a function, whether it's a consultant, it could 17.024. So you will have various conformity bodies, businesses who are, you know, for example, likes of the big certification bodies like UAL, intertech, sgs, bureau, veritas, tuv, a-plus, and you know there's a very long list of companies. I hope my friends in all those businesses who I did not name don't get back to me, but this is what I can remember right now. So you have a slew of these companies all over the world. Sometimes these are government bodies within a country who do this and there is a whole kind of industry around this.
Abhishek Chhabra:So this is people. Now people are covered. And this when I say people are covered, people are covered across design. People are covered within testing. Are they competent? People are covered as contractors. People are covered as inspectors. People are covered as facility managers or FM company across the cycle of the construction. Whoever, as an individual or fund, has liability should have some sort of insurance.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:What you bring now is something that's also in the middle of a very passionate discussion within the community, because designers, yes, they would be certified through their guilds or through other measures that give you ability to practice the work of a designer or an engineer. In some countries it will be protected, in some it's not, but usually you would expect some sort of that. But for fire safety engineers, I don't really know a good competence regime and it's something that we absolutely need and we don't have that. It's something that has to be built. We don't have a fire safety engineers guild that can, you know, give you that. And I contemplated for a long time, why is that? And two things are problematic. One is the scope, so there are these SFP core competencies. One is the scope, so there are these SFP core competencies.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:But, for example, I've had an episode with Jimmy Johnson on SFP core competencies who's a fire safety engineer? And they are so vast Like it's almost impossible that you have all of them. It's so many industries, it's like you would have to have a PhD in fire safety engineering to have at least a glimpse of all of them. And the other thing is that fire safety engineers are pretty scarce within the country. So we're not having an international accreditation scheme, cross-country.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It would be regulated at the level of a country because the security, the safety, you know, each country is independent in how they rule their own system and you have maybe a few hundred fire safety engineers in that country, so that's like you may have 100,000 architects right. So that's a big group of people, big industry, to regulate A few hundred fire safety engineers. We don't even know who those people are. You know they do something with fire. No one knows what they do. So I find you know, at the same time, a huge need for this assurance of the credentials of fire safety engineers in particular, and I feel we don't have it and I'm wondering if we will have it.
Abhishek Chhabra:I am very excited and happy that both of us are having this conversation, so I'm thankful to you giving me this opportunity. I'm thankful to each and every listener who will listen to this, because, you know, progress of solving problems comes by these kinds of conversations. So what you say is a problem or a challenge being tackled head on by various people, and I would be very excited to have this conversation further to support all of them on how this problem can be solved. You talked about SFPE. Absolutely, you know. They have developed you know this not oceans, but galaxies of information and we are at this time, if I'm not wrong, when we talk of SFPE, we are only in-depth about design. To some extent we are talking about installation, inspection, meet, but it is much strong focus on design. So I'll come back to the associations that I work for, and I'm very excited to have chosen to work for them, because they have solved this exact problem that you're talking of already to a considerable extent by being able to create as well as deliver systems cut across the laws and politics and standards of nations. So brace for this. This is going to be very interesting what I'm about to tell you.
Abhishek Chhabra:The National Fireproofing NFCA Association created a handbook of accepted knowledge and the FCA worked on what is called the Manual of Practice for Fire Stopping. This is, you know, a large, voluminous book in its eighth edition that has been progressively becoming standard neutral, and this is very exciting when I say standard and code neutral, which means this document is able to teach anyone who needs to design, install, inspect or maintain fire stopping by explaining a broad spectrum of technologies of fire stopping, which is materials, systems, solutions across manufacturers. But it starts with setting a base for teaching the individual how to read drawings, how to read the assurance documentation whether it is certification and listing done on the directory of Intertech or UL or FM and the drawing of the project. So three pieces are taught very, very well across standards. So whether you are looking at an ASTM standard or a UL standard in North America, or you are looking at a BS or an EN standard in Europe or UK, or you are looking at standards very recently published in Brazil or India, where we are, you would be surprised and people are aware of this, that there are fire resistance test methods for testing through penetration fire stops, perimeter fire barriers, as per Indian standards, as per Brazilian standards.
Abhishek Chhabra:So the document, which is the manual of practice. The teaching practice now has been progressing so well that it is cutting across what you mentioned, the politiki or the country level mechanisms, which means we have a training mechanism in order to impart training and then we have a credentialing mechanism which is run by international businesses, companies like UL and FM, and international accreditation bodies. So now we have mechanisms in place on the basis of this education system that has progressed over a period of time and saying that this is something that can be directly adopted by contracts, by governments, by quasi-government bodies, saying if we have a person who is credentialed, we can be assured that they know how to design a fire stop, we can be assured how they are installing a fire stop, we can be assured how they are inspecting a fire stop, how they are maintaining a fire stop. So this model now is getting expanded to fire doors, to partition systems, to fire rated glazing and just about everything in passive fire protection.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I think the way how it's subdivided into specific products even. I think that's the key for success in that scheme, because if you think about the holistic fire safety engineering, it's such a broad discipline. The more you narrow it down, the easier it is to put a regime in place. If you have a person that has to be competent for designing fire doors as placing them in a building, that's fairly simple to define what the person needs to know, what the person needs to understand and what the person should do in their professional practice, and then, based on that, provide professional accreditation. For that part, when you talk about fire safety engineer, I don't have a clue what fire safety engineer does.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In every country the fire safety engineer will be doing a different thing. You know, in the US the fire safety engineer may be a code consultant. In the UK they will be obsessed with fire strategy. In Poland they will have 70 clauses of code that they will have to watch for and, you know, juggle between them to make sure that the building is compliant with the building law, or if they want to go away from the low, they will have to figure out a specific thing. So the idea of having pieces of knowledge defining what is the competency that you can teach from. That's important.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:If you want to execute, we need to have the means to teach In fire safety engineering in general. If you just wanted you know a holistic fire safety engineer accreditation scheme, that manual, I mean you cannot go and do an exam from the entire SFP handbook, right, that would be a killer. But nevertheless, this is an interesting pathway and I think our colleagues who are working towards those schemes should follow those ideas. How different parts or subparts of our industry have solved the problem for them. And definitely in the install inspection areas, there's a ton of people who get those accreditation and get those credentials that confirm that they are fit to do the job.
Abhishek Chhabra:So you know, to answer your pertinent and important point of view, which is the spread of responsibility, the spread of, you know, definition itself. Who is a fire engineer? Excuse me, you know like depends where you're sitting. The fire engineer could be an MEP engineer, which is mechanical electrical plumbing, or a cord consultant, both or none electrical plumbing or a cord consult, both or none. So I would like to bring in two perspectives which help clarify this answer whenever you are sitting, and these two perspectives are what I call as the key drivers of assurance in the world, in any industry that you work. And these two drivers stem from what is more important in a given country Is law more important or money more important? This is a perspective which is very deep sometimes, but in any place that you are sitting in, which could be a municipal body or a municipality of a country, city or a state, in this microcosm environment, what is stronger? Is money stronger or law stronger? And this is where the definitions of all that you are talking of come into play.
Abhishek Chhabra:So, if you have a microcosm of, let's say, the hospitality industry, which is hotels all over the world, we know that there are certain and several large international brand names of hotels, who would swear by the fact that if it's a property with my company's flag on it, then you know these 30 things. You can question them and fire safety is one of them. They stand by it. If we talk of healthcare hospitals, for example, you have several competing international accreditation bodies, like the Joint Commission or so many others, who provide the branding or the name or the trustability to a hospital that they function. They again call in these resources and answer the questions of who is a fire engineer, who is a contractor, what they are supposed to do, and all over the world these definitions are becoming firmer and firmer and I am encouraging all the people to use standardization.
Abhishek Chhabra:When we talk of these four ISO standards. It is so much easy to define liability and responsibility, and when we talk of liability and responsibility as two words, then the core directives which we started off earlier saying is it money or law? So if you have a project backed by money, which is the money of a financial institution, insurance industry, when they see a standard trail, who is responsible for what? They know where the money can go or from whom the money can be taken in case of an incident or an accident, and exactly the same mechanisms is used by law. So if someone wants to punish a business or an individual, then this standard based traceability comes in handy.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Let's go back to your pillars and I'm rushing because I'm worried we'll run out of time but there were two more inspection, certification. Let's try inspection maybe.
Abhishek Chhabra:Sorry, I will talk about certification first because, okay, let's do certification first. Then yes, because inspection without certification is no good. When we test a product and you are very familiar with testing.
Abhishek Chhabra:I am very familiar with testing. We know that the test sample, whatever it could be a fire door, a sealant, a gypsum board, a cloth, a chemical, a food item, anything they know it has gone for a test. The manufacturer typically would know or the sender of the sample knows this will be tested. So you present the best case To prevent this scenario. As a means of assurance, the mechanism of certification has come into play, which is 17065. The 17065 standard defines how a certification program should be like, how to create a mechanism to make sure that the product that is picked up in the market is reliable. Several North American certification bodies run programs which are under the scheme of OSHA's, the National Recognized Test Laboratories, NRTL programs. They all have a traceability certification number which is to be printed on the product and you know several certification bodies run this level of certification program which is very high traceability.
Abhishek Chhabra:In fact, another standard, which is the ISO 7 DINOS67, which used to be Guide 67 and Guide 65 in the past, define the severity of conformity or certification enlisting. Will you pick up a sample from the market for surveillance? For example, cables, it cables, after every 10,000 kilometers manufactured? You know somebody will pick up a sample and do performance testing or fire safety testing, or so. So this ISO 17065 defines various levels of certification and listing and, you would be surprised, building codes like the building code that evolved in the UAE, united Arab Emirates the UAE Fire and Life Safety Code, calls for level four or five as a means of certification for product traceability, which means any certification body who is to be relied on by the building code needs to have a much higher level of assurance of certification program itself. So once you have this traceability under 17 or 65 of a product or a system, we move to inspections which we talked about.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I have a civil defense accreditation. Actually, we did that as a laboratory and as a certification body. That was interesting to see another level of that, like another level of that. So so in europe also, many of us engineers who work in europe would not think that much, because those systems are put in place through the european, european union, through directives. You know, we have the construction product regulation, we have the c marking.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, this, like all the blocks in here are put in place and the system is to some extent working or not. We're more arguing whether the system is working or not. We're not thinking about why the system is put in place and how it operates. And I think it's quite interesting to reflect on that why we need c marking, why we need this assurance, why we need independent certification of products, why you need sometimes to take a sample out of the market and blind test it to check if the level is expected, right. I think all the colleagues should reflect on trying to understand why those systems were put in place, because they were not put in place to annoy us. They were put in place for a very good reason and the reasons that you are now listing. So, yeah, I'm happy to move to inspection now.
Abhishek Chhabra:Very interesting you brought about. You know the directives and regulations in European Union and you know there is a very big advantage in late movers or smaller countries like the United Arab Emirates who studied these systems already. So just to put in perspective, you know you talked about CPR, the construction products regulation, which used to be CPD, the construction products directive in the past. And there is the medical devices directive, ndt. There is the low voltage directive, lvd, there is the pressure equipment directive, ped, there is the ATEX, atmosphere Explosive Directive. These are all European Union technical regulations and if you have the courage to go to Europa's website and download the directive in your language and go through anywhere from 150 to 700 pages, you will realize that inside these pages is referenced ISO 17065, the product certification standard we just talked about, and in some cases it sub-references the type of certification program as per 17067, which defines the severity of how much should be the level of assessment. So the pressure equipment directive, the ATEX directive, call for audits to be done in the factory two times a year. In European Union these are more stringent because you can clearly imagine the medical devices directive. For certain products the invasiveness of inspection, invasiveness of assurance is much higher because you need to rely higher on them as compared with some of the other directives, like CPR. People and professionals world over realize that the actual impact of a fire incident is equally impactful as, let's say, the medical devices or the pressure equipment directive, which means that the potential of loss of life and money is so high that there is need for much higher degree of assurance mechanisms to be put in place for 17 or 25. So yeah, coming back to 17 or 20, which is the standard that defines how those businesses operate who certify inspection bodies, businesses who are taking on the liability to say this business is ready to take on the liability.
Abhishek Chhabra:It is two-tiered. So, accreditation bodies world over whether the American accreditation bodies of IAS or ENAB or UCAS in United Kingdom, as well as hundreds of other country-level accreditation bodies who have typically signed the inter-laboratory accreditation ILAC virtual recognition agreement, saying we recognize each other's work, we oversee each other's work they are authorized to audit inspection bodies. Now these inspection bodies will build in their own routines of inspections of how inspection can be done, should be done. So, for example, I could talk about, let's say, within the fire stopping world. There are ASTM standards that have evolved on how fire stopping needs to be or can be inspected. We have the fire door inspection standard, the NFPA 80, as quite a standard which defines how fire doors should be installed and inspected. So there are now standards which have evolved and published to say how inspection can be done, and various inspection bodies build up the competence of their inspectors. And then you have inspection bodies who are accredited by accreditation. It's quite tiered, it's quite complex, but the good thing is that there are standards and there is kind of method to madness.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:There will always be complexities in those systems, because we're talking about such a vast industry. You know so many subdivisions even in that design, install, inspect, maintenance. If you think about how many stakeholders and parties are involved, from the design to keeping up, the building up. It must be a lot of different groups of people and you have to have a solution for each of them. So it's obvious that it's going to be complicated.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:One thing that I wanted to ask you so I know you specialize in passive fire protection and that has been a big part of your life. You specialize in passive fire protection and that's that has been a big part of your life. You've also, during the design, you mentioned that design should be per standard metrics. Now, an interesting problem that I see is with the performance-based design, because I would like to do as much performance-based design as I can and in that case there won't be that many standardized metrics. Okay, if I use a fire resistant wall of a specific class, then the class will be a standard and there will be a system behind that. But I would love to retain a freedom of choice or freedom to engineer a solution, and now, as someone creating those solutions, it's very difficult to put me as a part of a very rigid, you know, assurance scheme. So how do you feel performance-based design fits into this assurance promise value chain of thinking?
Abhishek Chhabra:This is a very exciting question for me. It excites me because I have an answer. Good, that's what I'm asking. It excites me because I have an answer.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Good, that's what.
Abhishek Chhabra:I'm asking. It almost comes across as if I rigged the question which is actually not there, because I don't think we talked about this.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I assure it was not rigged.
Abhishek Chhabra:But this is very cool because very recently, you know, as an independent assurance industry professional, I undertook a consulting assignment around this subject. And to give you an answer, I'll just recap the perspective, which is the prescriptive perspective, which is, you have a published building code as an example. The published building code talks about, let's say, in the United States. It's very systematic. You have CSI sections, says you know if you have a fire door, if you have cladding. This section talks about which standards the products need to comply with, which standards the designer needs. The architects want to challenge the engineers every day saying okay, you designed a flat building and a straight building. Do me this? Make this building, make the Burj Khalifa, make the Jeddah Tower, make the Museum of the Future, make the line. You know all sorts of engineering marvels as we call them, the line. You know all sorts of engineering marvels as we call them. And that's where all of us kick in with the performance-based design, because you go to the first principle, saying this is the key requirement. We will use the codes, the knowledge, but this is what we need to achieve. So I'll give you two examples to kind of solve this complex problem, and one of the examples is something that happens all the time. So you are in a situation where you are designing something which the building code defines in a given way and that definition doesn't sit in your project. So you need to come to compliance. So you need to come to compliance and this compliance needs to be verified using the same four pillars, or 25, which means the laboratory where the test needs to be done needs to comply with the requirements, that they can perform this test repeatably. The second assurance pillar, which is 17 or 65, which is product certification, cannot be done in its traditional sense because there is no factory manufacturing of a system. And this is where a responsible consultant will come in and mark out certain samples or certain products or certain solutions which are designed for that specific building or that specific type of construction, and these are then custom tested in the laboratory in custom environments. And these are laboratories where you have the trust of assurance that they have these capabilities. And once the results are available, then you go back to the site and there is an inspection done by a qualified inspector 17 or 20, 17 or 24, who will then sign it off. So the liability is covered.
Abhishek Chhabra:A very easy example is carpets. Carpets really vary by weave, by thread, by color, but there is a plethora of things by which you cannot certify a carpet that will be picked up by the next new airport in the world. Who will say, well, I need a carpet which has a flame spread index of so and so and I want it certified. So the manufacturer says I don't have any certification. So this is a typical scenario where a product is to be designed, manufactured for a given project for a limited amount. It has to be sampled for that project, it has to be tested for that project and it has to be verified in terms of inspection and installation for that project. So I have been personally involved as a testing laboratory in the past for a large set of this specific challenge. Saying you have a unique, performance-based design, how do you assure it? So yes, it's kind of solvable. It is not a standard, but it is a standard approach or it is standards-based approach to solve it.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I like what you say. It brings me to an evolution of fire laboratory. You know a fire laboratory that used to be 17025. I do tests of this type of product according to this product specification and I only focus on that, and it evolves into something that has an experience in fire testing. So basically, the fire laboratory knows how fire testing is done. That's a big piece of knowledge to know how fire testing can be done. And then with this knowledge the fire laboratory can take anything like literally any sample in any context of any design building and figure out and apply a test to assess a specific performance. And in this case you don't know the test specification because you're literally coming up with one, but you understand the role of the product in the building and you can apply a test that will, you know, answer to that role in a building. And I think that's what laboratories in the future will be more and more of.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In many cases performance-based design would be considered just as a one-off. I just designed it like this, just build it. But no, you brought in here the same assurance promise, value track, that the promise is that performance design will behave like that. But there's some sort of proof of that. It can be worse, it can be better, but always is better than none. And I'm very happy because this type of work we're picking up more and more as a laboratory, not for the and, funnily enough, not for the Polish market. We're picking it up for the UK market. This is very interesting because people are seeking this assurance within custom solutions that kind of escaped this promise to value chain that they have previously been in. So, yes, your answer made a lot of sense and it kind of opens, it kind of highlights the change in the world that's happening and the change that, for me, is an exciting one.
Abhishek Chhabra:But you know, I must raise a very large red flag when anybody is using this information and knowledge, and that red flag is related to the fact that you know all that we do. We think this is the most important. You know, I worked in testing laboratories for a considerable portion of my life and I feel you know that the testing as a concept adds so much value to the work that we do. But the whole spectrum is very big, very interconnected and needs to be put in place in totality, just like when we talk of using any building code, whether it is the American or the European or prescriptive. These are guideline documents published in New Zealand or in Qatar. It has to be used in full. We cannot take parts of it to be used in full. We cannot take parts of it. And this is where a lot of troubles happen in the industries and the work that we do around.
Abhishek Chhabra:I explained a concept saying well, you do a test for a specific project on a performance-based document that has been created by a fire engineer or a business who is a fire engineering company.
Abhishek Chhabra:Now, unless there is a defined liability, clarifying conformity, assessment of the people who have written this document, there is no traceability. So the four pillars of assurance the 20, 24, 25, 65, they all need to be correctly used, because if they are not, we will end up in a situation where a document is produced by an individual who works for a business who says I have an experience of X number of years doing this, hence I am qualified to write this, and then that becomes the core document of trust and a building is created or an infrastructure is created which is supposed to last thousands of years based on what? So the pillars of assurance needs to be really used correctly and properly. This is very important, but that's one part of it. But I must say that you know we started off by bringing out the need for using passive fire protection, so we must really say that, bring this out in some form as well, an ignored cousin of fire safety sometimes no, I would not call a pacifier protection an ignored cousin.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's a critical part of any building project. Abhishek, because we're running out of time, any final thoughts, like maybe one thought that an engineer should remember after listening to this podcast episode One key takeaway that we can give to people.
Abhishek Chhabra:Well, a key takeaway is standards-based assurance should be the underlying theme for all the work that we do. Whatever work we do, we should ask the question that if there is a million dollar case, a legal case happening where someone wants to say who said this and on the basis of what, there should be something as a strong base to it. There are standards who evolve regularly on the basis of empirical knowledge, experimental knowledge, accidents, investigation, et cetera, et cetera. There is third-party independent assurance mechanisms. So the underlying final kind of thing is standards-based approach and risk. We all know that risk needs to be divided and compartmentalized, just like passive fire protection. But the compartments of risk should be good, should be fire-rated compartments.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Of good class. Okay, Abhishek, thank you so much for bringing these important perspectives and talking about the things that surround us, but we don't often realize. I think it was a valuable lesson, good chance for myself to reflect on what I'm doing and perhaps a nice lesson to anyone's listening. So thanks for coming to the Five Sides Show, mate.
Abhishek Chhabra:Thank you very, very much. Lovely chatting with you. Thank you.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And that's it. Are you still with me? I guess, if you reach that point, that's kind of obvious that you are and I'm thankful for that. I'm glad that ISO standards have not scared you off. I wouldn't say that ISO 17025 is my favorite thing in the world. For a brief part in my career, I was actually the person responsible for quality in the laboratory, which includes a very in-depth knowledge of 17.025, which most of that I've already forgotten and I feel a little bit happier.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Anyway, no matter how you feel about the ISO standards and the assurance industry that's prevailing around us the standardization, certification, testing, accreditations and so on they are the important part of our industry. Without them, we would not be able to do the jobs as fire safety engineers at all. It would not be possible. You would have no clue that what you're designing is going to deliver the safety that you hope for, and only this system makes us sure that we're doing the right thing In Europe. I guess we don't appreciate it that much, but it's deeply embedded everywhere in the codes, in the European directives. It just comes on you from every single direction. Because it's important, because people know that it's important, so important that it's a part of the law In other parts of the world. You may be just implementing this, you may be thinking about changing it. Great, go for a good direction. It actually works. It could be annoying to people, but it actually works.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Thank you, abhishek, for being able to talk about the ISO standardization and all those pillars in a very interesting and engaging way. I hope you succeed in your mission of helping people with the assurance industry, helping your organizations thrive in this world and spreading knowledge about passive fire protection. We were supposed to talk about passive fire protection because that's an important part of Abhishek's life, but we run out of time, so I am deemed to invite him again because he's such a good speaker and such an interesting person to talk to. I will definitely do that in the future as well. Anyway, after this kind of heavy episode, that would be it. Thank you very much for listening. I'm glad that we've learned something today again, and guess what? Next Wednesday, we're going to learn another thing. So, yeah, look forward to Wednesday and let's see you there. Bye.