Fire Science Show
Fire Science Show
195 - Fire Safety Cases with Chris Mayfield and Martyn Ramsden
The UK's Building Safety Act requires high-risk buildings to maintain comprehensive fire safety cases - living documents that identify hazards, mitigate risks, and establish clear accountability for building safety. This is the subject of my discussion with Chris Mayfield and Martyn Ramsden from OFR.
• Safety cases differ from fire strategies by being owned by the building's accountable person rather than consultants
• The Principal Accountable Person must take responsibility for preventing fire spread and structural failure
• Safety cases must document hazards, protective measures, and management systems
• The approach draws from lessons in high-hazard industries following disasters like Piper Alpha
• Safety cases should follow a logical structure: building description, safety management, hazard identification, safety measures, emergency procedures, and conclusions
• Bow tie diagrams help visualise threats, consequences, and barriers in a way all stakeholders can understand
• For new buildings, safety cases integrate with the "gateway" approval system
• Existing high-risk buildings (over 18m/7 stories with 2+ dwellings) must have safety cases ready for inspection
• When properly implemented, safety cases create cultural change by helping everyone understand their role in safety
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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Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. As a response to the Grenfell tragedy, the British Law System Building Safety Act has underwent a big refurbishment recently and I had an episode in the podcast with Dame Judith Hacketh discussing why is that and what is about to happen to the British legislation. She called for a cultural shift in the industry and a lot of elements introduced in this new system respond to that call for a cultural shift, and one of the elements that are now required by Lowe is that the buildings have a very special document called the fire safety case, and that's not just a design document, it's something that lives with that building, is adjusted as the building serves the society and it's just something that every high-risk building is expected to have. For me, the term safety cases is not that obvious, but I'm happy to have friends who are more familiar with the subject. In this podcast episode I've invited two colleagues from the OFR, Chris Mayfield, an associate director, and Martin Ramsden, Research Associate, both already having experience in the fire safety cases but, more importantly, also with long, even decades, of experience in introducing safety cases in high-risk industries oil and gas, nuclear and so on. In this episode we will talk over what is a safety case, why we need one, how does a fire safety case differ from fire strategy or QRA other documents that you would prepare for your buildings when you design them and why it's actually a good opportunity for this cultural shift to happen, an opportunity to make our buildings significantly safer. So let's spin the intro and learn about safety cases.
Wojciech:Welcome to the Firesize Show. My name is Wojciech Wigrzynski and I will be your host. This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with Ofar Consultants, a multi-award winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally to eight offices across the country, from Edinburgh to Bath. 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 solution. In 2025, there will be new opportunities to work with OFR. Ofr will grow its team once more and is keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on 560 features this year. Get in touch at ofrconsultantscom.
Wojciech:Hello everybody, I am joined here today by Chris Mayfield, Associate Director at OFR. Hey, Chris, good to have you in the podcast. Hi Bojcic, good to be here, and Martin Ramsten, Research Associate from the OFR as well. Hey, Martin, good to have you in the podcast. Hi there, and what a nice day to talk about building safety and the Building Safety Act. I guess you guys brought the topic to me and that is the implementation of the Building Safety Act requirements and something called building safety cases, of the building safety act requirements and something called building safety cases. I I did my reading on the topic and it seems very interesting for not just uk but broader audience. But uh, before we get to what it is and how we implement that and why it's perhaps important, let's let's maybe um, give a little bit on on the backgrounds I should probably describe myself as a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none.
Chris Mayfield:I started my sort of career in fire safety following doing an undergraduate and postgraduate degree program. I then spent a number of years at bre and then doing a variety of engineering, ad-hoc testing, fire risk assessment work with them, which I enjoyed and found quite fulfilling, then decided to try and take a bit more ownership of that in a practical sense and went and worked through a university and support their estate at Spokeshill, delivering sort of fire safety matters for a large Russell Group campus in England and then got tempted back into consultancy because I was kind of at a point where I'd either use it or lose it in terms of the sort of more academic aspects of the fire engineer's role, and that's how I've ended up backing consults over the past seven years or so, and the name that may be known from the famous Hopkins Mayfield design fire guides book.
Chris Mayfield:Indeed boy Chad. Yeah, my one foray into publication.
Wojciech:Nice nice. Martin, how about you? What's your background?
Martyn Ramsden:Well, I started off a long time ago as a mechanical engineer, did a PhD in structural dynamics and progressive failure, and my first job at the university was working on seismic assessment of nuclear power plants, so looking at the effects of earthquakes on nuclear plants in this country.
Martyn Ramsden:So I worked in that for about four or five years and then I moved to another consultancy expecting to do much the same sort of thing. But it was around about the same time as the Cullen Report on Piper Alpha had been published, and so there was a big focus on using risk management skills in the offshore industry. So I, rather surprisingly, moved into that and so have worked in major accidents in the oil and gas industry and onshore high hazard industries and mining industries ever since mining industries ever since, again starting off doing the engineering side of things, looking at progressive collapse of platforms due to jet fires and pool fires on the sea surface, and then eventually moving into looking at safety cases in lots of different industries, and so I've written safety cases for onshore fuel terminals, offshore platforms, subsea wells, you name it. Really I sort of worked on it.
Wojciech:That's a very good background, because safety cases is just what we're going to talk. So not only you can give a perspective from the fire, but we will definitely discuss on how this has been. First, let's touch, maybe, the Building Safety Act. I already had Dame Judith Hacketh in the podcast. She gave some perspectives on the Building Safety Act. I already had Dame Judith Hacketh in the podcast. She gave some perspectives on the Building Safety Act, but you guys now represent the Big Fire Consultancy in the UK. How does the Building Safety Act look from your perspective? What did it address and what did it actually change?
Chris Mayfield:I think it's probably fair to say the Act it is today is still bedding in and the practical implications of it are still being understood in terms of what that means for all the duty holders that it identifies, identifies right through from sort of the top of the tree, in terms of the accountable person for a building or a client for a building that's under construction, right down through what we typically call the design team and the principal designer and the principal contractor, through to consultants with specialisms who support particularly around fire and structure, which is where the Act focuses its attention from a safety point of view and obviously spreading out and importantly so, into capturing relevant aspects for building users. And it goes on beyond that. For each end it's a massive legislation and it's overriding.
Wojciech:at the time when it received royal assent, there was also circa 30 plus pieces of secondary legislation that support multiple aspects, from transitional arrangements right through to very relevant parts, duties, expectations and requirements that are placed on a whole facet of buildings in england the whole world is watching, because you're very well aware that a lot of legislation systems in the world are based on on the british approach and when you guys evolve, when you guys change your system in such a big way, it it's an interesting thing to observe, because perhaps some of this should also be implemented in different systems. I think two things that are important for this discussion in relation to Building Safety Act are two definitions that perhaps we should go through. First One would be the principal accountable person PAP or accountable persons and also the high-risk building, because I assume what we will talk in here will apply highly to high-risk buildings, so perhaps we could try to take those definitions.
Martyn Ramsden:Yeah well, the principal accountable person is an attempt really to bring a what's supposed to impose a duty holder on a building, so someone who is responsible for ensuring the safety of the building, not necessarily for doing everything, but having that responsibility to make sure that everything necessary is done.
Wojciech:Yeah, we all remember the famous web of blame picture from Grenfell where everyone blamed stuff on other people. So I guess it's a response to that pretty much.
Martyn Ramsden:Exactly the intention is to provide, let's say that accountability so that there may be other people who are involved. There may be other people who have roles to play, but there has to be one person who has that overall responsibility. The Act says that the accountable person for a high-risk building must take all reasonable steps to prevent building safety risks materialising as regards part of the building for which they're responsible and reducing the severity of any incidents that are resulting from such risk materializing. So essentially, the responsibility of that person is to make sure that everything which you've identified that needs to be done is done, and reviewing that to see if there's anything more that you should be doing in order to keep people safe. It sort of relies on that phrase all reasonable steps for reducing risk.
Wojciech:And the definition of a higher risk building. Definition of a higher, higher risk building. So what is a?
Chris Mayfield:higher risk building a higher risk building is it is handily defined by the, by the legislation, it's quite simple in its definition and it is targeted, and buildings that contain these two residential dwellings are over 18 meters or seven stories in height. That includes, obviously, buildings where there can be a mixed use because they're tied in through any presence of residential dwelling, or two or more, and it also includes hospitals and care home facilities as well okay, you said two dwellings or 18 meters.
Wojciech:that seems like awfully a lot of buildings are higher risk buildings right now in the UK.
Chris Mayfield:Yeah, yeah, it's multiple thousands of buildings that fall into that category and then are captured by that definition that Judith Hackett highlighted in terms of her report. And what then became legislation in the building safety act was a very clear, deliberate move to bring greater control over a higher proportion of residential buildings within England. So the control that was felt was necessary to bring improvement into the industry, if you're talking about both design, construction and resurvision of those buildings, and also strength of the ongoing management for existing buildings if you try and have these, you know high standard of safety with respect to fire and structure and, looking longer term, that could go further. There is always the scope within the legislation that other building safety aspects could come into that.
Wojciech:Okay, so time has come. Let's define the safety case, because that's what brought us together in here. So, Martin, you just said you have experience stretching far back into safety cases. You said you wrote multiple safety cases. So what actually is a safety case? How does one look like?
Martyn Ramsden:Well, maybe I can start with a bit of a story. A friend told me that it's probably an apocryphal story, but he worked for a company who was taken over by an American organization and his consultancy was involved in safety cases for the nuclear industry. And the managing director of this, the new company, came over and wanted to see one of these safety cases to know how they were made and what you put in them, because his impression was that it was some kind of case that you put nuclear materials in to keep.
Martyn Ramsden:But a safety case is essentially, I suppose, making a case for safety, making a, a demonstration that you're doing everything that is necessary to keep people safe. In the context of whatever it is that you're looking at, whether it's an offshore platform, whether it's an offshore fuel terminal, whether it's a high-risk building I like to think of a safety case as being like a story. Essentially, what you're trying to do is to tell the story of an installation. So, if you think about it, what you're trying to do with a safety case is to imagine all the things that could go wrong with the building, all the hazards that are associated with a high-risk building, and what you're trying to do is identify all the hazards that are associated with the particular facility that you have. You want to understand what the extent of the harm that those hazards could cause and try to identify what are the measures that you need to have in place in order to minimize the risk associated with those hazards. So that, essentially, is what you're trying to do. The way that I like to think of it is of telling a story. Almost the safety case starts off with once upon a time there was a building, once upon a time there was a tall building in London that was built of concrete and steel and there lived 150 people in there and it contained these features it had a roof garden, it had a gym, it had a fast food restaurant on the ground floor. Because of those features, the people were in peril from these hazards. These are the things that could have gone wrong and this is how bad they could have been, and if you didn't do anything, then this is the impact that those hazards would have. Because of those hazards, there were certain safety measures that were necessary to keep the people safe. It was managed like this to make sure those safety measures continued working and that no more hazards were introduced, and there were these emergency procedures in place so that if there was a hazard that got out of control, then people would still be safe and be able to get out safely, and because of that, they all lived happily ever after. That, essentially, is the story that you're trying to tell with a safety case. It might be worth just going back and seeing why safety cases were introduced. We talked about Grenfell and how they were introduced in the Hackett report, but I first came across them in the offshore industry. Came across them in the offshore industry. Piper Alpha was a terrible accident that occurred in the North Sea in 1988. 180-odd people I can't remember exactly were killed as a result of that fire.
Martyn Ramsden:The inquiry that was led by Lord Cullen identified many things that could have been put right, that could have been managed more appropriately, that should have been identified, and his report made it very clear that he felt that there should be a requirement for a formal safety assessment, the opportunity to look at all the hazards associated with an operation, to identify what those hazards are, what could go wrong and what you needed to do in order to minimize the risk. And the first recommendation that he made in his report was that there should be a safety case regime. And he said that and I'll just quote you from the report. He says primarily, the safety case is a matter of ensuring that every company produces a formal safety assessment to assure itself that its operations are safe.
Martyn Ramsden:Only secondarily is it a matter of demonstrating this to the regulatory body, that you're doing enough. It's your opportunity to think through the accidents that could happen, the incidents that could arise before they actually do, and solving the problem before the problem actually becomes a reality. It's one of those things that whenever you look at incidents that arise, whenever you look at accident reports, you see time and time again things that should have been obvious. If you'd sat down and thought about it, if you'd looked, done a formal safety assessment and looked at what was happening, you would have identified many of these things that led to these major accidents like Bunsfield, like Macondo, like Piper Alpha and like Grenfell Tower. And again, the safety case is that opportunity to sit down before an accident happens and look at your measures and say are they good enough to keep people safe?
Wojciech:But it feels also like an opportunity to give a higher level perspective. Not, you know, we are often feeling like we're designing in silos. That's the thing that I hear a lot about fire safety. We're working in silos. There's a passive fire protection silo, there's active fire protection silo, there's fire strategy silo. They're intended to work alongside on the paper, but sometimes it's this far-field perspective that gives you, that shows you some obvious flaws or obvious misses between those right.
Martyn Ramsden:Well, the safety case is the opportunity to put all that together. It's a question of putting all of those different bits of the design, and you can't have a design that's done by one person and everyone talking all the time. You've got to have, I suppose, connecting points where people design up to that point and then someone else takes over. But the safety case is the opportunity for you to put all of that down on the table, as it were, and see are there any gaps? Have we missed anything? What is the overall picture that we've got from this assessment? Does our smoke ventilation system fit in with the fire scenarios that have been used in the design? Does it take into account the fact that you've got certain materials involved? And again, what you're trying to do is to make sure that you're putting it all down the table and also that there's a certain transparency of the safety case, where you're putting everything down and say this is our, this is what we believe is the right thing to do, this is what we believe is our, is our appropriate design. And it gives others a regulator, for example, or, primarily, other people in your organization the opportunity to say, actually, is that the way we do things? Should we do things better? Could we change this? Is there something more we could do here? Actually, we took this system out.
Martyn Ramsden:That's something which I found very helpful in producing safety cases is the opportunity to take information on a facility, put it into the safety case framework and then for other people to look at it and say, well, actually that's not quite right. We have something like this. We've changed that, and it also provides an opportunity for people to say, actually, that doesn't look very good, does it? Maybe there's more that we could do here. And the safety case is essentially a reflection of what you've got, but also an honest view of what you've got. That allows you to say, actually there's more we do. We do this better.
Wojciech:How does it differ from fire strategy of a building Like? Is it something different? Or is it like an expanded fire strategy with more explanation given?
Chris Mayfield:So they're fundamentally two different things, in that the regulator specifically requires a building safety case report which, as Martin describes, should tell a story of what the building is, what it's about, the hazards that are identified and relevant and pose a threat to the occupants of that building, and how, in that particular instance, those hazards are mitigated to a sufficiently tolerable level and, should something untoward happen, there's an appropriate response from the building systems, management and occupants to ensure that the incident concludes in a satisfactory manner without loss of life or significant injury. The fire strategy is almost context dependent in some respects. If, if we're talking about a new build, work to an existing building, I don't think. In the uk, historically you know, we have a lot of old buildings, a lot of old buildings. Stop that don't benefit from having a fire strategy, because 100, 200 years ago it wasn't the thing buildings. So buildings have been drawn through time. You know, flourish, great purpose to society and all the rest of that good stuff.
Chris Mayfield:However, when a sharper lens is focused on the fire and structural elements of that building, there starts to be questions relevant questions about certain aspects of that building's response to fire and what can be relied upon to provide suitable mitigation to address the hazards identified.
Chris Mayfield:So, in terms of existing buildings, I think we would advocate in general that it's a very useful asset for a building to have a fire strategy that goes with it.
Chris Mayfield:That sets out nothing particularly revolutionary, necessarily, but it provides a referenceable source that a building safety case poor can time close to that sets performance goals or recognizes performance capabilities of certain fire safety provisions, whether that's very fundamental things like travel distance, exit capacity, number of exits, what active fire safety provisions are relied upon, what passive fire safety provisions are relied upon.
Chris Mayfield:So there's that information in that arena. If we're talking about a new build, then obviously the fire strategy we would say still recognizes being the vehicle that is the basis for communicating today how it's intended if that building would respond to a fire event. If we're talking about fire safety aspect and then beyond completion of the building, then that should still become an enduring document and record of how the building responds to fire over the industry. Who can seek that document and rely upon it and to inform them of what's going on from a fire safety perspective, for whatever purpose they need to interrogate it for, whether it's for developing plans to expand or change the building, whether it's for renovation work and they want to be sure that what they're proposing to do for renovation doesn't cut across existing provisions that the building relies upon or if it's to inform fire safety management provisions and arrangements.
Martyn Ramsden:If the building's been sold or changing occupancy, it can communicate what a new accountable person or, in terms of the fire safety order, a responsible person should be aware of and have knowledge of so that they can manage their building in a safe and effective way I think one of the key differences between the the safety case and the fire strategy is that we, as ofr, would produce a fire strategy that would be an ofr document, and this would be our recommendations for how a fire strategy should should take place, and it's and and it's typically a document that looks forward. This is how it should be. Oh, it should be okay.
Martyn Ramsden:Yeah, the safety case is a document that is owned by the principal accountable person, so it's framed as this is the building that I have and that I am responsible for, and this is what we are doing. This is how it is built, this is how we manage it, this is how we deal with emergencies. So it's not an OFR document, even if we might have helped to prepare as an author, it. We're writing it from the perspective of the principal accountable person and it's their responsibility to take ownership of that document, if you like, to agree, and to identify whether there is shortcomings in that document. So it's really important to make that distinction between it being a document that's owned by OFR and providing advice or a document that is owned by the duty holder and basically setting out their case and again, if you think about it as being a legal case. This is their opportunity to say this is how we manage the building to keep it safe.
Wojciech:Where have a duty to under the act I was also thinking more in the contents of the document itself, because I also I've been told that a fire strategy should tell you a story of a building.
Wojciech:Saying a story of a building sounds very José Torero-ish to me, but it's a nice way to say that. Again, a big difference in that it's a live document. And the second big difference is that many buildings would not have a fire strategy, whereas this is something that came into power for all high-risk buildings. And it will also be the same if you compare the fire safety case with the qualitative risk assessment of all sorts, because QRAs also require you to take those steps you listed identify hazards, calculate the outcomes, you know, identify the outcomes, give a risk assessment. In here maybe not in the form of a story, more like in the form of risk metrics, risk index, fn curve, whatever. More like quantitative output in the form of a risk, but also the same steps. But again, qra would be done once when you build or perhaps when you have to do some modifications, and this case would be something continuous.
Martyn Ramsden:Yeah, well, I mean again, if I could just sort of take you back to the offshore industry. In the offshore industry, quantified risk assessment was something which was inherent to the early safety case regime, and I remember the first safety cases that I saw took up shells and shells of space for one platform, and that was because it contained details of all the QRA documents. And again, ultimately, the important thing about a safety case, I think, for it to make a difference to an organization, make a difference to an organization, for it to not not to come up with a number that is an acceptable number, but to come up with a strategy, a justification, helping people to understand what they need to do in order to manage safety. So one of the things that we use in in our safety cases is the bow tie diagram. I don't know whether you've come across bowtie diagrams.
Wojciech:Yes, you can explain to the listeners, because a variety of people listen to Fire Science Show and not everyone has a risk background, so let's give an explanation.
Martyn Ramsden:Well, a bowtie diagram is a representation of a major accident hazard, with the center, the knot of the bowtie, as being what we call a top event, the point at which you lose control of a hazard.
Martyn Ramsden:On the left-hand side of the diagram, you have all the possible threats, the things that could lead to that loss of control of the hazard.
Martyn Ramsden:On the right-hand side, you have all the possible consequences for what would happen if you lost control of a hazard, and then, on each line connecting the threats to the top event to the consequence, you have the safety measures, the controls, the barriers that you have in place, and so, essentially, what you're trying to do with that diagram is to help people understand how a particular barrier will help manage a particular accident, and it's one of the things that the health and safety executive have been very keen on over the years in all the safety case regimes I've been involved in not wanting just to be told what are we doing in terms of managing safety, but what are you doing and why are you doing it? What hazards does this particular safety measure manage? What impact does it have in each particular case? Why are you doing it? And so that's something which we have found quite helpful, the client has found quite helpful in terms of helping to understand and helping to provide that teaching opportunity, learning opportunity for people who will look at the safety case to say, okay, I understand why we're doing that now.
Martyn Ramsden:I understand why this is important, because it's helping to prevent this part of this accident of Samaria. So your quantified risk assessment will do a certain amount of that and it will provide some justification for that.
Chris Mayfield:Although I think there's a lot to be, I think, as a fire safety practitioner from my career perspective, we in the fire safety world I would say particularly in the regulatory environment in England and in other jurisdictions of the UK have traditionally relied more heavily on a qualitative appraisal of hazards and associated risks.
Chris Mayfield:And the higher hazard process industry world has obviously taken on the quantitative risk approach.
Chris Mayfield:The building safety regulator has been quite clear that they're obviously trying to strike a balance through driving improvement in building safety with respect to foreign structure, but trying to lead the industry, I think, through a maturing process, without overwhelming them or attempting to necessarily perhaps over convocate it through trying to justify levels of access, acceptability of risk in a quantitative fashion, that they've been quite clear that their minimum expectations are very much around a qualitative level of the praise of a hazard, of threats to a building.
Chris Mayfield:So I think that's perhaps a differentiator between the two regimes in terms of the high hazard process industry, which is our, is arguably the birthplace driver of a safety case regime, whereas in the built environment and occupied buildings, both the design, construction and operation typically and more generally, we are at a qualitative level of risk approval and that that sort of, I suppose, came to the fore with respect to another piece of legislation that came in 2005 the fire safety order, for even wales, with similar legislation, uh produces scotland, northern ireland that starts to promote what's termed responsible persons to have to think about the hazards that their building presents to people, their activities and what features of mitigation are there, and that started us off in the general building stock to try to think about that process, documented and manage anything that was considered to be insufficient through remediation or alternative measures or enhancement of that.
Chris Mayfield:So I think we're probably on a certainly a trajectory of improving standards for occupants of high-risk residential buildings. That is building on, I think, what was already an existing baseline of encouraging people with responsibility for relevant premises and buildings to think about the hazards, of what risk mitigations there are and to document that and be able to present that in an understandable and communicatable way to the relevant parties.
Wojciech:So, for the case itself, I assume it's necessary for all high-risk building. For the case itself, I assume it's necessary for all higher risk building. I think, as I understand so far, it's the responsibility of the person that's accountable, as defined by the law. Does the law tell you what's supposed to be inside the safety case? What do you?
Martyn Ramsden:consider when building one. In one of the secondary pieces of legislation there is a list of the contents for a safety case Okay. And also there's been published a set of assessment criteria where the regulator tells you exactly what they'll be looking for when they look at a safety case. Okay, that's useful. So it's quite explicit.
Martyn Ramsden:But the way that I always like to think about a safety case is let's say, you're trying to tell this story and you need to start off with a good description of what the building is like. So what is it about the building that you need to get across? It'll be about the type of construction, the type of location that it is, how old it is, who lives there, what else you're doing in the building, and so on. There are two hazards that a safety case must consider. One is the spread of fire and secondly it's structural failure. Those are the two things that a safety case is explicitly required to do, so you're not required to look at the risk of people falling down the stairs. I mean, that's all important and may come in elsewhere, but the safety case is very specifically focusing on spread of fire and structural failure.
Martyn Ramsden:So it's not even, I suppose, a fire starting initially, so you don't have to write a safety case that considers how you manage people having candles in their flats and that sort of thing. But but the important thing is, how do you make sure that that that fire isn't going to spread throughout the building more widely?
Wojciech:it doesn't bring up the evacuation like human, human safety in it, or well that that that will come as a result of spread of fire.
Martyn Ramsden:So, okay, hazard is the spread of fire. How that spread of fire might cause harm to other people Okay, okay, okay. So safe evacuation routes are part of protecting people against that spread of fire or against that structural collapse. The structural collapse will bring in things like gas explosions and those kind of features the Ronan Point example from the late 60s, where you had a gas explosion which blew out a panel in a large panel construction building and caused partial collapse. So those are the sort of things that they're concerned about. And one of the issues that has recently come to the fore in the UK is rack concrete, reinforced, autoclaved, aerated concrete? Or is it the other way around?
Wojciech:If I build, a furnace I would build from them. They're great for fire experiments.
Martyn Ramsden:But again, that's the sort of thing that you need to be able to demonstrate in your safety case, that you're managing the risks of that. So if you have a building that has racked concrete, then you need to be able to demonstrate that you're you're managing that that has of associated property. So the first thing is is this idea of of having a good description of the facility. There's a lot that you could put into a description of a, yeah, a facility. But there's there's a principle you've ever come across. It called the principle of Chekhov's gun, where the Chekhov, the playwright, said that basically, every element in a story must be necessary and irrelevant elements should be removed. For example, if a writer features a gun in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as it being fired sometime later in the plot. All elements must eventually come into play at some point in the story. So when you're putting in your description, you're putting in a description of things that are relevant to structural collapse or fire, or you're putting it in there to say this is the reason it's not relevant to some of these later issues. So again, the focus on this is not putting all the information you can find in, but it's putting the information that's relevant to making your case. So, chapter one description of the building.
Martyn Ramsden:Chapter two how do you manage this building? Your safety management system? Who's responsible? Who's the principal accountable person? How do they manage mentors of the building? How do they manage change in the building? How do they manage change in the building? How do they give information to people? How do they do risk assessments? How do you, how do you manage work, for example, hot work that might be taking place in the building? So how is your building managed from a safety perspective? So that's two. Chapter three is normally the hazard identification and risk assessment part of the piece where you're saying okay, these are the hazards that we've identified, these are how those hazards might cause harm and this is what we're doing to make sure that those hazards are managed appropriately. The next thing you want to do is you want to say about those safety measures that you're relying on to manage those hazards how do you ensure that they are specced correctly? How do you ensure that they're tested appropriately? How do you ensure that they're maintained to make sure that their performance is continued throughout the lifetime of the building?
Martyn Ramsden:Chapter five what happens in an emergency? If there's an emergency, if someone's apartment catches fire, if there's a structural failure in part of the building, how do you ensure that people are kept safe throughout that incident? And then the last chapter is okay. So what? What do we learn from this safety case? Are there any gaps that we need to fill?
Martyn Ramsden:And again, the safety case isn't a place for making recommendations. It's a place for stating what you are doing. So if you've identified things that need addressing, to be changed, that you need to inspect the external wall, to check the compartmentation, county closes are appropriate, then you need to say we have an action plan that we will test, we will check and do an inspection for these things. We are in the process of upgrading the fire alarm system. So it's a way of saying we've gone through all this process and, as a result of that process, we've identified things that need to change. And this is what we're doing and this is the timescale we're doing it in. So it's about saying we recognize things are perfect and we want to make it better and therefore, this is what we're planning to do.
Wojciech:Let's not talk. When do you do it? Because I know the system establishes this for new builds with this gateway system. It establishes it for existing buildings. Perhaps let's discuss the new buildings, Chris, maybe you can try the gateway system.
Chris Mayfield:So, in terms of a new building or work to an existing HRB, or work that takes a building that was a previous in HRB but brings it into the scope of being an hrb, whether that's through an extension to the building.
Chris Mayfield:High additional stories or a bunch of residential dwellings, for example, the principal designer has to steer the design through a what's comparatively now a highly sort of controlled process, which now has hard stops in that where, for an hrb, the regulator has to review comments and effectively accept a design proposal before work can commence on site. So there's various nuances around what type of word will initiate which gateways to pass through. So if you've got an existing building that doesn't involve planning, then you don't trigger gateway one. If you're doing work that triggers planning through other regulations and controls, then you have to submit a gateway one planning.
Wojciech:So gateway one is like essentially planning, Essentially supports planning of course.
Chris Mayfield:Okay, yeah, absolutely, and I suppose it's a heads up and a screening of what the outline and products to achieve in an appropriate level of fire safety for that premises is going to do. Once you clear planning and you're through that, then you're you're into building up to and getting the design to gateway to. So listen to a familiar with the reba plan of work and stages that go into that. What you're doing is at the point of gateway to submission to the regulator, submitting your design and all the associated information that the legislation requires with that is basically getting your design to the end of re-restageable and the point you could hand it over to a contractor and say build me this building please or give this word to my existing building following this design. You can only commence that work once the regulator has agreed it, so it's like a hard stop.
Wojciech:I have everything I need to build. Here's what I want to build. Give me an opportunity to build it.
Chris Mayfield:Okay. Now it doesn't preclude changes being made to the design, but there is now a prescribed process within the legislation, within the secondary legislation, that sets out how that change should be managed and that puts duties on various parties to have a process in place to manage that change control process. There are time limits placed on the regulator for them to be able to consider and respond to those changes. So the system doesn't preclude changes post-gateway two. But if you are a principal contractor taking on a design, you want to be very sure that the potential of the changes is reduced to as low as possible because of the potential for delay and extension of program that could come in as a result of effectively re-appraised certain aspects of the design that was previously approved.
Wojciech:Basically, the value engineering at this stage becomes highly risky in some way, I think any revisit to a component of the design.
Chris Mayfield:Again, these components are defined as to what would be a major change or a non-major change that would require us to go back around the approval loop with the building safety regulator.
Chris Mayfield:The approval loop with the building safety regulator.
Chris Mayfield:I think our experience at the moment is design teams doing all they can to avoid anything of that nature because of the somewhat unknown quantity of what that process looks like, both then as principal designer and principal contractor, trying to move that change through the regulatory process and consideration of it, and also being mindful of, to an extent, the potential pressure that the regulator is under to deal with the volume of work that is attributed to them now as a result of people starting to engage with existing buildings, build new buildings under this new regime and generate some calls for them to act and consider applications for everyone.
Chris Mayfield:Gateway 2, and changes during post-Gateway 2. The vision that the regulator presents when they talk to industry about this is, once you've cleared Gateway 2 and anything that you might need to address as a change to your gateway to design is that by the time the project arrives at gateway 3, they foresee that being a very simplistic process in terms of the building design delivery, because their hope is that all of the hurdles that the design has created or have arisen during construction have been resolved at that point, prior to that, and everything should be in good shape by the time you arrive at Gateway 3. You're looking to gain a certificate for occupation and have in place your building safety case report at that stage.
Wojciech:Okay, and let's assume you already have a building that was completed, that didn't go through this process, and all the building. Is there a fixed date at which you're supposed to deliver the fire safety case? Do you even deliver it, or is it just you're supposed to?
Chris Mayfield:have one.
Chris Mayfield:The duty to have a building safety case report that's premised on a building safety case is on the principal accountable person for the building and that duty was bestowed on them for October 23.
Chris Mayfield:And the regulator can request to see a building safety case for an existing building and the principal accountable person has 28 days to provide that to them for their review and consideration.
Chris Mayfield:So the, the process that sort of initiated the chain of events that led and laid the groundwork for principal accountable persons being in the fire arrive want a better expression for having a building safety case was through a process of demanding that principal accountable persons for HRBs had to register their building and provide certain information around that, and then that then led to effectively a register of buildings which range our bees, and that then now becomes a database for the regulator to look at to identify buildings that they want to call forward to review their building safety case.
Chris Mayfield:And they they they'd be quite explicit that they have a like a triage of process around buildings that, based on the information intelligence, they have a, if you like, a triage of process around buildings that, based on the information and intelligence they have on those buildings that they are more interested in seeing a safety case for as a priority over ones that, for whatever reason, are less of a priority for them. In simple terms, generally it would be something that a building safety regulator would be keen to see from a building safety case. The core perspective for an existing building would be a tall building that may still feature some proportion of a combustible cladding material.
Wojciech:Yeah, understood, but technically they can ask for any building that would fall within the higher risk building category. So yeah, can you deliver one in 28 days?
Chris Mayfield:obviously the idea is that as responsible and aware and informed principal accountable person for your building, you have gone through the process of having your safety case in place and effectively treating it as a live document and updating it under review, both as a matter of general process but also in response to anything that might happen or you become aware of over the course of the period of which the safety case has been in place and seeing if that needs revisiting and reviewing and further enhancements made to it and in terms of sort of the uk legislative picture. That shouldn't be an alien concept to a lot of people with responsibilities for buildings because in a in a slightly lighter version, that's what they should have been doing with respect to the fire safety order anyway so we're narrowing the end of the time and I really wanted to discuss fire safety engineering that goes into the fire safety case, but perhaps we've kind of run out of time for that.
Wojciech:But it's a fire safety engineering podcast. There's 200 episodes on fire safety engineering people can listen to. But one thing I want to ask. This came into life some months ago, so there's already some months of experience with this. How do you view this vessel of fire safety cases? This really something that fire safety engineering in the uk really needed, and do you see a qualitative difference in your market in your projects with this, or it's just business?
Chris Mayfield:as usual. I'll have a go answer that. Now martin can see whether he sees it slightly differently because of the slightly different background he has.
Chris Mayfield:I think by and large we try to view it as business as usual.
Chris Mayfield:But what we are doing is, I think, adapting, if you like, our model of the approach to a project in response to the requirements of the legislation that is generally now bringing forward detailed technical analysis fire engineering if you like more to the front and the initial stages of a project. So the demands of the regulators to see evidence of either deterministic or comparative analysis is there and in place and is being coordinated with the design team so that at that point when Gateway 2 submission is made, the design reflects any implications or findings of any engineering analysis that's been done and the information supporting that is presented in its fullness and sufficient detail to allow the regulator to interrogate that and hopefully be comfortable with what is proposed um and consider is it appropriate for the building I think it's a little early to say what impact this is having on the industry as a whole, because I suppose that the teeth of the regulator haven't bitten yet in terms of sending back safety cases that aren't adequate, feeding that kind of review back.
Martyn Ramsden:As I said before, the primary objective of a safety case really ought to be for an organization to look at themselves, and I think it's difficult to know whether that's happening. The really important thing is that organizations don't completely outsource the safety case function to someone else, but they take ownership of it, even if they get support from other people and I think that, for me, is one of the key implications of it even if they get support from other people, and I think that, for me, is one of the key implications of it.
Wojciech:And for the high-risk industry, post-piper Alpha. When this was implemented in an oil and shale gas, for example. Did you witness a change in there many years after that?
Martyn Ramsden:Well, maybe I'll give you an example. It was after the bunsfield explosion. We did a lot of work with the total looking at at some of their fuel storage facilities. After after that incident, we we prepared a safety case, or we we supported in preparing a safety case for a large fuel terminal very similar to bunsfield and we presented it to the workforce when we'd done it. It was part of the requirements under the COMA legislation, which is the UK permutation of Cervezo, and we trained the entire workforce in the safety case, explained to them what the safety case was for. We went through some bow tie diagrams, explained all this and we showed them the importance of the safety case was for. We went through some bowtie diagrams and explained all this and we showed them the importance of the safety critical measures that we'd identified. And afterwards the general manager we were talking to a little while back he said oh dear me, ever since you did that training course, people keep coming to us with suggestions for how to make the place safer. And he said that what it's done is it's given people an awareness of their role in managing safety through having access to that simplified version of the safety case, their particular jobs, whether it was working in the yard, whether it's working in the control room, whether it was doing maintenance. It helped them to understand what they were doing was important in managing safety. Certainly I've seen a difference in how safety cases good safety cases, if I could say that, how good safety cases actually make a difference to the culture of an organization if they're allowed to be spread and communicated amongst all the people that are involved. If it's an activity that is just by safety professionals for safety professionals, safety case won't actually touch the sides of the organization.
Martyn Ramsden:Yeah, could I just also quote from another accident inquiry? And some years ago in afghanistan there was a a nimrod aircraft crashed as a result of a design flaw. There was a safety case for this nimrod aircraft and again the safety case wasn't. The judge in the inquiry report said that the Nimrod safety case represented the best opportunity to capture the serious design flaws which had lain dormant for years. And he said, unfortunately and again, remember, this is the judge-led inquiry official report he said, unfortunately, the Nimrod safety case was a lamentable job from start to finish.
Martyn Ramsden:It was riddled with errors. It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency and cynicism. The best opportunity to prevent the accident to the Nimrod was tragically lost. So that shows the other side of how safety cases could have made a difference but didn't make a difference. I was saying to Chris earlier that I think maybe everyone who writes safety cases and is involved in safety cases should have that quote framed you put over their desk to remind them that what they're doing is, or what you have when you're doing a safety case is you're having the opportunity to prevent accidents from occurring.
Wojciech:Yeah, let's, let's go on that and let's hope we do not miss those opportunities. Dame Hackett asked for a cultural shift and I believe implementing this safety case as a process, because I value the process, I like the document, but I think the process itself. It just leads to better safety, to better understanding of what we're dealing with, and that just has to result in better safety if done correctly. That's one thing, but Tim Hackett also asked for FIRE community to take responsibility for his action and step up with the leadership, and I hope this part is what we're trying to achieve in some way in this podcast. So thank you, guys, for stepping up and discussing this important change in your regulations, and ripples of what's happening in the UK spread across the world, so I hope this was informative for all the colleagues around the world as well. Thank you, guys for coming to the FireSense show. Thank you, thanks for the chat and that's it. Fire safety case a new thing for fire safety engineering, but not such a new thing for high risk industries. A lot to learn from our colleagues who are implementing this for years. A lot to learn from our colleagues who are implementing this for years, and indeed it seems like an element that provides a great opportunity to revisit what you have in your building, to revisit what's happening, to revisit systems, to revisit solutions, to figure out if what we have is adequate to provide fire safety.
Wojciech:In many of those discussions, especially when I discuss risk with chemical engineers it's the thing I've noticed in the podcast they seem to think different about the risk. Like for chemical engineers, the process itself, the process of doing the risk assessment, is as important, or perhaps even more important, than the final evaluation. Now, when I do risk analysis for my clients in Poland for tunnels, let's say they only care about the FN curve and the final numbers, so they're interested in the output of the risk analysis. Is the risk acceptable or not? A numeral value that I have to give, which is okay? That's the point of risk assessment. Right To provide the evaluation of risk based on quantitative metrics. But the process itself. If you're doing risk analysis for your own case, it allows you to see so much deeper into your processes, into your solutions, and understand the weak points so much better. That's the real benefit of running this and therefore I really like the fire safety case as a tool and I like that the person responsible for the building is responsible for the safety case as well.
Wojciech:They cannot just outsource it and get the document, put it on the shelf and that's it. They have to take responsibility of their document. Of course, they will need help in preparing that, but they will need to take ownership. They will need to participate in the process and therefore they will need to take ownership. They will need to participate in the process and therefore they will make their buildings safer. Good tool.
Wojciech:Let's see how it's implemented. Let's see how it works out on the British market and I wonder if my Polish system has an equivalent of a building safety case. We have more equivalents of fire strategies, not necessarily of building safety cases. Perhaps we need to introduce something like that. I'll consider, because it really seems a valuable tool for fire safety. Let me know what you think about fire safety cases. Let me know if you have prepared one. Let me know if you had one reviewed. Let's figure out what to do with them, how to do them best, and hopefully they create this cultural shift in the fire safety that was called for. Thanks for being here in the Fire Science Show Next week. Another piece of fire science and engineering coming your way. See you there next Wednesday Cheers Bye, thank you.