123 - Futureproofing fire safety systems with Jaime Cadena Gomez

Designing Long-Lasting Fire Safety Systems

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello everybody , welcome to the Fire Science Show . If you design fire safety systems for buildings , I wonder if it ever crossed your mind figuring out how long actually those systems will last on the building . In each design fire safety strategy for your building , you design sprinkler systems , smoke control , detection in it the usual things that we would like to have in our buildings . And now the question is how long actually such a system can operate in the building , how long such a system can provide the level of safety we envision for day one of our buildings . And if you're , for example , burdened with a refurbishment project on an already existing structure , or perhaps you're changing occupancy , how to evaluate if what's in there is actually fit for purpose ? I have a feeling that these types of considerations are quite odd and uncommon , until the day when you really really need to do them , because you're forced by something breaking or some specific requirement and it's very difficult to find knowledge on how to design those systems . With future in mind , how do we future proof our fire safety solutions ? For this subject , I've invited Jaime Cadena Gomez once again . We've had similar discussion in the Mars Habitat Chat Perhaps you remember that and we realized that actually designing for robustness , for longevity of the systems . Future proofing them is perhaps an important aspect of building fire safety habitats outside of planet Earth . But coming back to the earth and earthly problems , today I ask Jaime important questions how do we make sure the systems that we design last long and how do we make sure that in the future , we can actually adjust some stuff as the building evolves ? So , as someone whose one hat is to run a fire safety laboratory , I see these things from the struggles of my clients . Jaime is designing tunnels , so he sees these things through the eyes of his clients , who want longevity for their systems . So I hope we got a good discussion here . Please join us and let's spin the intro and jump into the episode .

Speaker 1 2:11

Welcome to the Firesize Show . My name is Vojci Winksiński and I will be your host . Firesize Show is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants , a multi-world-winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges . 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 .

Speaker 1 2:52

Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants , the business has grown phenomenally in just six years . With offices across the country in seven locations , 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 solutions . Recent growth has seen it continue to build on its globally established reputation , advancing its journey to net zero , including embarking upon carbon balancing journey with the world land trust and recruiting more of the fire sector's best talent , with a team that now exceeds 100 professionals In 2023 . Ofr is growing its team and is keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on fire safety futures . Get in touch at OFRconsultantscom . Hello everybody , I'm here today with Jaime Cadena Gomez from Transurban . Hello , jaime hey .

Speaker 2 3:46

Wajjek , good to see you , good to hear you .

Speaker 1 3:49

Good to hear you once again in the podcast and we've been talking a bit . In our Mars exploration talk a few weeks ago and in that talk we brought some quite a lot of earthly problems about the system design in the terms of how long systems last , how much systems break and how to actually make systems that last longer . I thought that this is a very important thing for every designer to consider , even that we want to design sustainable buildings First . If you could tell me how important is designing this resilient , long lasting systems in your practice and why is that ?

Speaker 2 4:30

Yeah , I think it's important in every field of engineering to have an entire lifecycle view , and that is not easy to do , because that means that when you're designing something , you want , let's say , a particular equipment to perform a certain function and you might be focused on just that . You get the equipment , you install it , you configure it and you get it up and running and it does what you want it to do . But the reality is that five years later , 10 years later , 25 years later , that equipment might not be in the same environment . That equipment might have degraded , you might have done the correct maintenance or incorrect maintenance , or you might not have done the maintenance that you were meant to do , and then your system might have changed as well with it . And that's particularly important for the built environment . For buildings , the occupation changes , the use of the building changes , the layouts change , and taking into account all of those variables in the design is very hard to do , which is why we don't . As a general rule , people don't spend too much time , and therefore money , in trying to figure out all the possible ways in which a particular area , location , a particular equipment is going to change over 10 , 25 , 50 years , because it's just a guessing game . But in saying that , if you don't allow room for changes , if you don't allow room for the degradation of the equipment , degradation of the system , potential changes in your requirements because five years , 10 years down the track you might have a higher requirement and if you have no wiggle room , then you're going to be in a very complicated position . And I could give some examples .

Speaker 2 6:18

One thing that everyone has been struggling with worldwide is firefighting foam . Or typically , that foam was made with PFAS , which is polyfluorinated compounds that are very good at creating a blanket and then separating the fuel from the oxygen and therefore putting out a big pull fire which can cause a lot of damage . But on the other hand , those compounds we later found , after decades of using them , we found out that they were bio-oxymulative , toxic , could potentially lead to cancer and it's just nasty stuff . We don't want it in the waterways , we don't want it in the environment , we don't want it in people . So having that transition , now that we've realized that , into a different type of foam , sometimes the reality is that whatever equipment you have that could deal with that foam is no longer enough . Now you need to install this machine that helps you deal with thicker , more viscous , fluorine-free foam , and that is all good . You can have the money , you can have the time , you can have the resources . But what about if you don't have the space to put that in ? So , in the total space , I think you're familiar with that . That's space proofing . Thanks very much .

Speaker 2 7:30

It's a big guessing game , especially in early stages of design , and I know that there are consultants who specialize in these . But again , the wiggle room is very important , because too much wiggle room is wasted money . Too little wiggle room is a potential massive problem down the line . Foam is an example , but I think we have other examples Sprinklers , which is kind of the weapon that all the fire safety engineers tend to use when somebody challenges their fire safety strategy .

Speaker 2 8:00

Well , let's just put sprinklers . Well , what if your pump is not that reliable ? What if your building , say I don't know a timber building ? What if it's a very special timber building , the occupation that you have there ? What if it requires two independent sprinkler systems ? How are you going to make sure that they are reliable and stay reliable over 10 , 20 , 50 years ? So , answering your first question , it's very hard to take all of those variables into account , but at the same time , there's a responsibility that we have of taking into account whatever we are aware of and whatever we can prepare , for there's got to be things that come out of left field and those we will as they come .

Speaker 1 8:43

Maybe if we can zoom out , what types of fire protection systems , what types of fire protection tools are we even considering in this life cycle element , because I'm not sure how to narrow it down . Does it include passive protection ? Is it mostly focused on active protection ?

Speaker 2 9:01

Well , let's divide it into four big buckets Fire detection , fire suppression , fire ventilation and then passive fire protection . Each one has a different function . Some of them are very evident , Some of them are interconnected . They overlap a little bit , but we can kind of divide it into those four Big buckets of equipment .

Speaker 1 9:25

Let's clash now that with the lifetime of the building . So if you design a building , what would be the estimated lifetime of a building that you're designing for , or the object that you're designing for , and for each of those systems you mentioned , how could you , out of your head , expect the life expectancy of the system design day one in the common setting ?

Speaker 2 9:47

Well , I don't design buildings so I'm not sure about that . But we have buildings all around us and we've all grown up , so I think it's reasonable to expect that a building lasts anywhere between 50 to 80 years . Maybe it will suffer a lot of refurbishments .

Speaker 1 10:05

We as designing buildings . I think that's a fair assumption . 50-ish , If you design for less than 50 , for 20 , for 15 , you're probably already taking some cuts in other aspects of the building , given that it's quite temporary . So 50 plus , I would say .

Long-Term Equipment Lifespan and Upgradability

Speaker 1 10:23

And for tunnels you design tunnels .

Speaker 2 10:24

Tunnels would be 100 , right , that's what you would expect and then the one that I think I can answer a little bit better without getting into , say , sensitive information is detection and suppression systems are typically specified for at least 25 years . Ok , that's what many clients would expect from anyone who is selling you a piece of equipment to tell you this is going to last for at least 25 years . So , for example , firewater tanks , the liners , they can last for a long time , but they only have warranty for 10 years . So usually you replace them at 10 years . But then you have other things like pipes , like the combined fire mains which is bought for a tunnel , for a building , for a hospital , for whatever it is . You have a combined mains . That is , potentially , if you have a fire suppression system , you have a combined fire mains and that pipe , you would expect it to last pretty much as long as a building .

Speaker 2 11:23

But in reality it will depend on your water quality . It will depend on the actual design of the pipe , on the layout of the pipe . If you have dead legs , those dead legs are going to suffer massively because of corrosion and accumulation of sediments . If you have very flat pieces of pipe and you have an alternating environment where you have water and then you don't have water . So , for example , a dry pipe system where you activate for testing or in case of an emergency and then you close it again and then it's empty but there's a little bit of water left . All that pipe is going to be corroding at different rates . So you might expect that if you have a good corrosion rate , like an acceptable corrosion rate , that thing might last for three , four decades . But in those particular points of the system where you have those unique features , challenging features , your corrosion rate might be twice , five times , ten times more , and you won't know until you measure it . So it's something that could potentially be taken into account in the design . But again , if you do take it into account , it's going to be more time , more costs and potentially more responsibilities down the track . If you flag this particular section of the combined mains , it's exposed to higher corrosion rates . That means that you need to monitor that down the track and then you create a new maintenance responsibility which is going to create more optics and therefore it's going to make your whole project more expensive . It's still the right thing to do , but it doesn't mean that it's going to make it very attractive for , say , the client . So it's a very delicate balance to identify these kind of things that could cut life out of your equipment and then the treatment that you can give it so that it continues living for a long time . And that's the other part that I wanted to mention .

Speaker 2 13:19

Going back to space proofing , what if you identify a piece of pipe that is particularly exposed to high corrosion rates , let's say because it's next to an aircon unit that is bursting just hot air into it ? What if you don't have a way of practically removing that section of pipe once it gets corroded ? Let's say that you know you have to change it every 10 years . But what if you cannot physically do it ? Get in there and get the pinhole to safely replace that pipe .

Speaker 2 13:48

So those considerations , I think it's the same as with major accidents we only learn how to prevent them after they happen . And that is a bit unfortunate , but that's the way humanity learns anyway . I don't think it's particularly an engineering thing , it's just the way we learn . We learn by facing failures and by realizing that didn't work . We should have taken this into account , but at the same time we also have a big knowledge back and we should be able to prepare for at least a whole bunch of failure modes that we know will take place at some point , especially if you're looking at a 50 years lifespan .

Speaker 1 14:24

So if we look , for example , on the sprinkler systems , we should already have like 100 plus years of experience there breaking pipes , you know , corrosion , everything . We went through a lot of cycles of technologies . We've seen them come and go , but this is something that we do have experience , long , long lasting experience with . If I look at more complicated electronic systems , like you've mentioned , detection systems , if I go to a building and I see 25 year old Smoke alarm cabinet , I mean this thing belongs in a museum . It's nowhere Compatible with anything you can install nowadays and today .

Speaker 1 15:03

I look at products that are placed in market and , as a laboratory that tests those products and issue certificates , I know the common problems of my clients . They come back to me every three to five years , every of them , like literally every of them , telling me their supply chain has changed . They do not have access to the parts they have been using when Certifying a product and we are certifying for a specific set of components . Right , this spot with this part , with this part , this is your product , you're not allowed to use anything else and now it's out of the supply chain . You're not able to purchase anymore . You have to replace it with something . It becomes a new product , and those things are evolving much , much quicker than the manufacturers would even like , so it takes a lot of work . To create a system with envisioned Evolutionary compatibility no , I'm not sure if I'm very clear but something that you can then change , upgrade , put something new into it and it will just work .

Speaker 2 16:10

Like something like forward company compatibility , rather than back at the ability . You need to figure out the way of Designing something , get it certified but at the same time , make it so that you can modify it and upgrade it in the future and still keep working . Yeah , I I do have two points to that . One point is the responsibilities , or in the design , when you're making the case for your fire safety strategy and I talked about these , I think I've talked about these with you , but also with many other colleagues I think that there's a gap between fire safety engineers and fire protection engineers . The fire safety engineers Leaving these realm of design fires , fire dynamics , simulations , understanding the what the performance of the system needs to be , so that you can actually Justify a safe design or at least an alarm design , because justifying a safe design is very hard , but it's not impossible , but at least an alarm design . But then that realm of the fire safety engineering I don't think that there's a very smooth Connection with the fire protection side of things . A lot of the times those requirements that are specified by the fire safety engineers translate into Equipment , as you were mentioning particular fire panels , particular pipes , lengths of pipes , a layout of piping , selection of valves , selection of sprinkler heads that not necessarily Reflect the intention of the fire safety strategy . And maybe the idea of the fire safety strategy was really good , but the way it's executed , the way that it's implemented in the field is not necessarily the best . Or it's very good at the beginning , but then , five years down the track , that fire panel is no longer , as you said , upgradable . And now if one critical component , let's say the loop card where you connect all the devices , you can no longer find a replacement for that , if you don't have a responsible Manufacturer that will give you support , that will guide you through it , you're in a very tight space . You you might be forced to change your entire detection system because , because of this problem , and Even if your manufacturer is there with you , accompanying you , providing you support , which is the ideal case you might still be looking at very large capital investments that you were not expecting to have even before . Whatever , how many years they tell you that the system is going to last for ?

Speaker 2 18:44

So one thing that I'm trying to say with these is that when we're designing , there are a few Maintenance responsibilities that should be part of the fire safety strategy . It shouldn't be just accomplish these Performance through a sprinkler system or through a detection system . It's also make sure that these systems remain Suitable over time , and that requires an active asset management approach . You actively need to engage your manufacturer . You need to check that your equipment is still Supported , that there are steel parts , that you have spares available , that you're getting access to those spares , and that is all of that is a big challenge , and especially if you look at it in the building space , in the normal building space , not tunnel , because tunnels are Operated and there's a lot of tight asset management done in tunnels . But if you look at other buildings , say residential buildings , a lot of the times it's hard to figure out who is actually keeping track of all of these , especially if there's nothing retaining the fire engineer report , which is often the case because you just expect to comply with some sort of maintenance code .

Speaker 1 19:56

No , no thought came to my mind considering the you know upgrade ability of my systems . Actually , perhaps if I met the 20 year old fire alarm central in the building or a control panel , it would most likely be hardwired . You know , there would be probably a hardware solutions for connections , for steering for everything and in the end it actually might be more upgradeable than a modern , proper sherry System based on software . So perhaps a solution is also there in simplicity , perhaps not mega system that Steers absolutely everything with proper sherry Steering's . They're beautiful , tiny , they don't need power . It's just in five years they may be gone . And if you have Distributed network of hardwired Central panels that steer separately , or ventilation separately , or sprinklers , pumps , lighting , everything , it's perhaps possible to replace the modules . How do you see this ? Escaping the modern technology Rather into old and tested systems that we know will be compatible because they're simple , analog systems .

Speaker 2 21:09

Robust , more robust systems , not necessarily more optimized and more streamlined and More fancy , as you say fancy and shiny , new touchscreen , beautiful digital things , but maybe some more old-fashioned but Robust systems . And that's actually the second point that I wanted to make , because I found that manufacturers , they navigate a very interesting space . They're not fire safety engineers and they're not fire protection engineers . They build equipment , they supply equipment and they are a key player when that equipment is commissioned and , of course , when you have problems down the track , when something starts breaking down because of the use or because of an unexpected Failure , they are usually your point of call when things get complicated and they should provide you some support to figure out how to deal with those failures . And that's connected to that first point that was making .

Speaker 2 22:05

When you select a technology , when you select a manufacturer , it's not straightforward what you're looking for . Sometimes , if you look at it , that at the most superficial level , you're looking at price . All right , all of these people can provide me with smoke detectors and fire panels . Okay , which one is the cheapest ? Maybe at a second level you can say all right , I want to have some continued support from these manufacturers . So if something goes wrong , these people will be available to give me some engineering support or tech support . All right , that might be a second , a second layer , but then you get into more , deeper layers where you think what you were saying before Forward compatibility . Well , what's the expectation in your company as a manufacturer that these products are still gonna be around in the next 20 years , 30 years ? Is the entire system going to be supported ? Or do you have a long term or medium term or short term , a plan to Completely redo all your suite of equipment ? Because if that's the case , maybe I don't want to buy from you today , maybe I would want to buy from you once you do that full restructuring of your of your equipment . So there are many layers that you can keep going down and that's why I was saying that connection between fire safety engineers and fire protection engineers should be a little bit more Explicit , more tangible .

Speaker 2 23:35

In here in Australia . That can be done through Safety and design workshops , when you sit down , all the interested parties and you discuss these kind of things . So the fire safety engineer said that you need this sprinkler system and then the fire protection engineer said that the sprinkler system is going to look like this and then maybe you iron out a few inconsistencies , things that don't work out well . But bringing in that component of Equipment selection , or rather Manufacturer selection , so that you can future prove your fire safety strategy , I think it's very important because you might have a great fire safety strategy , you might have a great selection of equipment today , it might be installed , commission very properly , but your selection of technology is going to be very important .

Speaker 2 24:25

Five years , ten years , twenty , thirty years down the track , and If you don't make that selection , if you don't decide to make that selection , but you just go with , as I said , the basic level cost , maybe ten , twenty years on the track , you're gonna be regretting that decision . And so I think that that is often left to kind of random , to the way that projects flow , economic decisions , financial decisions . But there is more that can be done so that you future proof your systems , just by doing analysis like that , which is take a lot of effort , but it would be , it should , part of our responsibilities anyway .

Speaker 1 25:03

Imagine you have a building . Ten years into the building , the fire strategy changes Because of whatever reason a change of occupancy , a change of overall requirements in your country for these types of buildings , new owner that has their own higher standards of safety , whatever reason . Now , of course , you as the designer , the one when you design the building . It's a very tough selling point to tell someone you know I'm gonna make your building more expensive so you don't have issues in future . That never works from my experience , sorry .

Speaker 1 25:37

However , I also think that if you design a building with absolutely no capacity to change , it's also some sort of an error . Like I think , as a good engineer , I would have an obligation to design my systems in a way that you can actually try to do something with them in the future . I'm not saying I need to design an over-designed system that can handle whatever occupancy in future will be envisioned , but if I design a system and it barely fits in the room and I know that you have to install the parts in the correct order , other way it's impossible to even enter the room that perhaps it's not a space that will allow me to upgrade the part in the back corner of that room if

Responsibility and Options for Future-Proofing Buildings

Speaker 1 26:25

something is needed . So two questions in here how do you view the line between engineer's responsibility for future proofing and overburden like going too far with it , creating unnecessary costs ? I think that's a very difficult one . And second , what are the options for future proofing building ?

Speaker 2 26:46

Yeah , the second one is hard , so I'll start with the first one . I think you're right , and that's also what I mentioned at the beginning you need to provide some wiggle room and , if we say it in very layman terms , you need to provide some room for things to change , even a fire pump . Fire pumps are not small . A jacking pump is quite small , but if you are using a big electric pump or a diesel pump , those things are not going to be small . So I know of cases where there's no way of removing the pump or replacing a big component of the pump because it just won't fit through the door . So there are some very basic checks that you can do . So I think that that's the minimum responsibility of everyone right now , just to make sure that things that make sense are actually embedded into the design .

Speaker 1 27:36

Perfect example of such a thing and what happened with it Diesel power generators in buildings . If you have one megawatt diesel power generator in your cellar of your building , it's absolutely huge and it has a huge tank for fuel and it is absolutely necessary and I am absolutely sure in the next 10 to 20 years every building owner would like to replace that with a lithium ion battery , because this allows you for different things to do , is cheaper in maintenance and perhaps you can play on the energy market with it , which you cannot do if you have a giant diesel generator right and you're just left with it and then challenge with replacing it . So that's an example of how the view over the building use , not necessarily safety requirements . You still want to have power supply . You still want to have backup power . Fire strategy has not changed , but the technology and the overall climate around the climate has enforced you to replace it . I wonder how many things like that we will see in the future . So how would you future proof that that would be a challenge .

Speaker 2 28:43

As a basic requirement I would say make sure that things fit through doors . Okay , that's an easy one , because unfortunately there are too many examples where that doesn't happen , where you find that actually you cannot fit something through a door , or even doors themselves . Sometimes you cannot effectively replace a fire door because it's too large and maybe you don't have a way of bringing a new one in . So I don't like using the concept of common sense , because I don't think that there's a saying that common sense is the less common of all the senses . But there is some level of due diligence that I think is the bare minimum to ask when we're designing and selecting this technology . So one of that is yes , I can fit it in and I can fit it out . A second level would be yes , I can effectively inspect it . So I can effectively bring someone in a technician and inspect it , whether it's a visual inspection or if it's connecting to a system or if it's using some sort of non-destructive testing . Yes , I can do that , there is a way of doing it , and if there is not the easiest way , there is another way of doing it , and that's a second level . Then a third level would be well , I can fit it through a door , I can inspect it and I can also change it if I need to change it . Now there are some things that we might not want to ever change and if we need a new one , we might need to build some sort of new facility , some sort of new installation to fit a new system . But there are some parts of the system that we do need to change eventually .

Speaker 2 30:18

If you think about detection cards , if you look at the fire panel , the amount of cards that you have in there , and they all fulfill some very essential function , and usually they don't have a lot of redundancy . If you lose one of those cards , you need to replace it with a new card . If the new card that your manufacturer gives you is larger than the old card , it might not fit in . And how do you feature proof for that ? You basically cannot . You need to have enough room in your panel so that you can potentially Frankenstein some sort of support , some sort of bracket that will allow that card to go in and then live happily inside the panel . So that goes back to the wiggle room .

Speaker 2 31:02

I know that adding wiggle room to everything over designing things is not attractive , it won't fly . But you need to give yourself a little bit of pace because otherwise , when you need it , the system is basically obsolete . You cannot do anything . And there's a theory . I call this out on my PhD thesis . It's called InfoGap .

Speaker 2 31:21

Infogap is basically telling you give yourself some room , find the optimum . So let's take the example of the fire panel Find the optimum . So a very small size of fire panel will be able to fit all the cards perfectly . You don't need to waste any square centimeter of that fire panel . Everything is utilized . That is the optimum . But if you don't allow some extra room potentially for an additional card , two additional cards , an additional power supply unit , an additional battery that's not going to cost you too much . But if you don't do it , basically you have to rip apart the entire panel and bring a new panel in . So that concept of InfoGap is find the optimum and then step away from the optimal a very explicit amount so that it's not too expensive . But it gives you that wiggle room . And again , doing that is an expensive exercise but it's going to be much cheaper than having to say we need to replace a generator by a much larger one and we cannot take the old one out and put the new one in . That's going to be much more expensive .

Speaker 2 32:28

Whatever way you see it and a lot of the things that I've mentioned are not new it's not like we're inventing the wheel . This has already been invented , and I tend to mention chemical process safety . But chemical process safety went through all of these decades ago when they had explosions and fires and big failures . So we've learned to design for those things . Yeah , you don't want that happening and you can prevent that from happening , but if it does happen , you have a way around it .

Speaker 2 32:59

So it will cost you a little bit extra to put in those provisions , but if you don't , in a chemical plant that can be the difference between a major accident or simply a reactive maintenance activity . So in the building space and I've been advocating for this even since before my PhD there has to be a sharing of those lessons between the disciplines . Fire Safety Engineering has to look at other disciplines and realize those lessons have been learned already in other disciplines . Yeah , it's very expensive to do all of these things , but if we don't do it , we're just going to have to wait for something really bad to happen and then we'll learn that we have to do it . But we don't necessarily have to do that . We can actually be proactive and just start incorporating little by little .

Speaker 1 33:48

We want to talk with Jimmy Johnson that there is no required license to have money and be a client . You know , and perhaps unfortunately , the things that we are saying . It's great if it reaches fire engineers , but the people it should reach is the people who take decisions , the budget decisions , and look at the superficial costs of the as the only parameter in choosing their systems in the building . To finalize , the future proofing aspect , I also think , like in electronic systems , you would like to see as universal connections as you can Like . The more generic , the more universal protocol you use for digital transfer of data , the more , of course , as long as it's safe . You don't want to have things that are unsafe . But there are safe protocols that are already here for like 20 years and I don't think they would go anywhere in the next 10 to 20 . Like , we still use USB ports in our computers . It's a standard that's well established and for ages we will have either ports in our computers or tools to connect those things to our computers . I think analog systems in many cases would still be an optimal choice because they allow you for many things in generally hardwired , if you look robustness , if you look something that is absolutely on the critical path of your system that if it breaks , you're done . You probably want to have a simple solution as possible and also products which come in large families which already have generations . That's also kind of a good indication . Yes , if you look at the backward compatibility of your system , you can see that you're going . It tells you something about the general idea of that manufacturer , about how to build their family and what to expect in the future , and simply conversation with the manufacturer also should give you a lot of insight .

Speaker 1 35:37

Now I have two more questions . One has that's going to be difficult . Like what we're talking here , jaime , is like the absolute opposite of sexy . Like we are discussing the most boring , annoying stuff that no one would like to talk about . If anyone is still listening to the podcast , I'm actually very happy and amazed , because this is not the sexiest talk in the fire science show , but the important one .

Speaker 1 36:05

How about , in turn the things , things like wireless , connect everyone , build a million of sensors , build a neural network in a PC computer that handles them and challenge this system with maintaining safety in my building ? If you gave me a challenge and enough money , I could probably come with a system that uses uncertified temperature sensors , some machine learning network on my PC that would be able to figure out how to protect the building from the fire and it would know where the fire is and where it's going and how to act . It's just it would break in two years or not work in a fire . And that's the sexy part , right ? That's the interesting stuff that people talk about . That's the thing that excites people . How do we not kill the fun and stay safe with this ?

Speaker 2 36:56

That's actually exactly what I wanted to talk about next , because this whole problem is driven both in a positive and in a negative direction by compliance

Compliance and Innovation in Fire Systems

Speaker 2 37:08

. Compliance is a major component of this conversation If you think about it in levels of consideration . I was saying before that the first level might be budget , but actually there's even an earlier level . It's like a precondition Is this manufacturer or is this technology certified ? Are we compliant with what we need to comply ? And each jurisdiction will have its own compliance requirements . A lot of it comes from Europe . So , for example , in Australia , we reference a lot of European standards . Although we have our own standards , they reference a lot of European standards . And then America has its own set of requirements which are very stringent .

Speaker 2 37:52

So compliance is a key element to discuss , and I guess it doesn't get less sexy than that as compliance , if we're talking about future-proofing a system , if we're talking about reliability of your systems , you really need to think that anything has to be compliant to begin with . Once it's compliant , then you can think about all the other considerations we've discussed in this talk . Now how do you keep it interesting ? I think that there are two key players in that . One is the fire safety engineers who are actually designing these things . There needs to be a push to make those compliance requirements come to the 21st century , because we're still operating on their thing that we're very good . When they were created , they were very rigid for a reason , but we really need to start allowing some again to use the same phrase some wiggle room . We need to be able to trial new technologies , test them and then be able to find economic savings and performance boosts in technologies that might not be traditional but that might actually be very good An example for this is how inverters came into market .

Speaker 1 39:08

Inverter is not a new technology and it was the forbidden technology . You shall not use inverters for many , many years . Then , at the beginning of the 21st century , inverters came to the world of fire pumps and then people started questioning okay , wait , so you literally forbid me to put inverter in my building , but when it's on a fire truck it's absolutely perfect , right , and you love it . So this kind of broke the glass ceiling . And then inverters came to other parts of the fire systems , like smoke control , and now for large fans , for complicated systems with multiple operation points . I cannot see a system without an inverter , and it went from something being a forbidden technology into widely used technology , also through the root of compliance , because compliance learned how to deal with inverters and how to have them as part of certified solutions .

Speaker 2 39:58

I think that compliance has to be a very rigid field , which it is it has to be very tight and if you want to actually put a certificate , the stamp of compliance , on something , it has to comply with a lot of very specific requirements . But at the same time , there has to be a pathway so that you put something new , something that is from an entirely new classification . Let's think about detection , fire detection . If you come up with a new way of detecting fires which might seem very outlandish , like something completely out of left field , but it works , there has to be a pathway so that you can actually test it , certify it and then use it . And at least for me and I don't know all of these , I'm not an expert in compliance and I don't design fire systems for a living but I know that there are some technologies out there which basically don't have applicability because there is no way of getting them to be certified . They're not certified as a fire detection system and if your system is in the built environment it's ruled , governed by a building safety regulation of sort , and that requires that particular center to be applied then you cannot use that technology , which is a key difference with , again , with chemical processing plants , where you are meant to use whatever works best to reach a lark , to reach as low as practicable risks . And if you need to use a technology which you can show what it does , you can prove it's performant , but it's not certified , you might still be able to use it because it's not about compliance , it's about performance first , because you don't want the major accident . And if you look at it in a building , in a hospital , a stadium , a residential building it should be exactly the same . It's the performance .

Speaker 2 41:51

Now I understand that that has to be controlled by compliance . There needs to be a compliance framework because you might have one chemical plant for thousands or hundreds of thousands of buildings . So I understand that we need more compliance because buildings are everywhere . Well , you only have a few plants here and there , so you can have more control of that equipment , those facilities . But I guess what I'm saying is that pathway for innovation has to be there , especially as we create the things that we're creating nowadays . But there has to be a pathway so that innovation can be incorporated into these very complex and very safety critical systems just to make them better .

Speaker 2 42:32

Because , as I understand , there is a lot of compliance , but the key thing is that all of those compliance systems also have to perform really well , and just having a compliance system doesn't mean that it's going to perform well . And this goes back to an example . As you said , examples are important . It's like deemed to satisfy provisions . We assume that a deemed to satisfy provision means that it's safe , and we already know that there's studies that have done QRAs quantitative risk assessments on deemed to satisfy buildings buildings that have been designed under deemed to satisfy provisions which don't seem as safe as they should . So the same thing goes for equipment . Something might be compliant . That doesn't mean that it's going to perform well . That doesn't mean that it's a good fit for your application . So there has to be a pathway for that innovation and for that sexy technology that you're mentioning to actually be able to help us .

Speaker 1 43:32

And then actually pathway of compliance is a reasonable way to give someone a framework to work with . Like you , develop your technology case , great that the core is working and has these amazing features . Now Make sure that the rest of the technologies up this standard and then perhaps you're good to go . That's a good way out , hi Matt . Last one You've made a very sharp distinction between Fire Safety and Fire Protection Engineers .

Speaker 1 43:57

I will be honest with you , I never thought about it in such a sharp way . For me it always has been like two names for the pretty much same thing . But I like your framework . It makes sense that in essence there are people who work on more general Fire Safety side of things like what design fire should we choose for the building and how the building should defend from it , and there are people who can pick a sprinkler hat to fill that up and who are much more in-depth , technical and who are capable of solving the technical problem Engineer , the solution for the strategy that . I actually like this .

Fire Safety Engineers

Speaker 1 44:40

So the question is how big is the role of the safety engineer , the one that gives the strategy , the one that gives general thought in future proofing and making things last longer , and how can we educate them better to help them fit that role ?

Speaker 2 44:58

Yeah , I don't know that . The example that comes to my head is like with a suit . You might have someone who designs the suit and who thinks about a lot of things about what the suit , how the suit has to look like , but then the person who actually makes it happen is the tailor , who actually goes and cuts pieces of fabric and then puts them together and says well , actually this is not going to work this way , we're going to have to do it this way . To try to make it look as what the designer said and I think that also happens in buildings there's the architectural view or the architectural design , and then there's the actual structural design and what can actually be realized .

Speaker 2 45:39

I think in fire safety is pretty much the same .

Speaker 2 45:43

There is this high level understanding of the fire risk and how the system , how the building has to perform and what the system requires so that it performs to that level .

Speaker 2 45:55

But then there's someone who has to go and specify okay , so you need these many pumps of this size , you need these many pipes of this thickness nominal thickness , nominal diameter and you need this and you need that . And it needs to interplay like these . There's a cause and effect matrix that will trigger these , that will trigger these other things . And it has to actually make it happen to the detail of these smoke detector triggers , these alarm triggers , these valve allows the flow of water to begin , and those are not necessarily the same people Especially if you're thinking of a big building that will not necessarily be the same person . It might be the same team of people , but it's not necessarily going to be the same person . And that connection between the high level requirement of this is how the system has to perform and then this is what the equipment that we sell actually does . I think that that it has to be a very mindful connection between those two things . I think it goes both ways .

Speaker 1 46:55

I think also for protection engineers , the one who choose the solutions they should be really good at understanding what the intent was , because it's also not about telling you I need a sprinkler system and then that person will say oh yeah , here's a new one , that one works really well . I'll just put it in there . It goes both ways . There needs to be a communication line between those two groups .

Speaker 2 47:20

Yeah , actually , if I can make a small comment about that , because I've talked to some colleagues about these fire safety engineers working in fire safety consultancy and now every time that I meet with someone that I haven't met in a while , one of the things I ask them is how much do you know about fire panels ? And most of them don't really know the manufacturers , what they do , the different ways , how long they last . And it surprises me a lot that we're not necessarily fire safety engineers , we're not technicians working with a circuit board and we're not technicians necessarily testing a smoke detector . That's not our role . But there needs to be awareness of what that technology is , how it works , how it evolves in time , how it degrades in time . And from just those conversations this is not necessarily anything meaningful from a statistical point of view , but I don't think that there's a widespread awareness of these kind of things . It's kind of like we've specified the performance requirements but I honestly don't know what that particular machine does or doesn't do . And the thing is that that particular machine is what makes a raxure fire safety strategy .

Speaker 2 48:33

I recall not in detail , but I know that in the Grand Fertile Building there were some questions raised about the dampers , the mechanical dampers that needed to activate and close , and how they were not infected , not maintained and they didn't activate properly .

Speaker 2 48:49

And that is a very extreme example of why understanding your machinery , your equipment selection , your equipment location , the access to that equipment , is so important , even for a fire safety engineer , even if we're not the people who go down and play with these machines . It is important because those kind of variables can make or break your fire safety strategy . Even if at the conceptual level , even if you've done all your simulations , even if you have a very robust basis for why your strategy needs to be what you're saying it is , if it's not translated into the real world , as you said , the machines , the PLCs , the fire panels , the pumps , the pipes , and then maintained over time , then your fire safety strategy is going to break down at some point . And going back to the question you asked me before , I think that is a responsibility of ours . It's not something that will necessarily make things more expensive . It might , but if it does , it's because it requires so I think there's no way of escaping that .

Speaker 1 49:51

The moment you understand that it becomes justified cause in a way . Hi , man , as always , it was a pleasure to talk with you . It's been Worshick and see you here the next time , man .

Speaker 2 50:01

Thank you , worshick . It's great talking to you , as always , looking forward to the next one .

Speaker 1 50:06

And that's it . Thank you for listening for the least sexy episode ever . I guess the topic of maintenance and lifetime considerations is not something that excites a lot of people , but at the same time , I think it's some fundamental considerations for fire safety , some things that I would assume most engineers never learn in their professional

Importance of Building Device Lifecycles

Speaker 1 50:26

education . I don't think many people are exposed into how exactly the devices that we use in our buildings were against , what things go into keeping those devices healthy , alive , working as they should in the whole life cycle of a building . So a lot of important lessons .

Speaker 1 50:42

I resonate a lot with Jaime's thinking and I think he brought a lot of very , very important points in , so I hope you captured those . I hope it gave you some food for thought on how to design your own systems , how to design your own applications that will provide a long term safety and will actually be sustainable , because long lasting devices , long lasting systems , is exactly the thing we need for a sustainable future . Thank you so much for listening and looking forward to see you here next Wednesday . Thank you , bye . This was the Fire Science Show . Thank you for listening and see you soon .