Designing safety from day one: Quelfire at London Build 2024
Iain Hoey
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Craig Wells, Sales Director at Quelfire, explains the significance of education and collaboration in construction, essential for aligning design with current safety standards
Recent years have seen the construction industry has witnessed significant shifts in regulations and safety standards, particularly regarding fire safety and design responsibilities.
These changes have prompted professionals to reevaluate their approaches to building design and compliance.
Craig Wells, Sales Director at Quelfire, a leading provider of passive fire protection solutions, shares his extensive experience, offering a unique perspective on how these developments are reshaping the industry and the crucial role that education, collaboration and early engagement play in ensuring safe and compliant construction projects.
In your opinion, what has the Building Safety Act changed in terms of fire safety for construction projects?
First and foremost, it has brought fire safety issues to the forefront of minds and raised their profile.
It’s enforcing standards that should have been standard practice anyway.
Fire safety and structural safety are important and have been known about for a long time, but there’s probably been a passive attitude towards them.
The Building Safety Act is bringing them to the centre of attention, changing the way people work and approach things, with more attention to detail.
How do these changes impact design liability?
Design liability is a controversial topic and somewhat open to interpretation.
Historically, contractors might think they’ve used an architect or designer who takes design liability.
Equally, those architects might say they’ve done some detailing, but it’s down to subcontractors to ensure what they’ve drawn or suggested is appropriate.
The Building Safety Act has clearly defined the need for a principal designer—a named individual or organisation responsible for the design element.
Where there are multiple designers, which is very common, there must be a principal designer overseeing all the designers.
That’s absolutely the way it should be.
When we talk about service penetration sealing and identifying appropriately tested fire stop solutions for a particular service, we have to think about the M&E services themselves—the size, the specification, whether they’re insulated and what they’re insulated with.
The M&E contractors or MEP consultants will probably know that best.
We need to know the floor or wall substrate specifications—the MEP guys aren’t going to be clued up on wall and floor types.
There are acoustic requirements, and the fire strategy determines the fire rating.
It’s evident that multiple people or organisations, each specialists in their own field, need to do their part of the design.
So it’s right that there should be a principal designer taking overall responsibility for all those design elements.
The big change is the focus on competency and being able to demonstrate it.
There’s no way that one individual person, or possibly even one organisation, could say they are competent in all areas of construction.
Design liability now has clearer channels of liability.
Who do you think carries design liability in construction projects?
It’s very subjective and depends on individual contracts and how people want to work.
One of the big challenges we see is that organisations, while willing to do design work, don’t want to carry the liability side of it.
Others say, “We’ve got nothing to fear. We’re happy to take the design liability. We’re a competent design company and provided we draw on all the right advice, we’re confident about our design.”
The Building Safety Act enforces having a named principal designer.
I guess it will take some case law to finally settle these things, but ultimately, everyone is responsible.
Whether everyone’s liable would be determined in a court of law, but everyone has a responsibility to play their part.
How can Quelfire support principal designers?
First and foremost, through basic education. We’ve positioned ourselves to provide reliable, evidence-based education and technical support.
Historically, architects and designers might have been drawing lines on paper, coming up with nominal designs and suggestions, but they may not fully understand what they’re doing and, importantly, why they’re doing it.
Basic education involves getting up to speed through general CPD, learning about what products and solutions are available and what they actually do.
For example, consider a fire collar on a plastic pipe—how many people stop and think about what it actually does? Do they ever consider why it has to be fixed in a particular way and to a specific fixing? General education is essential.
We run a monthly CPD webinar, which is an open forum for anyone to register on Zoom.
We also arrange dedicated sessions for individual organisations, which tend to be more interactive, where people can voice their questions and concerns and hopefully get them answered.
Then there’s actual design support—technical support through early engagement.
It’s about reaching out at an early stage to discuss how they want to build the building, the fire ratings needed, what solutions are available and then incorporating those tested solutions into the design.
We’d like to act as a conduit for all the relevant trades and organisations to come together on one page, working towards a common goal—a fire-safe building.
Once it progresses from that, we support contractors to ensure that installers understand why they’re installing certain products, how to read data, standard installation details and how to make that design become reality.
In a nutshell, that’s what we can do.
What is required for companies or individuals to accept design liability?
The first thing is a change of mindset.
The term “design liability” might make it sound like something’s going to go wrong.
But the key thing I always stress in CPDs is that if we install the correct products in the correct way, the fire will be contained to the compartment of origin and the building and people will be saved.
There will be no consequences, no liability to fear.
We often focus on failures like Grenfell, but we don’t see all the building fires where the fire is contained because products are installed correctly.
People need to have a mindset change.
Yes, there is liability, but the first thing you do with risk is try to reduce it through proper design and due diligence, ensuring test evidence exists for solutions.
Secondly, having a clear process is crucial.
Knowing who is going to do what, how you’re going to communicate and collaborate with all the relevant parties and ensuring information is accurate, relevant and documented prevents missing important things.
There’s a huge emphasis on the golden thread of information—not just passing information to the occupier of the building but throughout the design and construction phases too.
Changes may occur due to design issues or material shortages, so if everything is clearly documented, you can trace back where other changes need to occur and document them again.
Does this message carry over to your stand at London Build? What will Quelfire be promoting there?
Yes, it very much carries over. At London Build, our exhibition stand will be split in half.
On one side, you’ll see a fully furnished room—painted walls, pictures on the wall, comfy sofa, plants, lights and so on.
On the other side, we’ll showcase fire stop solutions, service penetration seals and information about Quelfire, directly linking to our current campaign, “BECAUSE IT’S YOUR JOB TO KNOW.”
We’re trying to make people aware they have a responsibility to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
People often see the finished building—the painted walls, the furnished room—and don’t give any second thought to what’s in the risers, above the ceilings, or the fact that they’ve walked through a fire door.
But these are the elements that keep you safe.
Architects and designers specify and draw these things to protect people and property. We aim to illustrate that quite starkly.
We’ll have installed products to raise awareness of some of the products and solutions and highlight current challenges people face, like pipes at angles in walls.
We will also have a panel discussion on day one at 12 o’clock with industry representatives who have been part of submitting a Gateway Two submission.
The project is still with the Building Safety Regulator and they hope to have approval back on their submission before the panel discussion.
We aim to share experiences and insights—hopefully successes—of doing a Gateway Two submission.
There are concerns and anxieties for many design teams about Gateway Two submissions and the Building Safety Act itself—what is expected, what the Building Safety Regulator requires.
We hope to share clear, tangible suggestions and advice that our audience can take away, or at least show what others are doing and how seriously they’re taking it and their interpretation of the changes in the Building Safety Act.
Finally, how can attendees or readers engage with Quelfire to explore solutions for their project designs?
First and foremost, I suggest they download our white paper on early engagement at https://quelfire.co.uk/campaign/?utm_source=ifsj&utm_medium=craiginterview&utm_campaign=yourjobtoknow.
Invest some time to read it; it’s a very useful, extensive document with eye-opening content.
The next step is to attend one of our CPDs to gain extra knowledge about products, systems and requirements.
The key is, when they have a requirement—or even before they think they have one—to reach out to us.
Early engagement is crucial; you can never start talking about fire safety too early.
While it’s possible to engage too early without specific information, it’s never too early to start thinking about fire safety.
Getting all the relevant industry sectors, contractors and designers on the same page is essential.
In summary, download the white paper, attend our CPDs and reach out for early engagement technical support and liability will be minimised.
We’re here to help ensure that buildings are designed and constructed with fire safety at the forefront.
