Building safety from A to Z: From design to demolition
Iain Hoey
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Yaser Mohammed, FLS Design Manager at Diriyah Company, explains how building safety runs through every phase of a building’s life, from design to demolition
When people think of fire safety in buildings, they often picture sprinklers, smoke alarms, or the red pull stations on the wall.
But true fire safety is much more than devices or hardware.
It is a story that begins the moment a building is imagined and continues until its very last day.
Just like people, buildings have life cycles, birth, growth, changes and eventually retirement.
At every stage, fire safety must remain a constant companion.
According to the NFPA Fire Loss in the United States report (2023), more than 1.5 million fires are reported annually, leading to nearly 3,800 civilian deaths and over $18 billion in property damage.
These sobering numbers remind us why fire safety must be treated not as a single milestone, but as a continuous journey.
From vision to blueprint
The seeds of fire safety are planted at the earliest stage of planning.
Architects, engineers and fire protection specialists must work together to make choices that shape the entire life of a building.
At this point, fundamental questions arise:
- Who will use the building?
- How many people will it hold?
- What hazards might they bring with them?
A hospital, for example, requires defend-in-place strategies for immobile patients, while a shopping mall demands wider exit routes to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors each day.
Standards guide these decisions.
The Saudi Building Code (SBC 201) and NFPA 101 both stress the importance of classifying occupancy types and calculating occupant loads correctly.
The placement and width of exits, the need for fire barriers and the scope of suppression and detection systems are all influenced by these early design choices.
If designers opt for prescriptive compliance, they follow code requirements directly, while performance-based design allows them to use advanced tools such as computational fluid dynamics modeling to demonstrate safety.
As former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
Building it right
Even the best design means little if it is not built correctly.
The construction phase is often where fire safety faces the biggest risks, not from fire itself, but from shortcuts.
Contractors under pressure to save costs may use materials that don’t meet the code or fail to properly seal fire barriers.
Poor coordination between trades can also create problems, such as sprinklers being blocked by light fixtures or ducts cutting through fire walls without protection
Commissioning serves as the safeguard against these risks.
This process is more than a checklist; it is the proof that fire safety systems function as intended.
Sprinklers are tested to ensure they activate at the correct temperature, alarms are measured to confirm they meet the required sound levels and smoke control systems are evaluated for their response time and integration with detection systems.
NFPA 4, which requires integrated system testing, emphasises that individual components may work, but unless they work together, lives remain at risk.
At the end of this stage, the authority having jurisdiction signs off only if the building demonstrates true readiness.
Living with fire safety
When a building opens and people move in, fire safety begins its longest stage.
The responsibility now belongs to the owners and facility managers and their main task is to stay alert.
Fire systems must be regularly checked, tested and maintained, following standards such as NFPA 25 for sprinklers, NFPA 72 for alarms and NFPA 80 for fire doors.
NFPA research shows that sprinklers worked in 92 percent of fires large enough to trigger them and they were effective 96 percent of the time.
Most failures, however, came from closed valves or poor maintenance, simple issues that could have been prevented, but instead can turn a small fire into a major tragedy
History has shown the consequences of neglect.
The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 demonstrated how outdated systems and compromised fire barriers can magnify disaster.
Similarly, many nightclub fires, from Rhode Island to Brazil, were exacerbated by blocked exits and disabled alarms.
These lessons reinforce the importance of not only maintaining systems but also managing daily operations with discipline: keeping corridors clear, ensuring extinguishers remain accessible and training staff to respond calmly during emergencies.
Renovation brings an additional layer of complexity.
Buildings rarely remain static; an office may transform into a restaurant, or a warehouse into a theatre.
Each change reshapes the fire safety landscape.
Adding new cabling may puncture fire-rated walls, while increased occupancy may demand additional exits or sprinkler coverage.
Owners must treat every renovation as a new chapter, with approvals, reviews and upgrades.
As the saying goes, a building that changes without updating its fire protection is like a car driven without brakes.
Preparing for the inevitable
No matter how strong the design or diligent the maintenance, emergencies can and do occur.
At this stage, the focus shifts from systems to people.
Fire drills, as mandated by NFPA 101, translate theory into practice and have been shown to reduce evacuation times by up to 35 percent.
Modern advances are adding new layers of protection: voice evacuation systems that deliver clear instructions, AI-driven evacuation tools that adapt to real-time smoke and crowd movement and dynamic exit signage that redirects occupants when familiar pathways are blocked.
Even the end of a building’s life cycle brings risks.
Demolition and decommissioning involve hot works, temporary electrical wiring and combustible debris, all of which are potential ignition sources.
NFPA 241 sets strict requirements for construction and demolition safety, while NFPA 14 requires standpipes to remain available in partially demolished high-rise structures until the process is complete.
Fire safety must remain in place until the last wall comes down.
A thread that never breaks
Fire safety is not a one-time achievement but a continuous journey, running like an unbroken thread from the first sketch on paper to the final swing of the wrecking ball.
It demands the commitment of architects, engineers, contractors, regulators, owners and occupants alike.
When managed correctly, the reward is not measured only in compliance certificates but in lives saved and tragedies prevented.
A safe building, in the end, is not the result of one decision, but of a thousand small decisions made right, every day, for decades.
About The Author
Yaser Mohammed is the Fire Life Safety Design Manager at Diriyah Company.
He is an experienced fire protection engineer with more than a decade of work across construction, consultancy, and emergency response.
A member of the NFPA 101 Certification Advisory Group and holder of eight certifications from NFPA and ICC, he specialises in fire and life safety design.
Proficient in Saudi Arabia’s local regulations and the wider GCC market, Yaser ensures that projects align with both local and international standards.
At Diriyah Company, he leads safety design initiatives and works closely with stakeholders to deliver compliant and effective solutions.
Dedicated to advancing safety practice, his focus is on creating safer, smarter, and more sustainable environments.