‘Acceptance of the use of fire protection engineering in the industry has shifted.’

Our profession has quite a few challenges ahead, some are very apparent, but others are not.

The obvious one is how sustainability aspects are already affecting us, and with no doubt it will affect us even more in the future. The pace of sustainability measures that are being incorporated into industry and into our society as a whole is steadily increasing. Sustainability is becoming a key concept in most areas — whether it is water consumption, energy production, or development of new materials – and it touches everything.

Sustainability is obviously entering into many aspects of the fire protection engineering profession. Since facilitating a sustainable and fire-resilient built environment for future societies has become an essential objective, fire protection engineers must understand how sustainability is an important aspect of daily jobs. 

It is important for fire protection engineers, architects, policymakers, researchers, code officials, fire service representatives, and sustainability professionals to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the aim of promoting sustainable and fire-resilient built environments. This requires understanding the diversity of sustainability and fire resilience design objectives for the built environment. It also includes balancing the diverse and sometimes competing objectives of current and emerging technologies for building sustainability and fire safety.

Building designers will need to go beyond the prescriptive codes to design sustainable and fire resilient buildings. This will require that fire protection engineers (and others) implement alternative fire safety solutions that balance social, environmental, and economic impacts of fire.

There is a need for a change within our industry, a necessary step to truly understand how sustainability impacts fire risks.  This starts with thinking about how sustainability impacts the industry as a whole through design, research, legislation, etc. If the fire protection engineering profession can understand this impact and consider it in our daily work, it will have taken the first important step.

I would also like to touch upon another important topic that has been identified as one of the key challenges for our profession – competence.

Looking across the globe during the last decade, acceptance of the use of fire protection engineering in the industry has shifted. Many national regulations have performance-based codes, something that is necessary if we want to take real advantage of the principles of fire protection engineering in our projects. Buildings and infrastructure need a first-principles approach to justify fire safety goals, and that can only be done by using fire protection engineering. However, during the last few years, several national codes have restricted engineering freedom by imposing design restrictions for technical analysis.

Why is the profession going in this direction? In essence, it is because the technical quality of fire protection engineering analyses, the design solutions, and the performance criteria for projects can be so varied — ranging from excellent, to deficient, to everything in between. The fire safety of buildings often comes down to one important aspect: the competence of the fire protection engineer.

There is a definite need to create industry awareness. Increasing the global awareness of the specialized knowledge and experience needed for competent practice of fire protection engineering is a very important task needed to steer our profession in the right direction. This will help the fire protection engineering discipline gain professional recognition and acceptance in countries where it is not yet recognized. This recognition will let other professional engineers know there is an intricacy of knowledge and relevant experience required to ensure that appropriate fire protection engineering considerations have been taken.

Sustainability and competence are at the forefront of the initiatives that SFPE is working on. We have identified these as main strategic goals; if you are interested in helping us with this please reach out to get involved. 

About the IFSJ Influencer

Jimmy Jönsson, FSFPE, directs JVVA Fire & Risk and President of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) in 2023. A 20-year SFPE member, former SFPE Spain and SFPE Europe president, current SFPE EUROPE magazine editor, and board officer, he has a BSc and MSc from Lund University.

This article was originally published in the December2023 issue of International Fire & Safety Journal. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.