Construction Rant

There is a growing trend towards fire-engineered solutions, particularly mechanical extract, which fall outside the scope of the approved documents and are made specifically for one building.

Such solutions can be useful for complex buildings, but are inappropriate for simple apartment buildings where the additional cost, time and risk do not justify any relatively minor benefits in terms of space saved.

The proposal of specially engineered solutions puts additional pressure on approving authorities to approve complex systems when they may not have the expertise to fully understand the finite details of such designs.

My many years' experience has taught me that blocks of flats are essentially similar. While fire engineering has a valuable contribution to make in complex buildings, for the average apartment building it doesn't make sense to use a unique set of criteria for every project.

By far our most popular product is a natural ventilation system developed to ventilate common escape routes. This means there can be up to a 50% reduction in cost compared to a pressurisation system, it takes less time to specify, and there are fewer ongoing maintenance requirements. This system ensures compliance with the Building Regulations and a fast-track through the regulation approval procedure is assured.

We recently installed such a solution at a new development of seven apartment blocks. Using natural ventilation rather than a fire-engineered solution meant the installation was completed quickly and to schedule.

Only when the industry begins to recognise the value of promoting straightforward solutions designed to comply with building regulations can we enhance the construction industry's perceptions of the value of these potentially life-saving systems.

Allan Meek

Managing director

Smoke Control Services