Sustainable Construction - Building & Construction Authority

Sustainable Construction -
What is performance-based fi re engineering?
The performance-based approach to fi re safety design relies on the use of fi re engineering principles,
calculations and/or appropriate software modelling tools to satisfy the intentions of the Code of
Practice for Fire Precautions in Buildings 2007 (Fire Code).
This new approach provides alternative means of meeting the intentions of the Fire Code.
Building practitioners will have the added fl exibility in the application of fi re
safety for their buildings by having a choice of using the performance-based
approach, the prescriptive approach or a combination of both.
The performance-based approach is unique in that its provisions spell out
the intent of the code qualitatively but the means of achieving the desired
intent of the code is open to the building practitioner. The building practitioner
will need to substantiate that the proposed solution fully meets the intent of the
Fire Code using established fi re safety engineering methodology.
The performance-based regulatory system was offi cially launched on 1 July 2004.
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