When designing a fire strategy for a tall building, consideration of the effects of rising smoke on the upper levels, the need to protect staircases from fire and smoke in order to evacuate quickly and safely, and increased evacuation times due to high occupancies dependent on limited stair cores, is absolutely critical.

Our approach is to combine an emphasis on safety and addressing the very stringent building regulations applied to tall buildings with a clear focus on maintaining the architect’s aesthetic vision for the scheme. We also understand the challenges of tackling a fire in tall buildings where issues such as ensuring adequate water supplies, identifying fire locations and formalising access arrangements, are all factored in. The result is fire strategies that, thanks to a creative approach to smoke venting and reluctance to over-specify, offer both high levels of safety and maximised build value.

Whether it's a large sports arena or a small local cinema, sports and leisure venues require a fire strategy that is focused on the safe and simple evacuation of people in the event of a fire.

To answer these sector-specific requirements, our sports and leisure fire strategies consider key factors such as escape time, spread of fire, effective smoke management and crowd control. Our strategies also work to simplify designs that would otherwise inihibit the architectural vision. We then prove our design by using computer modelling techniques to establish fire and smoke spread, along with people flow modelling, to gain approval for our bespoke approach.

Our retail sector expertise means that we can develop efficient fire strategies that not only take account of the value of retail space but also the complexities of evacuation in a retail setting..

Our understanding of today's multiple storey shopping centres allows us to recommend solutions that will maximise retail space and simplify smoke venting design and strategies so that the architectural vision isn't inhibited. We also support our retail clients throughout the lifecycle of the development, leveraging our expertise to provide management evacuation strategies, quarterly compliance checking and Fire Risk Assessments as part of a comprehensive retail sector service package.

Office schemes often require the fire design team to ensure that the building's distinctive design aspirations remain intact whilst maximising the available floor space and dealing with complex multi-occupancy evacuation requirements.

Thanks to our innovative approach, our office schemes achieve all these goals with fire strategies that incorporate increased travel distances, fewer stair cores, reduced fire ratings, less compartmentation and smaller smoke shaft sizes to reduce build costs, increase saleable space and minimise disruption to non-fire zones whilst maintaining high safety standards. It also makes it possible to incorporate atria or free-flowing spaces within the structure without the need for expensive systems.

Mixed use schemes pose complex challenges as each building within the scheme has its own design features, occupancy levels and use, but they may share escape routes and need to be pulled together in a considered evacuation strategy.

Our track record of such schemes means that we have the experience necessary to deliver a unified fire strategy that will maximise safety in each building and across the entire development, whilst minimising disruption in non-fire zones. Our value engineering expertise allows us to provide considerable cost savings on such schemes, by increasing travel distances, minimising stair cores and creating more saleable area, for example, whilst gaining full approval.

In a sector where it is difficult to monitor how many people are in the building at any one time and occupants are likely to be unfamiliar with their surroundings, workable evacuation strategies and deliverable management plans are paramount

With wide ranging, international experience in the sector we understand both contemporary hotel design trends and the complexities of buildings that are often part of a larger mixed use development. What’s more, our value engineering expertise means that we are able to devise fire strategies that offer significant cost savings, whilst still delivering enhanced levels of safety.

It is not always possible to evacuate a heath facility immediately and for this reason healthcare schemes are perhaps the most challenging environment for effective fire design. Our approach centres around containing fires, minimising evacuation and, where possible, moving occupants only limited distances.

We are mindful also, however, of current design trends in healthcare architecture and our creative approach allows us to work with the building to ensure we deliver high levels of safety whilst maintaining the scheme’s design aspirations. Our expertise in the sector means that we can devise workable fire strategies that gain approval without adhering rigidly to Health Technical Memorandums (HTM) guidance. What’s more, our success in providing fire strategy advice and Building Regulations approval services for NHS LIFT schemes means that we have a proven track record in combining high safety levels, low build costs and ease of management in multi-functional healthcare environments

In an education setting fire design not only needs to take account of contemporary trends in school design, such as extensive use of glazing and open atriums, it also needs to be easily managed by staff. That's why our expertise in value engineering and developing fire management strategies is so valued by our education sector clients.

Our innovative, solutions-driven approach is ideally suited to the challenges of education environments and we use CFD modelling to eliminate costly over-specification and prove that an alternative design will also provide increased levels of safety. Because of the number of children or young people in a school setting, we take an ultra safe approach and our pioneering use of 'safety zones' to which the children can be moved as part of the evacuation process, minimises travel distances to enhance safety levels without incurring expensive systems or construction costs.