Performance based fire engineering approach is an approach that objectives are converted into performance levels that need to be specified such as fire safety goals and there is a sequence of steps for the design with the use of the fire engineering approach. The fire safety codes used in Hong Kong are mainly adopting the codes of United Kingdom (UK) with some changes that need to suit the local regulation. The building design is required to be submitted to the Building Department (BD) to have an approval by looking over all required fire safety features including routes for access of people and escape to safety place when there is a fire in a building. The Fire Services Department (FSD) is responsible to take part in checking the requirements and installation of fire protection systems are fulfill the local regulations. The fire engineering approach is started to be acceptable for buildings that are difficult to strictly follow the perspective fire safety codes by the Building Department from 1998 which is usable for already twenty years. Besides, the Building Department has established a group called a fire safety committee (FSC) in 1998 and this committee group is mainly responsible for inspecting the alternative fire safety designs from the performance based design. The chairman of this committee group should be an Assistant Director and the members of this committee group should have the Chief Building Surveyors and the Chief Structural Engineers from the Building Department, a representative officer from the Fire Services Department, and two experts in fire engineering that are come from the private companies. The guidelines of the fire engineering approach are suitable for designing new buildings or some amendments in existing buildings are listed in the document of the Practice Note for Authorized Persons and Registered Structural Engineers (PNAP) 204.
The history of the fire engineering approach development in Hong Kong is that the working areas for the building and construction industry has extended in a flash in the late 1990s which leads to the revisions and amendments on the architectural characteristics of buildings due to the urban development of Hong Kong in a fast pace, while a system of prescriptive regulations is performed by managing the fire safety measures in the local common practice. Therefore, the complicated and giant buildings such as the airport and underground MTR stations were allowed to use the performance-based fire engineering approach in the late 1990s as there are some new and different architectural components in these buildings which are increasing the obstacles from the standard design for fire safety. The concept of performance-based approach was authorized by the Building Department in the annual year of 1995 and 1996 that were stated in the regulation of Codes of Practice published by the BD. Then, the document of PNAP 204 “Guide to Fire Engineering Approach” was established and started to become effective from 1998 together with the establishment of the FSC, where the PNAP 204 is used to give the requirements on the submissions for the professionals in the building and construction sector while FSC is a group that is formed by BD and mainly focusing on consulting and doing judgments of the tactics for the fire engineering based on different background of the case.
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There are some reasons on the use of the performance-based fire engineering approach in the construction of new buildings and facilities that are very complex and have special requirements, which include the permission of the use of the new building design, the restrictions of the height on the structures of buildings, the large area in auditorium, the lack of space for underpasses, the extension of the travel distance for firefighting and high capability of people. For the permission of the use of the new building design, an extremely small fire for the design not more than a specified value of the small power is used in common practice in the design for fire safety but it is normally having high power of the fire than the design standard of low design fire that will easily cause serious consequences such as the increased difficulties of fire fighting in case of the occurrence of the fire and the interrupt to the normal operation of systems for fire services. There are some measures that can be taken for allowing to design buildings with additional features, such as the improvements on the estimation and determination of the design fire for fire safety in buildings with considerations of the appearance of the flashover fires, the heat release rates and the impacts on firemen’s actions, the applications on the use of fire simulation software, and the withdraw of cutting expenditures. For the extension of the travel distance for firefighting and the lack of space in underpasses, a longer time is needed for firemen to extinguish fires and rescue the occupants inside the buildings with the heavy weighted belongings since some environmental characteristics are added into the new buildings that may not fulfill the requirements of the fire safety, such as the daylighting and the natural ventilation, and some complex building structures are used in the buildings such as rooms for karaoke, underpasses and auditorium.
There are some important and compulsory procedures for the fire safety design in buildings with the use of the fire engineering approach. Firstly, the outline, the establishment and the application of the buildings are needed to be decided, and then check that the fire safety design in buildings is applied with the regulations stated in the documents of the Mean of Access (MOA), the Mean of Escape (MOE), and the Code of Practice for Fire Resisting Construction (FRC). The distinguishing of non-compliance and the proposal and the verification of the alternatives are required if the fire safety design is not following the regulations. If the design is still not approved by the Building Department, the following procedures are needed to be performed in order to gain more chances to have acceptances on the design. It is started with discovering the fire scenario that occurs in case of the fire, and then carrying out the calculations on the estimated maximum number of people, their position and physiological responses. Next, the determination on the factors for the fire protection is carried out, and then the hypothesis on the fire engineering analysis to look for the acceptable conditions for the fire safety design in buildings with the observations on the compliance of the minimum prescriptive performances by the Fire Services Department. A fire safety committee is responsible to check whether the alternative building design is approved for buildings that cannot follow the fire safety regulations in the common practice.
In nowadays, performance-based approach is already applied in some building projects in Hong Kong, such as the Hong Kong International Airport, the MTR stations in the Sha Tin to Central Link and the West Kowloon Cultural District, since these places are required to adopt the special requirements for the fire safety due to the huge occupancy for the buildings.
There are some benefits of using fire engineering approach. The first benefit is that the fire engineering approach can actually offer the design to become more flexible and keep up the target for the construction while the developments’ fire safety level can still be kept. Another benefit is that the approach can help to avoid the appearance and the expansion of the fire, and the loss of goods easily in a normal situation. The third benefit is that the fire resistance time can be increased with the use of structural materials for the construction of buildings with the protection from fires.
However, there are some drawbacks of using fire engineering approach. The first drawback is that the popularity of the fire engineering approach in Hong Kong owing to the lack of well-trained authorized person especially for the expertise in fire engineering, the absence of the local regulations for performance-based approach, the difficulties on the application of the approach, and the impossibility of the fire model simulations with tests on fumes. Another drawback is that the fire engineering approach requires longer time for the approval of the use of it since there is a lack of local regulations for that and the fire engineering approach from other countries and cities is needed to be considered on a case by case basis. The third drawback is that the validity of the fire simulations model is still not familiar enough that the upgrade on the fire engineering tools is still needed.
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