For performance based fire engineering design, there are numerous potential design solutions for every objective. The process of confirming that all of a design's performance objectives have been met is the challenge…
New Zealand adopted performance-based fire engineering in 1991 with the inclusion in the New Zealand Building Code of qualitative performance requirements for life safety, protection of other property and facilities for firefighting. There are prescriptive documents; C/AS1 and the forthcoming verification method that are deemed to meet the performance objectives, but they do not address every fire safety design element for every building.
For projects where fire safety design solutions differ from the prescriptive solutions and rely on performance-based design, there are risks of consent stage delay and non-approval. The risks are higher if the details of the performance-based design have not been identified and discussed with all stakeholders early in the design.
The NZFS supports the use of FEB process set out in the International Fire Engineering Guidelines (IFEG) and recommends its use for all large projects involving significant fire engineering issues.
For smaller projects an "FEB light" approach is supported by the NZFS. For full details of this approach please see our "Perfecting the FEB process" presentation.
The NZFS utilise an number of FEB check sheets as aide memoirs for review. The nature of an FEB means that no check sheet will ever fully fit, however the links below can be viewed as a useful aid to both the reviewer and the designer.