Fourteen Years of Experience with Performance-Based Fire Safety Engineering in Norway - Lessons Learned

摘要

This paper summarizes some findings from a study encompassing descriptions of practices and patterns seen in a regulation regime based on performance based fire safety in Norway. Performance-based fire safety engineering in Norway is usually a mixture of a pre-accepted solution with deviations. The deviations are in general motivated by restrictions related to the pre-accepted solutions. When deviations are being introduced an analysis of the consequences are usually being carried out by consultants. Such analyses are usually qualitative, not in accordance with any comprehensive procedure, and most commonly restricted to the deviation only. It does not consider the holistic fire safety level of the building. Decision-making regarding acceptable level of safety is usually done by comparing the alternative solution with another pre-accepted solution. Arguments are in most cases qualitative. As such, it could be stated that many fire safety decisions are based on subjective statements not substantiated in scientific literature, but representing experiences and gut feelings of the engineers. The concept of risk and risk analyses are not often introduced. Although this somewhat immature situation, it appears that there is some kind of consensus within the business. The rhetoric of the consultants seems to be more business-dependent than enterprise-dependent, i.e. we find the same arguments in different enterprises. Even though there is a poor understanding of measuring safety performance, the final fire safety measures and designs usually ends up quite similar.