Fire Safety

Fire safety has been an important consideration since the start of civilisation. Somewhat more recently, the first surveyors were appointed after the great fire of London to ensure that buildings were constructed of materials that would not allow the same fire spread to happen that’s caused such devastation before. This old rule survives today as requirement B4 in the building regulations. We are proud as chartered building engineers working and building surveying and building control to continue this heritage of helping people protect lives and property.

We have experience in fire safety and design in a variety of interesting buildings. This includes large atria/ historic property (commercial and residential) dense shopping centres, sports facilities, theatres, care homes, childcare settings, nurseries, dentists, extra care homes and other such facilities.

The importance of integrated and pragmatic fire safety design cannot be underestimated. We are trained in the use of advanced fire safety standards such as BS99999991, which are useful and interesting alternatives to the standard building regulation approved document. We also offer risked based solutions, recognising that “bookish” but unrealistic paper solutions will not save lives. We believe in practical and low maintenance solutions which are simple for the building users to understand and implement.

We offer a variety of services, such as fire safety design and building control compliance consulting, fire safety audits and risk assessment. In particular, where standard solutions may not work. Examples of this include our work with dementia patients- this is a difficult and sensitive area requiring a thorough understanding of user needs and behaviour in the event of a fire. Outside of the medical setting, we have worked with nurseries and early years’ education providers whether it is an obvious balance between security and safety, with the need to have a supervised and orderly evacuation plan in place. Kingston and Richmond town centres are very familiar to us and we have worked on several shops and offices which are hundreds of years old and subject to stringent conservation rules. To preserve the character but not endanger todays occupants, we have worked closely with authorities and building occupiers to ensure they stay useable, in some case breathing new life into a building which would’ve otherwise remained derelict.