Competency – Critical in Achieving Safety Performance

There are many ways to mitigate risk and here Andrew Orriss, Director of STA Assure for the Structural Timber Association, considers the crucial factor of competency on building safety performance.

Fire does not respect material form – fire spread can occur in any building. The fact is that all materials have some vulnerability to fire, for example, steel softens, and concrete cracks. The key therefore is to protect the structure to ensure that the building retains its integrity.

Increasingly factory-manufactured buildings are considered as the ideal modern construction method. By taking the construction process away from sites into well-managed factory environments with stringent quality control systems in place, enhances not only the quality but also delivers predictability of fire performance. All factory operations in contemporary production environments are now controlled by Quality Management System such as ISO9001 or the STA’s membership and quality standards scheme – STA Assure.

STA Assure was launched back in 2017 – this scheme has evolved over the years to ensure our members know how to advise customers in accordance with regulations and manufacturers guidelines to achieve building safety standards.

Competency is crucial to achieving excellent standards across all building products. In support of our STA Assure initiative, we have been working on a number of key schemes to reinforce the importance of competent installation and the use of fire protection processes and products.

The STA’s award-winning Site Safe Policy further ensures that the stringent factory controls are carried through to site processes – ensuring full compliance with Health & Safety Standards and CDM regulations. It is essential that all materials cover every compliance requirement, not just for fire. It is mandatory for all STA manufacturing and installer members to take part in our end to end competency training schemes which cover design, manufacturing, installation and onsite safety.

As part of the STA’s continual development programme, our experts have been collaborating with the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, the University of Edinburgh and BRE to produce fire safety in use guidance for timber frame buildings.  Structural timber solutions are widely recognised as the offsite construction system of choice, offering many sustainable and efficiency benefits achieving quality low carbon buildings and regulatory compliance. The STA has invested in an industry leading fire in use research project to test and prove commonly used timber frame wall, floor and roof make ups used in the UK marketplace.

The output of this research, a pattern book of EN tested systems, is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK timber frame sector. The EN tested systems and best practice recommendations provide a comprehensive package of information, for the design, specification and construction of timber frame buildings. This research now forms part of the STA’s library of fire in use best practice guidance.

The project was organised into four distinct, but connected work packages, running in parallel to gather the relevant data required for the pattern book.

• The first stage was the completion of research into various aspects of timber fire safety and testing

• The second stage was the completion of a large programme of full-scale EN fire resistance testing

• The third stage was the collation of all research and test information for analysis, peer review and subsequent endorsement by verifiers and regulators

• The final stage was the creation of the pattern book

In addition to the extensive fire in use research of timber frame systems, our experts also identified that the installation of fire stops and cavity barriers are of equal importance when it comes to building safety, an issue which prevails regardless of the building methodology. The STA have responded by developing a new guidance document on cavity barriers to complement the existing evidence.

The information will be regularly reviewed and updated by the STA’s Technical Committee and Board and the pattern book and guidance on fire stops and cavity barriers are free to download from the Structural Timber Association’s document library which can be found by visiting:  www.structuraltimber.co.uk/links/research-documents