Fire strategy development in Southport.

Approved Document B gives prescriptive guidance on complying with the Building Regulations but it cannot anticipate every building configuration or use. Complex buildings, with unusual layouts, mixed uses or atypical occupancy, often need a bespoke fire engineering approach to achieve equivalent or better levels of safety.

A well-developed strategy lets architects and developers justify design decisions that depart from prescriptive guidance, providing an engineering rationale that satisfies building control and fire authorities and a documented record of the design team's fire safety intentions. Critically, a strategy developed at the start of a project prevents costly retrospective changes: requirements identified late or after construction, are far more expensive to address than those built in from the outset.

A retrospective strategy is produced for an existing building where no original strategy exists, where the building has changed significantly or where the owner needs formal documentation of the fire safety approach for planning, funding or regulatory purposes.

These are increasingly requested as part of due diligence when purchasing or refinancing property and are often required by building control or fire authorities for regularisation applications where works were carried out without consent. We carry out a detailed review of the existing building, including drawings, construction specifications and installed systems, before producing a strategy that reflects the current position and identifies any remedial works required.

For higher-risk buildings (18 metres or above or 7 or more storeys) or where complex or unusual design solutions are proposed, a performance-based approach may be required in place of or in addition to, prescriptive compliance with Approved Document B.

Performance-based engineering uses quantified methods, including computational fire modelling, evacuation modelling and structural fire analysis, to demonstrate that a building achieves an equivalent or superior level of safety to prescriptive guidance, allowing innovative architecture to be realised without compromising occupant safety.