About
On last Thursday, the 2nd 2021 FIEP call took place on the thematic “Developing fire safety knowledge and awareness”. Mrs Fulvia Rafaelli and M. Heikki Vaananen from the European Commission (DG Grow) made an introduction and indicated that due to the success of those calls they wanted to add a couple of others around the summer break for which the agenda remains open to proposals. For that session Fire Safe Europe was invited with three other speakers. Andrei-Mircea Corches, chair of the FSEU Façade working group, and Rodolphe Nicolle, FSEU Director of EU public affairs, were invited to present this study.
Since 2014, Fire Safe Europe (FSEU) develops a comparative study on fire safety requirements in Europe. In 2020, FSEU has decided to proceed with it. Highly appreciated by policymakers and many stakeholders, it started in mid-2020 with a first part focused on high-rise buildings and more recently a second part on hospitals. This call was the opportunity to share this preliminary study on the two first parts. The final objective is to add a third part dedicated to schools and to publish a full report at the end of 2021.
Several stakeholders expressed their views and interests on it and their willingness to contribute to the next steps.
Following, Michael Strömberg from BRIAB introduced its “Survey on review and control processes for fire safety design in Europe”. He pointed out the importance of the baseline, between assurance and compliance, of the review and control procedures of fire safety. He explained the content of the Swedish INSTA 952 standard. After submitting and analysing surveys and questionnaires from various member-states, he found that self-check was the dominant control. He gave some factors affecting the level and quality of control, the needs for information and documentation requirements for each phase, and the road ahead to improve the situation: similarities and differences, co-creation, sustainability and digitalisation.
Then, Gary Strong from RICS made a great presentation about the “Need for better and consistent global standards in fire safety" based on the IFSS common principles and its endorsement by the UN.
The last presentation has been made by Krzysztof Biskup and Rene Hagen from EUFSA about their “European Fire Safety Association: Action plan for fire safety”. Krzysztof Biskup also mentioned that the next European Fire safety week will take place on the 22nd of November 2021. Rene Hagen made an overview of their existing action plan for fire safety
The last part of the call was a quick roundtable on how to find the right balance between less legislations or administrative burden and more fire safety implementation. FSEU pointed out that with the ongoing review processes for Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD), Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and Renewables Directive (RED), there was a possibility to strengthen fire safety position without creating any new piece of regulation and also added. that as European Commission representatives of the DG Grow, they knew what role the CPR could play.