Fire Safe Europe
15 Oct 2019
September 25, 2019, facades fire safety experts convened to Paris for the Third International Seminar on Fire Safety of Facades (FSF2019). Fire Safe Europe joined the discussions and presented the progress made at EU level on facades. FSF2019 exemplified the eagerness of fire safety experts to work together. A recurring theme throughout the seminar was the need to bring together information and data, make it usable and accessible. As one participant said: “the password is information”.
Day 1 started strong with Lars Boström (RISE) introducing the approach that will be developed at EU level to assess the fire performance of facades. He invited Workshop 1 participants to dwell on the complexity of the task: the variety of facade definitions, their diverse composition, the multiplicity of fire scenarios, are all factors that render the enterprise difficult. Not to mention the decision to be made on which specific parameters to evaluate through the test method. His enlightened questioning sparked a passionate debate among the audience, which ponders on whether one standard test and classification would be enough or even if it needed to be so.
On Day 2, FSEU’s presentation nicely complemented Lars Boström’s contribution by depicting the political and regulatory context that had led the European Commission to command a study on a European approach to assess facades’ fire performance in 2016 and to publish, on 17 September 2019, the tender to finalise such an approach:
FSEU started with reminding participants that, back in 2016, 94% of FSF attendees believed a single harmonised facades fire test was needed in Europe.
FSEU then commended the adoption of the “alternative” approach as the one to be further developed at the European scale since it had secured the support of a majority of Member States.
FSEU also detailed the milestones that contributed to this achievement, paving the way for a better facades fire safety at EU level. To find out more on critical successes and on what the tender encompasses become a member of the European Fire Safety Community and watch the full FSEU presentation as well as an exclusive interview of all four keynote speakers. Meanwhile, the live videos FSEU broadcast on its social media will give you further insight on Workshop 1, some keynote speeches and Day 3 conference round table.