Civil Engineering March 2022 | Vol 30 No 2

58 March 2022 Civil Engineering F i re Eng i neer i ng I n 2006 SAICE published the first Infrastructure Report Card (IRC). It was a response to the poor and deteriorating condition of the country’s engineering infrastructure and its effect upon the quality of life and economic development of the nation. A second IRC was published in 2011, followed by a third in 2017. The focus of the IRCs is the condition of existing infrastructure, together with the effect of that condition on service delivery. This article is a summary of a detailed technical report that was developed to provide an assessment of fire safety infra- structure in South Africa as part of the SAICE National IRC. The full report will be available upon request once the IRC has been published. This is the first time that fire infrastructure has been included as a standalone category in the IRC. FIRE SAFETY ENGINEERING CONTEXT The safety of the general population is a concept enshrined in the Constitution of South Africa, and many documents have accordingly been developed to guide the development of fire safety infrastructure. The National Building Regulations (NBR) and Building Standards Act (103 of 1977 1 ), states that the aim of the Act, in terms of fire safety, is: …to provide for the requirements with which buildings shall comply in so far as precautionary measures against fires or other emergen- cies are concerned, including the resistance of buildings against the outbreak and spreading of fires, the protection of the occupants or users of buildings or other persons against fires, the aids or other installations to be in buildings for the combating or prevention of fires and for the vacating of such buildings in cases of fires or other emergencies. The NBR details are qualitatively de- scribed in SANS 10400-T as follows 2 : Any building shall be so designed, constructed and equipped that in case of fire: a) the protection of occupants or users, including persons with disabilities, therein is ensured and that provision is made for the safe evacuation of such oc- cupants or users b) the spread and intensity of such fire within such building and the spread of fire to any other building will be minimised c) sufficient stability will be retained to ensure that such building will not endanger any other building d) the generation and spread of smoke will be minimised or controlled to the greatest extent reasonably practicable e) adequate means of access, and equipment for detecting, fighting, controlling and extin- guishing such fire, is provided. When fire safety infrastructure is evalu- ated in the discussions that follow, it will be done with the aforementioned descrip- tions in mind and it will be investigated to what extent such levels of safety are provided for in South Africa. It is also important to understand the role and requirement of a suitably quali- fied and competent fire safety engineer. The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) defines a fire protection/safety engineer as follows: Fire protection engineers identify hazards, characterise risk, and design safeguards that aid in pre- venting, controlling and mitigating the effects of fires. They have the ability to use and develop engi- neering methods and techniques related to fire safety design of buildings, industrial constructions, infrastructures, equipment and environment interfaces. … SFPE acknowledges that, as one of the younger engineering disci- plines, fire protection engineers may follow different paths to reach a com- petent level of practice. Although it is important to understand that the path to minimum technical compe- tency may vary from one individual to another, university programmes are essential to providing a funda- mental grounding in engineering knowledge, which every fire protec- tion engineer should possess.” 3 SAICE Infrastructure Report Card 2022 – fire engineering infrastructure summary report Prof. Richard Walls Pr Eng FSAICE Fire Engineering Research Unit Stellenbosch University rwalls@sun.ac.za Jocelyn Evans Pr Eng PMSFPE Fire Safety Engineer Hofman and Evans jocelyn@hofmanevans.co.za Dr Natalia Flores Quiroz Postdoctoral Researcher Stellenbosch University nataliaflores@sun.ac.za