About Us

Historic buildings were created in an era where fire safety standards and regulations didn’t exist. This makes it extremely difficult to meet the requirements of modern-day fire safety regulations and often leads to a scenario where a fire causes the total loss of the building (and contents).

Current building legislation requires only a risk-based approach for the purposes of life safety; however, these buildings also have an important historical relevance not only in the form of the building fabric, but they often also have culturally significant artwork or heritage pieces inside.

Should a fire take hold in a historic building, the types of building materials used as well as the layout and design (including the numerus unknown voids in the structure and inadequate means of escape), make it very difficult for a fire service response to actively control a fire situation.

The creator of this database is keen to go outside of minimal legal requirements to offer the Responsible Persons of historic buildings a realistic and pragmatic approach to protecting their properties not only in terms of life safety, but also asset protection. The research will establish a database of materials through different eras and from this database, designers, building managers, fire risk assessors and fire engineers can get a detailed understanding of how each material within the building may react when a fire breaks out, allowing them to make informed decisions on fire safety / engineered solutions including with the help of CFD modelling.