Fire Protection of Buildings: Current Practice to Performance Based Design

This presentation will showcase the opportunities presented by adopting a performance-based design approach to the fire protection of buildings. The advantages of this approach typically include more flexibility in design, better aesthetics, better economy, more reliability, and quantification of building response to fire. This presentation will first provide a background on the current state of fire protection of buildings, with a focus on protection measures for the structural elements and common issues faced by architects. Then, it will discuss the shortcomings of the current prescriptive design and advantages and opportunities presented by performance-based design. Several examples from projects such as the Shed and Pittsburgh International Airport will be discussed to show when and how performance-based design provides its benefits. The presentation will also discuss modeling egress and smoke in fire and how designs can be improved using a performance-based approach to the fire protection of buildings.