BIM4Housing Design Working Group Meeting 11-01-23

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Richard, you mentioned there’s a gentleman who may be able to do it, because I don’t think we’ve met for a while now…George is on site but it'll be interesting to hear, I think there's another gentleman from workstream 1 who you thought would be able to give some sort of a presentation.

PAUL McSOLLEY Yeah, I sit on a few other different things, one of which is the process group for the Pacifier Knowledge group. We had a bit of a chat about it in working session 1 with Martin and the rest of the guys there about how process flow looks from everyone’s POV. It’s always good to get everyone’s view on it because this stuff’s going to get more and more present in released, we did it at Build Expo as well. It will be good to see how we’ve looked at it here in relation to what you’re doing because the more input you get it just helps change the flavour of whatever cocktail you’re making.

RICHARD Also I think we’re looking at having some ongoing work on that, so I think the idea is that if there's a designer with an M&E type bent to get them on board with the actual work that's gonna be moving on forward, but Paul knows more about that than I do.

PAUL McSOLLEY The problem is everyone thinks construction is easier than say than doing nuclear or pharmaceutical, it’s not, it’s complex. And when you look at your key stakeholders, who’s the knowledge holder for each part of it, you can see in the way we’ve transposed it where the issue occurs.

DAS Jarek, thanks for the feedback on the questions. What will be useful, I’ll have a catch-up with George in terms of whether those questions have been passed on to the other working groups because obviously there are questions about the procurement teams and the client teams etc.

RICHARD Partially, but not formally enough. At the tail end of last year there was a lot of focus on fire safety, with several of the working groups particularly with that deadline on the 23rd, everything got thrown in to that. So they absolutely need to be more formally adopted as something to move forward without any question and that's on the agenda to do that.

DAS No, that’s fine, because I think it’s kind of attacking you from two ends, the work you’ve been doing, Paul, is looking at more the detailed level but then making sure (in Jarek’s comments) about the client knowing what the right questions is or the procurement standing because I guess all these consultants I guess throw things at the clients and they’re like ‘fine, I guess, you’re the expert’. But they’re not necessarily taking on board the required time periods for design or detailed design or procurement or reviews. So educating the client side continues to be a requirement because they will just pass it on to the consultants and everything just gets pushed back down.

I think also now that we are getting into enacting things like the Building Safety Act and it’s in play, it would be nice to see how we're getting tender requests for resi schemes and we're talking with some contractors, people like Waites and Boyd who as we know who are engaged, but some others aren't. So we're getting to see real life requirements for this stuff which can only help us if we share it. We go ‘our clients are asking these things, what are your clients asking?’ the same type of things or not, so I think that will be an evolution in the first bit of the year. That’s a general request for feedback on those questions as and when people get it, and Richard I guess there’s a formal asking and sharing of those questions.

PAUL McSOLEY shares screen and begins his presentation. There was two things, Andrew, and this isn’t actually about detail which I think makes a change. So what we did was this thing called the Passive Fire Knowledge Group, we launched this build Expo this year, basically it's most of the tier one contractors have been involved in it. So I've been looking over process and one of the big things was that we presented there was about having a need for like a passive fire code of practice, a bit like in building services terms. You've got CIBSE code M which is how you manage commission management as a management processor commission, not how you do it (you have separate guides for how you do it) but how you manage it in behavioural for the various stages of the RIBA. So we come up with this, (the little keys there came from Georges around Gateways) but we've been trying to refine it and bring it back into the group because I need help with the BIM side of it. BIM being the key part in getting the assets stuff correct in relation to how this flow works.

So don't pay too much attention to, it’s all about how you establish the shape and form of the building, how systems working in risk categories and relation to space ratings, time off, how they operate and how you get to the point where you’ve actually got like a register all the different seal types in the building because…

DAS Sorry Paul, just to jump in there. Just for my knowledge when you referred to the passive fire systems, these are essentially things which don't have power or anything to them. They’re just sort of fire stops and fields and things like that.

PAUL McSOLLEY Yeah, I’ll get on to it, because there’s active systems which are a bit more dynamic, you’ve got static passive fire, but then also you’ve got transient systems. So we’ve broken it into three categories, you’ll see it in a minute when I go through it all. So passive fire knowledge…even if you take a fire door, it’s still a passive system but you can walk through it, so it’s transient. ? 9mins 18secs extract is like dynamic, but it’s passive in its first principle because it compartments but it can open to extract. Don’t worry about all this too much at the moment because there is a RACI that sits behind this as well.

When you take, whether it’s a fire door or a damper, a pipe seal (because these things are all different), whether it’s a flue a busbar, the only way to know how these things work in practice is to look at the fire risk type fo the building and the space risk. And whether those systems are a fire door is transient (because you can walk through it), they can be duel swing, single swing, they can have glass panels in them, all different sizes of doors. Fire dampers are generally static (they shut), smoke controls are dynamic because they can open to extract, we try to bring it into some different language about that’s the operations types. Once you know that you’ve got to assign that to that, then you gotta look at how you get to the classification of those products because this classification here is just for a fire damper, but the fact is is that there's other classification information, important information that sits behind it, hence where the BIM is so important.

Because then you've got obviously the supporting construction side of it which we all know has been half the battle, whether its symmetrical asymmetrical or it's rigid, whatever type of wall construction has been used, whether it’s standard or other. So there’s this side of it, but you’ve also got the installation and maintenance type. Unless you kind of consider all of those parts before you get to this point here at gateway 1 there's a good chance something is going to be wrong. It’s about how we get clients back to a very diagrammatic…you can say if you don't follow something like this, this is what the output is gonna be to this project. Fire engineers generally should know the space risk and know what the building type is and that should build the fire strategy. They’re the knowledge holders of that part, not always…(audio cutting out). Ana joins the call.

PAUL McSOLLEY Just quickly for you, Ana, we tried to get RIBA aligned into such a way where you’ve got some very big methods of going through passive fire knowledge from cradle to grave. We were just talking about shape and form of building, risk category of spaces, system operational types and how you get to the point where you really need to have a classification register before you get to Gateway 1 because otherwise you can’t tell whether things are going to fit in the building. And there’s a case example at the back of this about how you see the effect of what not doing it is. So, back to where we were. These are the five things we were looking at: building safety type, space risk type, the operational side of the system because fire doors are transient, dampers are static, smoke controls dynamic (same as sprinklers because of the form and the function). Every products got different classification by DOPs but there’s other information that sits behind this which is more than this.

To get these parts right you need to understand the blade type of the damper etc and obviously you’ve got wall types which is your standard supporting, your flexibles, your brick and block, non-standard, asymmetricals. Then, you’ve got the access type of installation, maintenance of products and how you get them installed which is obviously a key thing to get this whole thing done before you get out of the planning stage. Not actually get it done fully drawn, but actually have the considerations for different products. What we’re saying here was that fire engineers are the knowledge holder for the safety type of the building and generally the space (some spaces are more complex but generally they should know it). You look at architecture and those should be down here, but most architects won’t understand the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical, brick and block work walls (they’ll know that part). They’re not fire engineers, they don’t necessarily understand how smoke control systems work and classifications of the products, or to understand how you install things because it’s product specific.

You look at building services consultants, they should generally know how things should function, but they don’t always because even with fire dampers and smoke control they don’t always understand how those products work either. So they should be the knowledge holder, but not necessarily know all of it - and not this part because they’re not fire engineers. When you look at principal contractor, just to really make you laugh, we are passing the risk down the line so we are knowledge holders of generally none if it. So just to bear that in mind, that’s what generally seems to happen. Specialist trades, someone that does dry wall should understand dry wall, someone that supplies dampers should understand how you install an access and do a damper. Product suppliers will understand how the product is classified and how the walls are classified.

But again, they’re not fire engineers. The point of all this was originally was that there’s not actually one duty holder that knows all of it and this is why we get into a bit of a pickle. When you say around procurement it’s quite key that if you’re going to procure a product you can’t just go CDP and actually the supplier of that product is going to know how to install all of this because they’re not. That's where it's kind of going a bit wrong. So we sort of went, how do you break it out into an easy way of portraying it? The big thing was is that the key denominator is the wall. I'm gonna do a case example on a damper because it's the one we've spent the most effort on. If you take a damper in consideration to a wall type, anything else that's in that wall must be considered at the same time as the damper because it affects the thickness and the type of the wall and the installation access to get that wall type right. So you can't set a wall unless you've set all of this in comparison to that wall.

So you look at procurement, we're seeing drawing packages, getting on board after maybe building services trades have done their coordination and doors are getting procured before security packages are known and it's all just a bit of a mess because with doors, if you don't know what type of lock you're putting in the door, it's really hard to do a fire door with a mortise lock in it if you didn't know you needed the mortise lock in the first place. So it's all about getting this system approach kind of lined up. So I'm gonna do a bit of an example around this so I think it make a bit more sense. In the whole sort of process there's a passive fire knowledge sort of code of practice and how you get things set out with a RACI, which I will share once we've got this kind of stuff into a bit of a better order because we're gonna get people's opinions and things on it.

How you then do workbooks is what I'm gonna show you next and the bit I need some help from with George on is about getting this asset information right because I don't think we're seeing these before. I did portray these in the Excel spreadsheets, they’re enormous things and it's quite hard to get simplified, this is all about simplifying it as well. I'm gonna do an example on fire damper and on how you select one of these things in say a protected space. So originally, and this is the first part of this whole passive fire process that I’m going to use on it, I’m gonna consider that damper as part of the wall system with everything else as well. I went through and plotted out how you select a fire damper based upon the space risk type, its functionality, the wall type and how you look at access and maintenance.

For us engineers it’s probably not too hard to follow, but it’s quite difficult for people that really don't understand the inherency of the engineering. So we sort of said this is where these come into it because these are representation of basically these channellings, so I'm gonna try and make this look a bit simpler. So I'm gonna start with this one, but I'm gonna relate it back to that RIBA process. First of all, let's look at a fire damper from the fire space risk and the building type risk. And I'm gonna look at it based upon maybe something like a disabled refuge in a protected corridor with supply and extract air. So I wanna establish the shape and form that will come from previous projects. You should look at lessons learned that you had on these kind of examples, but not as an individual architect as building services engineer but as a team, because everyone really needs to get, and this is where it's all gone wrong, a bit of a collaboration on doing passive fire team reviews, then we'll look at the next part of it.

So what does this look like in practice. So I said look all the different purpose groups, you’ve got 1As which are your multi flat sort of developments, your dwelling houses, duplexes, your prisons your group 2As your student blocks, hotels, 2B offices. So I kind of put all the purpose groups across the top then sort of went well someone's gotta look at the shape and form and you gotta look at the space risks (and this isn't all the space risks but just to give some example). So if you looked at a disabled refuge inside a protected space (not in a firefighting shaft but in a protected corridor somewhere) and your building is less than 900 metres squares, that drives your floor plates for firefighting shafts and things. Your heights this, it’s a group 2 student block student block we're looking at, it’s a refuge, it’s got a fire and a smoke risk, that should be the thinking behind the fire engineering to get you to that point.

Then you will look at how does this thing work in relation to its operational type. So you go, well, let's look at whatever is in there, how it's going to operate from a fire damper point of view and what the ratings and times are before we get onto the classification. I said, well, this is probably the best way to portray it because this is a protected lobby or corridor (I think everyone agrees with that because this is what you've got) and it's got ventilations, it has got a fire risk, a smoke risk. You can have a rating between 30-120 minutes depending on where it is. Because it's protected space it’s gotta be activated automatically to the closed position by follow activation, that’s method form building regulations for that type of damper. But the bit that gets kind of missed out is that that system and depending on the product you're buying it could be an opposed blade damper, it could be a parallel damper, it could be a single blade damper.

It can't be a curtain damper, because that can't be automatically driven. So it’s one of these three sort of damper types that you're gonna have and it's obviously got a power alarm and fire alarm supply. So what does it look like in practice? That's kind of what I'd be choosing. I’d want something like that to make it work. This is all about process that should go on, but it's not going on because I think we've kind of lost the collaboration in the industry to get it right because of how procurements driven maybe by clients (no disrespect to clients). It's like we're gonna do this CDP later on but someone that does CDP can’t be a fire engineer an architect and everything at once. It's gotta be done at a level before you prescribe it for them to describe the product that you're getting.

So if I come on to the classification of how these things look. You then go well into the next bit about getting it classified. I wanna establish all the classification types and I need to do a seal register as well for all of this stuff. So go on to the next one. It's the same chart again, but I've just changed some some language and added some more stuff into it. If you think about it, it's protected corridor again, so it's ES. I've got one of those little diagrams, just put the figure into it's now an ES damper, so it's good between thirteen hundred and twenty minutes it's ADB method 4 which has to shut automatically on a fire alarm activation because of the smoke risk. I’ve still chosen that blade type. Well, these are really important just to get into it because these kind of blades might give you a 70% free area, that might give you a 50 or 60% free area, that might give you 50% free area. So if you based your airflow in engineering on a fusible link your duct is going to be 50% too small.

We see this a lot because no one considers actually the blade types gotta be defined as one of the parameters before you go in to CDP so you know your Part L calculations is right for fan power. All dampers to be inside to out tested. This one is on a wall so I'm gonna go for the vertical installation. There's little diagram down there to tell you what it actually is, that’s a VE damper for the wall that way. And the cycling in dampers can be up to C 10,000. So you gotta look at this now in comparison, because you've set out what that product basically is, but you need to set it out in comparison to the type of wall you're looking at. If I'm putting it in a block work or a drywall, what am I looking at? Well, you got two types of support and constructions, you’ve got rigid block or you've got symmetrical in ? 23mins 29secs boards. So anything above that is classed as other.

So let's look at how this looks in practice, because you wanna establish how the construction is compatible with it. So these are all the different types of damper blades that exist on the market. So these are these are the ones that I know kind of exist on the wall. I've included now reverse deflection heads, cleats plastered in. So I've got a product range and I'm selecting the dampers as a building services consultant and I've got all configuration of what's compatible with an architect. So what I'm making this simpler is to say, well, I know what that is because it’s a protected space and I've got that bit figured out, but I maybe wanna use a flange damper because that might be made by…I’ll use one of these, I know it's compatible with a symmetrical wall. Anything else above this is classed as other and you need to make sure it’s been tested with it. But then the thickness, you need to check the DOP through the manufacturer the minimum thickness that's been used in their test to set that into the wall. So it might be 122 mil, it might be 100 mil, but you need to check with the manufacturer what that is. It’s giving you a method of going through it, but you know the passive seal types are in 520 and mineral wall.

So as I said before like this word on fire stopping, that’s not fire stopping because fire stopping is generally Part 3 which is pipes. This isn't fire stopping, this is a drywall detail. So who’s got the relative competence to do that isn't necessarily someone that does pipe work bats because it doesn't involve bats. That’s sand and cement, that's bat and mastics, there might be some crossover with a passive fire company that can do that one, but they've all got different seal types. This is how they all kind of work. So you've got a method there of selecting. Then you’ve got to look at how you do the installation, the access of it, because if you don’t look at this it’s where we’ve seen it going horribly wrong. It’s that you need to allow the space and this is how I’ve kind of worked it out. So I know what that is, I know the damper type, I’ve gone for that type of blades, I know what the pressure drop is, I know it's VE in the wall and it's symmetrical, but I still need to consider it with all the other components that go into the wall because that's just one component in isolation.

Not forgetting doors are complex because you might have Part M requirements, they might be powered, they might have lower pull forces. You might have security on it, it could be Z and L bracket to the top, it could be a mortise red lock. That has to be compatible with the wall thickness as well, and the wall types. All these things have gotta be checked as a system for the wall that they're going. So if you've got one wall in an office floor and it's got doors glazing in it, it's got flues in it, fire rated ducts and dampers, you can't just do this exercise about running the same exercise for all of these, all the components that go into it, because you’ve got to get that to suit all of these, not these to suit that because it’ll all be different. Then you got your seal type, then you've got your access requirements. So any seal that you've got for a damper, a duct, anything like that, you still need access both sides cause all seals need access both sides. You can't do it from one side, it just doesn't exist.

So if you've got a symmetrical wall in there you still need to get in to fix the wall, if you’ve got a shaft wall and this is testing the shaft wall, the seal still needs access both sides. And if you're doing that seal as a passive fire company or someone that’s doing the damper, you need 5 or 6 hundred worth of space. So you can't just ignore that, unfortunately, it’s there, but also you need access for cleaning for ones at the bottom, ones at the side, your TR19 requirements. But again, the wall requirement itself has still got its own requirement which has got to be compatible with these as well. So the minimum distance for this from the top might be 75 mil in the test standards if they can test things properly, but the wall if it's got a 25 mil deflection head might need 250 mil drywall build up before you can put the damper into it. And that's the reality of how this kind of shows things appropriately about how you do it. So you can kind of see it all there in visual.

So if you look at it all that's how you got to that classification number at the bottom by going through that process and this is how we can't just kind of try to portray it. We're gonna present this a bit more as time goes on. But obviously once you've done that, the big next step for me is to get this bit right, which is the asset information because all of these different things need to be recorded in the asset. Some things are gonna be geometry, some things are gonna be like PDF held like the test results or the O&M manual for the product. That's an expert I’ve got to get done with George, then obviously I've got a process of builders work. There's a way of doing different builders work schedules, the big thing is you cannot put passive fire seals on one shed? 28mins 10secs, you need to break them out by subject matter otherwise you get yourself into a pickle and a common denominator has gotta be the wall system.

Then obviously you got your digital record and inspections. There’s lots of other things that sit behind this that you may have already seen from us, but to put it into like a bit more of a flow around a passive fire knowledge sort of process which is that back to the top. That's what it kind of looks like in practice. I'm gonna switch that back off and revert to the screen and let the questioning begin.

DAS That was a whirlwind, but actually it’s clear you’ve done a huge amount of kind of work on that. And the diagrammatic element, for a visual kind of person like myself that really helps just to understand something quite complicated. I guess the question that I would have at the moment from an architectural, because we're going through at the moment trying to generate our content library for architectural speaking wall types and door types. In order to reduce the number, I think for all of us we just want to reduce the glossaries or the number of glossaries or the number of things in a glossary, for example. So what I can think immediately here is that coordination more detailed review between the M&E services the fire concern and architectural layouts, because typically I would say at the moment we do the layouts and then the M&E would overlay their design onto the scheme but I'm 100% sure that no M&E has ever looked through our wall glossaries and gone ‘actually hold on a minute, we’ve looked at the wall time type that you're proposing between the parting walls or shaft or whatever, and our proposed ductwork is not gonna work in that. We don't think it's gonna work’.

Now, I would like to understand whether in practice, what is currently happening at the moment - obviously on all this, I don't know if you know this level of scrutinising actually is happening or maybe it is, I've just not been lucky enough to kind of witness it. Is it actually a case of being more onerous with the coordination requirement to go actually M&E, fire consultants, you're gonna have to check the wall build ups as well that we propose to meet the fire and acoustics that we may need against the review that you’ve done in terms of the passive fire.

PAUL McSOLLEY What I'm seeing from various different things is, just take this one example, we've had a job where we've had a riser revelation? 31mins 05secs duct going all the way up, where the outturn onto the floor of the distance between that wall and that duct is 90 millimetres. And in 90 millimetres of space you can put a shaft wall there because (and this is about reversion to type) if you've got a shaft, the first thing that the human brain will think is I'm gonna put a shaft wall in because it’s a shaft because I’m safe because I’m only building it from one side. But it's not necessarily the right thing because we still need to look as a tier one contractor about how the space is safe to do the work for putting the duct in anyway, and actually I've still gonna have to put something in here in seal terms on both sides to make it work. So I wonder if we had to say to the client that 90 mil was 500 mil deficient, we can't make it work, we can't install it.

You can put any wall type in there that you want. We do not have physically have space to make breakaway joints, put access panels in, form seals, and actually the job in particular to even have a door into the riser. We can’t build this, this has got to come out. The problem was on this job is because it had gone through a process in stage 4 and had gone to tender the client agreed agreement for leases everything and they go, well, we can’t bring it out. We're going, well, make this smaller. We can’t because actually we’ve got an agreement for leases in relation to volumetric. We can’t make the volumes any smaller. So basically the whole job has had to go right back to Stage 2 and be re-planned, it just doesn’t work. If these kind of things aren't considered this unfortunately is just the reality of it. What you find is that if it comes up with the trades later on the trades can't fix it because they’re governed by getting seals installed correctly, doing breakaway joints.

And we’ve got a Building Safety Act coming in where the HSE maybe not completely cottoned on to all of this yet, because they may not have the reasonable skill that understands all the stuff around this, but they're gonna learn pretty quickly when the first few things go wrong. You will never make that job work. So get in at the end of Gateway 1 before it goes to planning where you’ve got some real good rule sets around, things like this diagrammatically about how things fit. It’s in everyone’s benefit to go out to a client and say, well, this stuff exists in the market, you can clearly see and this will end up in other documents that have been circulated, this is actually what you need to actually install these things correctly and safely and actually make the seals work. But this isn't knowledge that (this is the absolute truth) if you look at it from various sides, a Tier 1 contractor may be looking at the architects going they ain’t cutting the mustard.

This isn’t an architectural issue, this is a combination of installation, compatibility with wall types and procurement because the MEP consultant doesn't want to choose these. You don't wanna set these because you've been told the best value comes from the tier 1 later on when they select supply chain. So that's a direct conflict, it doesn’t work. That’s the whole behavioural thing in the construction industry. The fact is that if we can get to the end of Gateway 1 where there’s lots of good workbooks available for architects and building services consultants to work to make this selection process easier. So there's a workbook for that, a workbook for that, a workbook for that. But when you go through the same sort of diagrammatic flow that you get to the end and you go, well, I know the wall type that I've got, I know the thickness because I've now determined this against all of these.

Then you know the wall thickness that you need and the type that you need, you're 99% sure that it's all gonna fit in the future, even though what the wall deflection requirement is to get these things right as well, because that's one of the ones that's been causing problems. It's then no. And it's gonna make people's lives a lot easier, easier to talk to clients about it. The whole aim of getting this done is to give everyone the support to go through it with clients a bit easier.

DAS Yeah, and I think that builds on again one of the comments that Jarek made about this zonal design state because it's a zonal thing, isn't it a vertical horizontal, which we should be doing already. And I know we joke about M&E always wanting more riser space, but maybe they're true, and it's that kind of level of accuracy is what we need at this stage coming from, as I say the workbooks are rule of thumb. The flexibility is there for the specific product maybe later, but at least the installation and you're not narrowing yourself down by squeezing everything too early that actually you know you don't have the chance of procuring something more cost economical etc later down the line because you squeezed yourself in the design. You don't you have to go down a bespoke route every time or something.

PAUL McSOLLEY There’s limitations on bespoke. I’m doing the same thing at the moment for this on steel beams because you can’t put ? 36mins 14secs in compartment lines and put products through them, there’s no method of doing it. And I’m trying to get that method of how you get yourself out of dodge when ti all goes wrong into an order and the same sort of shape as this.

PAUL WHITE I think that’d the whole point and you’ve shown it very well, Paul. The key point is that if you close everything down there’s not going to be a solution, however much you want one. I think that's the situation that we're in now because somebody just solved it in the past and just put it all in and now they can't do that because they can't generate the evidence to say that it's alright.

PAUL McSOLLEY And you won't get assessments done either because it's not enough data to do it. If you look at all of the issues, this is just dampers. All this stuff will come out, I’ve got another meeting in the PFKG at the end of this month we're gonna try and get this fully ratified through al aligned, then we're gonna bring other people into it because the bit I really need the help on is…If you can get the manufacturers fully on board as well you’ll end up with that information that’s there in a Revit file and a tick seat at the front, which will basically make you go through that process of selection in this order. And that’s gonna help drive it as well, that’s where the BIM part is quite important because it's gotta be held in Revit a lot on this as well and that's all for Golden Thread and for changing and later on. Because this is essentially when you think about it, if you wanted to do golden thread for a fire damper in one location in the building, this is all it is, isn't it? You've gone for the whole process of type space, risk etc to get to that point of selecting the appropriate product for the appropriate circumstance of where you wanna use it. That’s what we’re trying to do and make it diagrammatically essentially.

DAS That's correct. One of the things that may help always is that with the, from an architectural point of view, and we're going through this sort of wall type filtering process for DMA-led projects, trying to minimise the number of types that we have of walls, dry lining at the moment is what we're focusing on. Ideally it'll be a dry lining or let's say RC, some block work in unusual plant room kind of scenarios. So maybe something that once you've kind of looked at this I could share what our team are doing. To say here's our typical glossary of wall types which achieved acoustic fire, but also maybe in other scenarios like in kitchens and bathrooms, because not a huge amount to be honest in a flat, for example, in an apartment, I think there's like 3 wall types. You have variations on that because of the type of board and the finish, but it would be useful to kind of say well actually the wall type thicknesses that we're getting are here. How does that align to the testing? Because you’ve got 122, 140, but actually they're quite thick walls, relatively speaking, in terms of our internal ones. So I'm happy to kind of share that when the time is right because we're doing it at the moment. So if your wall types don't match up with the certified.

PAUL McSOLLEY These Excels are available at the moment because they’ve been sent out, if you need I’ll send them back out to you.

DAS Yeah, I just find it easier to say we’ll kind of share our glossary and then you can say, well, ,most of the test data is done on walls which are thicker, so there’s some inherent misalignment within, say, BG White Book or Canal. And the testing that's been done in dampers for example.

PAUL McSOLLEY I've used these for actually, so you can look at all the things when you do the initial check on site, it's all installed correctly then for future maintenance. So you sit there and you go, well, you look to Actionair dampers because they use one layer of patrice board? 41mins 22secs. We looked at some other Actionair ones and there are two layers of aperture framing, this is what you have to follow. Some of the ??? 41 mins 31secs kit on the market doesn't have any picture frame because you're filling it with gypsum plaster. These things are actually a kit that's built with formed into the wall that comes specifically for the manufacture, sands, cement, cavity systems, cleats built into the wall. So all of these things have some variances so you have to compare that as a system approach with the whole wall and actually how many holes can you have on the wall before it before it can't house anymore.

PAUL WHITE The other issue with that is that you've gotta get your coordination if you're building the wall correct. Because if you buy that one, you have to have the damper installed before the wall goes up. And if you buy the other one, you've got to have the wall there before you put the damper in. So you've gotta be looking at your site coordination quite clearly.

DAS Interesting. I've just seen a couple of other things. I think Sharon, you made a comment and Joe you sent a link, if you wanna just add to that.

JOE Yeah, it just kind of rang a bell, really. In terms of you were saying that you're developing your your library of wall types. We've been going through exactly the same exercise kind of driven by sustainability more than anything else actually, and making sure that they are tested products. we haven't quite managed to boil it down to three wall types though, I’m impressed by that.

DAS Well, as I said, just internal wall, internal apartments, not when you take all the party? 43mins 06secs walls and everything else it just explodes. But yeah, in terms of just purely dealing with sort of fire and acoustics, but then when you put the board types, it kind of messes things up a bit. As you're trying to make things simple, things always wanna get more complicated.

JOE Exactly. So the link that I just put in the chat https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=1113875452800974116&appLang=en&os=Win 64 was to Knauf’s Revit plug-in. This is something that I haven't used, but I saw it when I was developing our own content. But I don't know if that actually asks the same kind of questions that we’ve been discussing today. I suspect it doesn't, but it's interesting that that is because it's getting so complicated, isn't it, that this has to be solved by programming and databases rather than was me, Immortals I think.

PAUL McSOLLEY This isn’t about business ? 44mins 04 secs this is about seeing everybody else’s problems because you can become a bit of an agony Aunt, everyone comes to you with their dirty laundry. Is that everyone kind of thought initially that they had a builders’ work issue and it's not a builders work issue that exists and I think…it’s a procurement issue that’s the biggest problem because we're doing things in isolation, not as a system approach. So you're seeing it faced in the builders work problem where everyone goes ‘the damper doesn't work, they’ve selected the wrong kit’ and actually go, well, it’s a door, it’s a wall, it’s a flue, it’s a damper, it’s smoke control, it’s glass panel and it’s all got a minimum thickness requirement and the type and there’s obviously the weight of it and the wall type that you’ve got to house it all in.

So if it gets to the point where you go actually generally 122 mil thick you’re probably not gonna go wrong. With glass panels on a wall you’re not going to go wrong on a wall smaller than 138 mil thick…Then you already getting down to the point when you're drawing walls out initially, you know that they're always symmetrical, you can access them from both sides, you allow the access inside to install them both ways and things like shaft wall reserved for a shaft when there’s nothing going through it. And that's it. That kind of removes that issue because I think what's happened is shaft walls just been used, its no one’s fault, it’s just easy to install, it’s safe and tested but nothing goes through it. That’s kind of the issue I have with steel beams is that a structural engineer wants to put them at the line level with the risers but there’s no test method to put anything through.

And I’ve started working out how you can get a method for testing stuff through it and honestly it’s gonna take me many weeks to into a document where you say this is everything you need to go through. It’s not gonna be classified either because there’s no test standard to prove it’s safe in all conditions because you’ve got a thickness that way, you’ve got a type of beam, a depth that way then a span, the layers of board in, the internal board in, the type of seal, they type of kit you’re gonna put through it - it’s just too much. So I always say keep steel beams off of compartment lines risers because you ain’t going through them, you’re gonna go under them.

DAS I think the other thing that I’ve noticed is it’s quite easy I guess to get too overwhelmed because actually maybe risers and shafts are relatively speaking quite a minor percentage of the build, very important. And actually all the other one’s (partitions, bedrooms, bathrooms. If you're talking residential) are generally accessible by both sides and asymmetrical, as you say Paul. So I think you shouldn't get too overwhelmed, but also it's quite good because these are specific instances within a building floor play that there's a bit of additional attention is needed time, but it's not like every single area, generally speaking I think that's true to say.

So one hand, yes, it seems like quite a tricky area, but luckily there's only a small percentage of them. And that's why when we look at the wall types, I’m speaking to the internal team ‘OK, look, it may look like there's a huge amount of wall types, but to deal with 80% of the floor play, we only need a couple. So let's not kind of get too overwhelmed at the same time’. Sharon, I think you just mentioned that thing on the chat: ‘20% of the areas giving 80% of the problems’.

PAUL McSOLLEY The big thing for me was that did everyone kind of agree that how the flow, when you look at it in that context, how it kind of flows? And it's just so you can see it from all the other inputs that I'm trying to get to this point where I’ve got a passive fire code, if you’ve never seen CIBSE code M it's always worth having a look at it, even though it's commissioning, it's not anything that maybe architectural deals with. If you look at the principle of how you manage commissioning, it's no different to really how you manage passive fire cradle to grave. You've gotta have the same approach. What CIBSE has done is you go have a passive fire knowledge code that…sets out how you do RACI from cradle to grave, how people should input to that thing.

Because it’s about specialist knowledge holders, it’s also about supply chain to a degree because once you’ve got the key classification information you can go to a manufacturer and say ‘can I have one of these’ and they can give it to you. If you go to them and ask for an FD what you get is a bit of a gamble: you’re gambling it’s going to be appropriate for where it’s going because all other parameters aren’t considered, if that makes sense.

DAS One of the things from an M&E point of view the experience, I guess there’s the idea of trying to get them on board earlier especially with the Gateway 2 requirement, is an M&E subcontractor with a designer who actually work together with their knowledge of install, commissioning and maintenance. A lot of consultants don’t have maintenance or installation experience, but you’d hope that if a subcontractor is appointing the designer they would actually review the design and say ‘we can’t actually build that in that sequence, or that’s not how we would do it’. I haven’t really seen that happen in projects that i’ve worked on but in an ideal world that would be the best way so that the maintenance and installation elements of it are picked up in the comment in the design and fed back to the architectural structural team saying we do need more space in this riser because of X,Y and Z because it’s required. So every time I see an M&E subcontractor appoint a consultant early (which is rare) I hope that the maintenance element and installation is reviewed. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s happening.

PAUL McSOLLEY No, I don’t think it is. This is why (shares screen again) I don't mind a bit of criticism because it's healthy to have it. Some people think I went too far, some people have gone I've got it just about right. Some people have gone, well, what about what about tolerances? The bottom line is to get to a point where you've got like a a graphical where you go before you go to a manufacturer and ask for a product that’s the minimum, along with that, you need to go to them with and say can I have one of these. That’s basically what you need. That’s why this sends the powerful message that you know you’ve gone through all of that. The only thing is you need to make sure, this is all comes down to relative competence. Fire curtains are a nightmare because the classification…what I’m experiencing here is that a fire curtain isn’t REI, and I’ve seen that a hundred times now. it could be R, it could be W, it could be EW or S depending on the function for which it’s fulfilling which effects the product.

I will get one of these done for fire curtains as well but the classification information will be different, I need to add all of that into it. But some of these parameters will be the same like the wall types will be the same, but there will be add-ons here with C-16 timbers and things I need to insert. So I need to get to a method where whatever product that's going into it of the general 7 or 8 that go into it there’s a method of getting to how they work classification wise and the common denominator on thickness and type because that’s gonna remove 99% of the problem. The fact is whatever you install, whether it's a damper, a duct, flue, even a door, you still need this level of access both sides to get that product installed safely. You can't get away from it, so that kind of sets the scene for ducts and dampers and things in closed risers and what actual space you really need to get it right because I can't see how else you’re gonna do it. But I’ve seen these things installed in spaces less than that before but you go back and you look at them, they're not installed very well. they’re not done properly, things are missing. These things aren't installed correctly that you know that you always find problems with them.

Especially when you look at what’s going on with defective premises. These things are coming back out the woodwork, people are making a cottage industry of it's very easy to do it. So that kind of stuff, this this will come out and you will get copies of it in the next couple of weeks. Once gone through with the PFKG, you'll see more of this stuff getting launched and I think my biggest thing was to make sure you guys were really aware of it because this is about BIM4housing, it’s about PFKG and it's about us all getting better collectively and hopefully it will help you guys. But the biggest one is doors because you’ve got security and you’ve got ? 54mins 16secs on it. This is the hardest one because this isn't about classification, it's about pipe work material, it’s about corrosive effects as well. There’s all different key propagators into this. If you look at pipe work, not to sort of bog this down, is that you can't put stainless steel through a wall with a HMV pipe made of rockwool, especially if it's a cold temperature cause the rockwool and the stainless steel will probably react.

This isn’t an architectural issue, though certain people are putting it on it, and it's not necessarily a building services issue. I’m seeing it as a whoever is gonna take ownership with the contract, at least to make sure the pencil sharp and this stuff's all considered. And then you support the design team with fire engineers to get it right because there's not one knowledge holder, there’s individual ones. And this is why it's good because you got mixtures of all those people in these groups.

SHARON I just wanted to say thank you because this is like a Christmas present for me. I had a conversation yesterday with someone saying that they'd still don't know anything about passive fire protection, they still don't know about service penetrations and sealing them, and that's a fit out contractor, quite a large organisation, FM. So listening to this, having an image of a person inside a riser and outside a riser. It just feels as if I’m in a conversation with likeminded people for a change, instead of me being a harbinger of doom every time I go onto a building site because I just say I can’t do that and everyone says don’t invite her back. The sprinkler pipe thing that you just mentioned, allegedly the mastic having an issue as opposed to the bracket tray being too tight and running against the block work etc. I mean honestly I just I had to intervene just to say that imagery that's been showing the evidence of how complicated things are and the way that people…it’s almost like people are throwing buildings up and it’s actually a science and this is gonna cut through all the bullshit and just make people sit up and think it’s not straightforward, so thank you.

PAUL McSOLLEY The only way we could work out how to do it was actually to put things into imagery purposes. The one I’m working on at the moment is the steel beam one, I’ve got to transfer these images into the same thing because it’s super complex to get it right. And without those images, as you say, you can’t cut through the bullshit. Because if you imagine it from a contractor’s perspective, and this is why we brought it up first of all with Martin and the contracting group, is that when you actually think it up is that once you get to that situation where that’s 100 mil, that’s 50 mil and there’s an AF filling involved…where you can’t make the riser bigger, straight away that contractor reverts to type and so does the design team, to be frank, and so does the client and it becomes hard hats on in the trench all fighting each other. The fact is someone just had to bight the bullet and make it bigger and deal with the contractual consequences, then it’s done. Should be simple but it’s not, so everyone starts fighting about it.

MIKE following on from his comment via chat ‘Collaboration and changing the industry culture is so key’. This is a really good conversation and if you took this topic about fire dampers and applied it to any other element within the building it’s a very similar conversation. I think the key message with this is we always come across people who have wonderful skill sets and knowledge about a specific element and it’s about having those right and open conversations at the right time. I’m always a little bit nervous of manufacturer-led design tools. I think they serve a purpose and I always feel there is a step ahead of that which is more generic information about building information about projects and that always comes from much better and open collaboration in the early stages of projects. So I echo many of Paul’s thoughts and thanks, it’s been really good.

DAS When we’re designing it’s just building in that kind of rules of thumb a bit more, that design book that we’ve spoken before about. All the zoning discussions and making zoning not just ‘oh it’s always 300 so we’ll do it 300’. It’s not just 300, it’s 300 or 350 because of X,Y and Z, decisions or actually this flow chart approach that you’ve taken to get to a zonal decision. They may not be 100% right but there’s actually a logic and a thread to how you got to that zone, so if you apply that vertically, horizontally to ceilings, to floor build-ups etc then that’s going to help minimise issues down the line. I’m sure you can make it bespoke and slim it, but always start with the real tolerance on each of the side first rather than squeezing ourselves first and really struggling later on.