As safe as houses

This is a well known expression, and is taken to mean something you can rely on. As construction becomes more complex the achievement of the intrinsic safety of buildings has to progress; an understanding of how the design, the material choices and fire protection works together has to be appreciated and specified up-front.

This is reflected in the increased focus by building owners, and by the public, on what is being used to make a building's response to fire meet the building code and the desired outcome: escape without injury.

What happens next?

As an employer of passive fire installation staff, as a project manager receiving data from an installer, as the owner of a building, as an occupier of a building what do you want of the passive fire installation industry?

I would suggest in all these cases you would want to know that a good job was done, a job that was delivered with evidence of good practice, a job that was sufficiently documented to support BWOF requirements, a job that would lead to safe construction that met the brief: the very fabric of the building delivers time enough for people to escape without injury in the case of fire.

This can be achieved through the evidence-based professionalisation of this part of the construction process.