Design for Life? Fire safety, building resilience and the Principal Designer

Led by Dr Liam Ross (Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh; author, Pyrotechnic Cities: Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation (Routledge, 2022)) and Paul Bussey (Chartered Architect, RIBA Expert Advisory Fire Group member, Practicing Senior Technical Consultant, FIFireE, FASFP, FIIRSM, IMAPS)

• Online (option to join fourth session in-person)
• 6 x Friday AM (10am-1pm)
• Fri 25 Oct to Fri 06 Dec (no session Fri 01 Nov)
• £625

 
The Design for Life course meets the following competencies:
 

• RIBA and ARB: Mandatory Knowledge Framework for Fire, Health and Life Safety
• PAS 8671: Behavioural, Legislative, Management and Technical competencies for Principal Designers
• CDM and BSA: Designer’s Duties and Client’s Duties

Formally recognised by:
 


“The RIBA welcomes the LSA Design for Life programme that supports architects in developing their competence in fire and building safety, for regulatory compliance and beyond. The sessions will help architects prepare for the design risk management element of the RIBA health and life safety mandatory competence assessment.”

 


“The London School of Architecture’s Part 4 programme provides exactly the kind of support that the profession needs to respond to the most urgent issues facing our cities. I am delighted to see this innovative professional development programme focus on the issues that practitioners in London are grappling with including inclusion and social value, fire safety and community heritage. Ultimately upskilling the sector on these matters is going to lead to a built environment that better serves Londoners.”

Jules Pipe CBE, Deputy Mayor

 

Are you aware of the changes to building regulations following the Grenfell Tower fire? Do you meet new mandatory competence requirements in relation to fire, health and life safety design? Are you confident in your individual and organisational capability as a ‘Principal Designer’? Do you know how to assess the competence of consultants you collaborate with or employ?

In the wake of Grenfell, the Hackitt review and amendments to Building Regulations professionals must demonstrate competency in fire, health and life safety design.

These competency requirements are not coming, they are here. Regulators mandate them; insurers value them; clients and the public demand them.

And your professional status and reputation – as an architect, building industry professional or client – relies on cultivating and recognising that competence.

This is the most-in-depth course available in the UK, meeting and shaping industry competence expectations in this area.

 

What participants say about this course

• “Fantastic course, more people should attend…it helps you to question what you are designing as well as your competency. A valuable insight into the latest fire safety regulations, from a philosophical and historical context, to fire legislation, to current discussions with leading experts on topics heavily centred around Grenfell and the resulting Building Safety Act.”
  Rizwana Osman, Senior Architect, and Sean Bignold, Architectural Director, Ryder Architecture
• “The quality of speakers, the wealth of supporting documentation and the level of detail that was covered was fantastic and made the whole experience unlike any other post-Part 3 CPD-type training that I have experienced. The interaction with other participants was also a worthy attribute of the course. I had not used Miro boards before and thought it was a great tool and exceptionally useful for such a training environment.”
  James Roach, MICA Architects
• “A good balance of broader contextual thinking and detailed, technical information.”
  Mark Broom, ACME

 

What will I get from this course?

• Individual competence and organisational capability: It is a client’s duty to demand competence of their consultants. It is your duty as a designer, and now as a Principal Designer under BSA, to have confidence in your competence. This course will prepare RIBA chartered architects for the RIBA health and life safety test, providing practice questions in the same format as the formal assessment. Non-chartered architects will be given access to related learning resources, and to the RIBA’s assessment portal, preparing them for the forthcoming reflective statement required by the ARB. Other professionals and clients within the building industry will learn how to satisfy their own duties with respect to fire, health and life-safety design, understanding what competence is, and how to assess it.
• Excellence beyond competence: Through design exercises led by industry experts, you will learn international principles of fire safety and how these inform UK statute. You will also explore ways to work critically and creatively with building regulations. Together, you will workshop key challenges of life safety design, applying first principles to practical problems. This course will not only exceed competence, but give you the skills to market this excellence and respond to client demands.
• Extending beyond statute: In addition to mandatory standards concerning life-safety, the course introduces extensive design guidance concerning property resilience. You will be challenged to review design decisions from the perspective of an insurer, and be shown how to reduce building insurance premiums through design. Participants leave the course confidence in how to write, and to assess, a building ‘resilience strategy’.
• Commercial nouse: You will be offered expert guidance on how to fee for life safety design, how to minimise design liability for fire safety, and how to keep public indemnity insurance premiums to a minimum.

 

However we believe that competence is merely the foundation. Knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours are enabled by research, training, collaboration and sound ethical bases. In fact, they turn competence into excellence.

We want to work with course participants who share this commitment to excellence.
 

Course context

A direct response to the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, the Edinburgh Schools scandal, and a new regulatory landscape, Design for Life responds to the professional, moral and ethical imperative of architects and building industry stakeholders to equip themselves with the essential and latest fire, health and life safety knowledge, and to learn how to apply it in practice.

For architects, Design for Life covers all topics included in the RIBA’s ‘Health and Life Safety’ Mandatory Core Competency – a requirement of Chartered Membership for 2024 renewals – and the ARB’s competence guidance on Fire and Life Safety. It unpacks the implications of the Building Safety Act for professional competency, preparing participants to act as Principal Designer. For other stakeholders to the building industry, it offers insight into the management of fire, health and life-safety risks from the perspective of the designer.

But more than this, the course will arm you and your teams with the latest design and technical knowledge alongside a confidence in selling professional service to clients, and an ethical framework to keep the public and our communities firmly at the centre of decision-making and accountability.

Course format and objectives

Design for Life? is a six-week course structured around the lifecycle of a building project, covering fire, health and life safety from Appointment to Concept Design, and Technical Design to Use. While addressing the gamut of health and life safety risks associated with building design, particular focus is given to the risk of fire, and related concerns of regulatory change, product certification, professional competence, the user’s voice, and design ethics.

The course is led by Dr Liam Ross (Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh; author, Pyrotechnic Cities: Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation (Routledge, 2022)) and Paul Bussey (Senior Technical Consultant, AHMM ), and is supported by an expert advisory panel including Jane Duncan OBE (Chair of the RIBA’s Expert Panel on Fire Safety and former president of the RIBA), Ian Abley (former Technical Consultant to RISCAuthority), Paul Hyett (RIBA Past President, Expert Witness to the Grenfell Inquiry and Partner at Vickery Hyett) and Arita Morris (CGL Architects and Chair of the NLA Expert Panel for Technical Competency).

Participants will leave with a toolkit of related documents and skills to integrate with their professional practice, confidence to sit the RIBA Health and Safety test, a prepared reflective statement as required by the ARB, a broader understanding of the ethical, legal and design consequences of their work and a greater confidence in offering fire, life safety and property resilience guidance in practice.

Week-by-week outline

1. The user: Fri 25 Oct 10am-1pm (online)
    
   • What caused the Grenfell Tower fire?
   • How and why were the safety concerns of Grenfell’s resident’s ignored?
   • What is the Cladding Scandal, and how can architects ensure concerns and voice of users are heard in building design?
    
   –
2. Rules: Fri 08 Nov 10am-1pm (online)
    
   • Were bad regulations to blame for the Grenfell fire?
   • What legal changes have been introduced by the Building Safety Act, and what further changes should we advocate for?
   • How is the architect’s competence defined?
    
   –
3. Money: Fri 15 Nov 10am-1pm (online)
    
   • What are the economic consequences of fire, health and life safety concerns?
   • How does insurance shape building design?
   • What civil liabilities are architects exposed to?
   • How can architects reduce insurance premiums by design?
    
   –
4. Specifying: Fri 22 Nov 10am-1pm (in-person)
    
   • How do materials respond to fire?
   • How is that performance certified, and can certification be trusted?
   • How should we detail and specify for fire-safety, and how can we recognise safety-critical elements and defects?
    
   –
5. Design: Fri 29 Nov 10am-1pm (online)
    
   • What is fire? What design principles should we employ to limit its spread?
   • Where do the expertise of architects and fire-engineers meet?
   • Are ambitions for enhanced fire-safety , construction and maintenance safety (CDM) and sustainability compatible?
    
   –
6. Risk: Fri 06 Dec 10am-1pm (online)
    
   • What is the role of the Principal Design under the Building Safety Act?
   • What are most significant risks in construction?
   • What are the principles of design risk management?
   • How can architects design out risk, and how can they limit their own risk exposure?
   • The PD role covers CDM & the Building Safety Act and the process of its integration with design is intended to be synchronous and led by the same design leader. The PD Toolkit for CDM & BSA/Building Regs shared in this session provides a methodology to deliver these roles in a comprehensible manner, attracting suitable financial remuneration.

Course contributors and advisors

Led by:

• Dr. Liam Ross: Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh; author, Pyrotechnic Cities: Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation (Routledge, 2022)
• Paul Bussey: Chartered Architect, RIBA Expert Advisory Fire Group member, Practicing Senior Technical Consultant , FIFireE, FASFP, FIIRSM, IMAPS, Chair HSE Coniac Keeping Pace with Change Working Group, Chair CIC Health and Safety Committee

Supported by:

• Jane Duncan OBE: Chair of the RIBA’s Expert Panel on Fire Safety and former president of the RIBA
• Peter Apps: Author, Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen and Inside Housing editor
• Arita Morris: CGL Architects and Chair of the NLA Expert Panel for Technical Competency
• Alastair Ogle: Associate, Waugh Thistleton, specialising in timber construction
• Giles Grover: Leading member of the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign
• Nick Beech: Associate professor of modern architecture, University of Birmingham
• Will Pitt: Laing O’Rourke, member of Passive Fire Safety Knowledge Group
• Scott Sanderson: Partner, PRP, focused on technical design, design management and BIM
• Andrea White: Independent fire engineer, fire risk assessor and chartered safety professional
• Samantha Peat: Leading the Construction Leadership Council’s PI insurance group
• Holly Smith: Academic researching high-rise architecture and community action in postwar Britain
• Luke Bisby: School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Grenfell Inquiry expert contributor
• Nathaniel McBride: Writer, Dictating to the Estate (play about events leading to Grenfell Tower fire)

General information

• The course runs over six weekly three hour sessions in an online format, every Friday morning 10am-1pm from Friday 25 October to Friday 06 December
• There will be a one week gap after the first session (no session on Friday 01 November)
• Week 4 (Friday 22 November) will be hosted at our studio in Dalston (4 Beechwood Rd, Dalston, London E8 3DY) – attending in-person is optional (you will be able to join online) but is a chance to meet your cohort, course leaders and contributors
• To ensure high contact, we’re recruiting a small cohort of no more than 40 – spaces are limited
• The course cost is £625 per participant
• You can read full Part 4 terms and conditions here

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