Managing risk under the Regulatory Reform Order
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order – which became effective in England and Wales in October 2006 – represents one of the most significant pieces of fire legislation in recent decades. Its aim is to reduce death, injury and damage caused by fire, and it heralds a new proactive approach to managing risk.

The main effect of the Fire Safety Order is to place greater emphasis on fire prevention in non-domestic premises. Fire certificates will now be abolished and the responsibility for compliance with the Order will rest with the ‘responsible person’. This is generally the person in control of the premises, such as the employer, occupier or owner.

The responsible person must carry out a fire risk assessment, the focus of which is the safety in case of fire of all ‘relevant persons’. This task may be passed to some other competent person, but the responsible person still holds responsibility for meeting the Order. The risk assessment will help the responsible person to identify fire risks that can be removed or reduced, and to decide the extent of the general precautions that should be taken to protect people against the fire risks that remain.

Responsibility for enforcement of the new rules lies with the local fire and rescue authority, which will carry out regular inspections, especially of premises that present most risk to the community. These inspections will be carried out within the context of the integrated risk management planning agenda for the UK fire and rescue service.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has issued A short guide to making your premises safe from fire, together with a series of guides on how to carry out risk assessments for different types of identified building premises. The guides provide information on what to look for in order to minimise the risk from fire. Any fire risk assessment naturally needs to cover a wide range of aspects, including possible sources of ignition, escape routes and the combustibility of the fabric of the building – and it is this last issue that has raised some concerns in the construction industry.

Suitable and sufficient assessment of the building fabric
Under the section ‘Identifying a fire hazard’, the DCLG guides list ‘insulated core panels’ as a potential source of fuel to be considered in a fire risk assessment. However, by not distinguishing sufficiently between the many different types of panel, insulant and application, there is a danger that the responsible person will be led to believe that their building represents a risk where it does not, or will be unable to identify where the real risks are. Managing risk involves having adequate and accurate information. Without clear guidance, mistakes could be made that are costly, either in financial terms or in terms of human life.

Even though the building fabric and insulated panels only form a small part of the fire risk assessment, it is crucial to base the assessment on the correct information and not on a generalised view about the behaviour of insulated panels in a fire. In recognition of the need for clearer guidance, Engineered Panels in Construction (EPIC) has produced a comprehensive guide to the main points that concern insulated panels when conducting a fire risk assessment under the Fire Safety Order. The guide, Insulated panels and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, will not only be of interest to responsible persons and competent persons undertaking risk assessments, it is also intended to be an invaluable tool for the fire and rescue service and insurance surveyors alike.

The guide is designed to make it easy for those carrying out the assessment to identify whether or not the premises represents a potential risk. It includes information on:
•	Insulated panels and where they are found in construction
•	Their performance in fire
•	How to identify panels and other systems

Making the right assessment
First step. The first step is to ascertain whether or not the building is constructed using insulated panels. Certain insulated lining systems, such as insulation boards with thin facings on either side – for example, aluminium foil or bituminous felts – are often wrongly described as ‘panels’. Great care should be taken to check that a wall or wall lining is a panel and not a board.

Insulated panels normally consist of two metal facings either side of an insulating core. The core is either bonded to the facings using a polyurethane adhesive in the case of mineral fibre panels, or by auto-adhesion in the case of polyurethane and phenolic cores. There is no air gap between the core and the facings. The panels are manufactured in a factory and delivered to the construction site as a single piece unit.

Insulated panels normally consist of two metal facings, either side of an insulating core. The core is either bonded to the facings using an adhesive or by auto-adhesion in the case of polyurethane and phenolic cores. There is no air gap between the core and the facings

Insulated panels are generally regarded as non-structural, although they are strong rigid units that act compositely when under load. This strength allows loads such as wind or static forces to be transmitted to the supporting structure, and it is this property that distinguishes panels from other types of insulated lining systems. It is important to make this distinction because the mechanical and fire properties of panels can be totally different to those of alternative forms of construction.

Second step. Having looked at the nature of the construction, the second stage is to consider other aspects such as the materials used. For example, the central core can be made of any one of a variety of insulating materials, each with different characteristics. The choice of insulation has a direct bearing on the performance of a panel in fire and therefore the fire risk assessment.

The most commonly used core material for insulated panels is polyurethane (PUR) or polyisocyanurate (PIR). From the mid 1990s, the insulating panel industry gradually moved from PUR to all panels being manufactured using PIR by 2004. Mineral wool (MW) cores are used in a variety of panels for walls, ceilings and internal compartment walls. Polystyrene (PS) has been used as a core material for over 30 years, mainly for panels used internally and for cold store panels.

Understanding Panel performance in fire

Fire risk assessment under the Fire Safety Order is primarily concerned with life safety and the prevention of fire. This is very different from assessing a building from the viewpoint of property protection or that of the fire services, where the fire is likely to be fully developed rather than a developing fire.

It is therefore important to take full account of the fact that at the critical personnel evacuation phase of a fire in buildings clad in PUR, PIR and mineral fibre panels, the vast majority of heat, smoke and toxic hazard is created by the materials involved in the initial fire. It is these hazards that are likely to be critical in terms of life safety.

The third step is to understand how insulated panels are likely to perform in a fire. In a developing fire, the fire will generally be localised and the temperatures lower. At this stage, the core of the insulated panels is protected by the metal facings, unless the temperature causes the facing or panel to collapse – for example, with some freestanding polystyrene (EPS) cored panels where the core is seriously affected at temperatures below 180°C.

For this reason, it is important to distinguish between panels used for the external envelope that are securely fixed to the building framework and which would remain in place thereby protecting the core, and internal panels that are often freestanding or supported on other panels and which are more vulnerable to collapse. External PUR, PIR and mineral fibre panels are normally mechanically fixed through to the structural steelwork of the building. Case studies have shown that these panels will not collapse until the building collapses.

Insulated panels are increasingly specified because they perform well in case of fire and also deliver on thermal efficiency requirements.		Insulated panels are used internally to line out buildings and to create environmental compartments.

Over the last 10 years, considerable advances have been made in un
derstanding how panels behave in fires, both through case history analyses and tests, and the information has been made available to designers and building owners. Extensive large-scale fire tests on a range of insulated panels have been carried out by EPIC, in conjunction with the major test laboratories. The information is available on the EPIC website www.epic.uk.com/fire_tests.jsp.