Fire Protection Measures in Buildings: The Architect’s Design Role

Abstract

The key elements of any fire protection system involve prevention, retardations, detection, extinguishments as well as rescue. Major advances have been made in all these elements and are continually improved and made increasingly effective by improvement in technology advancement. Advancement in Building design and construction can have significant improvement in fire safety, therefore, architects, need to adapt new techniques and new materials and incorporate them in their designs. They also need to liaise with fire professionals and engineers across the globe in order to update their knowledge in fire safety. In many countries, safety standards and laws were made as a guide to prevent fire conflagration, loss of assets or buildings, as well as protection of individual life, and architects follow such regulations during design. The fire protection codes, laws and standards are as such effectively implemented in advanced countries. Here in Nigeria there seem to be no adequate statutes in place, except the draft National fire Code. Architects in the country have to rely a lot on their personal fire protection knowledge and design dexterity to provide in building fire prevention and protection measures. Statutory Fire Safety Provisions should be established and administered by the 3 tiers of our government and such document must serve as a guideline in all architectural designs.    This paper therefore tries to give an insight into the role of architects as it relates to fire protection during design of buildings.

Keywords: buildings, fires, prevention, safety, standards.