Everything of Significance about Fire Safety

A guideline created by the work group for fire safety within the Forum DACH summarizes fire safety for hospitals and condenses it into one conclusive package. It helps technical managers, planners, and other fire prevention officers to act legally and reasonably in the best interest of the building users.

The primary goals of this compilation of national and international standards and expert recommendations are in accordance with the Construction Products’ Regulation of 2011:

  • maintaining the building’s load-bearing capacity in case of a fire for a certain time frame
  • preventing the formation and spread of fire and smoke within the building
  • limiting the spread of fire onto neighboring buildings
  • ensure that the occupants can leave the building unharmed or be rescued by other means
  • the safety of the rescue teams

 

The Best of All the DACH Countries

While making no claims of being complete, the guideline describes organizational, technica,l and architectural precautions that contribute to fire prevention in hospitals. Experts from all member countries of the Forum DACH have compiled the best from their respective countries and, with their practical expertise, combined them into a comprehensive compendium about fire safety. Based on the pillars organizational, structural, and engineering related fire safety, the guideline creates a unique overview of the complex matter.

A Reasonable Level of Overall Fire Safety

“Technical managers and planners can use it like a checklist to ensure they did not forget anything,” Rainer Wadlinger of the company Multimon, who lead the work group, explains. “For new hospitals, enlargements, or bigger renovation projects this document can be used by planning teams in addition to country specific regulations. Existing hospitals can use it to better assess the existing fire prevention measures and, as appropriate, organize fire safety according to current technical standards.” The guideline looks at fire safety from a protection oriented angle and takes a holistic approach to reaching the proposed quality standard of fire safety. Preventative and protective fire safety are regarded together and combined into a reasonable level of overall fire safety. Enriched by a lot of background knowledge, this summary by practitioners for practitioners helps to better understand the background of technical fire safety requirements and fire prevention equipment. It ensures that important technical components are not impaired in their function by lack of knowledge or inadequate handling.

Maria Thalmayr

170905 DACH-Leitfaden BrandschutzKrankenhaus2017_08.pdf (German)