Victoria is making great progress in identifying and replacing dangerous combustible cladding on buildings found to be at highest-risk across the state.
It’s now time to deal with buildings which have some cladding, but aren’t as risky. These buildings need a response that is proportionate, measured and consistent. And because any work on these buildings will need to be funded by the owners, the aim is to reduce risk in the most cost-effective way.
Leveraging the learnings from CSV’s program and with the expert assistance of regulators, Municipal Building Surveyors, policy makers, external practitioners and academics, including CSIRO Data61 and RMIT, CSV has implemented a process for identifying practical solutions to address the risk posed by cladding on these buildings. This is in keeping with the Victorian Government’s decision to apply a risk-based approach to cladding intervention. CSV’s approach, informed by science and evidence, is backed by a Ministerial Guideline that requires an MBS to consider CSV’s risk-based assessment and solution for each building. The Guideline will apply to all MBSs in Victoria who will be supported by CSV.
This approach is consistent with the National Construction Code, has been internationally peer-reviewed and is widely supported. It begins by confirming the status of all Class 2 and Class 3 buildings identified as potentially at risk and sorting those that require action from those that do not. Broken down on a council-by-council basis, CSV will support Municipal Building Surveyors and building owners to reach decisions that: are underpinned by clear evidence; are consistent across all cladding-related decisions; are cost effective, safe and feasible; and enable the removal of enforcement on building owners. Owners will then be provided with advice and practical help to implement the solution in each case where this is necessary.
Let’s now take a step back and look in greater detail at what is being proposed from an MBS perspective.
In collaboration with other stakeholders, CSV has been developing the ‘Protocols for Mitigating Cladding Risk’, otherwise abbreviated to the ‘PMCR’.
The Ministerial Guideline is underpinned by the PMCR which Municipal Building Surveyors and private building surveyors can use to identify rectification solutions. Through this process, CSV develops a proposal to address the cladding risk on each building which is assessed by the MBS. The intention is to arrive at a solution that is measured and cost effective, easing the burden on owners while keeping residents safe. This approach allows the MBSs and owners to consider a measured, proportionate, and lower-cost response to the residual cladding risk on their building.
So how does it work?
Under the PMCR, buildings are assessed using a set of criteria, including the potential for fire to spread from its source via cladding to other apartments. The assessment of fire spread is done consistently for each building using what is called an ‘Initial Fire Spread in Cladding Assessment Number’, abbreviated to ‘IF-SCAN’.
The IF-SCAN assesses the number of apartments that would be directly impacted under a worst-case scenario by a fire that ignites and spreads in combustible cladding prior to the first suppression response by firefighting agencies.
Along with other key information such as cladding type and position and existing fire safety systems, this puts a building into one of three categories of risk: unacceptable, elevated or low. These categories replace the categories of extreme, high, moderate and low used by the State-wide Cladding Audit. Those categories are now effectively redundant.
Where unacceptable risk is found, the amount, type and configuration of the cladding could lead to a rapid acceleration of a building fire and the primary focus should be on the widespread removal of the cladding. Buildings with this risk rating receive funding assistance from CSV.
Where assessment indicates elevated risk, a range of interventions are available to limit potential fire spread on this type of building. The primary focus should be on targeted cladding removal and enhancements of the building’s active and passive fire safety systems.
These interventions are aimed at addressing the four hazards, namely: apartment fires; balcony fires; ground fires; and electrical faults and penetrations. Each of these interventions is the product of a process that has been thoroughly researched and internationally peer reviewed.
In low-risk scenarios, well maintained essential safety measures, or ESMs, as well as providing ongoing good building maintenance will deal with the cladding risk on this building.
There are of course many fire safety interventions that can be applied to a building to make that building safer.
The challenge is to establish a way of objectively determining that the safety measures that have been applied result in the building being made safe from the risk of a cladding fueled fire.
There is an acceptance that buildings of all types carry some level of inherent fire risk whether or not they have combustible cladding. The aim of the PMCR is to get a building to a point where it provides an equivalent level of safety to the same building without cladding.
For the PMCR, 15 rules have been created to inform the intervention options available aimed at reducing the likelihood and consequence of a cladding related fire, improving the safety of both residents and the building itself.
These rules cover four categories: cladding removal; active fire safety system upgrades; passive fire safety system upgrades; and protecting entrances and exits. Once applied to a particular building, the cumulative impact of the interventions undertaken can be measured to show that the building is now safe from the risk of a cladding fueled fire.
So now let’s apply all of this to an example building in suburban Melbourne.
Here is a four-storey sprinklered building with 30 individual apartments, which has a combination of masonry and ACP external wall cladding.
Applying the IF-SCAN to this building, we find out that in the event of a worst-case cladding fueled fire scenario, the fire could plausibly spread to three apartments. Considering all the individual factors of this building including type of cladding, its location on the building, the existence of Essential Safety Measures, and other factors, this building is found to have a risk rating of ‘elevated’ when the PMCR is applied.
This means that the costly removal of all cladding is not required, and a solution to remove some cladding while implementing other lower cost interventions, will result in this building being made safer from the risk of a cladding fueled fire. Essentially, this guideline now means we have a consistent approach to dealing with these lower risk buildings.
In the case of this example building, the PMCR allows us to target solutions by removing some of the cladding, while also: installing smoke and/or heat detectors near windows to rooms adjacent to the combustible cladding; installing a connection between smoke detectors, affected apartments and to the Fire Indicator Panel, or FIP; and installing self-closers and smoke seals on individual apartment doors.
Each of these interventions has a measurable impact on the level of a building's overall fire safety. For example, the installation of sprinklers are found to have reliability and efficacy of around 95%. The installation of smoke/multicriteria detection in bedrooms and interconnecting these alarms can further increase life safety by approximately 50%. The installation of alarm signalling equipment providing direct automatic fire brigade notification or external monitoring agency notification upon the detection of a fire, also significantly reduces emergency service response times. These measures, coupled with the targeted removal of some cladding, has a cumulative impact on building safety.
Once all of the measures as recommended by the PMCR are applied in this example, the building is now deemed safe from the risk of a cladding fueled fire.
A range of other interventions may be possible, depending on the exact nature of the building – every building will be individually assessed to determine what interventions are required.
So, how can councils and Municipal Building Surveyors be confident that this not only works, but enables the cancellation of enforcement related to combustible cladding?
CSV has worked closely with councils across Melbourne to test this approach on real examples and we’ve refined processes based on their feedback. CSV, with the expert assistance of regulators, MBSs and policy makers also has partnerships with CSIRO Data61, and international experts, who are working with CSV on these protocols collaboratively.
Through this evolved approach and the partnership of all involved, Victoria can become the first jurisdiction in the world to comprehensively deal with combustible cladding.
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