Some insights on writting Fire Safety Technical documents based on the new challenges

This article only reflects my own views on this subject.

*Source for the image

On Tuesday, the 01st of October 2024, I attended an event after work where the speakers covered some key-points regarding a major fire. Good speakers with insightful and informative talks.?

It was good to see one of them making a very good summary of the Building Regulations’ “evolution” here in the UK and some of the challenges we tend to face regarding (miss)interpretation and particularly regarding the wrong use of some words, such as “adequate”. He also made some good points clearer regarding compliance and legal implications of what we write in our technical documents, such as Fire Safety Strategy (FSS) reports. In addition to these, the speaker made some pertinent points about fire testings and their representativeness regarding fire performance.?

Based on some of the reflections made by the speakers, what I really take from these is that we, Fire Engineers, must be very careful on what we state even based on the actual “evidence” of certificates. A lot of common sense has been brought up by the speakers, nevertheless, it appears sense is not as common as it should be. It also reminds me that all of us involved with Engineering, which is basically Science applied to the “real world” or whatever the real world might mean … without going into metaphysics here, we must have our mindsets focused towards the French Enlightenment rationale which is fundamentally based on the Descartes method… as simple as that. In other words, we must seek for evidence, data, reliable sources, make statements based on references… otherwise our narrative becomes weak, unreliable and unrealistic which is essentially “dangerous” when we are talking fire safety, life safety, human lives.?

In summary, all what I heard in that event re-enforced my thoughts and views on how we should write our reports and big emphasis on our internal Quality Assurance (QA) procedures.?

Some points to reflect:?

1. We must read all the relevant (fire safety) documents (e.g., ADB, BS9999, BS9991 etc.) and understand them;
2. We need to write our reports carefully. They need to be clear, objective and based on references. (Retrospective FSS reports need special attention regarding the way they are written… the verbs, assumptions etc.);
3. Special attention to the BS 476 series. Good to read them, particularly parts 4, 6 and 7;
4. Good to understand the history behind some of the fire safety British Standards, particularly the BS 8414.

And, finally, all these made me to reflect about the “danger” of using AI tools for producing our FSS reports and other fire related technical documents.

In summary, we must not use AI tools to write our reports. This should be a No Go for us at the moment. On the contrary of what some might argue, the use of AI tools for this objective will not improve “productivity”, they can actually compromise the accuracy, quality and validity of the reports. Please see link below:

The use of AI tools for creating technical texts

Rodrigo Machado Tavares

Some good references on AI and regulations:

Reference 1

Reference 2

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Reference 4

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Reference 12