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Fire design stakeholders such as architects, regulators, fire service, etc., often have different opinions about which passive fire protection approach is the most appropriate one in meeting structural fire performance objectives. There are many options for protecting steel buildings in a fully developed fire, but there is the need to identify a strategy that could satisfy at best the different and sometimes conflictual stakeholder desires, thereby reducing design uncertainties. This paper proposes a three-stage approach to address this issue: (i) stakeholder engagement, to identify and extract stakeholder desires; (ii) decision analysis, and; (iii) risk-based parametric study. The paper focuses, in particular on the first two stages. The first stage describes the process of identification and extraction of stakeholder desires in steel structural fire design from literature and structured interviews through a stakeholder engagement plan. The second stage of the decision-making process is demonstrated using a simple stakeholder goal-rating and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). In particular, the use of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed to manage the multiplicity of stakeholder desires towards common decision-criteria, manage possible inconsistent goal-rating, and to rank the different proposed passive fire protection options.

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To select appropriate fire protection options for buildings during their design stage, economic, safety, environmental, and societal criteria need to be accounted for. The divergent and sometimes conflictual desires from different fire design stakeholders involved in the process present a multicriteria decision problem. Design decision criteria and fire protection options can be interdependent, and so there is a need to manage these desires with an advanced decision analysis technique, thereby reducing uncertainties in the complex decision-making process.The aim of this paper is to use the weighted/geometric mean method-analytic network process (W/GMM-ANP) to balance the opinions of fire design stakeholders extracted from 42 structured stakeholder interviews on selecting the most suitable fire protection option for buildings constructed of steel frames. Different categories of interdependent decision elements were developed from 22 design decision criteria and 5 proposed fire protection options to produce a network of decision clusters for multicriteria decision analysis. In the synthesis and ranking of fire protection options, the W/GMM-ANP accounted for the multiple interdependencies of weighted and unweighted stakeholder desires and managed the complexity of the decision-making problem. The technique is proposed for approaching suitable group decisions in structural fire design of steel-framed buildings as well as other performance-based engineering decision making that may involve multidisciplinary stakeholders. KEYWORDSfire protection options, group decision making, multicriteria decision analysis, stakeholder views, steel-framed buildings, weighted/geometric mean method-analytic network process (W/GMM-ANP) | INTRODUCTIONFire safety is one of the fundamental necessities in the design and construction of buildings and other infrastructural facilities, with the aim to reduce to an acceptable risk level the loss of life, property, and environmental damage (Buchanan, 2001).This entails the determination of the fire risk levels (i.e., likelihood and impact of fire) at the initial design stage before deciding the means of achieving safety. Modern facets of fire safety in buildings include preventing fire ignition through fire risk management, fire detection and provision of warning to building occupants, provision of adequate escape routes, fire growth and spread management, enhancing firefighting operations, and averting building collapse (Yung, 2008). In cases of controllable or slowly growing fires, these fire safety goals can be achieved through timely detection and suppression with automatic sprinklers. However, during a severe or fast growing fire, the control of fire spread, protection of adjacent buildings, and prevention of building collapse will necessitate fire resistance of structures and fire barriers (Buchanan, 2001). In this case, the fire is resisted with passive protection measures, which are systems that are built into the structure and fabric of buildings.Building designs for fire safety...

The reinstatement of pavement markings after resurfacing will typically entail like-for-like remarking of the resealed road sections. However, there are cases where sections in between planned reseal (infills) may be left - untouched or are not required in the renewal contract irrespective of infill markings’ service life and condition. This gives room for poor marking continuity and reduction of the markings service level. As the asset management of long-life high-performance markings includes a duty of care around cost-effectively realising value from planned maintenance, there is the need to consider infills when reinstating long-life markings on resurfaced road sections. This paper presents a method to determine infill sites for cost-effective renewal to forestall returning to the same road in the future, thereby managing customer delay and realising cost savings without compromising road safety. The method considers tactical assessment merits and lifecycle costs to demonstrate its suitability to solve the problem. Various markings reinstatement cases were investigated where the results showed method applicability and highlighted sensitivities to remark length and installation time. The method supports the asset owner/manager to plan pavement markings renewals at the tactical/section level and could benefit from further studies that consider more complex scenarios, extended variables, and uncertainties.