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Lévy, Joseph Josy; Nouss, Alexis; Laplantine, François; Martin, Jean-Baptiste

doi:10.4000/books.pul.11250

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“…However, the definition of tenability varies greatly between jurisdictions, and potentially between different regulators. A recent survey of tenability criteria in 14 countries noted variations in acceptability criteria with smoke layer height varying between 1.9 and 3.5 meters, temperature between 50 and 200°C, carbon monoxide levels between 180 and 4,000 ppm, and radiant heat flux between 2 and 10 kW m −2 (Levy & Martin ).…”

Section: Pbd In Operation: Defining the Level Of Safetymentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism: Fire safety regulation in the neoliberal era

Spinardi

2019

Regulation & Governance

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Fire safety has traditionally been regulated by prescriptive rules that stipulate requirements according to the type and size of a building, with the regulator's job being to check that these rules have been followed. However, many jurisdictions now allow performance-based design regulation in which approval depends on the regulator assessing the prospective performance of a bespoke fire safety design for a particular project. Regulators thus need to be able to adjudicate on the knowledge claims put forward by fire safety engineers, but most regulators lack the knowledge to interrogate claims that are often the product of complex mathematical modeling across a range of disciplines. This expertise asymmetry poses a challenge for the effective regulation of fire safety designs, and the relative immaturity of fire safety engineering as a profession needs to be addressed before it would be wise to rely on professional competence and ethics alone to ensure safety. distances to exits, enclosed stairways, sprinklers, etc.), the new approach instead requires engineers to demonstrate performance outcomes for a project, and is thus typically referred to as Performance-Based Design (PBD). Regulatory approval is based on scrutiny of the design plans; in the case of prescriptive regulation, the regulator can check that all features necessary for that type of building have been appropriately incorporated, but in the case of PBD the regulator must be able to understand the knowledge claims made by the designer in order to judge whether their design provides adequate fire safety.Supporters of PBD fire engineering argue that it enables rational analysis to replace adherence to outdated and sometimes illogical rules that constrain innovation and add unnecessary costs. However, PBD has also been critiqued by those who see it as part of a neoliberal move toward deregulation. In particular, there is concern that PBD shifts governance of risk from the public to the private sphere if decisions about acceptable levels of safety become a matter of engineers' design choices rather than being societally mandated in requirements set by government (Brannigan 1999).The issue addressed here is a specific aspect of this critique, and centers on the challenge of expertise asymmetry posed by PBD regulation. The argument is that expertise asymmetry occurs when regulators have less relevant expertise than those they regulate, and that this may impair the effectiveness of regulation (Spinardi 2016). In the case of fire safety, the shift from prescriptive regulation to PBD raises concerns over the extent to which those who approve building designs have sufficient expertise to provide competent oversight of the proposed solutions.

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Section: Pbd In Operation: Defining the Level Of Safetymentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism: Fire safety regulation in the neoliberal era

Spinardi

2019

Regulation & Governance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Présentation

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism: Fire safety regulation in the neoliberal era

Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism: Fire safety regulation in the neoliberal era

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