Where there’s smoke there’s fire the old adage goes, but smoke is a potential killer and spoiler of goods and property, moving rapidly to find gaps in walls, ceilings and compromised or poorly built passive fire protection systems encouraging flames when they should be contained.

Keith Newman uncovers the worsening crisis in passive fire protection and what’s being done about it.

Lawyers and investigators are ramping up efforts to identify culprits ahead of litigation as widespread breaches of fire safety regulations and passive fire protection (PFP) are being exposed during leaky building investigations.

The leaky building crisis along with health and safety and other code and regulation reforms

are forcing people to be more conscious of risk, creating a trail of accountability that places faulty workmanship under a legal microscope.

PFP is now is becoming something of a blame game, with property owners, builders, tradies, installers, councils and those responsible for signing off compliance and potentially building warrants of fitness in the firing line.

The irony is that passive fire protection is a largely unregulated area, with the various parties involved often unaware of the requirements for such systems and how interdependent they are.

PFP is the requirement to design buildings to resist and contain fire through the use of specified fire-rated building materials, fire resistant paints and fire stopping sealants, wraps and collars for all plumbing, electrical and other penetrations of walls and ceilings.

As multi-story apartments in particular are pulled apart for weather tight repairs, inadequate or non-existent passive fire protection systems reveal that life and property is potentially at risk unless millions of dollars of repairs are undertaken.

Inadequately stopped

Fire industry group, the Fire Protection Association (FPANZ), has warned for over six years that many PFP systems aren’t up to scratch.

The FPANZ PFP special interest group (SIG) is working closely with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) on law changes to ensure fire protection systems are more specifically described along with the associated responsibilities and compliance checking.

New FPANZ chief executive, Scott Lawson, says the PFP issue is “a can of worms” that needs to be approached responsibly, with the right research.

“We don’t want to be saying ‘we told you so’. It’s a very complex issue and we need to be seen as part of the solution and get more involved at the coal face to see what’s been going on.”

Although industry guidelines are still some time away, he says FPANZ has to be pro-active “so this doesn’t continue happening”.

FPANZ continues to make it clear to industry and regulators that too many PFP jobs have been signed off without proper knowledge or understanding and those responsible may yet find themselves in court for failing to do their job.

While yawning gaps are being exposed in regulation and monitoring, the Government is ramping up pressure on local authorities to get building consents signed off more quickly.

Ron Green, chairman of the PFP SIG, has been a voice in the wilderness, warning regulators and others that inadequate PFP systems place building occupants at risk jeopardising business continuity and potentially insurance cover.

He says there’s been a systemic failure across the construction and fire protection industry. “The days of glancing at something and ticking the box are over because it’s going to come back and bite you if you don’t get it right.”

Green says a number of cases are already before the courts or about to head that way. While insurance may cover repairs he says there’s a cost to business including increased premiums.

He says the recent legislative shift to place health and safety liability on everyone from building owners to suppliers and tradies is a long overdue wake-up call.

Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) CEO, Tim Grafton, says fire protection non-compliance in residential multi-unit buildings

is serious and verging on criminal. “Lives are at stake, so deliberate short-cuts or failure to properly ensure compliance is inexcusable.”

He says many at-risk buildings have compliance certificates “upon which the insurer relied” but should never have been issued and could potentially invalidate any claim.

However, that decision would be made by each insurer on a case by case basis. “One option could be to pay the claim and seek recovery from those that issued the building code compliance documents.”

Not in leaky league

While it is a serious issue from the life safety perspective, Grafton wouldn’t compare the PFP crisis with ‘leaky buildings’.

“They rot and leak as a matter of course while non-compliance with fire safety doesn’t in itself materially damage the building...and the number of multi-unit building fires is relatively low.”

The leaky building or water tightness crisis was created by a combination of poor design,

unsuitable materials and shoddy work practices during the decade from 2004 when non-compliant buildings were often signed off by private certifiers.

Many of the tradespeople responsible and practitioners who certified those buildings are long gone, having foreseen the litigation and going into liquidation or reinventing themselves under new names.

The cost to the country of repairing those leaky buildings has been variously estimated at

$11-$33 billion. In the process of investigating or gearing up for repairs, widespread breaches of fire safety requirements are being exposed.

Geoff Merryweather, president of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), says the more he learns about the passive protection issue “the scarier it gets”, claiming too many have been able to get away with slack practice for far too long.

He says if you pulled most buildings apart, no matter how well they’re built, you’ll find defects but some of the things he’s seen raise serious concerns.

“I’m aware (through the grapevine) of probably half a dozen leaky building cases that have morphed into passive fire cases in Auckland and some down the line as well.”

He says even inspectors aren’t aware that things need to be installed in a certain way with different materials required and “it goes all the way through until something goes wrong and the lawyers get involved.”

While Scott Lawson would like to see things happening more quickly, he’d also like to see greater recognition for FPANZ at Government level as “a recognised voice of the collective industry”.

The group wants to be viewed as the first stop for informed advice to ensure messages being put out by the industry are “consistent and responsible”.

The worst case scenario, he says, would be to allow different parties to use this situation for their own soapbox. “The way the leaky buildings were handled was a fiasco with factions all over the industry from builders to consultants and councils pointing the finger.”

Lawson says clear statements need to be made about where things are at, what’s happening and what’s being done to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That voice he suggests should be FPANZ which has been on the case for many years.

Compliance chaos

Ron Green, who’s also chairperson of the Association of Building Compliance (ABC) and a director of Building Compliance and Fire Group Consulting, claims in the majority of buildings he inspects for the first time PFP does not comply with the Building Code.

As an independently qualified person (IQP) he’s called on to sign off on work and more recently to assess leaky buildings. “We get asked to review the passive fire systems and sometimes there’s no fire stopping or only partial. On one job 30% of penetrations had no fire stopping; while 70% were there, 70- 85% were wrong and fire resistance rating would have been next to nothing.”

Green was recently invited by a local council to inspect a South Island rest home 10-days before it was due to open.

“I spent most of my time in the roof space because that’s where the penetrations were. Despite the engineer having signed it off, they had to do everything again as they got it all wrong. It cost them an extra $120,000 to fix it.”

Tradespeople didn’t know what they were doing. “They guessed and used foam where they shouldn’t have, used the wrong sealant and didn’t use the right depth. To the fire engineer it simply looked okay.”

When you sign a council producer’s statement (PS3 and PS4) to prove compliance, you are stating PFP has been installed to the Building Code. “If you haven’t got the skill and knowledge, how can you sign it off?”

While fire engineers are required to prepare a report informing others what fire resistant ratings are required for relevant floors and walls, their knowledge of PFP and fire stopping has not been a strength, says Green.

FPANZ is recommending MBIE include passive fire protection as restricted building work signed off by a trained and qualified person. Green says these changes could improve the situation dramatically but no-one will know for certain until the MBIE review work is completed.

Ideally he says the SIG would like to see passive fire protection become part of the design process rather than people just talking about structure and how nice it should look.

“No-one talks about planning passive protection, saying ‘right where will our cable routes go, where will we put the PVC pipes, how do we approach fire stopping and what can we do to futureproof this for future penetrations’.”

Mystery stopper

As part of determining market awareness Ron Green often acts as “a mystery shopper” turning up at various hardware and trade outlets asking for advice on the use of products used in construction. “I can guarantee if you went to any well-known electrical wholesaler tomorrow and said, ‘Hi, I want to fire stop some cables’, the person at the counter will most likely sell sealant with a two-hour rating with no information on the label and ... give misinformation because they haven’t been trained. I haven’t had anyone get it right yet.”

Green says trade stores shouldn’t sell product they don’t know about and at least should advise people to find out online before using it.

Under Section 14G of the Building Act, suppliers and manufacturers are liable. “If I buy something from your shop and you give bad advice, you’re potentially liable.”

Everyone from the person who sells sealant at the trades outlet to the plumber who put in the PVC pipe and the fire engineer who ticks off compliance are liable if they’re deemed to have been complicit in building damage or decay. “Not properly understanding the requirements is not an excuse,” says Green.

Unplanned evolution

So how have we come to this place? The industry has evolved unchallenged largely because there have been few major fires that have showed up poor passive protection work. “It hasn’t been on the radar apart from the odd case,” says Green.

Because the architect, builder and other tradespeople don’t know what’s required for fire protection everyone expects “the fire guy to know...which often he doesn’t.”

It’s left to each trade to fire stop the holes made for their pipe or cable but Green suggests the buck should stop with “a passive specialist”, perhaps a new role in the fire industry, especially for larger projects.

Green’s Fire Group Consulting is one of several consultants checking installation work. And that’s not straight forward either as Hilti, 3M and others all have their own passive systems with different requirements.

“If you put a cable tray through a wall and it’s quite big you have to plan for that but people just stick their cable through then stop the hole with some sealant and don’t know that the penetration was to be framed and lined — if it’s done wrong it costs a lot of money to fix.”

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Guidebook, workshops to raise PFP awareness

A series of industry workshops, hands on training and a guidebook in conjunction with Building Research Institute (BRANZ) are planned by the Fire Protection Association (FPANZ) to lift the professionalism of fire protection installers and engineers.

The guidebook, to be published toward the end of 2016, will clearly explain what passive systems are, what they can and can’t do, how to design them and plan for cabling and plumbing penetrations to ensure they remain fireproof.

It’s aimed at fire engineers, architects and the building industry, including electricians, plumbers and others who may need to make holes in fireproofed walls and for those who sell Gib board, sealant and other elements of fire protection systems to the trade.

“It’s to explain to people this is not something random. You have to put some effort into designing and planning and there are certain things they have to do to get it right,” says FPANZ SIG chairman Ron Green.

The Association of Building Compliance is also working on a PFP inspection guide which hasn’t yet been finalised but is also expected to be released late in 2016.

Use it or lose it

The FPANZ SIG will also be conducting hands-on training for members involved with fire alarm cables and sprinkler pipes. “We’ll start out with theory then build some actual walls and show them how to do it in conjunction with various suppliers,” says Green.

The approach will be trialled in Auckland with up to 60 people and after being evaluated will be rolled out around the country to members and possibly others.

“From a professional point of view, we have to do something different...it won’t change if people are not trained and educated.”

And Green warns it’s a waste of time coming along to workshops if that training and knowledge isn’t put to use within the first month. “If you are not doing this regularly you’ll lose it.”

Auckland and Christchurch city councils are now saying fire engineers have to sign off this kind of work. “Some are nervous about this, others are joining the fire group for training...but there are still those who think they’re cool and don’t need training.?”