Fire safety objectives

Fire safety objectives are the specific fire safety goals that a building or facility is meant to achieve. Typical examples are life safety, property protection, continuity of operations, environmental protection and the preservation of heritage. They state what a fire safety design has to achieve, and so explain why fire safety measures are taken at all. Some objectives are set by law, such as protecting the occupants and preventing fire spread between buildings. Others are chosen by the client or by other stakeholders, for example an insurer. Fire safety engineering can itself be defined as applying all fire-related knowledge to achieve the relevant fire safety goals of a project, so the objectives come first.

Objectives are normally written in general words, such as safeguarding people from an unacceptable risk of injury or illness caused by fire. Before a design can be checked, they are refined into numerical performance criteria, for example a maximum temperature or a limit on fire spread. Building regulations seldom state how safe is safe enough. In a performance-based design, the objectives and criteria are therefore agreed between the parties involved before the analysis starts.

Goals, objectives and criteria

In the SFPE Handbook, a common hierarchy of fire safety decisions has five levels, although a particular application may have more or fewer. Objectives form the second level. Above them is the fire safety policy that an organisation adopts to achieve security against fire and its effects. Below them come strategies, each of which contributes wholly or partly to the objectives. The lowest levels are attributes and survey items, which can be measured or estimated in a real building. Broad aims such as fire prevention, fire control and occupant protection usually appear in the introductory sections of building codes and fire safety laws.

The terms are not used consistently, and an objective is sometimes simply called a goal. The International Fire Engineering Guidelines (2005) define an objective as the desired overall safety outcome, expressed in qualitative terms. A functional statement is more specific and states what the building, its systems or its occupants must achieve for an objective to be met. A performance requirement gives the criteria, in engineering terms, by which a trial design is judged. In the SFPE Handbook, stakeholders first identify broad goals, such as protecting people and property. These goals are then refined into objectives that can be quantified in engineering terms.

A simple chain shows how the levels connect, starting from the goal of protecting the occupants. A matching objective may be to keep the gas concentrations in a corridor tenable. The performance criterion then sets the numerical limit against which the expected performance of the design is compared. New Zealand's Building Code uses the same ladder of objectives, functional requirements and performance criteria. A report for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission notes that performance-based designs state their goals explicitly, whereas prescriptive requirements contain them only implicitly.

Objectives can be secured in two ways. In a rule-based approach, the design follows predefined rules and limit values, such as legislation, the conditions of an insurer or company rules. Such rules are generic and inflexible, and only partly tailored to the building, its users and its surroundings. In a risk-based or goal-based approach, fire safety is assessed for the specific project, so that more factors can be weighed together. In the Netherlands, such an alternative to the Dutch Buildings Decree (Bbl) is called equivalence. Article 4.7 of the Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet) allows it on condition that it achieves at least the same level of fire safety as the prescribed measure that it replaces.

Typical objectives

Most fire safety objectives trace back, directly or indirectly, to the protection of people. The safety of the people in a building when a fire breaks out is one of the most important objectives. Dying in a fire is also perceived as worse than dying in a car accident. Keeping every occupied area completely free of fire effects would be a very conservative and generally unachievable objective. An engineering analysis therefore has to consider what happens to the occupants: how many there are, where they are, how they act and what they can do.

Building codes commonly also aim to facilitate the work of the emergency services. Property objectives can concern the building itself, its contents and equipment, or neighbouring buildings. Other common objectives are business continuity and financial viability, corporate and public image, and community interests and infrastructure. Some projects also aim to protect heritage in older or significant buildings, or to limit the release of hazardous materials into the environment. The book Introduction to Fire Safety Engineering adds limiting the impact of a fire on society. It notes that its own list is an arbitrary and incomplete mix of public and private goals.

It is not always clear how something is valued or how its loss should be described. For life safety, some people draw the line simply between life and death. Others also count quality of life, pain and suffering, and rehabilitation after an injury. For property, smoke and water damage should be considered as well as damage by heat. For business continuity, a loss of image and market share can follow long after the short-term losses of downtime.

Outside ordinary buildings, the objectives can be quite different. For US nuclear power plants, the primary objectives of fire protection programmes are to minimise both the probability and the consequences of fire. Through defence in depth, these programmes are designed to give reasonable assurance that a fire will not prevent a safe shutdown and that radioactive releases are minimised. Defence in depth aims at a balance between preventing fires from starting, detecting and suppressing fires quickly, and limiting the consequences of a fire.

Objectives in building regulations

Building regulations set the public objectives that every building must meet, usually in broad words rather than in numbers. In the Netherlands, the explanatory notes to the Dutch Buildings Decree (Bbl) give two aims for its fire safety rules. These are preventing casualties, both injured and dead, and preventing a fire from spreading to another plot. Preserving the building and preventing damage to the environment, monuments or social facilities or interests are explicitly not objectives of the decree. The rules work these aims out in sub-goals, such as keeping the structure standing, limiting fire and smoke spread, and keeping escape and firefighting routes usable.

In New Zealand, Verification Method C/VM2 (second edition, 2025) relates all its design scenarios to three fire objectives of the Building Code. They are to safeguard people from an unacceptable risk of injury or illness caused by fire, and to protect other property from damage caused by fire. The third is to facilitate firefighting and rescue operations. In Australia, the 2020 handbook to the Fire Safety Verification Method, written for the 2019 edition of the National Construction Code (NCC 2019), summarises the broad fire objectives of that code. They are life safety of occupants, protection of other property, facilities for firefighting and fire safety during construction. The protection of the building itself and its contents is addressed only to a limited extent for some building classes.

The International Fire Engineering Guidelines describe two further systems as they were in 2005. The 2005 National Building Code of Canada was the first edition in an objective-based format, in which every provision serves at least one stated objective. Its objectives are worded as limiting the probability of undesirable situations, because a code cannot prevent them completely. The risk that remains after the code is complied with is regarded as the acceptable risk. For the United States, the guidelines note that choosing the intended level of performance is a value judgement that should ultimately be made by policy makers rather than by designers.

The overall level of safety is rarely stated in numbers. The Dutch rules do not lay down how many deaths and injuries are acceptable, or how large the risk of fire spread to a neighbouring plot may be. Their measurable limits apply to the measures instead, such as walking distances, minutes of fire resistance and compartment areas. These limits grew partly from consensus and partly from history, not from a quantified goal. The 2005 guidelines note that in New Zealand, too, the level of safety of the Building Code is not always stated explicitly, which can make its requirements hard to interpret.

Objectives of owners and other stakeholders

In a performance-based project, the objectives are agreed in the fire engineering brief (FEB), the process in which the stakeholders set down the basis of the analysis. The International Fire Engineering Guidelines suggest first identifying the objectives of each stakeholder, which may differ. These are then divided into building regulatory, other regulatory and non-regulatory objectives. Other regulatory objectives come from laws on matters such as the environment, occupational health and safety, the fire services, dangerous goods and planning. Non-regulatory objectives are set by the client or other stakeholders, for example to limit damage to the structure, contents and equipment.

Fire-safety objectives arise from different requirements and stakeholder goals. Based on National Research Council of Canada et al. (2005), pp. 1.2-7–1.2-8.

Complying with the code and protecting an owner's assets are not the same thing. Some owners do not realise that code compliance can differ significantly from protecting their building, process, contents or other assets of value. Such differences matter when tolerable damage and acceptance criteria are chosen, so the interested and affected parties must be involved. For New Zealand, the 2005 guidelines explain that the Building Act 2004 does not require anyone to exceed the performance criteria of the Building Code, so doing so is the owner's choice.

Clients also have objectives that are not about fire but still affect fire safety. Examples are increased security, natural lighting, an open-plan layout, new materials, energy efficiency, flexibility for future uses and low life-cycle costs. In the New Zealand part of the guidelines, the fire engineer is responsible for ensuring that such objectives do not stop the design from meeting the fire requirements of the Building Code. The engineer should also explain to the client the effect of adopting further objectives or not, and decline instructions where the objectives are unacceptable. In Australia, the 2020 handbook likewise asks for client and end-user objectives to be identified early.

Stakeholders do not always value the same outcomes in the same way. Some people accept a higher risk to firefighters, who take on risk as part of their job, if this lowers the risk to the public, while others do not. Stakeholders may want to protect historic features or to avoid business interruption, and those with different values may see these needs differently. The SFPE Handbook therefore advises identifying where value judgements enter a design and making these assumptions explicit.

From objectives to acceptance criteria

Objectives are too broad to be checked directly, so acceptance criteria are set for the analysis. The criteria must suit the objectives, the performance requirements and the analysis methods. They must also be numerical, unless the analysis is qualitative, and realistic: zero risk is not an appropriate criterion. In the ten-step design process of the SFPE engineering guide, as tabulated in the SFPE Handbook, the scope, goals and objectives are defined before the performance criteria are developed. Design fire scenarios, candidate designs and their evaluation follow after that.

The guidelines give typical criteria for each general objective. Protecting occupants can be judged by the margin between the available and the required escape time, and by the smoke layer height. Other occupant criteria are the temperature and radiant heat of the hot layer, the smoke density and the carbon monoxide level. Facilitating the fire services can be judged by radiant heat, structural failure, water supply and resources at the fire scene. Protecting adjacent property uses the radiant heat from the fire and flame impingement, while limiting damage and keeping a business running use monetary loss, smoke release and corrosive gases. Environmental objectives use the toxicity of the fire gases, the containment of firefighting water and the expected risk to plants and animals.

Objectives must be translated into assessable criteria and evidence. Based on National Research Council of Canada et al. (2005), pp. 1.2-25–1.2-26.

Regulations sometimes fix the numbers themselves. In New Zealand, the objective of protecting other property is backed by limits on the radiation received from a fire. The radiation may not exceed 30 kW/m² at the boundary of the property, or 16 kW/m² at 1 m beyond it. These values belong to the New Zealand Building Code as applied in C/VM2 (second edition, 2025). In an absolute assessment, the values may instead be agreed in the fire engineering brief, and they should allow for uncertainty and safety factors.

Two approaches are used to judge whether a design meets its objectives. In a comparative approach, the trial design is compared with an otherwise identical building that follows the prescriptive rules. The same criteria are used for both, and the trial design should perform at least as well. In an absolute approach, the results are matched directly against the objectives using the agreed criteria. In Australia, the Fire Safety Verification Method compares the design with a reference building that follows the deemed-to-satisfy provisions. This can make the outcome less sensitive to the choice of inputs and methods.

How objectives guide the design

The Australian handbook defines a fire safety strategy as a combination of physical and human measures, including maintenance and management, specified to achieve the nominated fire safety objectives. The design process normally starts by defining the relevant objectives, of the building code and any others, and then develops the strategy. The handbook describes fire safety engineering as a logical sequence from objectives and performance requirements to the strategy, fire scenarios, detailed analysis and the decision on compliance. The documented strategy should include a summary of the fire safety objectives.

Strategies link the objectives to concrete measures. Examples are ignition prevention, limitation of combustibles, compartmentation, detection and alarm, suppression and the protection of exposed people or things. A matrix of objectives against strategies shows how important each strategy is for each objective. A single system can serve several objectives: smoke and heat venting is designed to help people escape, to let firefighters see the seat of the fire, and to reduce property damage. How well a system serves an objective depends on two factors. Efficacy is the degree to which it achieves a design objective when it works as specified, and reliability is the probability that it does work as specified.

The fire safety concepts tree, a diagram based on the judgements of an NFPA technical committee, starts from the fire safety objectives at its top. Below them, it splits into two branches: preventing fire ignition and managing the fire impact. One branch or the other must succeed for the objectives to be met. Ignition is prevented by controlling heat sources, their interaction with fuel, and the fuel itself. Fire impact is reduced either by managing the fire itself or by managing what is exposed to it. If ignition is not prevented, the tree helps to evaluate whether the systems of the building can manage the fire impact.

Prevention and impact management provide complementary paths towards objectives. Based on Meacham (2002), p. 5-158.

In New Zealand, C/VM2 (second edition, 2025) tests a design against ten design scenarios that must each be satisfied separately. Each scenario is tied to one or more of the Building Code objectives. One scenario checks that the failure of a critical part of the fire safety system does not cause the design to miss those objectives. Each key system, such as smoke management or a fire door, is assumed to fail in turn, and the design is changed if the occupants could then no longer escape safely. Sprinklers and automatic fire alarms installed to a recognised standard are treated as reliable enough to be exempt.

Limits and common misconceptions

Fire safety objectives do not aim at absolute safety. For New Zealand and the United States, the International Fire Engineering Guidelines state that absolute safety and zero risk are not achievable. The accepted risk takes into account what the community expects and what safety costs the community. The Australian handbook adds that removing all risk would bring the fire safety strategy into conflict with the function and use of the building. Objectives therefore aim at an acceptable or tolerable level of fire risk, not at the absence of risk.

Deriving that level from the regulations is difficult, because their actual outcomes differ widely between types of building. In the Netherlands, the chance of dying in a fire per hour of stay is much greater in a residential building than in an assembly building. Yet the requirements for fire detection are stricter for assembly buildings. For an engineering approach, the required performance or the accepted residual risk must therefore be agreed in advance, for example by comparison with a reference situation that follows the rules. The Netherlands has no risk-based limit values, a drawback for quantitative analysis there.

Objectives also carry values and uncertainty. The SFPE Handbook (2002) notes that no significant work has been done to identify what fire safety is trying to achieve, so lists of objectives are very subjective. Few studies show how society values fire safety risks at the level needed for performance-based trade-offs. Uncertainty arises in the science, in human behaviour, in perceptions of risk and values, and in decision making itself. Some people are risk tolerant, while others are risk averse.

Meeting one objective does not mean meeting the others. Two designs may be equivalent for life safety but not for property protection, business interruption or structural collapse. The conditions behind the objectives also change over the life of a building, because its use, its occupants and even the fire service may change. The fire safety of a building depends on its fire safety system continuing to work and on management limits, such as fuel loads and free escape routes, being respected. When a building is altered or its use changes, the existing fire engineering evaluation may have to be re-examined to see whether it still applies.

See also

• Qualitative design review
• Performance-based design
• Prescriptive design
• Equivalency
• Fire scenario
• Fire safety management

References

• Australian Building Codes Board. (2020a). Data sheets: Fire Safety Verification Method (Handbook annex, Print version 1.1).
• Australian Building Codes Board. (2020b). Handbook: Fire Safety Verification Method (Print version 1.1).
• Cooper, L. Y. (2002b). Smoke and heat venting. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 3-219–3-242). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
• Hall, J. R., Jr., & Ahrens, M. J. (2002). Data for engineering analysis. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-65–5-78). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
• Iqbal, N., & Salley, M. H. (2004). Fire Dynamics Tools (FDTs): Quantitative fire hazard analysis methods for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fire Protection Inspection Program (NUREG-1805). U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
• Meacham, B. J. (2002). Building fire risk analysis. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-153–5-175). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2025b). Verification Method C/VM2: Framework for fire safety design (2nd ed.).
• National Research Council of Canada, International Code Council, Department of Building and Housing, & Australian Building Codes Board. (2005). International fire engineering guidelines (2005 ed.). Australian Building Codes Board.
• Notarianni, K. A. (2002). Uncertainty. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-40–5-64). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
• Van Rossum, E. (2027). Introduction to Fire Safety Engineering. Fire Safety Academy.
• Watts, J. M., Jr. (2002). Fire risk indexing. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-125–5-142). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.