020 - Fire Safety Engineering as a socio-technical system with Brian Meacham

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello, and welcome to session 20 of the fire science show.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Great to have you here, another nice round number for the podcast, and as usual, I'm having a really nice special guest for you.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um, my today's guest is also very special to me because he's research on the performance based engineering as being a starting point for many, many of my own endeavors.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I truly, truly admire him for his science, besides scientists as great that.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>During his years at Worchester Polytechnic Institute, he's shaped a whole generation of young fire safety engineers in the U S and not only.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, uh, his service to community is also astounding.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>He's served as the President of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers and currently is the Chairman of the International Association for the Fire Safety Science.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This is an amazing record, but after all.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Just a really nice guy.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And if you ever meet him on the conference, make sure to talk with him because this, these discussions are the best.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So please help me welcoming professor Bram Mitcham of Meacham associates and with Brian, what else can we talk about is going to be a discussion about the future of performance-based fire safety engineering, or maybe even the future of the fire safety engineering as a whole, that's not belong this anymore.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello everybody.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Welcome to Fire Science Show.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I am today with Professor Brian Meacham managing principal of Meacham associates.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hi Brian.

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<v Brian Meacham>Hi Wojciech, how are you?

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm great.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm really happy.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We got to this point to do this interview.

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<v Brian Meacham>I'm honored that I've been invited to join this a wonderful and important podcast.

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<v Brian Meacham>So thank you.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>well, thanks.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thanks for your opinion.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's much appreciated.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm really happy to hear that from you, especially.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So Brian, I know your research.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I know your studies.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I followed them for years they've been the starting point for many of my own research items.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I really wish I could start this podcast by saying 15 or 20 years ago when I started my interest in this discipline, it was a completely different world.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And now everything is different, but it's not I'm here just for less than two decades.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I don't see this paradigm shift around me.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I go to my office, I do the same work I did 10 years ago.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Did we slow down or stop?

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What, how do you feel about that?

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<v Brian Meacham>Yeah, I share a bit your same concerns.

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<v Brian Meacham>And for me it's been more than 30 years.

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<v Brian Meacham>So, when I started looking into, you know, the whole area of performance-based design for fire and performance based building regulations it was in a time when I think there was a lot of interest of, how we can do better and how we as fire safety engineers can add value and not just follow the regulations, but, break out and become designers.

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<v Brian Meacham>And unfortunately, at the time I talked about a paradigm that was presented by a great structural engineer, Alan Cornell from Stanford, who talked about the three phases of maturity, of an engineering discipline.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I always characterize fire safety engineering as being in the adolescent stage and kept projecting that we get out to the mature stage within the next 10 years.

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<v Brian Meacham>And then 10 years later, I said the same thing, 10 years later, I said the same thing.

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<v Brian Meacham>And now I'm not so sure that without a big shift where we're actually going to get there.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I think part of that is because we haven't, really absorbed and taken to heart well enough that we're just a small cog and the wheel of building design and building regulation and the built environment, and we should be reacting to the bigger system and we were trying to drive the system.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I think we need to maybe think a little bit more of how we can do a better job to advance ourselves and advance the system.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, I, if I remember your paper,  it was like 1999, like the future of PBD.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I loved it.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Then 10 years later, you've said pretty much the same after another paper.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then they see it  years later, it's again, it reminds me of Shawshank Redemption when Red was filing for release from the prison.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Everything is, and, and you finalize that now.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You're not so sure.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's a similar maybe that's a sign of a maturity of the discussion.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>For myself, I think the PBD approach in a way is a unicorn.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And my daughters would really love and unicorn, but no one has seen one yet.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, in a way I feel chasing the same thing in this formula, this freedom of engineers, this, ability to craft shape design.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I'm not sure if PBD is that thing that, that we're chasing.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I found this quote in 1925, us building code that wherever possible the requirements should be formulated in terms of performance, based on research results.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, that's pretty much PBD there a hundred years ago.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, I think this approach is as old as the engineering itself, maybe it is the engineering itself.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So what for you is PBD.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How do you see this unicorn?

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<v Brian Meacham>Yeah, well, it's interesting.

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<v Brian Meacham>I mean, I agree that, performance-based design at least how we use it in fire, really is design.

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<v Brian Meacham>It's engineering design.

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<v Brian Meacham>It's what we all should be doing.

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<v Brian Meacham>As engineers.

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<v Brian Meacham>I think the challenging part in particular for fire is that we've grown up as a discipline in the shadow of disaster and.

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<v Brian Meacham>Regulation was putting the place to mitigate disaster, which put boundary conditions around how fire safety engineering would actually be accomplished and the flexibility that you would have.

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<v Brian Meacham>And so you can look at the, all the way back to the great fire of London, if you want to go back that far, but even in the 19th century and in the U S for example, the Chicago Fire or the Boston Fire and the Baltimore Conflagration, even the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire in 1906.

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<v Brian Meacham>And then we kept burning cities down.

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<v Brian Meacham>And so that was actually the establishment of insurance, requirements around fire safety design, which ultimately went into building regulation.

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<v Brian Meacham>That at least in north America became, pretty much specified what you do rather than engineering solutions around it.

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<v Brian Meacham>And then we have the added complication that other disciplines don't have.

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<v Brian Meacham>Like, you could argue structural engineering has the same challenges to deal with earthquake loads, wind load, and other, cyclical, but not a consistent design events, but we have an no offense, a Fire Service.

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<v Brian Meacham>There's no Structural Police.

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<v Brian Meacham>Right, there's no Energy Police, there's no Structural Design Police.

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<v Brian Meacham>We've created this culture and this society where, we expect that there will be fires and the fire service or the heroes that will come in and save lives.

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<v Brian Meacham>And so the fire service, is a little bit I was going to say risk averse, but maybe practical in saying that, we don't adopt some of these thinking of the structural engineers of risk-based design we think you should be designing for zero risk.

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<v Brian Meacham>And even though they understand that there's no such thing as zero risk, there's kind of a public persona that you publicly can't say that there is a possibility that our building will burn down or a life will be lost because that's what the fire services therefore is to prevent that.

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<v Brian Meacham>So we have these challenges that you don't see in other engineering disciplines, which are our social constructs and cultural norms that, that change the way we operate the way we're regulated and how the discipline actually works.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>With this, concept of firefighters beint there to mitigate in a way, the consequences  of the building fires , that's additional layer of complexity to where the acceptance boundary can be, you know, because instructional engineering, you lose your load-bearing capacity the building collapses.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's very sharp, right?

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you earthquake engineering, if you design a building for this magnitude of earthquake and you have a bigger one, it's gonna mostly fail.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Right.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But here it's blended because you're talking about the consequences of fire.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>First, the fire scenario itself is a complex thing.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, there is a design scenario, but it's not necessarily the fire that will be in the building or there, that is not the fire that will be in the building the fire response, how well they will go.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It there's so many things to account for.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>so you're like interfaces blended there.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not the single point goal that you go through.

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<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

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<v Brian Meacham>And it's even more complex because we have the challenge of people, right?

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<v Brian Meacham>So you're not worried about people causing a seismic event.

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<v Brian Meacham>maybe if you get enough people jumping up and down that you'll have a little bit of a concern, but I mean, people and human behavior, people can start fires.

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<v Brian Meacham>People contribute to the severity of fires by the contents that they put in buildings, how they treat things such as, do they block open smoke or fire doors?

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<v Brian Meacham>And so you have this human component that adds a complexity to what the fire scenario and the fire significance is going to be in any given building, which increases the uncertainty in prediction because you have this huge variability in the population.

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<v Brian Meacham>and so people are an always have been kind of a focus of protection  in fire safety.

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<v Brian Meacham>And again,  the fire service plays a role in, in keeping the emphasis on people.

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<v Brian Meacham>And if you look to earthquake engineering or wind engineering, it's not that they ignore people, but they're.

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<v Brian Meacham>Very much in the paradigm of the probability of failure of the system or a significant part of the building.

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<v Brian Meacham>so the focus is the building and not the people.

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<v Brian Meacham>And what's the reliability of the structural system, given different load combinations.

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<v Brian Meacham>And so you never see a building regulation or a standard talk about, explicitly the life loss side of it.

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<v Brian Meacham>Whereas in fire, it's always talking about, what's the, how many people are going to die, what's the probability of, 10 or more people dying, which is by NFPA kind of a large event.

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<v Brian Meacham>And so this also dis dichotomy between people as a metric versus the building performance as a metric.

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<v Brian Meacham>And if we were in the building performance realm,  I think it would be a little bit different, but I don't know that society necessarily will allow us to go in that direction, because they have this social conception of the firefighters saved people from burning buildings.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And this abstract concept of safety, the people would like to be safe.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Now, the definition of safety in itself is a complex thing.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would like to take it closer to the PBD because, um, for performance  based design, you don't mention some aspects like probabilities risks, the consequences of the fires, but the PBD is a big animal.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It comes in flavors.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It comes in different forms and you've mentioned it's, it can take different forms from even simple expert judgment, up to extremely complex risk analysis.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if you want the PBD to come as a tool for fire engineers, so designers can design, what flavor of that should it be?

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Should we.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let the expert judgment in, should we go into the risk-based concepts or maybe what's we're doing now in the middle, like taking a design fire, popping a CFD now, under there and seeing what's the outcomes.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Where do you think, is there a simple answer to what the PBD should be?

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Or how can we push it to, to become a useful element of our environment?

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<v Brian Meacham>I think it already is a useful element.

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<v Brian Meacham>I think what it can become is more useful and more widely applicable.

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<v Brian Meacham>I would take it back maybe to a more fundamental question of what performance are we trying to achieve.

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<v Brian Meacham>One of the things that was always a concern for me.

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<v Brian Meacham>And one thing that I tried to incorporate when I was teaching about performance-based design is getting the problem definition, correct.

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<v Brian Meacham>Because over my career, I've seen a lot of people invest a lot of time in solving the wrong problem.

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<v Brian Meacham>And then at the end of the day you have all this nice analysis that says all kinds of wonderful things, but,  somehow the point has been missed.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I think that's the root of the challenge here is that I don't think we've well enough to define what performance we're trying to achieve.

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<v Brian Meacham>And you can look at this.

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<v Brian Meacham>In different ways.

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<v Brian Meacham>If we go back maybe a little bit to the structural engineering analogy, it's trying to prevent unacceptable failure of the building given, load combinations that are imposed on it.

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<v Brian Meacham>In fire safety, we have a lot of objectives.

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<v Brian Meacham>We have basically the five fire safety goals of protecting people, property, business, operation, environment, and heritage.

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<v Brian Meacham>And each one of those has a different aspect, but this focus on people gets us into writing design objectives.

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<v Brian Meacham>Like, provide adequate time for everybody in the building to escape without being subjected to, untenable conditions.

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<v Brian Meacham>So now we've taken the design objective away from designing a building.

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<v Brian Meacham>That's going to perform at a certain level when subjected to a fire to trying to protect people who are highly variable in their physiology and behavioral responses.

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<v Brian Meacham>And we're expected to be able to say that people will be able to get out without walking through a smoke-filled corridor.

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<v Brian Meacham>We can't control people.

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<v Brian Meacham>You know, we take certain steps to try to control conditions, but maybe it's a.

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<v Brian Meacham>Yeah, we have to rethink, should we be really focusing more on what we can do with the building and its systems, given our understanding of human interactions, social constructs, and the regulatory environment and shift the objective, then.

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<v Brian Meacham>You can figure out the performance that you're actually trying to achieve and pick an appropriate method, which can still range from expert judgment to complex analysis.

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<v Brian Meacham>But you know, when you do it in the context of the institutions that are involved in the regulation and operation and occupancy of the building, then you're sitting in a little better position.

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<v Brian Meacham>So this taking better account of this social technical systems interaction, where you're really looking at the actors, the institutions and the technology together, and you're looking at how you can design the building to enable the objective, which may be, don't collapse, the building, same as you would do in earthquake engineering, which has the benefit of keeping people safe.

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<v Brian Meacham>And maybe that's a way to start moving beyond some of the roadblocks that we've seen with acceptibility with people who don't necessarily have confidence in our engineering analyses and the assumptions we make,

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>To make sure I understood correctly.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you would say that the objective should be, for example, less focused on individual tenability, for example, but more focused on the overall goal that we want to achieve by designing a building, taking into account this, actors, institutions and technology, which is what is possible with every level.

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<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

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<v Brian Meacham>That's it that's a good summary.

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<v Brian Meacham>Another way to think about it is I view building as complex systems of systems.

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<v Brian Meacham>A building, the work, the interactions between all of the systems have to work appropriately.

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<v Brian Meacham>And the building fire safety system, as a holistic type of, construct means that your detection and your suppression, your compartmentation and resilience all has to work together, but the question then becomes work together to achieve what.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I think it's really thinking about this core issue of, is it really, to ensure that every person can get out safely or is it to ensure the integrity of the building and minimize the potential for,  unacceptable loss associated with people, property operations, that could occur because there's always a probability of it occurring.

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<v Brian Meacham>Fire is astochastic  event.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I do have concerns and we sometimes try to do everything deterministically and ignore the probabilistic aspects.

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<v Brian Meacham>And I think we have to mature in that way, but I think we can only mature in that way.

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<v Brian Meacham>If we mature our thinking about, what it is, we're really hoping to achieve in the building.

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<v Brian Meacham>And actually how we communicate that

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When I'm doing analysis for buildings, I'm doing my CFD.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm calculating the ASET / RSET times.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And so on.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I sometimes have this feeling.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I cannot get rid of that.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm building a proxy of safety.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I am absolutely sure that this scenario I am doing is not a representation of a threat that will happen in the building.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What I'm doing is I'm going through a social concepts that if for my design fire, taking this boundary conditions for my analysis, I prove that the building has passed the test.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And one value is bigger than the other value.

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<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Then if something happens in the building, it will be okay because it passed my test.

00:19:13.406 --> 00:19:20.819
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I'm not seeking, the true safety or I don't even know what objective is there like, it's very hard to define it.

00:19:21.059 --> 00:19:23.640
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>My goal is to get one value above the other one, right.

00:19:24.059 --> 00:19:30.630
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I have to fit the building with solutions so long that it passes the test, but it's essentially, it's a test.

00:19:30.630 --> 00:19:32.940
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not a measure of safety of that building.

00:19:33.423 --> 00:19:33.873
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

00:19:33.913 --> 00:19:35.613
<v Brian Meacham>And that's part of the challenge.

00:19:35.613 --> 00:19:44.823
<v Brian Meacham>If you look to the system safety literature, and some of the constructs that are used in other areas.

00:19:45.133 --> 00:20:02.748
<v Brian Meacham>Let's, take road safety just as an example, and in the Nordic countries and elsewhere, they have a vision zero objective to,  try to reduce the number of accidents that you know, would lead to a death due to traffic accident.

00:20:03.107 --> 00:20:13.508
<v Brian Meacham>And so the aim is to put in designs within the system to control for, the type of accident or incident that could occur.

00:20:13.867 --> 00:20:19.673
<v Brian Meacham>That would be a an indicator or a predicator of that fatality.

00:20:19.673 --> 00:20:38.893
<v Brian Meacham>So the focus is on,  putting in safety systems, safety boundaries, minimizing the potential for the unacceptable event to occur rather than calculating or estimating all the scenarios that would necessarily lead to the unaccepted or unacceptable loss.

00:20:39.252 --> 00:20:58.482
<v Brian Meacham>So if we change that over  to fire, maybe we spend far too much time, trying to create scenarios that, address situations that yes, would result in a fire, but may not be the fire that we're going to see or as suitably representative enough.

00:20:58.992 --> 00:21:13.653
<v Brian Meacham>So what if we kind of take a step  backwards to the idea of the most, worst credible case, fire event or the maximum foreseeable loss scenario type that the insurance industry uses.

00:21:14.042 --> 00:21:24.212
<v Brian Meacham>And the design is focused on putting in safety barriers that are intended to keep the loss within the limits.

00:21:24.553 --> 00:21:42.752
<v Brian Meacham>Maybe we're modeling situations that, we're trying to understand, but we don't actually need to understand to end up with the level of safety or the implementation of safety measures that would increase the safety to a socially acceptable level.

00:21:43.563 --> 00:21:51.202
<v Brian Meacham>But that's a much different way of thinking then performance-based design is currently being practiced.

00:21:51.273 --> 00:21:58.089
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you've mentioned this socio-technical systems as well connected to the building engineering, but there's also technology it's legislators.

00:21:58.359 --> 00:22:03.470
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So without changing this other elements, you cannot solve the building problem.

00:22:03.470 --> 00:22:06.299
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I had also this thought that, vision zero.

00:22:06.299 --> 00:22:11.910
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>When you said that vision zero is a goal and is vision is real possible in fire.

00:22:11.910 --> 00:22:30.019
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The challenge is that even if we do improve our regulations, even if we do improve the technology, if we go through some courageous moves to improve the safety, we are usually talking about the safety of the newly built structures.

00:22:30.049 --> 00:22:38.710
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, from my experience is that the issues, the fatal fires, the problems are with the existing structures, not the, with the new ones.

00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:43.940
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you would like to push a vision, that's, it's the simplest idea.

00:22:43.940 --> 00:22:50.589
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's sprinkler, every building in Poland would not be possible because, that the cost of this operation is unbelievable.

00:22:50.859 --> 00:22:58.119
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So without an objective measure, of when it's worth to go to that, like we're blind.

00:22:58.150 --> 00:23:00.519
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We, I don't know if it's worth it or not.

00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:27.186
<v Brian Meacham>Well, again that's part of the challenge with, the social technical systems thinking when you're dealing with the institutions and, regulations and again, for me, a part of that is the role of the fire service in, in looking at, this idea of, is there an acceptable level of risk or is there a tolerable level of risk or do you have to aim for being safe and at all accounts.

00:23:27.186 --> 00:23:36.547
<v Brian Meacham>And, you know, structural engineering, again using that analogy, is in the, is governed by the building regulations.

00:23:36.787 --> 00:23:59.217
<v Brian Meacham>Building fire safety design is often governed by both building regulations and some type of fire service regulation,  in some countries, Asian countries in particular, it goes so far as said, passive protection and structural is in the building code, but active systems like detection and suppression is in the fire code.

00:23:59.394 --> 00:24:00.204
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's the same in here.

00:24:00.464 --> 00:24:02.037
<v Brian Meacham>It's hugely complex.

00:24:02.136 --> 00:24:07.017
<v Brian Meacham>Why does fire design have to be that complex?

00:24:07.017 --> 00:24:28.707
<v Brian Meacham>And I think from the institutional perspective, as long as the fire service is engaged in the regulatory side of things and in the enforcement, it's always going to be an order of magnitude higher than designing for any other hazard, because you have a dual set of regulatory structures.

00:24:28.707 --> 00:24:31.926
<v Brian Meacham>You have a dual set of enforcement structures.

00:24:32.376 --> 00:24:46.596
<v Brian Meacham>You have one side that I would argue on the building side accepts the concept of risk and reliability based design because they do so for structures and for earthquake and wind hazards.

00:24:46.926 --> 00:24:53.412
<v Brian Meacham>But the fire service doesn't, they don't want to say what an acceptable level of risk is.

00:24:53.622 --> 00:25:19.372
<v Brian Meacham>So this gets into this challenge of how do you set an objective for building, if you have an institutional actor who's focused on life safety, because that's their primary job who will never agree to a level of acceptable risk or safety for the population, then you're stuck in this limbo where, you're negotiating all the time to try to determine what that target level is.

00:25:19.582 --> 00:25:24.801
<v Brian Meacham>And then it'll change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction within a country in between countries.

00:25:24.801 --> 00:25:31.102
<v Brian Meacham>And you can't say we've matured to a system that is  universally acceptable.

00:25:31.102 --> 00:25:59.701
<v Brian Meacham>Maybe if we start thinking and trying to shift the paradigm a little bit more to focus on, system design and buildings as safety barriers to prevent a fire of a certain size from occurring, that fits more under the paradigm of say the earthquake engineering, there's going to be a risk that you'll have an event that is bigger than what the design of the building is intended to achieve.

00:26:00.031 --> 00:26:04.592
<v Brian Meacham>But then you're at least in this realm of being able to quantify those risks.

00:26:04.592 --> 00:26:19.672
<v Brian Meacham>Because now you're looking at the probability of failure of a system that you can control for versus the probability of death of an individual for whom you have no hope of ever being able to, individually control.

00:26:20.122 --> 00:26:37.297
<v Brian Meacham>And so as a, from a system design perspective, you're still going to achieve the same outcome of limiting the size of the fire, limiting damage to the building, increasing the probability of people reaching, a safe place and saving lives.

00:26:37.326 --> 00:26:53.446
<v Brian Meacham>But, the narrative that you have with the development of the regulation, a discussion with the enforcement officials and everyone else changes, and maybe that, facilitates better, ability to engineer better solutions.

00:26:54.125 --> 00:27:08.045
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think we are somewhere there in tunnel engineering, because, and the reason for that is that it, it's very obvious that at some point you reach a design scenario, which is impossible to manage.

00:27:08.194 --> 00:27:14.938
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like if you have a collision oil tanker with a bus inside the tunnel, the outcome will be multiple fatalities.

00:27:15.208 --> 00:27:22.137
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the only way to prevent this scenario would be to ban traffic in a tunnel, which is kind of not the thing you would like to do with the tunnel.

00:27:22.617 --> 00:27:52.067
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, we actually do that sometimes to do ban the heavy goods vehicle traffic, and in this field, because this outcome is so obvious that there will be some events that have high consequences in terms of loss of life and they're impossible to prevent, if you want to keep the function of your tunnel, this concept of risk and managing the probability and consequences has led to the definition of, let's say, acceptable level of safety in a tunnel for which we design.

00:27:52.067 --> 00:28:00.768
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And if we do that we are okay'ish with the fact that if a bigger fire happens, we are not able to control it because it's too big.

00:28:01.337 --> 00:28:09.306
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Is this something that, could be also done for a buildings or buildings are a little more complicated than that, they have multiple functions, right?

00:28:10.053 --> 00:28:12.452
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah, but I think we can move in that direction.

00:28:12.482 --> 00:28:18.962
<v Brian Meacham>This is where I think bringing in systems thinking and social technical systems thinking is really important.

00:28:19.512 --> 00:28:30.252
<v Brian Meacham>It's interesting that you mentioned tunnels because I think,  of the I can say this cause they are younger than me, younger researchers who are actually thinking in this way.

00:28:31.083 --> 00:28:45.163
<v Brian Meacham>Jonathan Tandler and Henrik Yellen are involved in the Nordic project, looking at, fire safety and tunnels and trying to implement, more systems sinking into the fire scenario development and the fire thinking.

00:28:45.163 --> 00:28:53.772
<v Brian Meacham>And we've been having some discussions with that group and Haukur Ingasson has been involved in Jose Terrero and Ricky Carvel.

00:28:53.772 --> 00:29:00.613
<v Brian Meacham>And, just trying to say tunnels are designed as socio-technical systems.

00:29:00.972 --> 00:29:09.712
<v Brian Meacham>How can we apply a little bit better fire scenario thinking and fire design thinking within tunnels as socio-technical systems.

00:29:09.742 --> 00:29:15.353
<v Brian Meacham>And then for me, the logical extension is how do we bring that into buildings?

00:29:15.663 --> 00:29:19.472
<v Brian Meacham>And you mentioned buildings being more complex from different uses.

00:29:19.782 --> 00:29:29.323
<v Brian Meacham>I think we inherently understand that because we often classify buildings by their use assembly, building industrial warehouse.

00:29:29.863 --> 00:29:42.343
<v Brian Meacham>We know that, and we've in a way been doing this, but we get stuck in how the regulation operates rather than thinking about what the use of that building means and how we should be designing for it.

00:29:42.682 --> 00:29:53.573
<v Brian Meacham>So in a way we've taken the easy way out of allowing the institutions to define, everything about the design and the level of safety and F taking the engineers out of it.

00:29:54.143 --> 00:30:10.353
<v Brian Meacham>But that doesn't mean we can't get back more involved and look at these issues on these different complex systems interactions under the different building uses and be able to do a better job than we currently are, which I have to say is not a bad job or.

00:30:11.133 --> 00:30:23.833
<v Brian Meacham>We're generally doing a good job with new buildings and structures, as you say, part of the challenge is how do we take some of this thinking into existing buildings and work with the institutions to make changes in those areas?

00:30:24.152 --> 00:30:25.352
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>For us the fire engineers.

00:30:25.352 --> 00:30:31.852
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>what we do is sometimes we push for unnecessary solutions that do not improve safety at all, but we push for them.

00:30:32.451 --> 00:30:42.785
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We put constraints on objectives of other branches, which sometimes, a building is a multi objective system is not just to not kill people in fire.

00:30:43.144 --> 00:30:49.714
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It has thermal objectives, it has acoustic objectives, it has health objectives.

00:30:49.805 --> 00:30:52.595
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It must provide comfort to the occupants.

00:30:52.924 --> 00:31:05.914
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's a multi objective system and sometimes pushing for some solutions of fire safety, put extreme constraints on the other branches where a problem could be solved in a different way, maybe not putting these constraints.

00:31:05.994 --> 00:31:09.565
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a thing that when I think about how we can improve.

00:31:10.359 --> 00:31:13.720
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like we are already designing pretty safe buildings.

00:31:13.910 --> 00:31:18.410
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Sometimes we fail and you can see that on television when the building burns down.

00:31:18.680 --> 00:31:22.099
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Especially facades come to my mind as the first example of where we

00:31:22.688 --> 00:31:25.627
<v Brian Meacham>recently, for example, every

00:31:26.200 --> 00:31:28.829
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it's so often  that this major events happen.

00:31:29.259 --> 00:31:32.690
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And this obviously are indication that there are places where we fail.

00:31:32.700 --> 00:31:44.390
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But generally as a professional, we're doing quite a good job of providing a safety, especially that most decisions related to fire safety are taken by non-fire stakeholders.

00:31:44.390 --> 00:31:44.660
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like.

00:31:45.049 --> 00:31:51.380
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it's not the fire safety engineer who takes the majority of the decisions and how you fit this.

00:31:51.461 --> 00:32:01.051
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>other people in this process, because I think it's naive to think that a fire safety engineers can solve that by having a better fire safety engineering,  framework.

00:32:01.082 --> 00:32:06.555
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It will solve some of the problems, but without thinking about the other branches, it's not happening.

00:32:07.022 --> 00:32:07.353
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

00:32:07.403 --> 00:32:12.623
<v Brian Meacham>Again, it's an attribute of this complex socio-technical system.

00:32:13.232 --> 00:32:25.272
<v Brian Meacham>When we think about for building design and how the building design is done in its technologies, the institutions that control for that and the actors, and I would say.

00:32:25.958 --> 00:32:38.428
<v Brian Meacham>It works both ways because we've seen, fires in buildings that are attributes of pressure being put on other objectives, like energy performance, over fire performance.

00:32:38.788 --> 00:32:54.587
<v Brian Meacham>And then the decisions being made by either owners or regulatory officials who are unsure of the impacts and the fire safety engineer actually has no role in, in trying to help identify the challenge.

00:32:54.948 --> 00:33:10.133
<v Brian Meacham>So this whole a core part of the problem there is that we as I guess an industry failed to look at holistically buildings as complex systems of systems and we do design in silos.

00:33:10.643 --> 00:33:21.923
<v Brian Meacham>So there is the energy engineers and in one silo, the structural engineers and another silo, the fire engineers and another, they don't talk to each other as much as they should.

00:33:22.403 --> 00:33:33.782
<v Brian Meacham>You know, the architect is trying to develop a design, it's become so complex and multi-disciplinary that, a single responsibility for integrating the design is difficult.

00:33:34.702 --> 00:33:37.583
<v Brian Meacham>And the regulations get built in that same way.

00:33:37.913 --> 00:33:49.792
<v Brian Meacham>So you have the energy performance of buildings, regulation telling you to put more insulation in, who's checking that you're looking at the combustibility of that insulation or the protection needed.

00:33:50.093 --> 00:33:55.343
<v Brian Meacham>If you use a combustible material to achieve the level of safety.

00:33:55.762 --> 00:34:05.873
<v Brian Meacham>So you keep asking for more to be done through regulation and legislation, less to be done by design teams because you're trying to control the costs there.

00:34:06.173 --> 00:34:12.492
<v Brian Meacham>And you miss this whole, systems thinking and optimization that can be done when everybody's working together.

00:34:13.032 --> 00:34:33.288
<v Brian Meacham>And of course,  the financial constraints on that are often what dryers these issues anyway, because nobody wants to spend the money to do a better job because they're always looking at the short-term gains rather than the,  long-term benefits of overall building performance.

00:34:33.827 --> 00:34:42.858
<v Brian Meacham>And so it's in addition to the social technical systems thinking it's this real need for holistic view on things.

00:34:42.858 --> 00:34:55.217
<v Brian Meacham>And you know, some of the work that I was able to do with Patrick van Hees in Lund University on trying to look more holistically at facade designs is just a microcosm of the problem.

00:34:55.518 --> 00:34:57.018
<v Brian Meacham>If you have pressures to.

00:34:57.518 --> 00:35:05.797
<v Brian Meacham>Do energy performance and over override the pressures for fire performance or guests, what the fire performance will fall to the bottom.

00:35:06.217 --> 00:35:10.597
<v Brian Meacham>And then that's when you start to see the challenges in the system.

00:35:11.197 --> 00:35:18.188
<v Brian Meacham>And then I think an added complexity goes back to your comment of a few minutes ago about existing buildings.

00:35:18.518 --> 00:35:24.128
<v Brian Meacham>There's more to be done on energy retrofits of buildings, which can often be extra regulatory.

00:35:24.518 --> 00:35:46.507
<v Brian Meacham>And so if the fire engineer is not involved in the fire service or regulatory enforcement, people are not involved looking at fire aspects when an energy retrofit is done, there's no way to even catch the possibility of an unsafe system configuration being put in the place.

00:35:46.927 --> 00:35:54.648
<v Brian Meacham>So this goes back to this, how does the whole system have to operate better performance and existing buildings.

00:35:54.978 --> 00:36:06.947
<v Brian Meacham>I think there are some mechanisms that could be explored, but if you're requiring people to do, I don't know, a seismic retrofit in New Zealand or an energy retrofit in Poland.

00:36:06.947 --> 00:36:21.597
<v Brian Meacham>And you're not asking to have the fire system looked at the same time, you're creating the potential for problems where none existed or maybe amplifying a problem that is put into place by the change you're making to the building.

00:36:21.958 --> 00:36:26.157
<v Brian Meacham>So it's not an easy challenge by any stretch.

00:36:27.074 --> 00:36:42.804
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>An interesting thing in what you've said is where to place the boundary between the design of this particular building and a whole system, like the whole legal system of how buildings are built in this place of the world.

00:36:43.315 --> 00:36:49.858
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because as you mentioned that some things shouldn't be like brought up, maybe put in into jurisdiction legally enforced.

00:36:50.128 --> 00:36:57.548
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But that's also the things that we often try to escape with, with PBD approach, to show that there are other ways to secure the same objectives.

00:36:57.579 --> 00:36:59.679
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If we eventually have an objective.

00:36:59.958 --> 00:37:18.733
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So is there a good way when let's say them individuality of building ends, that it must be, taken to an upper layer or maybe we should not think  in this way and just generalize the objectives, like what we really want the buildings to be in and give the full freedom at the building level.

00:37:19.233 --> 00:37:20.672
<v Brian Meacham>It's a good question.

00:37:20.672 --> 00:37:34.402
<v Brian Meacham>And I've been happened to, I've been doing some work  the last a year or two with Sweden, thinking about how to redo their building regulations and, having discussions with different stakeholder groups there.

00:37:34.402 --> 00:37:58.512
<v Brian Meacham>And, one thing that really for me is become more apparent  in recent years is that, we really should be changing the whole regulatory system to what I call a user-focused system, as opposed to a building focused system or really a compliance focused approach.

00:37:59.023 --> 00:38:05.728
<v Brian Meacham>And so if you can envision a little bit how the building process works.

00:38:06.208 --> 00:38:15.487
<v Brian Meacham>The whole design environment is aimed at, trying to, design a building that will achieve regulatory compliance.

00:38:15.547 --> 00:38:27.077
<v Brian Meacham>And then we don't care so much what happens for the building in use, but the building owners and the tenants of buildings are all focused on, how the building will work for them.

00:38:27.557 --> 00:38:34.668
<v Brian Meacham>And we're not really taking this user center life cycle focus of the building into account.

00:38:35.027 --> 00:38:42.387
<v Brian Meacham>So if you go back to the regulations at the highest level and say the objectives should be at targeted for.

00:38:43.378 --> 00:38:49.498
<v Brian Meacham>How the users use the building, how the building should be maintained, what their lifespan should be.

00:38:49.898 --> 00:39:00.728
<v Brian Meacham>How you are going to deal with the end of life of building and have that as your objective, that makes a complete different approach to building design.

00:39:01.088 --> 00:39:06.907
<v Brian Meacham>Then if you're looking for regulatory compliance at the time, you hand over the building to the user.

00:39:07.507 --> 00:39:18.728
<v Brian Meacham>So we focus on 1% of the life of the building, getting somebody in the door and then everybody else has to deal with the problems  of the next hundred years of how they're going to use the building.

00:39:18.728 --> 00:39:19.867
<v Brian Meacham>It's crazy.

00:39:20.447 --> 00:39:29.427
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Do you think we have a good idea how to upgrade this, design fire approach we have to better work with this.

00:39:29.507 --> 00:39:35.708
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's say objective based design, because for now when I'm designing a fire, I take a standard.

00:39:36.307 --> 00:39:36.577
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay.

00:39:36.577 --> 00:39:37.297
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Five megawatts.

00:39:37.297 --> 00:39:37.688
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Nice.

00:39:38.047 --> 00:39:39.338
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, and I place it in there.

00:39:39.577 --> 00:39:59.184
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in, in one of your communications, you wrote it this, it's not great that in many cases that there is this linked between the fire scenarios and design fires, where they are inextricably linked, and that's a reformed concept that you have to link them together.

00:39:59.485 --> 00:40:04.175
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I see that there needs to be shift also in this, to move forward that the whole thing,

00:40:04.255 --> 00:40:04.644
<v Brian Meacham>yeah.

00:40:04.644 --> 00:40:12.894
<v Brian Meacham>Getting, specifically to that issue and then, kind of the back to the vision zero  or the safety barrier concept.

00:40:13.704 --> 00:40:32.867
<v Brian Meacham>If the aim is to put a building performance and building fire safety systems into place to achieve a certain objective care so much that you have to model the probability of each ignition source or the evolution of a fire, to a very specific degree.

00:40:33.137 --> 00:40:46.117
<v Brian Meacham>What you need to know is what is the fire insult that is going to cause unaccepted performance of the system, or what fire characteristics are needed to assess the performance of those systems?

00:40:46.536 --> 00:41:07.896
<v Brian Meacham>So again, why are we going through this complicated, analysis to, to develop a fire that, we can say, history has shown us that if we have a 10 Megawatt fire and this system, no, we have a 20 minute rated door it's likely to fail, at a certain point.

00:41:08.047 --> 00:41:10.927
<v Brian Meacham>So we need to make that system more robust.

00:41:11.496 --> 00:41:19.257
<v Brian Meacham>Or if we're producing X amount of fire effluent, we need,  smoke exhaust or other system of a certain size.

00:41:19.646 --> 00:41:41.757
<v Brian Meacham>So at a point that becomes less of an emphasis on doing, too much detailed scenario analysis and more on thinking of, what is the load against which the building has to resist and the individual fire safety systems, I don't think, earthquake engineering is running, a whole range of scenarios.

00:41:41.757 --> 00:41:52.617
<v Brian Meacham>Like we are, they're looking at the maximum considered earthquake and maybe one or two other earthquakes, why are we not looking at the maximum considered fire and how the systems will perform?

00:41:53.047 --> 00:41:56.157
<v Brian Meacham>We're maybe not optimizing in the right location.

00:41:57.173 --> 00:42:04.574
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And do you think that, generic fire safety engineer is fit to, to do this kind of thinking.

00:42:04.873 --> 00:42:14.134
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe educated fire safety engineer would be, but many times the shoes of fire engineer are taken by someone who's not a trained fire engineer, but they have to do take decisions.

00:42:14.284 --> 00:42:14.614
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Right.

00:42:15.094 --> 00:42:19.693
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>, if that person takes a bad decision, then, the whole concept is in ruin.

00:42:19.934 --> 00:42:27.704
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So to what extent should this go up to the legislation or be remained free, for the designer.

00:42:27.704 --> 00:42:33.543
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And it's something that comes to my mind is the New Zealand approach with, the method they have with the scenarios to, to be considered.

00:42:33.574 --> 00:42:38.766
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I think some concepts like that were also in Sweden, for smoke control, to define this scenarios.

00:42:39.547 --> 00:42:39.876
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

00:42:39.876 --> 00:42:42.666
<v Brian Meacham>It's in the Swedish building code currently.

00:42:42.666 --> 00:42:59.523
<v Brian Meacham>It's also in the Japanese system, there's a variety of systems around the world that have, the scenario considerations built in fires and sometimes even the calculation methods that you should use, when addressing them.

00:43:00.273 --> 00:43:03.663
<v Brian Meacham>And again, this is, part of the bigger picture thinking.

00:43:03.670 --> 00:43:12.699
<v Brian Meacham>Some of it I think should be legislated, but the legislation has to consider the objectives of the building.

00:43:13.179 --> 00:43:23.980
<v Brian Meacham>And if it doesn't, then, you can't expect a legislator to make a decision on what's inappropriate fire size or a fire scenario should be, so you still have to work together.

00:43:24.010 --> 00:43:30.719
<v Brian Meacham>The fire engineers and the, the policy makers and the other actors in sorting that out.

00:43:31.789 --> 00:43:38.639
<v Brian Meacham>But if we go to more of  a system safety approach, we can jointly develop what those.

00:43:39.139 --> 00:43:41.210
<v Brian Meacham>Threats need to be to a building.

00:43:41.809 --> 00:43:48.420
<v Brian Meacham>And I think we have to do a better job of educating,  fire safety engineers on how to work with that way of thinking.

00:43:48.929 --> 00:44:01.079
<v Brian Meacham>And for me, I really, another big part of the problem is too many,  ill equipped, improperly educated or trained people, making fire engineering decisions.

00:44:01.079 --> 00:44:04.380
<v Brian Meacham>It's not just legislators and others who don't have the background.

00:44:05.010 --> 00:44:14.090
<v Brian Meacham>It's people on the ground doing the analysis or purporting to be able to do the analysis who don't have the capabilities.

00:44:14.090 --> 00:44:24.210
<v Brian Meacham>And I think that's a bigger problem today that  it's not the people who really can do good modeling and good fire safety engineering or creating bad buildings.

00:44:24.570 --> 00:44:34.340
<v Brian Meacham>It's the bad actors who really don't know what they're doing are creating unsafe, buildings that when fail are making fire safety engineering look bad.

00:44:34.940 --> 00:44:43.300
<v Brian Meacham>But that's also another part of the system because a lot of countries don't require, engineers to be licensed or registered or chartered.

00:44:43.300 --> 00:44:47.380
<v Brian Meacham>And you can be a fire engineer if you want to call yourself a fire engineer.

00:44:47.739 --> 00:44:59.030
<v Brian Meacham>So again, holistically, the system has a lot of challenges that, that, currently work against people who are trying to do the design in the right way.

00:44:59.978 --> 00:45:16.547
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think you have to also take into account economical pressure in the building process that, you have this, let's say primary objectives of building, not collapsing, providing fire safety and meeting  the fundamental roles of the building should have, but then again, the building is built by a stakeholder.

00:45:17.027 --> 00:45:28.748
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that stakeholder has their objective is to finish the build on time and earn money while building that and hopefully not, go into bankruptcy because of the building.

00:45:29.108 --> 00:45:35.047
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So often, uh, many decisions will be driven by non-safety factors, but economical factor.

00:45:35.898 --> 00:45:43.427
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And,  replacing technologies, replacing materials, choosing different ways, maybe some changes to the way how the building will be used.

00:45:43.478 --> 00:45:56.577
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We've seen that multiple times when officers were turned into apartments or otherwise, for example,  and this, uh, here it's this competing objectives like, well, maybe not competing because I assumed the contractors would also like to build the building safe.

00:45:56.608 --> 00:45:56.907
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Right.

00:45:57.268 --> 00:46:19.661
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But, when you have, we're giving this talk in Rotterdam about where we are and someone in the audience said that the paradigm is CATNIP- Cheapest  Available Technology Not Involving Persecution and that's, that was like really nailed, When you were, you close yourself in the fire safety engineering offices, it's often this, atmosphere of trying to build a safe building.

00:46:20.170 --> 00:46:26.530
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But when you go to the field and go to the construction work, it's often it's becomes purely economical battle.

00:46:26.831 --> 00:46:30.911
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So this also is a part of this social technical system that you're talking about, right?

00:46:30.940 --> 00:46:31.300
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

00:46:31.300 --> 00:46:35.199
<v Brian Meacham>And that, unfortunately that situation exists in a lot of countries.

00:46:35.248 --> 00:46:39.159
<v Brian Meacham>I've been involved with New Zealand a bit and Scotland.

00:46:39.849 --> 00:46:49.652
<v Brian Meacham>And Scotland over the last few years wanted to try to find a way to facilitate more fire safety engineering and performance-based design.

00:46:50.192 --> 00:46:56.751
<v Brian Meacham>And they recognized that,  there were certain actors that had a race to the bottom,  perspective.

00:46:57.081 --> 00:47:17.782
<v Brian Meacham>And so the government actually was looking at what kind of mechanisms could be,  available to help either raise the, the level of knowledge and ability within what they call the  local authority verifier,  who are the ones that approve the buildings, or even consider a way to put in a national peer review system.

00:47:18.262 --> 00:47:34.041
<v Brian Meacham>And so that you put mechanisms in that, help to filter out the bad actors by requiring more, to be done, putting a higher level of capacity in those people reviewing the design.

00:47:34.052 --> 00:47:47.141
<v Brian Meacham>So they're not just,  allowing, inappropriate designs to be put through, but then you also have to have,  ethics considerations within the design community as well.

00:47:47.922 --> 00:47:57.192
<v Brian Meacham>I mean, if it's true that every building has a budget and every project has a budget and as an engineer, you have responsibility to your client.

00:47:57.581 --> 00:48:03.592
<v Brian Meacham>But, for example, in the SFPE Code of Ethics, your responsibility first and foremost is to public safety.

00:48:04.431 --> 00:48:14.012
<v Brian Meacham>And, sometimes you just have to be willing to say no, and that's a tough thing for especially small businesses.

00:48:14.552 --> 00:48:27.431
<v Brian Meacham>I'm fortunate that in my point, my career, I can just turn down jobs and, it's also one reason I don't do a lot of legal work because usually the first thing the lawyer asked for is we want to hire you to, to demonstrate our case.

00:48:27.461 --> 00:48:29.851
<v Brian Meacham>It's that's not my role.

00:48:29.851 --> 00:48:37.952
<v Brian Meacham>The role is to determine whether or not the building is safe or the product is safe or whatever, and how to make it better.

00:48:38.431 --> 00:48:59.431
<v Brian Meacham>There's this big challenge that if you don't have, again, the institutional systems to either raise the bar in terms of ethics of the practitioners or put controls on, financier's who are trying to put too much emphasis on cost savings, over safety, all of that has to be taken into account as well.

00:48:59.931 --> 00:49:01.731
<v Brian Meacham>And no system will be perfect.

00:49:01.731 --> 00:49:13.731
<v Brian Meacham>We know we're going to grapple with these issues, but I think fire safety engineers can do a lot just in terms of deciding which projects to take and what they're willing to agree to.

00:49:14.242 --> 00:49:22.702
<v Brian Meacham>And, when they are willing to be able to say enough is enough relative to some of the requests that are put to them by the market.

00:49:23.679 --> 00:49:29.139
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you look from a perspective of being a fire engineer on your own scrutiny, that's probably correct approach.

00:49:29.170 --> 00:49:37.369
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But if you look at the global ecosystem of building environment, you would like every built building be built the same, let's say level of ethical, course.

00:49:37.369 --> 00:49:44.400
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the system should actually not, it should exclude from itself, the ones that do not meet this constraint.

00:49:44.699 --> 00:49:45.480
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And okay.

00:49:45.510 --> 00:49:51.230
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Previously we've mentioned the, new Zealand's approach with, defining scenarios in, in, in the PBD.

00:49:51.710 --> 00:50:00.010
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Now we've mentioned a national peer review systems, and let's say authorities being more involved in verifying the scrutiny of the design.

00:50:00.394 --> 00:50:13.085
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if this boundary between the competing economical ends and safety objectives was crossed in, in, in wrong direction, at what moment it stops being a PBD at what moment we are back to the prescriptive system?

00:50:13.184 --> 00:50:26.514
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Where's the boundary, because I've heard, some people not happy with the New Zealand system of defining the scenarios because it takes the possibility of them designing, let's say a perfect scenario for the building.

00:50:26.614 --> 00:50:53.300
<v Brian Meacham>I think a little bit, this takes us almost full circle back to the beginning of the discussion, but you know, Regulators are imposing more constraints on the system because they don't have confidence in the fire safety engineers to be able to deliver robust designs, because we haven't advanced far enough as a profession to have the robust performance-based engineering methods.

00:50:53.659 --> 00:50:59.929
<v Brian Meacham>And we lacked the, in some areas, the ethical constraints to apply appropriately.

00:50:59.929 --> 00:51:02.909
<v Brian Meacham>What we do know is right, within the system.

00:51:03.360 --> 00:51:05.219
<v Brian Meacham>And so you can think of.

00:51:06.005 --> 00:51:10.025
<v Brian Meacham>The regulatory system as a pendulum you'll swing back and forth.

00:51:10.025 --> 00:51:26.744
<v Brian Meacham>And in the 1980s and nineties, a lot of countries moved to performance-based regulation because of ideas of deregulating by some governments, giving more to the market to take responsibility for allowing more innovation.

00:51:27.344 --> 00:51:31.255
<v Brian Meacham>And what happens anytime you see a market failure, more regulations.

00:51:31.284 --> 00:51:39.574
<v Brian Meacham>New Zealand is an example of, they went performance because they thought, the maturity was there to, to design better buildings.

00:51:39.574 --> 00:51:46.204
<v Brian Meacham>And ultimately, they've decided, in not just in fire, but they had their moisture issue with the leaky buildings.

00:51:46.204 --> 00:51:54.974
<v Brian Meacham>They had found some challenges with, earthquake engineering and they had the, canterbury earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.

00:51:55.304 --> 00:52:00.835
<v Brian Meacham>And so there's always a bit of system correction where you're trying to, find a way to go.

00:52:00.835 --> 00:52:03.655
<v Brian Meacham>And then I think that's what happened for fire.

00:52:04.074 --> 00:52:08.094
<v Brian Meacham>Is it because they didn't have a way to really regulate for fire engineers.

00:52:08.394 --> 00:52:20.005
<v Brian Meacham>Anyone could call themselves a fire engineer, lesser qualified people were taking projects at a lower fee and doing, not such a good job so that the enforcement officials lacked confidence.

00:52:20.335 --> 00:52:27.945
<v Brian Meacham>They said, okay, we'll put in a more prescriptive performance approach as a dampening measure on some of that behavior.

00:52:28.605 --> 00:52:40.364
<v Brian Meacham>And so we're going to see more of that until we get our act together in actually developing a more robust approach that raises confidence in the market.

00:52:40.394 --> 00:52:43.175
<v Brian Meacham>And then this is where, I'm trying to think of.

00:52:43.679 --> 00:53:10.139
<v Brian Meacham>If we change the focus a little bit about what we can actually predict control for and gain confidence in relative to building performance and system performance more so than,  how likely we're actually able to predict individual safety or population safety and having that be a subset of building performance, maybe that's a mechanism to, to build confidence.

00:53:10.139 --> 00:53:21.940
<v Brian Meacham>And, but we have to find what that measure is, are we're going to continue this cycling back and forth as the pendulum swings that, you know, they gave us enough rope to hang ourselves.

00:53:21.989 --> 00:53:25.860
<v Brian Meacham>We hung ourselves and now they're tightening up things again.

00:53:25.860 --> 00:53:29.099
<v Brian Meacham>And what do we have to do to be given more freedom?

00:53:29.130 --> 00:53:31.920
<v Brian Meacham>And we don't get more freedom by doing the same things.

00:53:32.483 --> 00:53:37.253
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not the fundamental, issue with the designs we're creating or the methods we're using.

00:53:37.253 --> 00:53:44.123
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's also an issue with communication trust, maybe clarifying the competencies of actors, right?

00:53:44.172 --> 00:53:55.523
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it's not that we will invent a new, better model for fire or invent a new tool that everyone will shift to because that happened in the past, there was an invention of a zone model.

00:53:55.523 --> 00:54:03.402
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In seventies, there was the invention of CFD and creation of the FDS, which democratized the powerful abilities of numerical calculations.

00:54:04.123 --> 00:54:07.333
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And yet the issues with swinging the pendulum has not stopped.

00:54:07.333 --> 00:54:10.092
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's not the single shift in technology that can enable us.

00:54:10.092 --> 00:54:13.782
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's the building, the confidence of the authorities that we can do.

00:54:13.833 --> 00:54:16.742
<v Brian Meacham>Right, but that's why it's a socio-technical system.

00:54:17.432 --> 00:54:24.992
<v Brian Meacham>So, you know, partly I would argue that we've missed the social and institutional components for the last 20 years.

00:54:24.992 --> 00:54:48.463
<v Brian Meacham>We focused on the technical parts and the advancements in the technology and  again, no offense because I know you're excellent modeler and your knowledge of fire fundamentals is phenomenal, but modeling is not engineering and there's too much today of the model being the tool to design a building.

00:54:48.762 --> 00:54:49.663
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>An Oracle.

00:54:49.719 --> 00:54:51.050
<v Brian Meacham>And that's not the case.

00:54:51.050 --> 00:54:58.909
<v Brian Meacham>The model is a tool and if every problem, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

00:54:59.360 --> 00:55:00.420
<v Brian Meacham>And so you.

00:55:01.505 --> 00:55:04.894
<v Brian Meacham>Hammering away at, I can model this better and better and better.

00:55:05.074 --> 00:55:07.445
<v Brian Meacham>When are we going to get back to talking about engineering?

00:55:09.717 --> 00:55:10.588
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, you're right.

00:55:10.588 --> 00:55:14.268
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We can add these improvements and this is what they've seen over the course of my career.

00:55:14.568 --> 00:55:15.978
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The models are more sophisticated.

00:55:15.978 --> 00:55:17.268
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I have more meshes to play.

00:55:17.268 --> 00:55:18.947
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I have better turbulence models.

00:55:19.307 --> 00:55:25.248
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I've learned a lot on heat transfer, but in essentially the fundamental questions are still the same.

00:55:25.248 --> 00:55:32.047
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I still sometimes fail to answered them because the new capabilities of my model didn't resolve the issues.

00:55:32.527 --> 00:55:47.927
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the last thing, which I think it was very interesting in our pre discussion to this episode is the pace in which the technology develops, because it's also like you have to also put all of this in the timeframe that's moving.

00:55:48.378 --> 00:55:53.257
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You've said a hundred years ahead wonder what we will have and what problems we'll face.

00:55:53.288 --> 00:56:06.708
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But even today, if you put a new technology on the market, you would expect that it will create this positive disruption that, okay, we stopped doing what we were doing and we're using this new technology and everyone says, it's great.

00:56:07.007 --> 00:56:13.398
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Sometimes it's not clicking because of low, let's say economical benefit from putting this new technology.

00:56:13.427 --> 00:56:19.557
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if we cannot earn more money on using this technology, why shift our ways when the old ones are working and are cheaper.

00:56:20.467 --> 00:56:31.177
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Or maybe the Authorities will not believe that technology solves an issue and we're failing to communicate like what will create this shift, or maybe you're putting technology and tools of people who are not ready to use it.

00:56:31.597 --> 00:56:37.268
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it's also creating a interesting, the social dynamics between the actors.

00:56:38.170 --> 00:56:38.530
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

00:56:38.530 --> 00:56:40.750
<v Brian Meacham>And I think it's all of the above.

00:56:40.989 --> 00:56:43.269
<v Brian Meacham>We're putting tools in the hands.

00:56:43.300 --> 00:56:59.619
<v Brian Meacham>We're putting sophisticated tools in the hands of people who maybe know how to use a tool, but not in the context of the design environment to try to achieve an objective, that's not well agreed enough between all the actors and you have a problem.

00:56:59.889 --> 00:57:05.929
<v Brian Meacham>And when you think about technology introduction, there's always a time lag.

00:57:05.960 --> 00:57:10.579
<v Brian Meacham>Whoever develops the technology, you start promoting it, everybody gets excited about it.

00:57:10.940 --> 00:57:16.159
<v Brian Meacham>You think it's going to solve the world's problems, you know, computational modeling for fire effects.

00:57:16.400 --> 00:57:17.750
<v Brian Meacham>We can do everything now.

00:57:18.139 --> 00:57:18.500
<v Brian Meacham>Great.

00:57:18.559 --> 00:57:27.260
<v Brian Meacham>Well, We may be think we can do that, but the institutions, the approvers, the legislators, aren't so sure yet.

00:57:27.710 --> 00:57:36.559
<v Brian Meacham>And so you hammer away at it, but the confidence is going down because you're not actually necessarily showing any better performance.

00:57:36.949 --> 00:57:49.250
<v Brian Meacham>You're showing that you can do more modeling, but in the end of the day, how much have you actually changed the building design or showed that you're able to create safer buildings and have a bigger impact on society?

00:57:49.820 --> 00:58:16.159
<v Brian Meacham>Maybe we take our tools and instead of doing all the modeling you're doing for individual projects, create , a set of what are the what's the design basis, fire what's probability distribution, representation of the fires that would impact buildings of different types and uses that would become a legislative basis for a performance-based design.

00:58:16.190 --> 00:58:17.059
<v Brian Meacham>There's still a lot.

00:58:17.059 --> 00:58:34.750
<v Brian Meacham>You would have to engineer for the building to get it right, but then it gets away from modeling as being the act of engineering, to modeling, being a tool, to understand the building performance, to enable better engineering designs.

00:58:35.199 --> 00:58:58.440
<v Brian Meacham>And so even within the discipline, changing how we think about how we approached the problem and giving data to the institutions who don't necessarily have confidence in us to raise the confidence, will help us, shift the pendulum back to having more engineering freedom particularly when warranted.

00:58:59.010 --> 00:59:02.400
<v Brian Meacham>And, I'll go back again to the structural analogy.

00:59:02.849 --> 00:59:07.349
<v Brian Meacham>There's a whole lot of buildings that don't require a lot of complex structural analysis.

00:59:07.949 --> 00:59:14.019
<v Brian Meacham>And, the loads and resistances have been codafide and distributions exist.

00:59:14.019 --> 00:59:17.920
<v Brian Meacham>We know the load factors and combinations, but.

00:59:18.744 --> 00:59:24.894
<v Brian Meacham>And it's, if it's a complex building or a unique building, it does require that engineering analysis.

00:59:25.074 --> 00:59:26.934
<v Brian Meacham>So why should fire be any different?

00:59:27.235 --> 00:59:35.394
<v Brian Meacham>We haven't gone back to the basic buildings with the data to show how you can do it better based on our knowledge.

00:59:35.844 --> 00:59:47.155
<v Brian Meacham>And so therefore you haven't built up the confidence that when it comes to the complex building, the methodologies are equally applicable to solving the unique and innovative challenges.

00:59:47.277 --> 01:00:05.807
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In my case, like looking at the case of Poland, I think the issue is that, it's difficult to define the middle ground between the two approaches, because a it's either a one push two to go fully prescriptive and the issue of blocking innovation, or you would like to go full freedom, which creates all these issues we've discussed before.

01:00:06.228 --> 01:00:21.487
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, the best, like the most efficient way, I think from looking at the build environment as a whole system would be a codification of standard solutions and a clear and easy path to obtain an non-standard solution for a non-standard problem.

01:00:22.347 --> 01:00:31.807
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And both of these connected to the same objectives and the same, let's say objective level of safety that, is the ultimate goal of the whole system.

01:00:31.807 --> 01:00:35.568
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That, that would probably be something of,  good world live in, right.

01:00:37.414 --> 01:00:39.304
<v Brian Meacham>But we're lacking in all the areas, right?

01:00:39.304 --> 01:00:43.114
<v Brian Meacham>We don't know what that objective level of safety is that we're aiming for.

01:00:43.414 --> 01:01:02.324
<v Brian Meacham>We haven't taken our engineering knowledge and produced back into the prescriptive, the simplified, engineering approach, like, a load and resistance factor design for structure that builds that baseline confidence that you can then go and do the unique components with the right level of oversight.

01:01:02.715 --> 01:01:13.864
<v Brian Meacham>We tried to do everything in the performance realm without feeding back into the prescriptive with, enough engineering, methodologies and approaches, so that it's common, right?

01:01:13.894 --> 01:01:15.934
<v Brian Meacham>It's still unusual for a lot of.

01:01:16.405 --> 01:01:24.835
<v Brian Meacham>Regulators to see the engineering analysis we're doing, right whereas in structure it's built in to the regulation for simple buildings.

01:01:24.835 --> 01:01:49.934
<v Brian Meacham>If we build that, if we do the simple analysis, following the same process and embedded in the prescriptive approach, then it becomes much easier to show how you're expanding that same principle in that same system to a more complex design and taking into account the uncertainties associated with the unknowns and in the innovative design.

01:01:50.445 --> 01:02:02.394
<v Brian Meacham>But if we don't give the regulators and the enforcers, the benchmark understanding of where we're at, why do we expect them to,  automatically assume we can do the more complex buildings?

01:02:03.032 --> 01:02:06.443
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And they also have no clue what is the safety they expect.

01:02:06.452 --> 01:02:09.822
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because there is no, probably there are there exists measures.

01:02:09.853 --> 01:02:14.793
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe risk would be one way to quantify  safe let's say of a building.

01:02:15.092 --> 01:02:19.043
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But  that's a complicated, approach for legislator to go through.

01:02:19.342 --> 01:02:22.583
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's impossible for them to do this sort of analysis.

01:02:23.003 --> 01:02:24.682
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then you face issues.

01:02:24.682 --> 01:02:29.773
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you've mentioned multiple times in there that it's difficult to say that the person candie in a fire.

01:02:30.088 --> 01:02:38.887
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because there will be a hero that will save her and it's not possible to,  we need to prevent that when there are scenarios in which it could happen.

01:02:38.967 --> 01:02:48.635
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I also, once naively said that today's best, performance based solutions, are the prescriptions for future, but it's not this feedback loop is not working like I thought 10 years ago,

01:02:48.882 --> 01:02:50.931
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah that's a big problem.

01:02:51.141 --> 01:02:54.762
<v Brian Meacham>We don't have, good enough feedback loops.

01:02:54.791 --> 01:02:58.742
<v Brian Meacham>That's back to one of your first questions about, have we stagnated a bit?

01:02:58.751 --> 01:02:59.981
<v Brian Meacham>We've learned a lot.

01:03:00.012 --> 01:03:15.222
<v Brian Meacham>I'm not sure we've incorporated what we've learned into the processes we use the, our engagement with the stakeholders, both the building owners and the developers, as well as the, authorities.

01:03:15.612 --> 01:03:22.242
<v Brian Meacham>We're still working in silos and not on this kind of continuous learning and an advancement loop.

01:03:22.992 --> 01:03:32.731
<v Brian Meacham>So I think, that's part of the system that we, we need to go forward with an end to your other comment about, the legislators having difficulty with risk.

01:03:32.731 --> 01:03:44.356
<v Brian Meacham>And we talked about that before, but they do seem to accept risk when we're talking about probability of failure of a structure to events a certain size.

01:03:44.784 --> 01:03:46.565
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They understand it in tunnels.

01:03:46.864 --> 01:03:48.425
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They underst it's the same authorities.

01:03:48.425 --> 01:03:53.494
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They understand it very well that this risk means there is a fire that can kill this many people.

01:03:53.494 --> 01:03:59.505
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And we have no way to ensuring it will not happen unless we close this tunnel and they understand that there.

01:04:00.027 --> 01:04:10.827
<v Brian Meacham>So now we have to say, what, how did we get to that point in tunnels with fire and how do we have those same dialogues with the authorities for buildings?

01:04:11.097 --> 01:04:14.876
<v Brian Meacham>And again, as you said, communication plays a huge role.

01:04:15.327 --> 01:04:27.867
<v Brian Meacham>And it often seems that there's an adversarial arrangement between the fire safety engineer and the enforcement official because enforcers are the authority sink.

01:04:27.867 --> 01:04:35.817
<v Brian Meacham>You're trying to reduce something in the building rather than actually assess the safety and provide appropriate safety.

01:04:36.206 --> 01:04:37.706
<v Brian Meacham>So it's how we communicate.

01:04:37.706 --> 01:04:41.626
<v Brian Meacham>It's how the developer or the building owner communicates.

01:04:41.626 --> 01:04:44.427
<v Brian Meacham>And it really is a confidence.

01:04:45.192 --> 01:04:47.141
<v Brian Meacham>I think we can do what we need to do.

01:04:47.202 --> 01:04:56.652
<v Brian Meacham>We haven't been very good at being able to tell people and bring them along and show them how good we are at what we're able to do.

01:04:56.865 --> 01:05:08.115
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So imagine a situation  in which you chair the most powerful organization in the world of fire scientists, which you are, uh, where, where should the fire science go?

01:05:08.195 --> 01:05:12.315
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What are the pain points  on the map.

01:05:12.795 --> 01:05:20.706
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the map is in your head is built on your experience of this 30 years, battling with the system and now realizing how it interconnects.

01:05:21.036 --> 01:05:23.635
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So where should we like press research?

01:05:23.815 --> 01:05:25.565
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Where it is most urgent?

01:05:25.596 --> 01:05:27.576
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Is it in quantifying the objectives?

01:05:27.965 --> 01:05:32.076
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Is it an objectifying the safety is it's developing new.

01:05:32.735 --> 01:05:35.376
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't know, measures to, to measure safety.

01:05:35.405 --> 01:05:36.195
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What's your take?

01:05:36.949 --> 01:05:37.188
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

01:05:37.188 --> 01:05:40.998
<v Brian Meacham>So it's a complex issue obviously.

01:05:41.599 --> 01:05:46.208
<v Brian Meacham>And, from the fire safety science perspective, we always do.

01:05:47.048 --> 01:05:57.648
<v Brian Meacham>Fundamental research to better understand, phenomena, performance and materials under fire condition, understanding human behavior.

01:05:58.068 --> 01:06:11.559
<v Brian Meacham>Of course, there are big issues and in the wild land fire arena now, and this intersection of , wild land, urban interface, fire, where the natural fire event is impacting on the built environment.

01:06:12.248 --> 01:06:26.469
<v Brian Meacham>But I think when you get to the applied side or the engineering side,  engineers should be about solving problems using the, benefits that science has given us in terms of knowledge, information, and data.

01:06:27.068 --> 01:06:32.139
<v Brian Meacham>And we should be thinking more about tackling the social problems.

01:06:32.289 --> 01:06:41.268
<v Brian Meacham>So it is, what do we need to know to solve or help wildland-urban interface fire resiliency of communities.

01:06:41.699 --> 01:07:01.329
<v Brian Meacham>How do we take the fire safety science knowledge we know, and build more robust, settlements in developing low and middle income countries where the informal settlements can displace 10,000 people and create a whole environment or destroy a whole environment.

01:07:01.898 --> 01:07:13.114
<v Brian Meacham>And when we get to buildings and in more developed countries, why are we, trying to apply complex models to relatively easy problems.

01:07:13.385 --> 01:07:17.195
<v Brian Meacham>Let's work more on getting the system objectives.

01:07:17.644 --> 01:07:23.784
<v Brian Meacham>The system design the confidence in the stakeholders of we know what we're doing.

01:07:23.934 --> 01:07:27.985
<v Brian Meacham>We can apply engineering analysis to simplify the problem.

01:07:27.985 --> 01:07:31.164
<v Brian Meacham>We can agree objectives and figure out how to go forward.

01:07:32.380 --> 01:07:43.840
<v Brian Meacham>Not keep focusing on this narrow part of increasing the computational capacity that we can do and refocus on how we do better engineering.

01:07:44.380 --> 01:07:52.789
<v Brian Meacham>And so, again, it's a spectrum, but I think, the science has got a lot to do with dealing with the wild land fire issue.

01:07:53.210 --> 01:08:19.039
<v Brian Meacham>I think sociologically, we have a lot to do with how we handle, low and middle income countries where resources aren't available, but in high-income countries,  let's stop, over-analyzing buildings and let's work on the building regulatory system and the infrastructure and the system parameters  and the safety objectives, so that we're able to do better engineering

01:08:18.930 --> 01:08:22.461
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>As the last thoughts, if we could come up with really good.

01:08:23.256 --> 01:08:26.765
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Safety objectives, goals of the fire safety approach.

01:08:27.305 --> 01:08:31.115
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That would be easy to explain to other stakeholders.

01:08:31.685 --> 01:08:41.735
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was significantly improve their chances of succeeding and not creating another fire issue where the fire engineer was currently unavailable to do help and aid.

01:08:42.036 --> 01:08:54.746
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because if you look at  structural engineers, architects, or other stakeholders you need to give them fairly simple tools to quantify if the decisions are going on the good side or on the bad side,

01:08:54.984 --> 01:08:55.345
<v Brian Meacham>Yeah.

01:08:55.425 --> 01:09:03.645
<v Brian Meacham>I think when we look at overall objectives for buildings, you can modify a lot of them by saying things like we need to increase the energy.

01:09:04.875 --> 01:09:20.685
<v Brian Meacham>Performance capacity of the building and decrease the energy needs without creating unintended consequence associated with fire indoor, environment or other health or safety effects, right?

01:09:20.685 --> 01:09:23.895
<v Brian Meacham>So it's somehow building into the objectives.

01:09:23.895 --> 01:09:27.194
<v Brian Meacham>The fact that it's not a singular objective.

01:09:27.295 --> 01:09:32.854
<v Brian Meacham>You're working on energy performance, but not to the exclusion of, of safety.

01:09:32.854 --> 01:09:43.715
<v Brian Meacham>You're looking at thermal insulation of buildings, but not to the exclusion of healthy indoor environment that requires a certain amount of air movement and filtration.

01:09:44.194 --> 01:09:51.064
<v Brian Meacham>You're working on the seismic performance of buildings, but not to the exclusion of post-earthquake fire performance or others.

01:09:51.784 --> 01:10:05.914
<v Brian Meacham>And if we keep thinking objectives early, as each discipline in its silo, you're never going to even give indicators to the other disciplines of what to consider, let alone getting them actually talking to each other.

01:10:06.414 --> 01:10:08.484
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a great summary, Brian.

01:10:08.725 --> 01:10:09.715
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you so much.

01:10:09.715 --> 01:10:13.604
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was a huge pleasure discussing socio-technical systems with you.

01:10:13.604 --> 01:10:21.944
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And like I'm taking this bird's eye view on the which puzzle we are in this big puzzle of built environment.

01:10:22.921 --> 01:10:24.542
<v Brian Meacham>Well, thank you very much for having me.

01:10:24.542 --> 01:10:30.851
<v Brian Meacham>It's, it's interesting to see how one's own perspectives change over 30 years or so.

01:10:30.851 --> 01:10:36.002
<v Brian Meacham>And you know, I, I think being able to constantly evolve is a good thing.

01:10:36.002 --> 01:10:38.072
<v Brian Meacham>So we all should try to do that

01:10:39.210 --> 01:10:43.949
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I see this year, 30 years ahead of us in this process, the process of rethinking fire safety.

01:10:44.279 --> 01:10:46.329
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So that's a great thing.

01:10:46.329 --> 01:10:47.289
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thanks so much, Brian.

01:10:47.452 --> 01:10:48.152
<v Brian Meacham>Thanks Wojciech.

01:10:49.291 --> 01:10:49.621
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Wow.

01:10:49.621 --> 01:10:58.373
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What a episode, I hope you felt this power of the thought that the fire safety engineering is not just models, tools, law or regulations.

01:10:58.404 --> 01:11:04.823
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's a whole socio-technical system within a larger system of a building environment.

01:11:04.884 --> 01:11:09.984
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And if we don't start treating it as a system, it's doubtful that it's going to work well.

01:11:10.314 --> 01:11:13.463
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I think it's not only a summary of this episode, but.

01:11:14.163 --> 01:11:16.144
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Of the 20 episodes of the podcast.

01:11:16.234 --> 01:11:23.134
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And what I've learned in the last three months is that, , fire safety is much wider than I felt.

01:11:23.373 --> 01:11:24.423
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I knew it was going to be huge.

01:11:24.423 --> 01:11:33.123
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's going to be interesting varying in topics, jumping from evacuation, human behavior, combustion science, to fire safety engineering, to modeling and stuff like that.

01:11:33.453 --> 01:11:37.863
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I knew it's going to be fun, but I never thought it's going to be that much varsity in it.

01:11:38.378 --> 01:11:45.969
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And when you really listen to what people have to say, when they come to the podcast, you'll notice that they all speak the same language.

01:11:46.088 --> 01:11:50.229
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They often see the issues outside of the modeling, outside of the tools.

01:11:50.229 --> 01:12:03.729
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>They see issues with education, with the system as whole, with the way how we approach modeling with our assumptions with blindly following the results without questioning the scope without finding objective.

01:12:04.623 --> 01:12:07.463
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And,  this is something really fascinating to me.

01:12:07.463 --> 01:12:14.514
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And for the next episodes, I'm going to dig into that even more because this is something I have never learned in my professional education.

01:12:14.993 --> 01:12:16.344
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You know, I was taught models.

01:12:16.373 --> 01:12:17.753
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I was taught the law.

01:12:17.934 --> 01:12:28.404
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I was taught the code speak, but I was never taught the socio-technical system I'm living in and I am a part of, so I'm really happy to be discovering this on air with you.

01:12:28.493 --> 01:12:30.594
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I really hope you are enjoying this journey.

01:12:31.519 --> 01:12:38.328
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, yeah, I, I can only promise you, we're going to keep doing this and there's going to be a lot more coming your way.

01:12:38.599 --> 01:12:45.729
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if you're interested, share the knowledge with someone, you know, and, yeah, come back here the next Wednesday for the next episode.

01:12:46.238 --> 01:12:47.109
<v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you very much.