Enablers of Quantitative Risk Assessments in Major Hazard Facilities versus those in Fire Safety Engineering

• There is an opportunity for FSE to learn from the practice and implementation of QRA in other industries, including MHF • We review the different contexts of MHF and FSE and highlight a number of key differences between them • Adoption of QRAs in FSE cannot ignore the different contexts between the two fields of application. • FSE addresses consequences of a fire, this must be recognised in development and application of risk-based FSE techniques Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) is a tool which has a long history of development in safety related disciplines, and which is seen as a potential means of both regulating and demonstrating required building performance in fire safety engineering. Whilst application of QRA in other fields has arguably been successful in enabling operators of infrastructure to successfully manage risks, this has been achieved in a regulatory and engineering environment which is significantly different to the one in which fire safety engineering is conducted. Key differences include tractability of the solutions, availability of data, design philosophy and approach, risk ownership and acceptance criteria. Through a comparison of the enablers of QRAs in Major Hazard Facilities in many countries against the current environment for practice for fire safety engineering this article explores these key differences and discusses the suitability of QRAs as a means of evidencing the satisfactory performance of a particular fire safety strategy at a given building or infrastructure. A number of key issues are highlighted which suggest that QRAs cannot be the only means of regulating or demonstrating performance. The paper concludes by proposing that: 1. QRAs should be part of a multitude of methods by which fire safety engineers can evidence performance in a performance or risk based regulatory environment; that 2. QRAs may be better suited as one means of demonstrating optimisation of a fire safety strategy through reduction of residual risk after having demonstrated the achievement of overall fire safety objectives based on the consequences of occurrence of a fire; and that 3) The role of professional judgement and responsibility need to be fully revisited for an approach of this nature is to be implemented adequately.