A12
ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT
Date: May 14, 1997
Dept. File No. PL000V.RPT
CC File: 3651-1
TO: Vancouver City Council
FROM: The General Managers of Fire and Rescue Services and Community
Services Group in consultation with the Comptroller of Budgets
and Research
SUBJECT: UBC Fire Protection Engineering Program
RECOMMENDATION
THAT Council approve awarding a contract to the University of
British Columbia to provide special training and technical support
in the area of Fire Protection Engineering to assist the Permits
and Licenses and Fire Departments. The value of the contract to be
$75,000 for the academic year 1997 - 1998. The source of the funds
to be 1997 Trade Permit Fee Revenue Accounts.
GENERAL MANAGERS' COMMENTS
The General Managers of the Fire and Rescue Services and Community
Services Group RECOMMEND approval of the foregoing.
COUNCIL POLICY
Current policy requires that all contracts for consulting services in
excess of $30,000 be approved by Council. The services proposed in this
report include a combination of specific services and consulting
services.
SUMMARY
This report presents a proposal from the University of British Columbia
to provide specialist training and consulting services to the Fire and
Permits and Licences departments.
The services proposed include the following:
- Provision of places within the Fire Protection Engineering M.Eng.
studies program;
- Assistance with the development of training programs for fire
fighting management;
- Holding workshops and seminars on fire modelling techniques;
- Assistance with forensic fire investigations;
- Assistance with the processing of fire safety equivalents;
- Assistance with managing the transition to performance-based codes
which will be a reality by the year 2001.
It is proposed that these services will provide invaluable assistance to
City Staff and Fire Department Personnel to improve the standard and
awareness of fire safety in the City. They will also assist with
achieving the objectives of Better City Government by providing staff
the tools required to provide effective and rational input into the
permitting and inspections process. This will enable designers to
achieve more efficient building designs through equivalency/performance
objectives while maintaining adequate and consistent levels of fire
safety.
The proposal will also provide the City's support for the Fire
Protection Engineering Program at UBC and assist this specialized
program develop into a major Canadian Centre for fire safety education
and research. Currently, the M.Eng. program is one of only two in North
America. The resources provided by this centre will prove of
significant benefit, not only to City Staff, but also the design and
construction community in Vancouver.
PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT
- To present the response from the University of B.C. and the Union
of B.C. Municipalities to the request from the Standing Committee
on City Services and Budgets;
- To present the proposal from the University of British Columbia to
provide specialized training and technical support in the area of
Fire Protection Engineering;
- To further comment on the rationale for the Fire Protection
Engineering program and to outline the current level of
participation by City Staff in the UBC Program;
- To briefly review recent developments in the application of current
Fire Protection Engineering principles in the design of complex
buildings and the implications for the City in the proposed
transition to performance-based codes in Canada.
BACKGROUND
Council has a long-standing policy on promoting fire safety in buildings
ever since Council encouraged the use of more performance-oriented codes
and adopted the 1970 requirements of the National Building Code (NBC).
Subsequently, Council has adopted successive editions of the NBC which
have been consistently improved and updated in the area of fire and life
safety.
In 1993, Council authorized a grant of $75,000 to the University of B.C.
to support the Fire Protection Engineering program and enable it to
commence offering M.Eng. courses while discussions with the Union of
B.C. Municipalities continued to arrange for additional funding from
other municipalities. It was proposed that the City's share would be
achieved through an increase in the trade permit fees, with matching
funding from UBCM. This increase, based on collecting 2.25% of all
trade permit fees, is currently in effect and covers the City's portion
of the funding and would be available for the cost of this contract.
This grant was renewed by Council in June 1995 for a period of two years
subject to UBC providing 10 course sessions per year free to City staff.
The two-year extension was to support the program for the academic years
1995-1996 and 1996-1997. It was anticipated that this period would
allow adequate time for UBC to secure alternative funding for the
program from the Union of B.C. Municipalities and/or industry and
facilitate continued funding from Vancouver to be matched with funding
from other municipalities.
Subsequently, Council on June 27th 1996, approved a recommendation of
the Standing Committee on City Services and Budgets that consideration
of this grant to the University of British Columbia, for the
continuation of the Fire protection Engineering Program, be deferred to
September 1996, pending a response from the Union of B.C. Municipalities
regarding its financial support for the program.
DISCUSSION
The attached response from UBC (Appendix A) describes the development of
the Fire Protection Engineering Program to date and outlines the current
sources of funding for the program. It also contains more information
from the UBCM on its recent actions to procure funding from its members
and notes the endorsement of the program by the Fire Chiefs' Association
of B.C.
An updated information package has been distributed to B.C.
Municipalities together with a further request for financial support.
In return for their contributions, municipalities will receive credits
towards enrolment in the Fire Protection Engineering Program and in fire
protection workshops.
While the University is still optimistically pursuing funding from the
UBCM, it has also aggressively sought funding from industry. This
effort has been relatively well rewarded and the attached report
outlines the source and magnitude of such funding. However, this
funding alone is not adequate for the program to maintain its current
level of services or to develop as originally anticipated into a major
centre for research and training in the field of Fire Protection
Engineering.
The University has proposed that in lieu of a direct grant,
consideration be given to awarding the Fire Protection Engineering
program a contract to provide high level training as part of the M.Eng
Program or in alternative diploma or certificate programs in Fire
Protection Engineering. In addition, it is proposed to provide Permits
and Licenses and the Fire Department with consulting services and
special fire safety modelling to assist the City with investigations,
equivalencies and analysis of building code issues and policies.
Following is a tentative program of the contract activities and funding
allocations which will be confirmed at a workshop to be held by UBC with
City staff in attendance:
1. Tuition fees: Equivalent of 4 City employees enrolled on a full
time basis in the M.Eng. Program in Fire Protection Engineering. 4 x $2,300 = $9,200
2. Fees for six City employees in workshops on Fire Protection
Engineering. (1997/1998 Workshop will be entitled "Municipal Fire
Protection for Public Administrators".)
6 x $2,000 = $12,000
3. Presentation of four three hour seminars on performance based
design delivered to City staff (Permits and Licences)
Tentative Seminars for 1997/1998 (final program to be developed in
consultation with City Staff)
- Basic concepts and principles
- International performance-based codes
- Performance-based design for fire resistance
- Performance-based design of detection systems.
Preparation/presentation based on 24 hours per seminar
4 x $2,400 = $9,600
4. Four three-hour seminars on the role of fire modelling in fire
investigations to City staff (Fire Dept)
Tentative Seminars for 1997/1998(final program to be developed in
consultation with City Staff)
- Introduction to Fire Modelling
- Review of current models
- Documented use of fire modelling in forensic analysis
- A worked example (selected in consultation with VPD).
Preparation/presentation based on 24 hours per seminar
4 x $2,400 = $9,600
5. Assist Permits and Licenses in Building By-law development by
undertaking one complete fire safety engineering analysis of a
proposed major code change per year
This would likely form the basis of an M.Eng. Project thesis in
which 50% of the stipend would be awarded to the student in the
form of a scholarship and 50% to the program. One such topic could
be to carry out a reliability analysis of fire safety systems for
tall buildings and assess the level of fire risk after an
earthquake. Proposed Cost $10,000
6. Assist the Fire Department in forensic analysis by using fire
modelling techniques to recreate one specific fire event each year.
This could similarly form the basis of an M.Eng. Project Thesis in
which 50% of the stipend would be awarded to the student in the
form of a scholarship and 50% to the program. A proposed topic
could be to analyse the recent fire at 5th Avenue which presented
some significant problems for fire fighters and to assess the
advisability of Fire By-law changes and/or modified fire fighting
procedures.
Proposed Cost $10,000
7. Provide specialized consulting services to the City to assist with
the following:
- Provide advice and analysis for review of equivalent fire
safety measures;
- Assist with the development of degree, diploma and certificate
programs for the Fire Department;
- Participate in policy planning committees for the Fire and
Permits and Licenses Departments;
- Provide assistance with the transition to performance based
codes.
Estimated time commitment per year - 150 hours @ $100.00 = $15,000
______________________________
Total Estimated Cost = $75,400
FIRE AND LIFE-SAFETY KNOWLEDGE
The program presents a valuable opportunity for the City of Vancouver
staff together with other B.C. municipalities and the professional
design community to develop a substantially higher understanding of fire
and life-safety engineering and the underlying rationale of current
building codes and standards. This assists the designers in achieving
the required level of fire and life safety in their buildings consistent
with other design constraints.
It also provides municipal staff with the tools necessary for reasonable
application and interpretation of increasingly complex regulations and
avoids the problems associated with a relatively rigid adherence to
purely prescriptive regulations, the rationale for which may not be
fully comprehended. With the planned introduction of the newer
objective-based codes and standards, currently scheduled for publication
within five years, it will become necessary for most municipalities and
fire protection design professionals to take further specialised courses
in order to stay current with this new direction in building code
technology.
CODE EQUIVALENCIES
The Permits and Licenses Department is currently receiving an
unprecedented number of requests for fire safety and building code
equivalencies. These requests are generally prepared by Fire Protection
Engineers based on a consideration of the perceived objectives of the
National and Vancouver Building and Fire codes and are required to
demonstrate that they achieve levels of performance equivalent to
current code standards. This approach provides the designer
considerably more latitude in design than following the more narrow
purely prescriptive requirements of the building code, and enables the
designer to achieve more creative design solutions. It also greatly
assists in avoiding any conflicts with current zoning and development
by-laws and guidelines.
In common with several other Lower Mainland municipalities, we have had
reason to question the quality and technical adequacy of some of the
reports submitted to us by practitioners without adequate background
knowledge. Several reports have been found to contain unwarranted
assumptions, technical errors and ambiguities and have had to be
returned to the writer with requests for major revisions. This causes
delays to the projects and inconvenience to the owner and designer.
MAINTAINING A LOCAL COURSE
The discipline of Fire Protection Engineering is a relatively new
discipline. Currently the UBC Fire Protection Program is the only
Canadian University offering a graduate program in Fire protection
Engineering and is one of only two in North America. Due to the
relatively rapid expansion and growth of opportunity in this field, it
has attracted practitioners who may lack formalised training and
in-depth experience in Fire Safety and Fire Protection Engineering. It
is the intention of the Permits and Licenses Department to require that
all Fire protection engineering reports and requests for equivalency be
prepared and sealed by a registered professional engineer who has
successfully completed a graduate level program in Fire Protection
Engineering such as that offered at UBC or Worcester Polytechnical
Institute in the USA. It is proposed to implement this requirement once
a sufficient number of Fire protection consultants have had the
opportunity to attend the UBC program.
Commensurate with requiring enhanced qualifications from practitioners,
it is also necessary that City staff dealing with equivalencies possess
adequate training and professional level qualifications. Due to the
complex technical nature of the training required, it is not feasible
for the City to offer such training in-house. Accordingly, Permits and
Licenses and the Fire Department intend to upgrade the requirements for
all staff processing equivalencies and technical fire safety reports to
include graduate level training in Fire Protection Engineering. This
requirement will become more essential when objective-based codes are
introduced in Canada in the year 2001 and when more designers seek to
take advantage of the increased flexibility and rationalization offered
by such codes.
Currently, four City staff members are enrolled in the UBC program,
three from Permits and Licenses and one from the Fire Department. This
virtually fills our quota of free allotted space for the next two years
or more. The balance of the space allocated to the City would be
utilized through attendance by City staff at UBC's fire protection
workshops. It is likely that with increasing exposure to the program
and the proposal to require enhanced qualifications for both Fire
protection Engineers and City professional staff, more staff members
will wish to avail themselves of the opportunities offered by this
program. CONCLUSION
The availability of a graduate level program in Fire Protection
Engineering at a local institution provides an invaluable resource to
the local design and building regulatory community. As the program
expands, it will attract to Vancouver, internationally-renowned
researchers and practitioners and provide a centre of information and
technical excellence. This will likely prove very beneficial to the
local design and construction community and improve their reputation and
standing throughout Canada and overseas.
In order for the program to be developed past its current initial phase
and to avoid curtailment or abandonment of the program, it would be
necessary that some financial support funding from the City comparable
to that originally authorized in July 1995, be continued. It is
recommended that consideration be given by Council to continuing this
funding, but on a contractual fees for service basis as outlined above.
In response to concerns raised by the Greater Vancouver Regional Permits
and Licenses Committee, the Association of Professional Engineers and
Geoscientists of B.C. has drafted proposed qualification requirements
for fire protection engineers. Subsequently, these will be presented to
the Regional Permits and Licenses administrative committee for
acceptance by all municipalities within UBCM. This should necessitate a
mechanism for funding the UBC program and should facilitate obtaining
future additional funding from the UBCM members municipalities.
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