Building construction and it's effect on the Fire Service - Essay Example

Type II is Noncombustible, this type represents those building having steel beams and girders, they are susceptible to steel deformation and resulting collapse with less or no warning. Type III is the ordinary construction which consists of a mix of materials, including steel, wood and concrete, the older this type of building gets the more it is prone to fire. Type IV is the Heavy Timber almost all types of members and load bearing structures are made of wood and as a result the burn time of these structures are normally very long before the structure fails or collapse completely.

The connections, usually of steel, are the weak points in this type of construction. Type V is Wood Frames, they normally consist of common houses and other small structures made of wooden frames. The appendix 1 contains a extract of the NFPA 220: Standard on Types of Building Construction, Edition which gives the fire resistive rating of each type of building construction given. There are many aspects of the building that are to be considered for fire protection and safety. The issue is that what these steps and aspects should be gauged and standardized too, for this there are several standardization bodies, research organizations and codes working significant among which are National Fire Protection Association, International Building Codes (IBC), International Fire codes, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and ASTM.

Where as the codes that dictates the fire services and building construction at the same time are NFPA 1: Uniform Fire Code, NFPA 101: Life Safety Code, NFPA 241: Standard for Safeguarding Construction, Alteration, and Demolition Operations, NFPA 1141: Standard for Fire Protection in Planned Building Groups, NFPA 5000: Building Construction and Safety Code. (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). The fire services and its specifications are designed on many considerations of the buildings construction, the first consideration would be the type of construction as mentioned before, second major consideration is the height, no of floors and working space of the building, thirdly are the structural systems and their connections, failures points and fourthly the material of construction also known as the fuel for the fire and lastly the occupancy of the facility.

Firstly it is the type of construction that governs the fire services, the resistance of the construction directly affects the fire protection system and the no of hours the building can sustain fire. The method of calculation is given below and it corresponds to those written in the appendix 1. Type II (000), it requires sprinklers and If it is a Type II (222), sprinklers are not required. So the type of construction dictates the type of fire fighting. Now as we know the fire resistance of the building, the major building codes dictates all the fire services accordingly, the most widely used and implemented building construction code is International Building Code IBC 2006 and International Fire Code.

Now I would like to highlight the main components of fire services which are affected my the fire resistance capabilities of the structure. According to IBC the first consideration is fire walls that need to be build and which is summarized in the table below. The section 715 of the IBC 2006 has a detailed standards on