Content uploaded by Michael Strömgren
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Michael Strömgren on Oct 17, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
A Review of the English and Swedish Building Regulatory Systems for Fire Safety using a Socio-Technical System (STS) Based Methodology HOLIFAS Project WP3
Abstract and Figures
This report is the result of a socio-technical system (STS) review of the English and Swedish building regulatory systems for fire safety. The project is a part of the HOLIFAS project, pertaining to fire safety of facades from a technical and regulatory perspective. The regulatory settings of England and Sweden are considered as a socio-technical system with complex interactions between institutions, actors (stakeholders) and technology. By applying the socio-technical building regulatory assessment methods, STBRSAM, the English and Swedish systems are reviewed. The application of the STBRSAM to England raised issues identified in the Hackitt review and demonstrates proof of concept for the applicability of the STBRSAM. The application of the STBRSAM to Sweden raises similar issues as identified in England. Both systems show inadequacies that may lead to unsafe buildings. The review identifies a number of inadequacies in both the English and Swedish regulatory regime. Most notably, there is a widespread lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities and lack of clear competency and accountability structures.
Figures - uploaded by Michael Strömgren
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Michael Strömgren
Content may be subject to copyright.
... Reasons for how potentially competing objectives could be introduced into the regulation and design of buildings, and the uneven levels of building performance that can result, have been explored in other contexts as well. Contributing factors include changes in policy-level focus, a siloed approach to building regulation development and building design, lack of clarity between sustainability and resilience, introduction of new materials and systems without adequate testing and design understanding, and inadequate enforcement mechanisms [45,56]. In addition to a SAFR Buildings approach to building regulation and design, sociotechnical systems (STS) thinking and an STS approach for the whole of the building regulatory system [57] would greatly assist in identifying and managing competing objectives and deliver on holistic building performance [12]. ...
... Socio-technical systems (STS) theory developed from studies of organizations that identified linkages between social and technological components, whether at an individual organizational level or as a collection of organizations and institutions operating at the overall level of society [57]. Building regulatory systems reflect well the STS concepts at the societal level when considering the interaction of actors (stakeholders), institutions and innovation in defining and achieving acceptable building performance in both regulatory and market environments [56,57,71]. ...
... It is important to think of building regulatory systems as STS especially in times of rapid system change and increases in complexity, either in regulation, technology or both, since systems that are not structured to consider influence across the institutional or actor levels can lead to failures [56,72,73]. When all parts are simple, adherence to the rules without deviation is likely and adequate, so prescriptive regulation works well. ...
... It has been argued that buildings, the building construction process, and the building regulatory processes that govern them, are all STS, as the 'system' in each case is characterized by complex interactions of technology, actors and institutions, continuous redesign facilitated by many actors from within at various stages, and for which safety and risk management concerns requires application of systems thinking [85,90,95,96]. As such, design of any building 'subsystem', including a buildings' fire safety system (the aggregate of all fire safety features), should be considered a STS design challenge. ...
... 5. Buildings, Building Regulatory Systems, and Performance-Based Design for Fire Safety as STS Buildings (complex buildings in particular) are macrosocial, or type 3 'systems of systems' that need both actors and some social/institutional infrastructure to be in place, and working integrally with technology, in order to deliver their intended performance [85,95,96]. Buildings have multiple types and levels of technology which need to work together for the building to operate, such as heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, fac¸ade/envelop design and construction, and sensor and control networks, or passive and active systems, sensors and controls for fire safety and occupant evacuation. ...
... Building regulatory systems are STS since they must consider the roles that institutions, stakeholders and technology play in design, construction and operation of buildings [85,90,[95][96][97]. This includes (a) the need to establish clear societal objectives for buildings, (b) how the technologies must work at each phase, and in total, in meeting the societal objectives, and (c) how to balance the myriad stakeholder input from those involved in the building design, construction and operation phases of a building's lifespan. ...
The fundamental construct for performance-based design for fire safety in use today has not significantly changed since the early 1990s. While the current construct has seen some success, performance-based design for fire safety is not as broadly accepted as performance-based design approaches in other building-related engineering disciplines. To advance performance-based design for fire safety, it is proposed to move towards a sociotechnical systems approach. This means changing the starting point from a focus on fire safety objectives as a unique property of buildings, infrastructure, or operations, and considering fire safety as one of several sociotechnical objectives. It also means focusing fire safety analysis and design on system attributes which can be controlled through design, and less on variables for which control is unlikely or not possible. As part of this, consideration of fire safety systems performance should be considered in terms of a ‘fail-safe’ perspective, in which there is less focus on all possible events that could occur, and more on preventing those which could result in unacceptable performance. Evaluation of building fire safety as a sociotechnical systems problem would also need to consider the interactions of all components that contribute to safety over the lifetime of the system, including in-use safety system management and system performance over time.
... It was determined that such direct interaction was the most appropriate way to gain the most current knowledge regarding practical developments in these areas. Discussion with IRCC members was complemented by a limited review of literature regarding the situation with performance-based building regulatory systems in representative European countries (e.g., Meijer et al., 2002;Ang et al., 2007;Meijer and Visscher, 2017;Osácar et al., 2021;Pedro et al., 2009;Meacham and Stromgren, 2019). ...
... Also, if a holistic review of the building regulatory system is not undertaken, there can be mitigation cost burdens imposed without the benefits that are anticipated (e.g., Greenwood, 2007;Ashe et al., 2009;van der Heijden and de Jong, 2013). It has been shown through a case study on the building regulatory system failure in England associated with the Grenfell Tower fire that application of a STS approach for assessing building regulatory systems can be helpful in identifying such gaps (Meacham and Stromgren, 2019;Meacham et al., 2020). ...
It has been suggested that future generations of building regulation can become more risk-informed and performance based, and that this can be best facilitated through viewing the building regulatory system as a socio-technical system (STS). A central component of the STS approach to building regulation is that government (regulators) and the market understand and agree the risk measure(s) that have and will be used to define the tolerable level of risks that are addressed through building regulation, the specific risk criteria that will be used in the evaluation of the risks for regulation and design, and the analysis and design approaches that will be used to demonstrate that building design solutions can be verified as meeting the risk criteria and measures. To support these efforts, a risk characterization roadmap is presented as guidance for building regulators embarking on efforts to use risk as a basis for building performance requirements. While the roadmap has been designed to address all health and safety hazards considered within building regulations, characterization of fire risk is used as an example throughout.
Fire has the potential to create significant impacts on the built environment. Managing this impact is sometimes pursued without consideration of the interface between the natural and technological worlds. However, as society has recognized the impacts of technological development on environmental sustainability, the need for sustainable and resilient development has emerged. To facilitate sustainable and resilient development, technological choices should embrace a sociotechnical systems approach that considers the interactions of society, technology and institutions, and their interactions with the environment. Failure to do so can result in unintended consequences. Society’s technological choices aimed at increasing sustainability of buildings, such as the desire to reduce building carbon footprints or improve the use of renewable energy systems, can have significant impacts on fire resilience if not considered holistically. To better understand and comprehensively address and mitigate intolerable fire risk associated with choices driven by sustainability objectives, a balanced and holistic systems approach is needed. To this end, a framework to foster a systems-oriented approach to improving both sustainability and fire resilience, in tandem, to create a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Built Environment (SAFR-BE) is presented.
The project has strived to create possibilities for an unbroken chain of information for
fire safety and has tried this concept in practice. The model for the unbroken chain of
information consists of the concept, systematisation and methods for regulatory
compliance and quality assurance as well as defining the associated information
process. The potential effect is clear communication, increased transparency, audit
trails, increased quality, and improved productivity.
The goal of the project was to prove the potential of an unbroken chain of information,
evaluate technical infrastructure and identify potential barriers to implementation.
Further, the goal has been to identify hinders and opportunities for other disciplines to
apply a similar concept and to create interoperability between different digital
platforms
An online survey regarding the global situation with fire safety engineering was conducted in late 2016 and early 2017. The survey was distributed via social media (e.g., LinkedIn) and direct email distribution. The survey was published in English and Spanish languages. Overall there were more than 400 respondents from 41 countries, although not all respondents completed the full survey. The questions were wide-ranging, with an aim to obtain a sense of how fire safety engineering was working (or not), what types of analyses are being undertaken, whether there are sufficient numbers of qualified practitioners, authorities, etc., and what types of strategies might be appropriate to advance fire safety engineering in the future. Analysis focuses largely on countries with the highest number of responses. Commonalities and differences between the countries are explored. Findings suggest broad agreement on the need for more engineers, greater competence and more education.
This is the second part of a two part article. In Part I, a social systems theory was applied to the analysis of hazardous technology and socio-technical systems, their complex dynamics, and risky dimensions and likelihood of accidents. It identified many of the diverse human risk factors associated with complex technologies and socio-technical systems, thus contributing knowledge toward preventing - or minimizing the likelihood of - accidents or catastrophes. This second part of the article will systematically address the broader issues of risk conceptions, analysis, and management in contemporary society including policy and other practical aspects. The social systems perspective and its derivations are contrasted to such impressionistic conceptions as those of Ulrich Beck. Section 1 of the paper introduces the topic of risk as a discursive concept in contemporary society. Our point of departure is the social system approach introduced in Part I, which is contrasted to that of Ulrich Beck, who eschews systematic theorizing at the same time that he denigrates empirical sociology. The section stresses that contemporary society is not so much threatened by high risks all around (as in Ulrich Beck's "risk society") but is more characterized by its developed risk discourses (a great deal owing to Beck himself), risk consciousness, risk theorizing, and risk management. What is truly characteristic of modern society are discretionary powers to determine dimensions, levels, and regulation of risk, that is, choices can be made whether or not to develop a technology, whether or not to not to tightly regulate it, for instance limiting or banning its use or whether or not to allow its widespread application, and under what conditions. Section 2 provides a brief review of our social systems framework, actor-system-dialectics (ASD) theory. Section 3 treats risk and risk analysis in a systems perspective, emphasizing the limitations of risk assessment and the risk management of complex, hazardous systems. Section 4 considers several principles which may serve to guide policy-making and regulation with respect to the hazards and risks of complex technologies and socio-technical systems.
Building regulatory systems have been evolving in recent decades, first with a transition to a functional or performance basis, and more recently with the introduction of new societal objectives, including those related to sustainability and climate change resiliency. Various policy and technical challenges have been identified with this evolution, including the lack of a common basis for establishing performance expectations, quantified performance metrics, and robust mechanisms to incorporate new objectives in a manner that effectively integrates a diversity of stakeholder input and results in regulatory requirements that do not compete with long-standing objectives. Among the mechanisms being explored to facilitate a managed evolution is the use of risk as a basis for performance, and modifications within the building regulatory environment to enable this. It is posited that framing the building regulatory system as a socio-technical system (STS) will highlight the complex interactions that exist between regulators and the market, the roles stakeholders play in characterizing risk for use in building regulation, and what steps are required to shift to a risk-informed performance-based building regulatory system, taking into account different legal structures and regulatory approaches that exist between jurisdictions.
An alternative approach to understanding innovation is made using two intersecting ideas. The first is that successful innovation requires consideration of the social and organizational contexts in which it is located. The complex context of construction work is characterized by inter-organizational collaboration, a project-based approach and power distributed amongst collaborating organizations. The second is that innovations can be divided into two modes: ‘bounded’, where the implications of innovation are restricted within a single, coherent sphere of influence, and ‘unbounded’, where the effects of implementation spill over beyond this. Bounded innovations are adequately explained within the construction literature. However, less discussed are unbounded innovations, where many firms' collaboration is required for successful implementation, even though many innovations can be considered unbounded within construction's inter-organizational context. It is argued that unbounded innovations require an approach to understand and facilitate the interactions both within a range of actors and between the actors and technological artefacts. The insights from a sociology of technology approach can be applied to the multiplicity of negotiations and alignments that constitute the implementation of unbounded innovation. The utility of concepts from the sociology of technology, including ‘system building’ and ‘heterogeneous engineering’, is demonstrated by applying them to an empirical study of an unbounded innovation on a major construction project (the new terminal at Heathrow Airport, London, UK). This study suggests that ‘system building’ contains outcomes that are not only transformations of practices, processes and systems, but also the potential transformation of technologies themselves.
Over the past 25 years, building regulations in many countries have become less prescriptive and more functional or performance oriented. Concurrently, there has been an increase in the application of performance-based design concepts and in the use of innovative building methods and materials. In some cases, there has also been an increased reliance on self-certification by design professionals. Each of these changes promises flexibility in design and reduction of regulatory burden. In most cases, the promises are fulfilled. However, there are also cases where some aspect of the system does not work as intended, and buildings are constructed that do not meet performance expectations, sometimes with serious consequences. Focusing on experiences from member countries of the Inter-Jurisdictional Regulatory Collaboration Committee (IRCC), challenges faced and lessons learned from issues associated with accommodating innovation within building regulatory systems are examined: innovation outpacing readiness, a lack of education, the need for increased competency, feedback mechanisms and control. There are also mismatched performance expectations, a lack of performance measures, self-certification issues, and inadequate application of available data and information. This will assist regulators and others to become aware of potential issues and possible solutions.
A new method for identifying and ranking critical components and sets of components in technical infrastructures is presented. The criticality of a component or a set of components is defined as the vulnerability of the system to failure in a specific component, or set of components. The identification of critical components is increasingly difficult when considering multiple simultaneous failures. This is especially difficult when dealing with failures of multiple components with synergistic consequences, i.e. consequences that cannot be calculated by adding the consequences of the individual failures. The proposed method addresses this problem. In exemplifying the method, an analysis of an electric power distribution system in a Swedish municipality is presented. It is concluded that the proposed method facilitates the identification of critical sets of components for large-scale technical infrastructures.
Swedish legislation requires that any owner or user of a building maintain a reasonable level of fire protection measures to ensure the safety of all people located in the building. If a building, in the wake of a fire, in court is determined not to have had a reasonable fire protection, the blame will likewise be assigned to the building owner or user. Using the perspective of risk governance, this study aims at analysing how regulation and stakeholders interact to maintain a specific level of fire protection in hotels. The focus is on identifying problems and frictions that have emerged from the complex relationships, and differences of interests, between the different stakeholders. Based on a stakeholder analysis, 11 respondents were selected for an interview study. The main problems identified in the analysis are that there are ambiguities for the individual hotel owner to know whether her or his fire protection measures are reasonable according to the law, that the system has emerged without clear political goals, problems related to the process of local supervision, that the ambiguous situation gives rise to opportunities of other stakeholders to claim the definition of what counts as a reasonable extent, and the ethical problems associated with convicting a single individual for failure in a complex multi-actor system.