May 22, 2024

153 - Fire Safety Engineer of the Future is a Great Communicator

153 - Fire Safety Engineer of the Future is a Great Communicator

A few weeks ago in Copenhagen, stepping onto the stage to open the SFPE Fire Safety Conference and Expo on Performance-Based Design, I took a bit of a gamble. I was invited to give an opening keynote, but instead of talking about my fire science and engineering, I've chosen to confront an often-overlooked cornerstone of our profession: communication. If you follow the podcast, it is not something new to you. I brought up this case multiple times - Fire safety is not just about the technical mastery of fire dynamics and code compliance – we, as engineers, need to be as adept with our communications so that our solutions are put into practice.

 In this episode, I'm giving my best attempt to recreate my I share the insights from my keynote, focusing on articulating complex fire safety strategies across diverse competencies and the crucial need for innovation in our communication methods. The art of communication within fire safety engineering is akin to translating an intricate language for a varied audience. From investors to fellow engineers in MEP and HVAC, ensuring each stakeholder not only grasps but values the information is key to effective implementation. 

By popular request, I hope you enjoy this talk for all those who were not able to make it to the SFPE conference in Copenhagen. And those who were there, this perhaps serves as a good refresher of that event and perhaps a point to restart some of the most interesting discussions that happened there.

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

Chapters

00:00 - Communication in Fire Safety Engineering

13:21 - Challenges of Communicating Fire Safety

29:16 - Improving Communication in Fire Safety Engineering

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:00.201 --> 00:00:01.985
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

00:00:01.985 --> 00:00:04.751
A month ago, something really amazing happened to me.

00:00:04.751 --> 00:00:09.111
A truly bucket list item has been ticked off the list.

00:00:09.111 --> 00:00:14.486
I was invited to give an opening keynote at a major fire safety engineering conference.

00:00:14.486 --> 00:00:19.224
That was the SFPE Fire Safety Conference and Expo on Performance Based Design.

00:00:19.224 --> 00:00:23.472
Many of us refer to it as the big SFPE conference.

00:00:23.472 --> 00:00:26.882
It happens every few years at the different continent.

00:00:26.882 --> 00:00:30.492
The last time it was in Europe it happened in Warsaw.

00:00:30.492 --> 00:00:33.220
Actually, it was a fantastic event.

00:00:33.220 --> 00:00:37.670
Many years ago I was a simple master of science back then.

00:00:37.670 --> 00:00:38.853
I gave some presentations.

00:00:38.853 --> 00:00:52.604
I wouldn't think the next time the conference comes back to Europe I would be giving an opening keynote, but yet it happened and I appreciate SFP, I appreciate the organizing committee for giving me a chance to do that and I truly hope I did not fail you.

00:00:52.604 --> 00:00:59.445
But based on the response that was given after the talk, the response was fantastic and a lot of people enjoyed it.

00:00:59.445 --> 00:01:04.061
I was given a complete liberty on the subject of my talk.

00:01:04.061 --> 00:01:11.474
So I thought about all the scientific topics I could cover regarding fire safety engineering and scientific side of the fire safety.

00:01:11.474 --> 00:01:41.215
But I thought, yeah, I've given a lot of talks on science in SFP conferences, and I think a topic that I can truly speak from my experience based on the thing that I'm doing right now together with you is communication, and I found out that, yeah, perhaps a talk on communication could be something interesting for the broader fire safety engineering community present at the SFP conference in Copenhagen.

00:01:41.215 --> 00:01:43.587
Yeah, it worked quite well.

00:01:43.587 --> 00:01:45.385
The feedback was fantastic.

00:01:45.385 --> 00:01:49.968
A lot of people requested me to share the talk which I am doing right now.

00:01:49.968 --> 00:02:03.046
I'm just gonna give the keynote to you, using the fire science show as my vessel, and I'll try to convince you as well why the future fire safety engineer is a great communicator.

00:02:03.046 --> 00:02:06.332
So, yeah, let's spin the intro and let's try and do this.

00:02:06.332 --> 00:02:13.822
Welcome to the Firesize Show.

00:02:13.822 --> 00:02:17.283
My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host.

00:02:17.283 --> 00:02:33.257
This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants.

00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:36.188
Ofr is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy.

00:02:36.188 --> 00:02:47.043
Its globally established team has developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and environment.

00:02:47.043 --> 00:03:02.842
Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally in just seven years, with offices across the country in seven locations from Edinburgh to Bath and now employing more than a hundred professionals.

00:03:02.842 --> 00:03:14.513
Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society, applying the best research experience and diligence for effective, tailored fire safety solutions.

00:03:14.513 --> 00:03:25.146
In 2024, ofr will grow its team once more and is always keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on fire safety futures.

00:03:25.146 --> 00:03:28.485
This year, get in touch at ofrconsultantscom.

00:03:29.427 --> 00:03:30.068
Okay, let's do this.

00:03:30.068 --> 00:03:36.514
I hope I'm a good communicator because I'm about to give you a slideshow without showing you a single slide.

00:03:36.514 --> 00:03:43.816
I actually have the copenhagen slides in front of my eyes and let's try to give you as close experience to the keynote speech as possible.

00:03:43.816 --> 00:03:45.120
So, yeah, let's do this.

00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:51.259
So the fire safety engineer of the future is a great communicator.

00:03:51.419 --> 00:04:12.022
As I said, I've chosen the topic of communication over multiple scientific topics that I could give a speech on, and I thought the first question that people will have in their minds when listening to the talk, to the opening of the talk, is is why, why this subject is is this truly the biggest challenge we have within the fire safety engineering?

00:04:12.022 --> 00:04:17.899
Is this really something that requires a keynote, that requires a highlight?

00:04:17.899 --> 00:04:33.060
This is really something we need to talk, and you must understand that it happened in a very particular moment, because just the day before there was this massive fire of a historical building in the middle of Copenhagen where we were all located.

00:04:33.060 --> 00:04:41.432
It was just a few hundred meters off the conference, so definitely the minds of fire safety engineers in the place were in a little different place than communication.

00:04:41.432 --> 00:04:46.348
So the first question is is communication really the biggest struggle in fire safety engineering?

00:04:46.348 --> 00:04:47.750
And yeah, of course it's not.

00:04:47.750 --> 00:04:52.666
Of course it's not the number one issue we do have in fire safety engineering.

00:04:53.329 --> 00:04:58.206
I've raised a list of things that I think are biggest challenges or bigger challenges.

00:04:58.206 --> 00:04:59.951
Definitely competency.

00:04:59.951 --> 00:05:04.228
If you've listened in any way to danger did hacketh of what?

00:05:04.228 --> 00:05:18.011
What Jose Toledo had to say after Grenfell, if you've listened to my episode with Michael Woodrow, for example, competency is something that we perhaps really struggle in fire safety engineering and something that we need to have established and forward.

00:05:18.011 --> 00:05:20.067
Next thing I've raised is innovation.

00:05:20.067 --> 00:05:22.387
Innovation and it connects with sustainability.

00:05:22.387 --> 00:05:23.444
Another thing on my list.

00:05:23.444 --> 00:05:32.879
Those two things are the big drivers in the built environment that require sudden, quick change in how fire safety engineering is performed.

00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:47.427
We have to adopt to complete new array of challenges that were never met, that we've never faced, and we need to find a fire safety way to deal with them, and usually most of the solutions that are innovative and sustainable for some reason burn down.

00:05:47.427 --> 00:05:50.906
They are usually quite dangerous from the fire safety engineering perspective.

00:05:50.906 --> 00:05:52.286
So, yeah, that's a big challenge.

00:05:53.326 --> 00:06:07.336
I definitely see a struggle with funding fire safety engineering, both in terms of funding the research in fire safety engineering and fire safety science itself, but also the endless struggle for funding fire safety science itself, but also the endless struggle for funding fire safety features of the buildings.

00:06:07.336 --> 00:06:15.024
It's a matter of cost optimization right now how what we put into our buildings and how we deliver fire safety in them.

00:06:15.024 --> 00:06:18.271
And, yeah, this, this is a serious challenge.

00:06:18.271 --> 00:06:26.644
How do we provide fire safety to population at large with the limited amount of resources that are available to us?

00:06:26.644 --> 00:06:36.148
And because the resources are available in a scarce amount, we need to figure out what solutions give us the biggest bang for a buck spent on fire safety.

00:06:36.148 --> 00:06:37.411
That's a true challenge.

00:06:37.411 --> 00:06:41.225
I've also perhaps have mentioned that architects are a problem.

00:06:41.225 --> 00:06:51.396
Actually, that was a little joke for my friend, paolo Ramos, who is a performance-based design fire safety engineer and architect.

00:06:51.396 --> 00:06:55.629
So, yeah, a little pun If you ever attended any talk of my own.

00:06:55.629 --> 00:07:01.023
I like to have them lighten with some jokes inside the next after architects.

00:07:01.062 --> 00:07:03.526
The next problem I seen was legislation.

00:07:03.526 --> 00:07:09.315
We live in completely different law orders in different parts of the world.

00:07:09.315 --> 00:07:20.091
The struggles are very similar, the challenges are very similar, the law framework is usually very different and we need to find solutions that will work in the framework we are.

00:07:20.091 --> 00:07:30.906
I've once said in the past that fire safety engineering is a skill to adopt global knowledge on fire safety into your local challenge, and I stay by that.

00:07:30.906 --> 00:07:32.966
And lastly, the uncertain future.

00:07:32.966 --> 00:07:34.884
What will happen in the future?

00:07:34.884 --> 00:07:35.848
I have no idea.

00:07:35.848 --> 00:07:37.906
We haven't seen facades coming.

00:07:37.906 --> 00:07:47.404
Okay, some of us did, and I appreciate those people, but at large we were not aware that perhaps the facades are as big a problem as they are.

00:07:47.404 --> 00:07:49.706
We have a certain future.

00:07:49.706 --> 00:07:56.689
We don't know which of the subjects that we're touching today, which of the solutions of the modern world, will become a fire safety problems of the future.

00:07:56.689 --> 00:07:59.540
If we did, we would be already looking for solutions.

00:07:59.540 --> 00:08:12.052
Of course, some of us are working on novel solutions for novel problems, but do we know everything For sure not, and one day we will need to find solutions for problems we don't even know they exist yet.

00:08:12.052 --> 00:08:15.591
That's a true challenge of Fisaf engineering of the future.

00:08:15.591 --> 00:08:19.129
So yeah, that's quite a list of pending challenges.

00:08:19.540 --> 00:08:20.942
Where's the communication in that?

00:08:20.942 --> 00:08:30.629
And here I raise the point that communication is a critical component of solving all of these challenges that arise with Fisafed Engineering.

00:08:30.629 --> 00:08:32.472
You want to solve competency.

00:08:32.472 --> 00:08:36.336
We need better education and we need continuous professional development.

00:08:36.336 --> 00:08:41.991
We need to share knowledge between people who know and people who might need knowledge, like what I'm doing here.

00:08:41.991 --> 00:08:45.485
That's the mission of the podcast to share knowledge, fire safety engineers.

00:08:45.485 --> 00:08:48.010
We need that if we want competency.

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We truly need that.

00:08:49.173 --> 00:08:51.082
Of course, education is another subject.

00:08:51.082 --> 00:08:56.562
That's a little bit more organized communication and of course, we need great education.

00:08:56.562 --> 00:09:03.182
But the people when they leave their school, they they are not yet the fire safety engineers that design buildings.

00:09:03.182 --> 00:09:08.533
They need, need experience and while gaining that experience, communication is critical.

00:09:08.533 --> 00:09:14.251
Good communication is critical in establishing the competencies in their design.

00:09:15.260 --> 00:09:18.510
If you think about innovation, sustainability, how can we solve that?

00:09:18.510 --> 00:09:24.753
We need to communicate with the people who innovate, with the people who design the sustainability features of our buildings.

00:09:24.753 --> 00:09:32.264
We need to participate, we need to be present at the table and not just be there.

00:09:32.264 --> 00:09:32.625
We need to listen.

00:09:32.625 --> 00:09:50.091
We need to listen, aggregate information that's given to us from those people, understand their position, their needs, their goals, then process those needs and present them a solution that not only works in a fire safe way but also does not underpin their goals and their objectives.

00:09:50.091 --> 00:09:53.831
Only in this way you can have a fire safe innovation.

00:09:53.831 --> 00:09:59.332
Only in this way you can have a sustainable future, with fire safe being a part of the equation.

00:09:59.332 --> 00:10:07.669
Because if we do what many people do, we just ban or we just forbid, or we turn their objectives upside down.

00:10:07.669 --> 00:10:10.528
The fire safety engineering is not a part of the solution.

00:10:10.528 --> 00:10:12.706
Back then, everyone works around it.

00:10:12.706 --> 00:10:22.712
Everyone works to get rid of this nuisance and, yeah, if we want to truly be a part of the solutions, we need to communicate better.

00:10:23.620 --> 00:10:27.947
If you think about funding, well, to get funding, you need to build a support for your ideas.

00:10:27.947 --> 00:10:29.967
You need the funding for your research grant.

00:10:29.967 --> 00:10:36.148
You need to give a reasonable explanation of why this research is important.

00:10:36.148 --> 00:10:36.990
That's communication.

00:10:36.990 --> 00:10:42.629
You need to get funding for a specific fire safety solution in your building.

00:10:42.629 --> 00:10:52.220
Yeah, sure, you need to design it, but then you need to communicate why this particular feature over the others, why it makes sense to fund this particular aspect of fire safety.

00:10:52.220 --> 00:10:53.966
That is communication.

00:10:53.966 --> 00:10:58.424
If we talk about legislation, how do you get good legislators?

00:10:58.424 --> 00:10:59.942
You need to educate them Again.

00:10:59.942 --> 00:11:04.525
Communications you need to teach them on the projects that are happening in your area.

00:11:04.525 --> 00:11:14.394
You need to show them the modern fire safety solutions and explain them why these solutions are better than other ones, and that's how you get a good legislation in your country.

00:11:14.394 --> 00:11:26.965
It won't happen randomly, and if people start taking clauses of codes from all over the world to clamp them into one megacode of your country, you're not going to have a great time as a fire safety engineer.

00:11:26.965 --> 00:11:29.772
You need to educate and to educate them Again.

00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:36.280
Communicate and uncertain future well, here, my friends, is where we need to communicate with each other.

00:11:36.280 --> 00:11:41.620
When someone sees something new coming our way that no one else does, we need to communicate.

00:11:41.620 --> 00:11:44.027
We need to sit down and figure it out together.

00:11:44.027 --> 00:11:46.091
It's not going to be solved by a single person.

00:11:46.091 --> 00:12:02.384
We need to talk among fire safety engineers and if we do that, then the uncertain future is lesser of a problem, because I'm sure in a world where we communicate between each other, we will be able to solve a lot of things that are coming our way.

00:12:02.384 --> 00:12:13.996
So let's say that's the end of the part one of my keynote, the rationale behind giving this talk, and I think I've built a compelling case of why communication is important.

00:12:15.326 --> 00:12:38.697
Now, in the next part of my keynote, I gave hopefully as well compelling evidence why communication in fire safety engineering is so difficult, and for this I've built a very visual example of rulers and on those rulers I've marked the level of competency of different stakeholders.

00:12:38.697 --> 00:12:46.453
So first I've put a ruler and very high on the level of competency I've placed you, the fire safety engineer.

00:12:46.453 --> 00:12:52.754
What I mean by this analogy is that, yes, we are a competent group of people.

00:12:52.754 --> 00:13:02.909
I would love to believe that we are a competent group of people who can solve fire safety issues and if you think about fire safety challenges, we are the people who are capable of solving that.

00:13:02.909 --> 00:13:21.164
In our everyday work we meet other fire safety engineers, sometimes better than us, sometimes less experienced than us, but in essence we meet other fire safety engineers, sometimes better than us, sometimes less experienced than us, but in essence we work with fire safety engineers and that's the easy part of the communication, because we are talking to someone who is pretty much on the same level of understanding fire safety challenges.

00:13:21.485 --> 00:13:28.839
It's very easy to convey fire safety strategy or a specific technical solution to another fire safety engineer.

00:13:28.839 --> 00:13:31.650
I don't say they will agree with our opinion.

00:13:31.650 --> 00:13:35.706
I'm not saying that we will all come up with the same solution.

00:13:35.706 --> 00:13:36.509
That's not the point.

00:13:36.509 --> 00:13:43.139
The point is it's easy to communicate about them and have a technical discussion about that, but it's not.

00:13:43.139 --> 00:13:51.399
The world would be beautiful if we only work with fire safety engineers, but I'm not sure if we would build a lot of buildings if the world was only designed by FSCs.

00:13:51.924 --> 00:13:53.893
So there are many, many other stakeholders.

00:13:53.893 --> 00:13:58.615
There are investors, and I would say investors are usually clueless.

00:13:58.615 --> 00:14:06.130
Unfortunately, they are usually on the bottom of the competency scale and there are two reasons for that.

00:14:06.130 --> 00:14:10.890
Or there are two groups of investors that I've met and both will be clueless.

00:14:10.890 --> 00:14:15.296
One group would be investors who are there with the money and they don't care.

00:14:15.296 --> 00:14:20.711
They just want the building be delivered and fire safety engineering is the nuisance.

00:14:20.711 --> 00:14:21.715
Just get rid of that.

00:14:21.715 --> 00:14:29.216
They don't care, just solve the issue and they have no technical understanding of the fire safety features of their buildings.

00:14:29.216 --> 00:14:42.812
And the other group of investors would be ones that are very into the process of building a building, the ones who have a really good technical understanding of the building, who are very involved in the process.

00:14:42.812 --> 00:14:48.773
But I also don't think this would be very competent in the world of fire safety engineering.

00:14:48.773 --> 00:14:53.496
Because if you try to understand the building, there are hundreds of objectives.

00:14:53.496 --> 00:15:02.197
There are so many things to understand from the sustainability perspective, from the acoustical perspective, from the even.

00:15:02.197 --> 00:15:04.461
You know how pretty is the building.

00:15:04.461 --> 00:15:06.083
That's an important feature of buildings.

00:15:06.083 --> 00:15:08.152
There are so, so many objectives.

00:15:08.152 --> 00:15:09.014
How pretty is the building?

00:15:09.014 --> 00:15:10.780
That's an important feature of buildings.

00:15:10.780 --> 00:15:11.865
There are so, so many objectives.

00:15:11.865 --> 00:15:17.605
And unfortunately fire safety engineering is not on the first page of the sexy objectives and definitely is in among the top three of the annoying objectives.

00:15:17.605 --> 00:15:34.753
So usually they would rely on people to solve their issues for them, and I very rarely meet investors who would be very competent in fire safety engineering, even though if they are very involved in the design process and they're very involved in their investment in other way.

00:15:35.586 --> 00:15:38.436
Then another group of people, authorities having jurisdiction.

00:15:38.436 --> 00:15:40.873
In some countries this would be firefighters.

00:15:40.873 --> 00:15:43.232
In some countries it would be some local authorities.

00:15:43.232 --> 00:15:51.371
In other countries perhaps it's a third party that's given the right to to act as an authority, and it will change by country to country.

00:15:51.371 --> 00:16:04.480
In some countries you will be very lucky to have other fire safety engineers acting as your authorities having jurisdiction, and in that case the communication is easy because you can communicate on the same level as you are.

00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:16.116
In some countries you would have authorities that are clueless and just like with the investor, communicating with someone who has very little comprehension of the fire safety features of the building.

00:16:16.136 --> 00:16:27.375
Communicating the fire safety strategy and your solutions is very difficult because you need to present them in an easy and approachable way, without dumbing them down because you're not going to get your point across.

00:16:27.375 --> 00:16:33.894
But then again you have to convey them in a way that a person without a good technical knowledge can understand.

00:16:33.894 --> 00:16:41.155
That's a true challenge, that's a true struggle of communicating fire safety across different competency level.

00:16:41.155 --> 00:16:48.129
And you may also have authorities who are above the scale you know on the competency level, at least from their own view.

00:16:48.129 --> 00:16:52.014
You may have authorities that don't care what you say to them.

00:16:52.014 --> 00:17:01.897
They have their divine law to define what's good and bad in their jurisdiction and no matter how great communicator you are, you're not going to be able to convey your message.

00:17:01.897 --> 00:17:12.512
Not saying that you should not try, and educating them is a good strategy to get your projects approved, but it definitely gives another challenge to communication.

00:17:13.234 --> 00:17:19.313
And then you have a whole bunch of people in other branches of engineering.

00:17:19.313 --> 00:17:27.911
You know MEPs, hvac architects, other engineering branches, which will be a different level of competencies all over the scale.

00:17:27.911 --> 00:17:34.160
Technically it depends on how many projects with fire safety engineering in them they've done in their lives.

00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:40.891
That's pretty much an experience-based factor because they would rarely be formally educated as fire safety engineers.

00:17:40.891 --> 00:17:46.577
So depending on how much fire safety they've seen in their lives, that's how competent they will be.

00:17:46.577 --> 00:17:52.553
And it means you have to convey your message across all the levels of competency out there.

00:17:52.553 --> 00:18:12.271
So what I've built with this graphical illustration of competency is that you are a fire safety engineer who has a great comprehension of fire safety engineering and on the other side you will have people ranging from absolutely clueless to people who are absolutely sure they know more than you do.

00:18:12.271 --> 00:18:22.306
But those rulers of competency or those levels of competency also work in a little different way when you change the area of competency.

00:18:22.306 --> 00:18:37.021
If you think about mechanical design, I don't think fire safety engineers at large would be very competent in choosing the engines for ventilators and choosing the size of the cables for the ventilators, for example.

00:18:37.021 --> 00:18:46.617
I don't think fire safety engineers would be very competent in choosing HVAC solutions for the building based on their expertise in fire safety engineering their expertise in fire safety engineering.

00:18:46.637 --> 00:18:59.413
You see, when the area of competency changes, it's us who go down the competency ladder and suddenly we are the less competent than others, and it also requires a specific set of skills in communicating.

00:18:59.413 --> 00:19:04.515
You need to understand the level of comprehension of the technical subject that you have.

00:19:04.515 --> 00:19:07.618
You need to extract the information from the other side that you are able to process.

00:19:07.618 --> 00:19:07.634
It's not about nod.

00:19:07.634 --> 00:19:10.253
You need to extract the information from the other side that you are able to process.

00:19:10.253 --> 00:19:27.809
It's not about nodding your heads to all the information given to you, but you truly need to understand what's happening in the building, what's happening with the particular technical subject being discussed at the table, and you need to process that information and give a fire safety solution to the information you have received.

00:19:27.809 --> 00:19:31.375
That takes a hell lot of communication skills.

00:19:31.375 --> 00:19:42.948
If we are unable to communicate across all of those levels of technical competencies, we'll not be able to design fire safety solutions for our buildings because they will simply not work.

00:19:44.009 --> 00:20:08.152
And another challenging aspect of this competency and communication overlay is that priorities for different branches may be in a place that you don't really recognize as a priority for yourself is in dimensioning fans and the shafts and electrical cables.

00:20:08.152 --> 00:20:13.236
Perhaps architects are really struggling with balancing the sustainability objectives of their buildings.

00:20:13.236 --> 00:20:16.816
Perhaps the fire brigades really care only about the external water supply.

00:20:16.816 --> 00:20:21.834
Authorities may care about city planning, not just your one particular building.

00:20:21.834 --> 00:20:31.354
The investor may think about selling the building in five years and thinking about, you know some sort of lifecycle analysis and how they will be able to market the building on the market.

00:20:31.354 --> 00:20:36.085
And structural engineer could care for, for example, about the width of the building.

00:20:36.085 --> 00:20:42.673
That could be a very powerful objective for the design and that makes fire safety engineering very complicated.

00:20:42.673 --> 00:20:51.710
You have to be aware that there are overlaps and competencies, overlap of goals and you absolutely need to be able to communicate across them.

00:20:51.710 --> 00:21:05.567
So that was my case on why communication is actually quite difficult, why we sometimes struggle as fire safety engineers communicating with other branches and being a part of the building design.

00:21:05.567 --> 00:21:10.412
It's not easy to communicate at different levels, but it's a skill set that we all need.

00:21:10.471 --> 00:21:15.276
To get my next part of the next few slides in my presentation.

00:21:15.276 --> 00:21:16.971
The next case that I've brought.

00:21:16.971 --> 00:21:35.907
It was an example, a visual example, of what happens when the communication fails, and for this I've brought an example of a smoke, hot smoke test carried out in the shopping mall, a case that actually happened to us and it's a real building, real project, real problem.

00:21:35.907 --> 00:21:39.615
We were performing hot smoke tests within a compartment that's connected to a mall.

00:21:39.615 --> 00:21:53.738
So the idea for the system was pretty straightforward you extract the smoke from the compartment into the mall and in the mall you have a mechanical smoke extraction and you basically extract the smoke a very typical solution you would find in any shopping mall.

00:21:53.738 --> 00:22:03.989
Now the mall itself was compartmentalized into smoke reservoirs with automatic smoke curtains again a very typical solution.

00:22:03.989 --> 00:22:14.109
So so far it's a normal project that you would have very generic solution, I would say, for fire safety engineering.

00:22:14.150 --> 00:22:15.413
So where's the failure?

00:22:15.413 --> 00:22:19.634
Where's the problem with communication in this generic design?

00:22:19.634 --> 00:22:28.028
When we were performing the hot smoke test, obviously there was a lot of smoke produced and the smoke was entering the mall where it was extracted.

00:22:28.028 --> 00:22:40.237
Obviously there was a lot of smoke produced and the smoke was entering the mall where it was extracted, but between the gaps along the smoke curtains, small amounts of smoke have leaked into the neighboring smoke compartment and that, again, this is something you can expect.

00:22:40.237 --> 00:22:44.259
Those smoke control zones are not leak-proof.

00:22:44.259 --> 00:22:46.842
It's not that any smoke cannot escape them.

00:22:46.842 --> 00:22:50.326
For me it was just yeah, that's how it works.

00:22:50.346 --> 00:23:01.507
Now the issue was that as soon as that smoke reached the smoke detector in the next zone, the system has triggered in that zone and it actually switched off in the main zone where we had the fire.

00:23:01.507 --> 00:23:18.592
The operation of the system moved into this new zone, that neighboring our zone, and then a few minutes later, when the smoke moved into another zone, it triggered another zone and suddenly the system works in a completely remote part of the building, not where the fire is.

00:23:18.592 --> 00:23:21.133
So, yeah, that's a massive failure.

00:23:21.133 --> 00:23:25.876
That's a failure that could be actually life-threatening in some cases.

00:23:25.876 --> 00:23:29.295
So why it is a communication failure?

00:23:30.366 --> 00:23:37.153
It's because the automation designer of the building they've been told here's the building is separated into smoke compartments.

00:23:37.153 --> 00:23:40.375
They have not understood what the smoke compartment is.

00:23:40.375 --> 00:23:47.673
They had assumed that the smoke is sealed within the smoke compartment and, come on, it's a reasonable thing to assume.

00:23:47.673 --> 00:23:52.256
Actually, they've never been told that they have to block the systems or the stearings.

00:23:52.256 --> 00:23:58.493
Perhaps they were told, but they were not explained the importance and urgency of this decision.

00:23:59.615 --> 00:24:04.428
So I truly believe this is a communication failure and a failure that could perhaps be very dangerous.

00:24:04.428 --> 00:24:13.728
And if we think about where this communication failure comes from, it perhaps is because of not recognizing that you need to talk with someone at a different competency level.

00:24:13.728 --> 00:24:26.958
Perhaps it's not listening to the objectives of the automation, perhaps it's failure in oversight of the work done by that branch, and definitely all of those failures are related to communication.

00:24:26.958 --> 00:24:33.118
So here I bring a very strong case that bad communication can lead to a very bad outcome.

00:24:33.118 --> 00:24:35.884
And in fact it was not an isolated problem.

00:24:35.884 --> 00:24:39.901
We've observed the same thing happen in numerous buildings.

00:24:39.901 --> 00:24:44.516
We've seen that in metro station, we've seen that in stadia, numerous buildings.

00:24:44.516 --> 00:24:46.099
We've seen that in metro station, we've seen that in stadia.

00:24:46.119 --> 00:24:50.876
It's a big challenge to work with fire automation where people are not completely aware how, for example, smoke control works.

00:24:50.876 --> 00:25:11.228
We really need to communicate better to avoid issues like that on buildings, and indeed that's perhaps one of the main points of my talk Every single time we engage with other stakeholders in the building process, we communicate Every conference, talk, presentation, call, meeting, even an email.

00:25:11.228 --> 00:25:13.198
When you need to explain something to someone.

00:25:13.198 --> 00:25:21.027
That's communication, and you have to be good at that communication to make sure that the effects of that communication are correct.

00:25:21.027 --> 00:25:37.863
Every activity in which you engage with someone and from which a collective experience can be gained, this is communication, and we need to be good at this communication so we build a collective base of experiences that make every next project easier.

00:25:37.863 --> 00:25:42.165
This is how we develop a better fire safety engineering at large.

00:25:42.974 --> 00:25:53.086
And now, in the let's say, final part of my talk, I wanted to share some good and perhaps bad examples of communication in fire safety engineering and fire safety science.

00:25:53.086 --> 00:26:03.901
So I start with an example of ACET-RCET criterion Available safe evacuation time should be larger than the required safe evacuation time.

00:26:03.901 --> 00:26:12.611
I think this is genuinely a brilliant communication because it explains an idea.

00:26:12.611 --> 00:26:19.106
It is something that a fire safety engineer can understand, but it's also something a layman can understand.

00:26:19.106 --> 00:26:24.982
The building needs to give you more time to escape than you need so you are not endangered by the fire.

00:26:24.982 --> 00:26:30.146
Of course, there are weaknesses in ACID-ARCID and I've criticized it in the past.

00:26:30.146 --> 00:26:40.186
I know the Vito's paper and, yeah, it's a part of scientific discussion, for sure, but the concept itself, how it is presented ACID must be larger than ARCID.

00:26:40.775 --> 00:26:52.467
It's such a simple thing with which you can achieve such great fire safety engineering A truly remarkable example of how a great communication tool can look like.

00:26:52.467 --> 00:27:02.378
If you can turn your fire safety engineering into simple, beautiful thoughts like this, it means you can truly communicate in a great way.

00:27:02.378 --> 00:27:11.508
Another example like that is the requirements for fire safety engineering that come from the european directive.

00:27:11.508 --> 00:27:24.528
So you know those five basic points in case of fire, load bearing capacity can be assumed to be maintained for a specific period of time, the spread of fire smoke is limited, the spread to neighboring structures limited, and so on, so on.

00:27:24.528 --> 00:27:47.157
I think that's a remarkably good communication because it conveys the basic ideas of fire safety engineering in an approachable way and again, as with aced asset, you can actually work with that, you can build up on that, you can communicate across all levels on the competency ladder with this, because you can either build it up and it does not require to simplify it more.

00:27:47.157 --> 00:27:50.384
So it's an excellent example of communication.

00:27:51.306 --> 00:27:58.934
Now to move with limited examples of communication or examples where the communication is perhaps challenging.

00:27:58.934 --> 00:28:03.702
One thing is scientific communications, so scientific papers.

00:28:03.702 --> 00:28:16.665
I've wrote a lot of them, 45 at this point and yeah, they are good tools to communicate between the scientists, but they are very bad tools to communicate with the general public.

00:28:16.665 --> 00:28:19.523
They're simply not meant to be a communication tool.

00:28:19.523 --> 00:28:21.561
They are meant to be published.

00:28:21.561 --> 00:28:25.455
They are meant to sustain a specific level of scientific rigor.

00:28:25.455 --> 00:28:28.321
They must be written in a very specific language.

00:28:28.321 --> 00:28:32.700
If you try to write a paper in a plain language, you're going to be penalized for that.

00:28:32.700 --> 00:28:42.598
Seriously, you cannot write papers in an unapproachable way because it's against the ideals of science, whatever the ideals in the minds of those who criticize are.

00:28:42.598 --> 00:28:47.101
I'm actually quite annoyed with that because I think science should be approachable.

00:28:47.101 --> 00:29:03.063
If we want to achieve greatness with science, if we want to get impact over the society, if we want to change the world with the science, it must be written in an approachable way and the current way the business operates the scientific publishing business operates is prohibitive for that.

00:29:03.063 --> 00:29:09.125
So I'm kind of annoyed for that and I find scientific literature as a limited way of communication.

00:29:09.125 --> 00:29:16.028
Actually, I think podcasts are much better in translating the ways of science to the general public.

00:29:16.714 --> 00:29:24.180
Another limited way of communication for me is the hit-release rate, the way how we present the size of the fires.

00:29:24.180 --> 00:29:28.683
You know, we fire safety engineers, we love our kilowatts and megawatts.

00:29:28.683 --> 00:29:30.307
We love our designed fires.

00:29:30.307 --> 00:29:39.963
We love to say this fire was five megawatts, medium growth, and your fellow fire safety engineer will okay, yeah, that's a big fire but quite slowly growing.

00:29:39.963 --> 00:29:40.345
Nice.

00:29:40.986 --> 00:29:45.365
But if you try to convey that to anyone else in the fire safety engineer, what does it mean?

00:29:45.365 --> 00:29:50.282
Like the biggest fire people have ever seen in their lives?

00:29:50.282 --> 00:29:53.160
Usually would be a campfire.

00:29:53.160 --> 00:29:54.484
How big is that?

00:29:54.484 --> 00:29:55.941
A few hundred kilowatts at best.

00:29:55.941 --> 00:30:03.000
Perhaps, if you're a little courageous, maybe a megawatt, but it's not a huge fire and fires are unlinear.

00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:06.440
How many of you, the listeners have seen a 10 megawatt fire?

00:30:06.440 --> 00:30:08.306
How many of you have seen a 100 megawatt fire?

00:30:08.306 --> 00:30:12.945
It blows your mind when you first time see a 10 megawatt fire.

00:30:12.945 --> 00:30:17.425
Seriously, even most fire safety engineers don't comprehend how big that fire is.

00:30:17.425 --> 00:30:28.023
So, despite the fact it conveys the information how much energy is generated in a period of time it fails to communicate the size of the fire.

00:30:28.023 --> 00:30:35.154
It doesn't really tell you how big the fire is, even though it gives you a very precise number on the heat generation.

00:30:35.336 --> 00:30:43.667
I think heat release rates, how we present and in general, the concept of design fires and the fire curves is a very limited way of communication.

00:30:43.667 --> 00:30:49.125
Another example very similar to that is the fuel load expressed in megajoules per square meter.

00:30:49.125 --> 00:30:54.862
I mean it doesn't really tell you much, even though it's the basis of so much of fire safety engineering that we have.

00:30:54.862 --> 00:31:12.167
And I believe that if we want to communicate better, we need to find better ways to communicate parameters like heat release rate or the fuel load in ways that people can understand them, because this allows us to achieve the objectives of our fire safety strategies and our fire safety design.

00:31:12.167 --> 00:31:19.682
Another example of limited ways of communication something we work very strong on changing are CFD simulations.

00:31:19.682 --> 00:31:31.123
I think CFD simulations and the way how we present CFD simulation results are very limited, because there are usually a ton of colorful images from which gathering knowledge is very difficult.

00:31:31.123 --> 00:31:50.464
They're very unapproachable for non-fire professionals and it's much better for me to present an objective analysis of a simulation in five sentences and just tell you what happened in the simulation rather than showing a bunch of pictures, because the pictures are difficult to interpret.

00:31:51.146 --> 00:31:59.799
And now we move to something I would call the bad tools of communication or bad ways of communicating fire safety objectives, of fire safe design.

00:31:59.799 --> 00:32:05.452
One horrible tool of communication is, for me, the Euroclass system.

00:32:05.452 --> 00:32:09.501
The Euroclass system achieves its objective in many aspects.

00:32:09.501 --> 00:32:11.526
It's great for market regulation.

00:32:11.526 --> 00:32:15.503
It works for the laboratories we enjoy the Lottes laboratory.

00:32:15.503 --> 00:32:17.631
It works for the manufacturers.

00:32:18.031 --> 00:32:20.919
But it's a really bad tool of communication why?

00:32:20.919 --> 00:32:33.479
You know Euroclass system A, b, c, d, e, F, different classes of how materials react to fire and among those classes, let's say you get the product of class B on that scale.

00:32:33.479 --> 00:32:35.123
Wow, that's pretty high up the scale.

00:32:35.123 --> 00:32:36.767
That must be pretty fire safe, right.

00:32:36.767 --> 00:32:44.567
But what it means is actually a product that perhaps burns, product that in a specific setting could perhaps be quite dangerous.

00:32:44.567 --> 00:32:50.061
I've seen a lot of systems built with Euroclass B materials that could end up in a very big and bad fires.

00:32:50.061 --> 00:32:52.994
So in reality it's complicated.

00:32:52.994 --> 00:33:01.646
It doesn't give you a full information about the fire safety characteristics of the thing you're designing, just the fact that you know it's Euroclass.

00:33:01.646 --> 00:33:03.300
There's so much more to that.

00:33:03.300 --> 00:33:11.598
But in the eyes of a layman, in the eyes of an architect, in the eyes of an investor, that's a pretty high class, that's a really good material.

00:33:11.598 --> 00:33:16.229
So in a way it's not just not communicating good enough.

00:33:16.229 --> 00:33:25.565
It may be considered misleading, it may actually confuse the other side and give them completely wrong impression of what the characteristics of the product that you're using are.

00:33:26.615 --> 00:33:32.044
The same thing is with fire resistance Fire resistance expressed in minutes.

00:33:32.044 --> 00:33:39.048
This is how we failed, or how we are failing, in the battle of timber, mass timber in the built environment.

00:33:39.048 --> 00:33:41.702
Come on, timber is fire resistant, right, yeah, it is.

00:33:41.702 --> 00:33:46.067
It's just the fire resistance is a horrible way to assess the fire safety performance of timber.

00:33:46.067 --> 00:33:57.124
If you express fire resistance in terms of 60 minutes to laymen, what they will think is that this particular part of the building will resist the fire for 60 minutes.

00:33:57.124 --> 00:34:00.525
I mean that's reasonable what you could expect from this class.

00:34:00.525 --> 00:34:20.342
In reality, what fire resistance of 60 minutes means is that a specific test has been passed for this duration at a very specific fire curve, at a very specific pressure conditions, in a very specific way, to build a sample in a very precisely controlled furnace environment that doesn't really represent a real building.

00:34:20.342 --> 00:34:22.402
That's what fire resistance means.

00:34:22.402 --> 00:34:26.514
I mean there's an entire podcast episode with Piotr Turkowski about fire resistance.

00:34:26.514 --> 00:34:30.920
I highly recommend listening to that and I think here.

00:34:31.635 --> 00:34:40.940
Fire resistance and Euroclass system these are examples of bad communication in fire safety engineering, saying we should not use them or ban them or whatever.

00:34:40.940 --> 00:34:49.682
I just say we need to strive for better, we need to strive to have good ways of communication and we need to turn those bad ways into ways that actually work.

00:34:49.682 --> 00:34:57.704
So here we have reached the conclusion part of my keynote speech and it was about inventing new ways of communication.

00:34:57.704 --> 00:35:11.690
I think that as the fire science and engineering communities grow up, we need to come up with new ways to communicate fire safety at all levels of competency ladder, at all levels that we are involved at.

00:35:11.690 --> 00:35:20.150
We also need to learn how to communicate when we are the incompetent ones, when we try to involve designs coming from other stakeholders.

00:35:20.150 --> 00:35:25.414
We need to communicate effectively with all stakeholders that we deal with.

00:35:25.414 --> 00:35:28.943
I truly believe it is our responsibility.

00:35:29.804 --> 00:35:45.648
Some years ago, my mentor told me that if I'm doing research, a scientific project, and I do the world's most brilliant experiment and I don't publish the results, it is as good as if I have never done the experiment actually.

00:35:45.648 --> 00:35:49.644
And I think in communicating fire safe solutions is the same.

00:35:49.644 --> 00:36:08.764
If you come across with the best engineering design you could have for fire safety feature of your building, but you fail to communicate why we need that feature, why it will work, why it's better than others, it's not going to get implemented, it's not going to work and it's as if you have never came up with the idea.

00:36:08.764 --> 00:36:21.744
To achieve fire safety objectives, to be great designers, to be people who are changing the built environment for better, we need to become great communicators.

00:36:21.744 --> 00:36:33.394
And yeah, that is my final message of the talk I've gave at Copenhagen and that's the final conclusion I would love to leave you up at the end of this podcast episode.

00:36:33.775 --> 00:36:41.744
So, once again, huge thanks to the organizing committee of the SFP Fire Safety Conference and Expo on Performance-Based Design.

00:36:41.744 --> 00:36:47.021
It was truly a huge pleasure to be invited to the conference to give keynote speech.

00:36:47.021 --> 00:36:52.762
10 years ago I would never thought that I will be opening a conference of this magnitude.

00:36:52.762 --> 00:36:53.605
Yet it happened.

00:36:53.605 --> 00:36:56.373
I appreciated a lot in the conference.

00:36:56.373 --> 00:37:07.547
The response was fantastic to this uh keynote and a lot of people were talking about it, and the general theme of communicating well was coming up in like every third presentation in the conference.

00:37:07.547 --> 00:37:15.721
So I think I've left people with a good foot for thought in their conference experience and the podcast listener.

00:37:15.835 --> 00:37:17.481
I hope I've did the same for you.

00:37:17.481 --> 00:37:21.023
I hope you've enjoyed this short talk about communication.

00:37:21.023 --> 00:37:24.416
I hope you agree with me that we all need to have better communication skills.

00:37:24.416 --> 00:37:39.324
I'm working very hard on my communication skills and strive to be a better communicator, podcaster and share the knowledge that I have and extract knowledge from others to share their knowledge with you in the most approachable way.

00:37:39.324 --> 00:37:44.079
I think that's an example of hopefully good communication, maybe even great communication communication.

00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:45.943
I would really love that to be the case.

00:37:45.943 --> 00:37:48.327
So, yeah, that would be it for today.

00:37:48.327 --> 00:37:55.226
Once again, thanks for the ability to talk in copenhagen, truly uh, once in a lifetime experience.

00:37:55.226 --> 00:37:58.360
Perhaps I'll be able to do it once again one time, we'll see.

00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:05.043
And for things that don't really change that much, next wednesday, next week, I see you here in the Fire Science Show once again.

00:38:05.043 --> 00:38:07.782
So thanks for being here with me and see you there.

00:38:07.782 --> 00:38:21.902
Bye, this was the Fire Science Show.

00:38:21.902 --> 00:38:24.266
Thank you for listening and see you soon.