Historic buildings present unique challenges for fire protection engineers. The historic building and its contents will typically have significant value which means that the building itself needs to be explicitly protected from fire. This is in contrast to conventional modern buildings, where life safety is the primary goal of fire protection. Therefore, with fire protection engineering for historic buildings, new objectives gain significant importance, and while life safety remains a priority, this is now balanced alongside protecting the historic building which is of high material and historic value.

Balancing Historic Preservation with Fire Protection

Fire protection in historical buildings requires a careful balance between preserving cultural heritage and ensuring safety, however the demands to preserve historic structures, can conflict with the need to protect the same structure and the people within from fire. Designing a modern fire protection system that does not disturb the aesthetic and historical value of the building is a challenge that requires someone highly skilled and knowledgeable in both fire protection and historic preservation.

Challenges in Fire protection for Historic Buildings

With fire protection engineering for historic buildings, engineers can face some unique challenges that they do not often face with contemporary buildings. 

Here are some of the main challenges:

• Historic Preservation: Fire suppression systems must be designed in a way that does not compromise the historical or aesthetic integrity of the building
• Valuable Contents: Historic buildings often contain furnishing and contents that are highly valuable, which can also be fragile. In the case of a fire, the extinguishing agents employed should do as little damage as possible.
• Old buildings v New Regulations: Historic buildings were constructed a long time before existing building regulations, which means ensuring that fire protection designs satisfy current fire safety standards is a more complex process.
• Complicated Architecture: Historic buildings were constructed a long time before existing building regulations, which means ensuring that fire protection designs satisfy current fire safety standards is a more complex process.
• Flammable Materials: Historic Buildings may be constructed with materials that are flammable, and can sometimes contain objects that are a fire hazard. 
• Lack of Fire and Smoke Barriers: Historic buildings were constructed without fire doors or compartmentation to contain smoke and fire to one section of the building. The nature of historical buildings makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to add these features.

Learning from Past Fire Incidents

Every year historic buildings are partially or entirely destroyed by fire. We can learn from these past incidents by making sure historic buildings have the fire protection systems they need to endure.

The catastrophic fire that destroyed a significant part of the Notre Dame was partly due to the focusing on preserving the historical integrity of the building, while neglecting fire protection measures. The decision was made not to equip the cathedrals attic with fireproof partitions or automatic sprinkler systems because of the singular focus on preserving the historical integrity of the attic. The beams used in the attic were made from hundreds of oak trees harvested in the 12th and 13th century and deemed too valuable to have any kind of interference with. However, had these fire protection measures been used it is likely that the fire would have been contained and suppressed before it caused enormous damage to the rooftop and the iconic spire, which collapsed through the ceiling onto the cathedral floor.

Modern Codes and Old Buildings

Historic buildings were designed and constructed before the stringent fire safety requirements prescribed by modern building codes. This means they can be particularly vulnerable to fire, but the task of designing fire protection measures so that they meet modern code requirements is challenging due to the nature of the old building.

The standard prescriptive approach of modern building codes is relatively straightforward to apply to new and conventional buildings, but trying to use a one size fits all approach is not always relevant or suitable for old buildings. Concerns about historic preservation cannot often be addressed creatively through prescriptive fire codes and simply adhering to prescriptive modern building codes would diminish the historical value of these old buildings.

Performance-Based Design

Historic preservation and fire safety objectives can both be addressed through performance-based design, as this approach allows for more nuance and flexibility than prescriptive design. Performance-based fire design involves applying engineering expertise to design fire protection in buildings, taking into account the specific building characteristics and unique factors, rather than ticking the boxes to satisfy prescriptive fire codes. Instead of a one size fits all approach, fire protection engineers can create a custom solution that meets safety requirements alongside preserving the historical heritage of the building.

Take a look at our historical page to see the range of buildings we have protected from fire.