There remains a persistent and, frankly, dangerous misunderstanding at the heart of fire safety design and delivery: a product that has been tested is assumed to perform in any configuration in which it is installed. It will not.

Compartmentation is often presented as one of the most fundamental elements of fire safety. Walls, floors, and doors are designed to resist fire and smoke, limiting spread and protecting escape routes. On drawings, this is usually clear, with lines defined, boundaries marked, and periods of fire resistance specified.

There has been a quiet but significant shift in the fire safety landscape.

There is a tendency, when dealing with historic buildings, to treat heritage as a constraint on fire safety.

A recurring feature of fires involving historic buildings is not the absence of expertise, but the absence of clear and sustained accountability.

Historic buildings rarely burn down because of a single failure. More often, fire is the outcome of a series of small, entirely foreseeable conditions aligning over time.

Fire safety design has traditionally been framed around compliance.

Fire safety design has traditionally been framed around compliance.

Fire strategies are often highly technical documents. They describe fire scenarios, model outputs, escape provisions, and system performance.

But there is a simple question that is not always asked clearly enough.

What does the client actually need this building to do in a fire?

Fire engineering is intended to be a design tool. A means of developing solutions that achieve clearly defined fire safety objectives.

But there is an uncomfortable reality.

It is sometimes used the other way around.

Fire engineering has enabled a generation of innovative buildings. It allows designers to move beyond prescriptive rules and develop solutions tailored to the specific needs of a project.

But it also raises a fundamental question.

The debate around Residential Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans is often framed as a question of inclusion.

Who needs help?

Who is at risk?

What is the right thing to do?

These are important questions. But they are not the most important question?

There are few areas of fire safety that expose the gap between policy ambition and operational reality quite as starkly as Residential Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans.

Fire safety design often begins with solutions. Sprinklers are added. Stairs are checked. Smoke control is introduced. Compliance is demonstrated. But a more fundamental question is frequently left unasked. What is the building actually trying to achieve in fire?

A recent CROSS-UK report highlights a growing issue in the market: portable fire extinguishers labelled as suitable for lithium-ion battery fires.