Prescriptive fire protection adds 8-15% to structural costs. Performance-based structural fire engineering can reduce this by 40-60% while achieving equivalent or better safety. Here's how.. The Cost of Prescriptive Fire Protection Prescriptive fire protection — applying standard fire resistance requirements from lookup tables — is simple but expensive: Steel buildings: Intumescent coating adds £30 50/m² to steelwork cost Concrete buildings: Additional cover and reinforcement adds 8 12% to frame cost Timber buildings: Encapsulation adds £15 25/m² to element cost Total impact: Fire protection typically represents 8 15% of structural frame cost For a large commercial building, this can be £2 5 million in fire protection costs. The Performance Based Alternative What Is Structural Fire Engineering? Instead of applying generic fire resistance periods (30, 60, 90, 120 minutes) from tables, structural fire engineering: 1. Defines realistic fire scenarios — what fires can actually occur in this building? 2. Models fire behaviour — using localised fire models, parametric fire curves, or CFD 3. Analyses structural response — how does the structure actually behave under these fire conditions? 4. Demonstrates adequate performance — does the structure maintain stability throughout the fire and cooling phase? The Tools Eurocode 1 Part 1 2 — fire actions on structures Eurocodes 2 6 — material specific structural fire design (concrete, steel, timber, masonry, aluminium) BS 7974 — fire engineering framework SAFIR — specialist structural fire engineering software ABAQUS/ANSYS — general purpose FEA with thermal structural coupling Vulcan — Sheffield University's structural fire analysis tool Real Savings Project Prescriptive Cost Fire Engineered Cost Saving 30 storey office, London £3.8M £1.9M £1.9M (50%) Distribution warehouse £1.2M £0.5M £0.7M (58%) Multi storey car park £0.9M £0.35M £0.55M (61%) Hospital extension £2.1M £1.4M £0.7M (33%) Magnus Opifex provides structural fire engineering using Eurocode methods. Contact us.