Research towards a Performance-Based Building Code: preliminary analysis NBC. Part 3: fire and life safety provisions

Motivated by successes and continued evolution of international developments in performance-based design and performance-based codes, the question is posed whether there may be opportunities for Canada to capitalize on the international experiences and lessons learned. In response, an overall project, Research towards a Performance-Based Building Code, was initiated with the intent to investigate and collate international approaches, experiences, and benefits observed so far so they can be considered in a Canadian context. The overall scope of this research project intends to cover fire and life safety provisions in Part 3 and earthquake provisions in Part 4 of Division B of the 2015 edition of the National Building Code (NBC). This project will ultimately require the coordination of efforts between the research and the code development communities to identify knowledge gaps and future research needs in the areas of fire and life safety and earthquake design. It is proposed that results from this project inform the code development system and, perhaps, the discussion whether to introduce a new performance-based compliance path in the NBC, which would follow its due process, as determined by the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes (CCBFC). As a foundational step to support this overall effort, an understanding of the current portion of performance requirements in the NBC would be beneficial. Where performance requirements refer to provisions that have a clearly defined level of performance, this requires measurable performance targets, clearly defined evaluation methods and a thorough understanding of how the intended level of performance was developed. A high-level survey of the current provisions that are prescriptive, performance, or a combination would provide a starting point to identify where there are groups of code provisions with no clear level of performance identified, topics that may need additional review and potential research to develop performance targets with the associated measurement methods. The preliminary analysis of the fire and life safety provisions of Part 3 of the NBC 2015 is summarized in the report. This effort was designed to provide a fundamental step towards understanding the proportion of current requirements with prescriptive or performance-based targets, whether the values for these targets are qualitative, quantitative, or a combination, and the associated measurement methods. This preliminary analysis is undertaken to support a better understanding of the opportunities and obstacles of a performance-based approach for the NBC in the Canadian context. In the short-term, improvement in setting the level of performance for each provision may improve our approach to alternative solutions—within the current code compliance options—and inform potential for impact and benefits of developing a new compliance option via a performance-based code framework. Such an improvement towards a more performance-based code may support the harmonization of building code requirements across Canada by providing performance targets for the safety level of buildings, so that individual prescriptive requirements may be discussed within the broader context of the intended performance of a building or part thereof. In addition, a clearly described performance framework and approach with quantified performance targets may also help to create a level playing field for various construction materials, products and technologies, and expedite national and international trade.

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