University of Edinburgh publishes Fire Engineering research papers

The Ove Arup Foundation has maintained long-term support for research and the establishment of a Fire Engineering course at Edinburgh University, and, following the research carried out by Graham Spinardi and others, two papers have now been published, these are:

• Graham Spinardi, “Performance Based Design, Expertise Asymmetry, and Professionalism: Fire Safety Regulation in the Neoliberal Era”, Regulation and Governance, (2019).
• Graham Spinardi, Jim Baker and Luke Bisby, “Post Construction Fire Safety Regulation in England: Shutting the Door Before the Horse has Bolted”, Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, (2019).   

The former paper discusses the fire safety regulator's requirement to adjudicate on the knowledge claims put forward by fire safety engineers, despite lacking the knowledge to interrogate claims that are often the product of complex mathematical modelling across a range of disciplines.

The latter paper argues that a range of evidence exists that should be used in developing fire safety policy, and that reliance on annual statistics of deaths alone to guide policy may fail to address failings that can be inferred from other types of data.