Fire Protection of structural steelwork using intumescent coatings

By Ray Lucas

Phoenix Fir Protection’s Ray Lucas explains why water based technology can provide many benefits for designers, engineers and developers of the regions most prominent structures, and why third party certification of products is essential to ensuring good practice.

“Architects and engineers are now much more educated and informed about the fire protection issues of today.”
-Ray Lucas

Structural steel has become a popular choice for designers and developers in recent years. With the cost of steel currently estimated to be 60 per cent of that in 1981, structural steel has also become the material of choice for many of the new commercial and industrial buildings across the region and has the advantage of having a greater strength ratio over traditionally used concrete options.  In terms of style, the material offers far greater flexibility for designers and architects than concrete and allows far more freedom of design.

Structural fire protection and the manufacture of intumescent coatings to provide a decorative form of fire protection to steel structures is still very much a niche business driven by different international and local legislation requirements, and few companies in the world are able to meet all of these whilst also ensuring that the clients needs are catered for.

In particular the development of water-based technology over the past 10 years has provided many benefits for a vast range of projects not only from an environmental view point as the products have extremely low VOC (volatile organic content) but also in the form of lower dry film thickness which results in less material to be required in order to protect the structures in question.

The benefit of applying water based materials particularly in hot climates like we have in the MENA region means that the materials can be applied much faster and dry or cure far quicker than that of traditional solvent based products. This can prove particularly beneficial for large quantities of steelwork being applied in both on-site and off-site situations, which can reduce the total contract period quite significantly, whilst also providing savings in cost as well as time.

Why Third Party Certification?

Despite the recent economic downturn the regions growth over the past 10 years has been nothing short of dramatic and whilst this has presented excellent opportunities in many areas the downside can be that often products that do not have the relevant and required test data to comply with specification will be used without having the appropriate due diligence carried out on them. This can of course become a major risk.

To this end, the introduction of independent third party certification of products has helped enormously with providing architects, engineers and approval bodies within the region independent, detailed and qualified justification with regards to the performance of a particular product.

In particular the Dubai Civil Defence (DCD) of the UAE has been largely responsible for implementing this as a mandatory requirement for all passive fire protection products that seek approval for use within the UAE, and consequently this has helped significantly in raising the standards and quality of products to be used for fire protection purposes throughout the region.

The DCD should be complemented for taking such positive and pro-active action that has now resulted in many other regions outside of the UAE to introduce the same requirements. However it is only with constant strict and regular policing of products and their approvals that the benefits of this will be maintained.

Architects and engineers are now much more educated and informed about the fire protection issues of today and as such their demands for transparency of certification and realistic and meaningful warranties are forever increasing. It is therefore vitally important to make sure that any decisions on choice of materials and products particularly when used as a fire engineered solution are thoroughly investigated based on factual tests and assessments carried out by independent and approved laboratories that are relevant to the same parameters required for that particular project in question, rather than assumptions or estimates often made by manufacturers to suit their particular product requirements.

Meeting the clients specification requirements with realistic, meaningful and relevant solutions rather than wild assumptions is paramount to ensuring good practice of passive fire protection throughout the regions growing number of developments.

Ray Lucas has been working in the structural fire protection industry for over 15 years, the last three of which has been spent based with his family in Dubai as the General Manager for Phoenix Fire Protection, a company which manufactures and distributes a range of intumescent coatings systems designed to protect structural steelwork in the event of fire.