Hawkins is delighted to welcome, Principal Associate, Chris Taylor, to our Birmingham office.
Chris brings over two decades of experience in the fire industry. Beginning his career on the London Underground, Chris managed the fire safety aspects of the project, to ensure that any works being undertaken were in accordance with London Underground standards and that the correct assurance processes were followed. Chris then moved into an engineering consultancy role, working on a wider portfolio of projects including rail and other transport sectors, high rise, residential, commercial/office, retail, heritage, education, and industrial. During this time, Chris applied a range of fire engineering techniques to a variety of situations, considering the impact on compliance, functionality, cost, time and safety.
Chris has developed his own quasi-steady state tools for analysing both smoke and people movements, as well as applying other recognised tools such as FDS, B-RISK, CFAST and STEPS. Following the legislative changes brought about by the Grenfell tragedy, Chris became highly experienced in applying the FN Curve and has been using this to determine the overall risk scale of buildings, a useful method for prioritising remedial works at higher-risk buildings and identifying optimal risk mitigation solutions. This approach has proved especially helpful for more complex buildings, with fire safety guidance documents BS 9999 and BS 9991 both highlighting the limitations for buildings over 50m, and considering the need for a Qualitative Design Review (QDR) above this height.
Chris’ expertise extends to the underlying principles of both suppression and detection systems and through this knowledge, can evaluate whether the system installed is suitable for the actual application, assess alternatives, and provide commentary on the compliance of these systems.
Throughout his time consulting, Chris undertook third-party reviews on behalf of approval authorities, developers and contractors to give assurance when advanced performance-based fire engineering techniques have been applied. These focused on both the suitability of the method applied, as well as the accuracy of the assessment. In addition, Chris recognises the significance of the inputs used in both quantitative deterministic and probabilistic studies and has found that this will often have significant implications on the output of the studies. He can communicate the sensitivity these inputs may have and advise on how to improve modelling accuracy. Chris joins our team of Fire Engineering experts and will be a great asset to the company.
You can find the full details of Chris’ experience on his profile. It is a pleasure to welcome Chris to the business.
