Product assessment

Product Assessments, also referred to as Technical Fire Assessments, are conducted when it’s impractical or impossible to directly subject a product, construction material, system, or specific construction to a fire resistance test. These assessments serve as a vital alternative, offering scientific and/or engineering grounded technical evaluation of how these elements would have performed under fire conditions. The process relies on the extensive expertise of subject matter experts who employ a combination of their technical knowledge and reference data from related fire tests.

Product assessments range from straightforward judgements and/or justifications on small changes to a product, through to detailed and complex engineering analyses of large, sophisticated building systems, and will sometimes involve advanced specialist evaluations (e.g. structural analysis in accordance with Eurocode, computational structural modelling, heat transfer modelling etc).

• Flexibility: They can be tailored to specific products or systems that are difficult to test in a standard test environment.
• Cost-Efficiency: Reducing the need for multiple, potentially expensive, physical tests.
• Innovation Support: Allowing for the assessment of cutting-edge materials and designs that have not yet been covered by existing testing protocols.

Ultimately, these assessments provide a critical pathway for qualifying or certifying the fire performance of products, enabling them to be reviewed and accepted by the relevant AHJs (Authority Having Jurisdictions), and to be used confidently in building constructions while ensuring compliance with fire safety standards and regulations. It’s a sophisticated way to bridge the gap between innovative construction practices and stringent fire safety requirements, ensuring that advancements in building technologies do not compromise the essential aspect of fire safety.