Matt has been working in the electrical industry for over 35 years, 25 of which working for Legrand Electric Ltd where he started his career with the company in Sales and Technical based roles. After working as Legrand’s Major Projects Manager for a number of years, it was Matt’s passion for learning and teaching others that enabled the forward thinking of the company to create his current role, Training and BIM Manager, a post he has held since 2013.
Matt is responsible for developing the BIM capabilities within Legrand UK whilst also supporting the Legrand Group with their objectives and drive for Digital acceleration. He also has responsibility for creating and delivering inhouse and client training programmes, including the management of the companies external CPD programme. Matt also finds himself engaging more and more with Legrand’s CSR strategy and is driving Sustainability practices and education within the business.
He has also been recognised by the construction industry for his commitment to digital transformation throughout the sector and is an active member of a number of industry working groups such as bsi B/555, CEN TC/442, Chair of CPA’s LEXiCON project and is the current Treasurer for CIBSE’s Society of Digital Engineering. Matt is also a STEM Ambassador supporting and engaging with young people making life and career choices.
Outside of the work environment, Matt has been involved in the Martial Arts for over 35 years and has taught traditional Lau Gar Kung Fu and other forms of self-defence to many students over the years. Matt is also a fully qualified chef, holding certification in traditional French cookery.
So uh my name is uh engineer Steven ugu and I’m the chairman of the branch so as a branch um we continue to engage our members and especially those in Nigeria um one of them is the technical session uh thanks to the technical team for always um bringing high quality webinar to our
Members uh we have a lot of other activities um that we do as a branch where register charity in the UK um we have a lot of stem activities uh conferences we have some technical visits a whole lot of things that we do to keep our members active here in the
UK and we also support uh engineering activities in Nigeria as well so the first part of the invite as I say is uh technical session and today’s session will be dedicated to exploring cable man management the premature collapse and fire rated containment I believe that this is a key
Priority for building and construction industry in today’s evolving technological landscape and I’m also sure that this will be of great value um to most of us joining here today especially those from Nigeria um uh because um you know a lot is happening in this space at the moment
And I’m sure that uh uh presenter today we be able to do justice to that we’re able to explore the Innovations and best practices within Cable Management here in the UK and of course the standards uh without wasting time I will introduce the technical team we have engineer
Ik MN and engineer sh lawyer so these are the people behind most of the technical um events that organized as a branch um and I will just quickly hand over to engineer sh who is uh a ched engineer here in the UK with over 18 years experience in the electrical and
And um in the design installation of electrical Building Services so sh over to you thank you very much thank you so much Mr chairman for your kind introduction and I want to use this opportunity to welcome everybody um to this to this webinar um just a few
Housekeeping and we go quickly into the webinars I know our time is far spent um please I will advise that everybody please kindly mute so that we can minimize any noise interference um again this is a CPD for 45 minutes and then we take 15 minutes
Q&A um the topic is on cable management premature collapse and fire rated containment in building um this is a CPD webinar so um we expect that we issue um a CPD certificate at the end of it so kindly leave your name and um emails in
The chat so that we can colate all the attends and forward it to our presenter today so without Much Ado I’ll just like to introduce our our presenter today um our presenter today is Matt codin uh Matt has been working in the electrical industry for over 35 years 25
Of which he has been working for leg Grand electric where he started his career with the company in sales and Technical based roles after working as L Grant’s major project manager for a number of years it was Matt’s passion for Learning and teaching others that enabled the Forward Thinking of the
Company to create his current role which is training and beam manager a post he has held since 2013 Matt is responsible for developing the beam capabilities within legran UK while also supporting the legran group with their objectives and drive for digital ass acceleration he also has responsibility for creating and
Delivering in-house and client training programs including the management of the company’s external CPD program Matt also finds himself engaging more and more with El with l Grant CSR strategy and is driving sustainability practices and education within the business he has also been recognized by the construction industry for his commitment to digital
Transformation throughout the sector and is an active member of a number of work industry working groups such as BSI b555 CC 442 he’s the chair of CPA lexicon project and he’s the current treasurer for sipy soci Society of digital engineering Matt is also a stem Ambassador stem stands for science technology engineering and
Mathematics uh and supporting and engaging with young people making life and career choices outside of work interestingly Ma has been involved in martial arts for over 35 years and I st the traditional laar kungu and other forms of selfdefense to many students over the years Matt is also a fully
Qualified Chef holding certification in traditional French cooker so can you all join me in welcoming mat for presentation today Mark over to you thank you engineer sein for that wonderful um introduction I’m very grateful you’re and also thank you for inviting me to um join you today and to
Make this uh CPD presentation to you and your members which I’ve really been looking forward to um since we uh since we spoke so I’m just going to uh share my screen I don’t use zoom very often so hopefully um this will work perfectly so I should okay so hopefully
You can see the first um introductory slide yes we can see good perfect and I hope that everybody can hear me clearly as well so um as you can see the subject title is premature collapse and fire rated containment um the seminar is actually fully approved by CPD UK so we
Will be able to uh create and deliver CPD certificates for everybody after the event um obviously I don’t need to tell you who I am anymore engineer seun is very very kindly done that for me so without further Ado let’s take a look at the presentation itself so I’ll just
Introduce you very very quickly to to the company I work for I work for L Grand electric limited where uh a product Manufacturing Company in the construction sector so we service the entirety of the built environment um all kinds of buildings and and project activity um we’re a global operation
Headquartered in uh Lio in central France um and the UK stats are on the screen here so we turn over 140 million in the UK in terms of uh cable management and power distribution products and we’ve got 700 odd 650 it says on there it’s about 700 people work
For us in the UK but about 38,000 globally for a grand um um these are the sectors that we operate in um and these are the these are the UK sectors but these are Global sectors as well through data centers offices education health health care as you can
See the other ones on there as well so that’s the business that I work for um my responsibilities are for training and I’m also the Bim manager so digital Engineering Building information modeling and I’m becoming more and more involved in sustainability because we tend to find that the engineers working
In the building information modeling World also have a very big interest in the sustainability aspect as well so those two things kind of dovetail together very very well so the presentation subject itself there are some learning objectives on the um screen in front of you um back in January of 2019 so three
Three four years ago now the UK electrical installation standards as you could see from the first sentence on the slide there required wiring systems within a building to be adequately supported against their premature collapse in the event of a fire but since that time there are two recurring questions that are asked again
And again and again first of all what is premature collapse because although we talk about premature collapse and it’s referenced in number of different standards like bs8 519 for example there still isn’t a definition of premature collapse and the second question is how do metallic CMS systems
Or cable management systems perform in a fire and the answers to those two questions are quite difficult to um to to put together for lots and lots of different reasons that I’ll try and expl explain as we go through and you know we as a business LR have been trying to
Explore and investigate these questions to come up with some answers for the industry so that’s what I’ll try to do over the next sort of 40 minutes or so we have an agenda of course which is here so we’re going to begin um right at the top with the critical stages of um
Fire safety or fire protection if you like um which are these three elements here as you can see so we talk about um prevention we talk about extinguishing and we talk about containing a fire um with um theories like compartmentation within a building to stop fire spreading
From one building element to another but what we’re focusing on really today is more the prevention side so obviously that’s around the selection of non-flammable building materials um so it’s just really important just to put that up right at the beginning because fire is um something that’s affected the
Industry quite severely over Years Gone by and certainly here in the UK we were seriously affected by the grenfell tower tragedy um a few years ago when um the uh the building was badly affected by um failures in the cladding that was installed and consequently a lot of people uh unfortunately lost their
Lives here in the UK we have a TV channel called BBC 2 and there’s a wonderful documentary that that really sets out the the landscape um which was called the fires that foretold grenfell tragedy and the reason that that um documentary was put together was because we’ve had previous fire
Disasters um over the years and I’ve got some photographs or pictures of them on here number one was a uh Summerland Holiday Park in the UK number two was um one in Liverpool Noley Heights number three was um in Irving in Scotland garau Court the fourth one was Harrow Court in
Stevenage and the fifth one was lcanal house in um campwell in London and the reason I put these on here is just to show that all of these issues occurred through the construction the design phases of these buildings but lessons weren’t learned each time something could have been done
Better but it didn’t actually happen and it’s really the greenel tower tragedy in the UK that’s made us focus our minds on what we’re actually doing but there is a question to ask here and the question is with all of these things going on why are we still allowed to use plastic
Clips and clamps and cable ties and things like that plastic systems to hold up heavy metallic systems when we’ve got fire situations of course these plastic systems just burn away or or um or or or end up just corroding away in the fire to such an extent that we have this
Premature collapse problem where the containment systems can drop down to a dangerous level and again here in the UK we’ve had circumstances where firefighters have been snagged in the cables that have fallen down from a prematurely collapsed containment system um and unfortunately um they’ve they’ve lost their lives in these uh in these
Fire evacuation situations so it’s a terrible um terrible problem that we have in our industry Common Sense would tell us that if we’re designed in products to resist fire then those products themselves should be non-combustible but there are no regulations in place that say that we have to
Use uh let’s say metallic um fixings and clamps and clips we can still use those plastic ones that we looked at on the previous slide now what we do know is that when we do have a a disaster scenario we should look at that and work out how
We can improve and how we can do things better and and to a small degree it happened but not as much as we would have liked in the industry so looking at those fires that I showed on the other slide after Summerland there was a tightening of the regulations but it
Wasn’t a very big tightening of the regulations the fire disaster at Noley Heights resulted in the production of approved document B um which is uh building regulations um document for fire safety after the Harrow Court fire there were some reviews undertaken and BSA 519 was developed which we’ll look at a
Little bit later and after Shirley Tower’s fire there was some Amendment some amendments in the wiring regulations but nothing really addressed the fundamental questions that we’re trying to answer here which is what is premature collapse and how do we mitigate against it and what is the fire resistance of Cable Management
Systems now after the grenfell tragedy there are now some major reforms coming in particularly in the UK we’ve got a new piece of legislation that’s um becoming law which is called the building safety act that’s going to drive multi levels of competence requirements into the industry so our
Industry here here in the UK is up for some significant changes um because of the building safety act that’s coming through right now so if that sets the scene a little bit we’ll just talk about a few other things that we go through here and one of them is the Construction Products
Regulation so the Construction Products regulation is um uh a European directive with a number of 30520 one1 and and it it it’s basically a set of legislation that tells us how we should place and market products into the construction industry and when it comes to products it talks about what we call Construction
Products and a construction product is a product that’s described as something that is permanently installed in a building so um cables uh um are considered to be uh permanently installed unless they are your little cables that you might have on the end of a mouse or um your cable that plugs your
Mobile phone in or your computer but typically most other cables are classified under the Construction Products regulation and they’re tested for the reaction to fire so not resistance to fire but reaction to fire what happens to that cable when it burns and what the Construction Products regulation does is it classifies the
Cables so that might look complicated on the slide but actually what it’s telling us is all cables are classified by the Construction Products regulation with a code and the codes are on the central part of the slide from FCA at the bottom to Aca at the top and
If you look at the text against each of those codes you can see how they contribute or how they don’t contribute to fire propagation so an FCA cable is a dangerous cable it’s a it’s a cheap imported cable um and it’ll cause terrible fires whereas the ACA cable at
The top would probably be something like a just a copper um a copper pyro type cable which won’t burn and is I don’t like using the word safe when we talk about fire but it’s the safest type of cable that we can use um in installations and what the Construction
Products regulation then does is once you’ve categorized your cable code you can then test your cable for three things smoke production so when the cable Burns how much smoke does that cable give off the second thing is Flaming droplets so again when that cable Burns does that cable drip with
Flaming pieces of um the the the um the coating of the cable and if you’re walking underneath that kind of thing when there’s a fire the less flaming droplets you’ve got the better and the third thing is acidity so it’s the acidity of the smoke so almost if you
Like how how poisonous is that smoke so you can then begin to classify a cable for example you could have a CCA cable which is Central there down in the middle of that um that chart and then you could have a category for smoke production flaming droplets and acidity
And we’re beginning in the UK to see specifiers actually describing with a full specification code so it could be CCA um s1a d0 A1 of the types of cables they want to see installed into the buildings that they’re designing so there are two things to think about
With cables one’s reaction to fire one’s resistance um and we’re talking really here about reaction to fire what happens to that cable when it burns there are other standards out there that will talk about resistance so bs8 519 that I’ve mentioned a couple of times already does
Help us to um test and rate cables by their survival time in terms of minutes so you know when we we we typically talk about fire doors with a minute rating don’t we 30 minute 60 Minute 90 minute 120 Minutes that’s what bs8 519 is trying to do for the cables that it’s
Talking about as well but interestingly there’s no fire test in Europe or the UK for cable management systems so when we think back to those questions at the beginning of the presentation what’s premature collapse and what is the um resistance to fire of a metallic cable management system the second
Question there is no fire test standard there isn’t one and these products also remain outside of the scope of the Construction Products regulation because they’re not considered to be um permanently installed products and they actually are governed by a different regulation called the um low voltage
Directive so you can begin to see how how complex um our industry is and the difficulties that we as manufacturers and you as Engineers have in terms of how do we navigate our way through all of this complexity to build these buildings that are fire
Safe so I mentioned bs8 519 uh a couple of times we’ll just have a quick look at this one now it’s around circuit Integrity cable um and it was it was first um written in 2010 which was directly after the Harrow Court fire in stevenage there was a coroner report
That was written and one of the results of that coroners report was the development of BSA 519 it was updated in 2020 so the one that we should be working off now is B BSA 519 2020 um and it’s all around power and control cables for Life Safety and for firefighting applications
And other critical applications as well but there are two really interesting uh sections well it’s all interesting if you like reading standards but section 15 and section 16 are the are the key areas that I would point you to section 15 is around cable installation practice
And I’ve put some text in red there underneath and it does actually say in section 15 the resistance to fire of the cable containment system should be at least equivalent to the survival time required for the cable so bs8 519 is really good because it tries to connect
These these two things together the resistance to fire of the cable containment system and the survival time for the cable and it’s the only standard that actually tries to do that so bs8 51 is a really good piece of um standardization that we should be using
Um in our industry and the second really important section is section 16 and if you’ve read that red text already on the slide it says Failure to observe the design criteria set out in the rest of the standard will result in premature collapse of the cable containment
System which is great but what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t Define again what is premature collapse so it’s still is it’s still quite difficult for us to navigate this this whole landscape that we have to navigate in order to design and build the buildings that we’re all involved
In and what you can see here is that um bs8 519 talks about using a system approach um it and it says there on the uh the the first uh sentence the support system should have a fire survival time equal to that of the cable it supports and
What we’re talking about with the system is when we start combining products together so maybe that could be your fire stopping your cable containment system the hangers the drop rods the supports the fixings the whole thing becomes a system so if you don’t observe the design criteria it will it will result in
Premature collapse and obviously we’re trying to avoid that premature collapse situation from happening um what we do know is that you know that the steel is steel is exceptionally strong as we know but in a fire situation when steel reaches about 500 degrees C it loses about 50% of its
Tensar strength so steel is big and heavy as you know and if that is collapsing we need to be very very careful with how we’re designing the supporting structure that holds that system in place so that if we do have a collapse the whole system comes to the floor level and it
Doesn’t allow cables to hang at snagging level which is the area around midchester above the head here where firefighting teams can get contain get snagged in that containment as it as it drops down there is actually a methodology in in 8519 um which is that methodology a equals W
Over etc etc um and what that does is it basically tells you depending on what type of cables you’re using depending on the span of the supports you’re using for your containment and so on it tells you what size drop rods you should be using uh and the calculation does work
We’ve tested it ourselves created spreadsheets and put lots of information in there and done some test things that’s again it’s a good piece of information that we’ve um that we can use for this type of thing and if we accept the the standard is to ensure that cable is
Supported for the correct amount of minutes then it also offers us some benefits as well because we can adjust the support spans so if you work with a typical manufacturer’s loading table it might be possible to stretch those support reports a little bit and then you can
Begin to reduce your overall cost of the project so although we’re talking about you know trying to stop um fire disasters from happening we still have to run our businesses and we still have to think about costs we still have to think about the best design for the
Project we’re working on so amongst all this worry about premature collapse and the fire safety and so on we still can think about okay how do how do I design so that I can reduce costs maybe think about the you know the support spans looking at the loading graphs and so on
So there is some benefit that we can take here to reduce the steel content of the installation as well and that ticks of course some of the sustainability um targets as well because if we’re using less steel we can become a bit Greener and then we can
Drive down some of those costs as well so we’ll talk a little bit about the wiring regulation these are the British standard wiring regulations which are bs7671 um and the wiring regulations were actually first published in 1882 and that’s what they looked like at the time
Four pages um with 21 rules and if you’re aware of the wiring regulations particularly now you’ll know that we’re on the 18th edition of the wiring regulations um we about 600 pages long we have chapter after chapter after chapter and hundreds of rules and regulations but actually what we’re
Trying to achieve now in 2023 compared to 1882 the principles are exactly the same don’t cause anybody’s death don’t kill any animals with bad design and don’t start any fires and those are the fundamental principles of the wiring regulations so moving forward to today’s wiring regulations um Shirley Towners in
Southampton was a was a fire where two firefighters were killed when they went to do a rescue and the cable containment system had collapsed because of the fire and the two firefighters went into one of the um Apartments to make a rescue and became entangled in the cables that were at
Snagging height so this level of mid chest to just above the head um their breathing apparatus became entangled by the cabling and unfortunately they both Lo they both lost their lives but one of the other tragedies from this particular disaster was that the residents trying to escape the fire couldn’t see through
The smoke because it was so thick and they were within two or three feet of the Escape Routes but they couldn’t see the illuminated Escape Routes because the um the smoke from the cables was so thick so then we think back again to the euroclass classifications for the cables
Which is why it’s so important to specify the cable the right cable for the for the job with that full specification so we can determine the right we call it opacity of the smoke how how how clear is the smoke can we see through it and see light shining
Through um so that if we had if we had cabled that building to the euroclass classifications those residents would have been able to see the Escape Routes and they would have been able to escape so hindsight is a wonderful thing um but you know these these these disasters
Have have helped us to think about how things should change to a degree um and what happened was was in the 17th edition of the wiring regulations there was an introduction for a requirement for all the cabling in Escape Routes to be designed against premature collapse but in the 18th
Edition it then expanded it to the entirety of the building not just the Escape Routes so 17th Edition said all Escape Routes have to be cabled up against premature collapse and the 18th Edition said it’s now the whole building not just the Escape Roots so that was a fundamental change a
Big change for our industry because I think it’s fair to say that in lots of our buildings that we have these days we’ve got ceiling grids with the lights in them and if you were to lift up those ceiling grids you’ll probably see cables just laid across the grid and so on and
Those cables if they came down could cause premature collapse so the 18th Edition would say you had to fix those cables into Steel containment or you have to fix them with steel clips and clamps to the fabric of the building so you you you you’re you’re mitigating against that premature collapse as much
As you possibly can one thing of Interest again is the wiring regulations still don’t Define premature collapse and what’s made things even more complicated is in um in our UK wiring regulations 2022 there was an amendment made which introduced the term protected Escape Routes so we have Escape rots already
Which are designed you know to a very very high degree um of Integrity usually um in line with BS 9999 but now we’ve got the concept of a protected Escape Route but the wiring regulations didn’t Define it very well and it left the industry very very confused over what’s the difference
Between the two how do you determine what an Escape Route is versus a protected Escape Route so there was a further amendment made in may just of this year so only you know four or five months ago which tried to give some clarity on what is a protected Escape
Route and who should design one a lot of this used to be put onto the contractor to design the Escape Route but it’s not the contractor’s responsibility it’s the entire design team the entire design team should be responsible for Designing the fire safety um rules if you like for each of
The buildings that we work on now so we do have some definitions which are down at the bottom of the screen here um Escape Route is defined and protected Escape Route is also defined I won’t read those out now I’ll I’ll we’ll Supply a copy of the presentation after afterwards and you
Can read that at at your leisure and just begin to understand the differences unless you know them already which is absolutely fine so when we talk about protected Escape Routes ideally they should almost be sterile environments where you’ve probably only got um uh a socket in there for cleaning and some emergency
Lighting um so the two pictures on the on the slide there the one the one on the left is a typical Hotel Corridor you could call that an Escape Route but coming off the hotel Corridor you might have some um protected Escape Routes which would be the stairwell that you can see
Here but as I said and it says it in the box at the bottom there the decision to classify a protected Escape Route and an Escape Route is the entire design team it’s not just the responsibility of one person which it used to be a while ago it’s now
The entire design team working together and collaborating so there’s some introductory text that the um wiring regulations have published to Define an Escape Route um and it basically says that you should only put fire safety or related fire safety system in there electrically um General needs like in and socket outlets
And um and that is it that’s all you should put in there nothing else medical locations have a small exemption which is on here I won’t read all that out now um but you can have a look at you can have a look at that but there are some small exemptions for um
Health Care Facilities but they’re only they’re they only deviate very slightly from what we’ve just looked at so as I mentioned before um we’ve got the building safety act coming into play now in the UK which is coming into UK law so it basically means if we don’t
Comply with the building safety act we will be committing a criminal offense and we will be either fined or we will have a jail term applied to us so it’s really really key that we understand that and we begin to pick up all of the information that’s coming out now in our
Industry about the building safety act and what it’s going to mean for our industry so there’s a few things here I just want to point out um after the um grenfell Tower disaster there was an independent review made of the building regulations and the fire safety regime that we as
Manufacturers and you as Engineers have to work under and um Dame Judith hack who wrote the report basically said that our industry in terms of regulations was not fit for purpose which is why there’s all this work going on now building safety act has come out we’ve now got
Things like the golden thread of information um that’s that that people are beginning to talk about so basically the golden thread is a tool to manage all of the information for a building so it’s it’s unbroken and it’s dig digitally traceable so effectively any change that’s made in a building
Design can be traced back to who made the change why was the change made and if it’s only on cost now and you’re putting in a a lesser um quality product that will soon we hope be something that’s outlawed a thing of the past if you’re substituting a product for a better
Quality product that’s fine but there’ll still be a digital Trace who made the change why was it done and all of this will be traceable through the golden thread of information and the golden thread exists through every stage of the building from conception all the way through to the inuse and the operation
Of the building and even the Demolition and the repurposing of that building as well it’s an unbroken chain of information so there is a definition um there this is a very small part of the definition the definition is actually three or four pages long but basically the
General um definition is that it’s the information that allows you to understand the building but also the information that gives you the steps needed to keep the building and the people safe both now and in the future and all of this is referenced within the building safety act okay so it’s it’s
Really important important for us but also the golden thread of information is Shar um stored sorry as structured digital information so we as an industry are going through a huge digital change at the moment where we’re moving from you know the old analog methods and paper based records and drawings and
Things moving into that digital realm where we’re using building information modeling and things like that for our designing and our our sequencing of our building phases so the building safety act is going to drive the help to drive the digitization of our industry through Concepts like
The golden thread and it also says the government is now going to specify digital standards that we will need to we as the industry will need to use um and the first digital standard that’s come out through all this is um a firestopping standard BS 8644 and it’s the digital management of
The fire safety information um and there’s just some information about the document there but Point C at the bottom is important because it this document enables relevant accurate and accessible fire safety information to be made available to the right people at the right time and why is it really important to say
That because if you look at the words underlined in red this is how our industry worked before lots of things were conducted in isolation we work very independently from each other information was rarely defined and structured for the fire safety Handover um generally substandard um analog largely paper based manual
Processes difficult everything thing on that slide is what we don’t want to be but until you know very recently that is exactly what we were so these the these changes are coming through now which are having a lot of impact on the industry and and there are some real drivers here
Around those questions that we asked at the beginning what is premature collapse and what is the fire rating of the cable management system so we can build our buildings better we have some good things happening you know the Advent of building information modeling so that this will help us with
The golden thread concept because we can create our buildings in um in a digital environment um we can create them accurately um we can create a digital design from beginning to end using the or supporting the golden thread initiative you know we’ve got accurate parameter naming we’ve got scheduling we
Got takeoffs and all that wonderful stuff stuff so building information modeling is um is an enabler if you like to the principles of those digital standards that the government is now beginning to drive using the golden thread of information as a a digital information delivery concept underpinned by the building
Safety act which is coming into UK law um very very soon so growing demand okay well having said all of that about what’s happening in our industry there’s a real on growing growth now in legislation and regulation as you can see so it’s really important that we understand that because all of
Those pieces of legislation regulation and standards Drive what we do as a business so we as an industry that’s me that’s you that’s all of us together have to be become more focused in ensuring that the design and the installation of the systems that we put
Into the buildings can be proven to meet the standards so really there’s a growing need for a demonstration of proof how can we prove what we’re doing and what we’re saying so for a manufacturer of Steel products we can say that steel basically is non-combustible it doesn’t burn but we also know
That clients when they’re looking at their fire strategy they need documentation for everything and unfortunately for us as manufacturers it’s whether it burns or not we still have to provide documentation but as I said before there’s no European Standard to specify a fire test for um Cable Management
Systems so how do we do it this is what we get asked all the time what is the fire rating of your CMS products so what we’ve done is and this is a challenge for all manufacturers of Cable Management Systems not just us as L grand um there are two principal standards
That you can see on the slide there um BN 61527 which is the cable ladder and cable Trace standard and um BN 585 which is the um cable truck in standard but they don’t have any requirement at all for product performance in fire so we’ve
Had a look around um the UK and Europe and we found a German din standard 4102 D12 now that’s a fire test for circuit Integrity cables it’s not a fire test for cable management systems so what we’ve actually managed to do is to piggyback if you like our cable
Manager agement systems onto the back of the circuit Integrity cable test so when the circuit Integrity cables go into the oven which you can see being built there in the middle picture in the right hand side um our containment systems can be used as the supporting structures inside the
Oven which is going to get very very hot so we can see how our products perform under a test condition but remember it’s not a test for cable management systems it’s for um circuit Integrity cable but we’re joining the party so to speak and getting in on the um getting in with the
Um the testing environment to put our products into that really extreme environment of fire testing so the way it works is you begin to build up the system on the left hand side there so there’s some of our cable ladders in there you build the oven around
The structure so on top of those cable um Management Solutions on top of the ladder you’ll find circuit Integrity cable which is the object of the test the oven is then built and finished as you can see on the right hand side and it’s then craned into place what happens
Then is all of the cables are connected to circuits so they’re live and then you can monitor each of those cables for um how they perform inside the oven so effect ly um when the light goes out on that particular cable you know it’s failed so
You can begin to see how long did that type of cable last during the test was it 30 minute 60 Minute 90 minute but what we can do as a manufacturer is that at the end of the test so this is at the end of the test
After 90 minutes hour and a half and a temperature of a th degrees we can then go and inspect our cable management system and what we found is that there was no collapse of the cable management system in the test instance so when we talk about what is the um
Fire rating of your cable management system remember there isn’t an actual test there isn’t one it doesn’t exist but what we can do is we can provide a certificate of compliance or conformance if you prefer that tells us under test conditions how long our product lasted for in that extreme oven based test
Environment um and there’s an example of one there fire performance and resistance to premature collapse it didn’t collapse 90 minutes th000 degrees C um so we can provide for the different finishes of product you know preg galvanized hotti galvanized stainless steel we can provide this documentation so we talked about
Evidence-based before so the evidence-based part of it here is we can now give you a document when you ask for one that hopefully will give peace of mind for um for your for your design practices but also to give to your clients as well that the product has
Been tested and here is a document um that tells you that that is the case so when we talk about evidence you know we can evidence by using um by using Bim um designing and installing supporting systems to bs8 519 um ween evidence with independent tests which is just what we were showing
Remembering that it is a cable test it’s a German standard din 4102 but we can offer a declaration of performance that the products resist existed premature collapse for over 90 minutes so we can give that level of assurance now instead of just saying I’m ever so sorry we don’t have anything
That we can give you so hopefully that additional level of proof can offer peace of mind for people who are responsible for Designing those fire safety structures and areas within a building so very quickly we talk about the future here because we really don’t know what it’s going to look like um
What we do know is that there’s an awful lot going on in our industry there are an awful lot of things influencing our industry now that we didn’t have in place a few years ago um we’ve got a lot of different standards that reference each other talk about each other you
Know we’ve got the um Construction Products regulation those Euro class codes for the cables that we talked about before we’ve got the golden thread initiative we’ve got um the the the amendments to the wiring regulations protected Escape roots and so on we’ve got the building safety act so what
We’re trying to do here on the slide is just bring everything together we can see the different elements that we just talked about but it’s clear that the standards and reg regulations all cross reference each other much more so than they ever did before the building safety
Act is going to take time to bed in but what we do know is it references digital standards but it’s also addressing and referencing the development of Competency standards for our industry and those competency standards uh beginning to come through now so there are competency framework standards coming through for principal
Designers for principal Engineers uh and so on and there will be more of these as they come through and basically those competen standards are there to make sure that those disasters that we’ve had before don’t ever happen again so in summary wiring systems must be adequately supported against premature
Collapsing event of a fire previously that was just Escape Routes but now we’ve got protected Escape Routes to think about we’ve got formal introduction of Competency so be aware that that’s coming down the line remember that there’s no UK standard for fire testing for cable management but we
Do have the German din 4102 for circuit Integrity cables that we’ve tested our products to and there are still no UK standards for defining premature collapse but there is some work going on to help us to understand what that is um couple of bits of further learning
On the slide here that you can see few websites and bits and Bobs and that brings us um right to the end so I’m happy to try and answer any questions it’s a really complex scenario unfortunately that uh we all have to to work together um under thank you so much
Matt it’s a pleasure thank you so much for that presentation it’s been it’s quite an interesting one it’s quite extensive and it’s very applicable to obviously electrical systems within buildings and you’ve actually dealt with it extensively um I will hand over to my colleague engineer Simon who will take
Us through the Q&A session um I believe just because our time is fast spent we’ll probably take very few um quick Q&A so engineer Simon please go ahead and take the q& session all right thank you engineer shun um I actually dropped a note for as
Many that would want to ask questions um to drop their questions um in the chat room and um in the absence of no questions there if you have um a question you could kindly also indicate by raising up your hand and we’ll take about maybe two or three questions and
Um we call it a day for this section okay um quick one there’s one question from manufacturing point of um view is there any effort to move into fireproof insulating materials for cable manufacturing um that was by engineer Alfred okay yeah okay that’s for you yeah okay
Well we we as um we as a manufacturer don’t manufacture cables themselves we manufacture almost everything else that goes into a building in terms of digital and electrical infrastructure structure but we we’re heavily involved ourselves in standardization so we have various people within our um organization of LR
Both here in the UK but within Europe and globally as well that actually sit on standards bodies and work within those those areas to to try and bring that safety aspect to the four um I think for for the for the question if it’s related more to the cables we’d
Probably need to seek some information from a cable manufacturer such as um prisi or bicc but certainly for for the for the cable management systems and all of the other types of products that we do yeah we’re heavily involved in looking at new product materials you know that can be
Um f more fire safe we’re we’re very interested in in the the strictest possible fire testing environments for all of our products okay thank you very much for that um another question reads um what are the process for safety process for different type of cables to include fire hazard and demonstration of safety
Measures that’s from engineer aabi um could you just read that one out again for me all right um what are the processes for safety for different type of cables to include fire hazards and demonstration of safety measures okay I if I’ve understood the question correctly it would be around
The design of of of product so it would be around making sure that when you are designing products whether it’s a cable or or or any type of product these days that you are fully respecting the standards that that govern that type of product any regulations that might exist
In your locality whether that’s the UK whether that’s Europe and just making sure that you’re creating the the products to the to the highest possible um levels of safety because we you know we we spoke about the building safety act before and what we do know is that
Under the building safety act that’s coming through in the UK there will be a building saf regulator so a new position if you like in the industry that will be able to stop buildings from being built if products are found to be substandard all right thank you very
Much um mat I think um I just take one more question from my side and U maybe that will be all for for the evening um following um the fact that um there are several standards the industry standard standards for cables and um safety that that Engineers need to deploy for for
Able to to be able to contain them fire containment and all that now would you say um if we start looking at smart materials or composite materials or high performing materials for cable installations would that be a possible solution for the future and um can that
Really be um the solution we need in terms of um structural development quite possibly yes I think um I think the development you know the technological development that we that we’re going through right now as an industry and and and wider than that you know in in everyday life is to such an
Extent that looking at things like composite materials for for new builds and so on can have some real good benefits because it’s exploring things that we’ve never done before and that can be a good thing um and also if we can tie in into that the sustainability
Factor as well so that we can find materials that are that are Greener that are more environmentally friendly but also being as safe as possible so we’re making sure that we’re we’re covering all of those aspects that I think that is the future I think for me if I was
Taking my career choices again now um my career choices when I were younger were to look at um catering and as engineer segan said before a qu ified Chef so I went down that path I think I would certainly look at engineering now because of all the advances and the the
Things that we can do together to make you know make all these buildings the um better than we ever have done before for you know our future Generations really yeah all right thank you very much um I I’m very impressed and glad with um the knowledge you have given to us thus far
I think um in the absence of no other questions again this be um half far from my end um I’ll kindly hand over back to the chairman who will continue with proceedings for the meeting thanks very much Matt and thank you all for thank you my pleasure