Membrane action at

the fire limit state

MJP has the expertise to undertake structural fire engineering assessments in order to determine the inherent fire resistance offered by a structure, allowing significant reduction in the costs of applied fire protection, whilst continuing to achieve compliance with Part B of the Building Regulations. Part of the design suite includes the Vulcan finite element package as developed by the University of Sheffield. This aspect of MJP’s services is headed up by Maurice who is a Chartered Member of The Institution of Structural Engineers and has several years of structural engineering consultancy experience to draw upon.

FDS -sloping thermal flue vertical fire spread

Our Directors have extensive experience in the practical application of computational fluid dynamic modelling packages such as Fire Dynamic Simulator as developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. Such smoke and heat modelling techniques allows an assessment of the tenability conditions of complex facilities thereby enabling a more accurate determination of the mechanical/natural ventilation requirements to be made compared with that proposed by the prescriptive codes -  with potentially significant savings for the client. In addition MJP has developed a comprehensive and fully validated suite of In-House software to undertake conventional smoke & heat calculations for the steady state and growing / filling conditions in accordance with BRE Design Guide368.

simultaneous evacuation

MJP has full command of evacuation modelling packages such as STEPS & Simulex, which allow the simulation of complex crowd movement scenarios. These packages can also be used in time line assessments where the required escape time is compared with that of the available escape time. Such assessments are very useful for resolving non code compliant means of escape arrangements.