Fire protection - missing classes

[RebeccaHedberg]

Hi,

I work as a fire protection engineer developing 3D fire models. I would like to request IFC classes for objects representing fire protection requirements.

I think it's a real issue that there are no suitable classes for objects that are representative of fire protection requirements. Instead we are using a variety of other classes that end up adding our representative components to the same classes as actual building components which is far from ideal.
The fire model is quickly becoming a natural part of the modeling package in projects and currently the lack of appropriate ifc classes is creating a situation where projects are opting to filter out fire information in different ways when the ifc is the primary information model. This creates quality risks and it is certainly not a wanted outcome that the fire model becomes a problem for the project as we are trying to ramp up the ways in which it can be helpful for projects.

I realize there is no standard for how these elements should be categorized, but we need to move forward with something. I see this as a real quality issue in our models.

KR
Rebecca Hedberg

[stefkeB]

We are currently collaborating in a project "FireBIM" (ITEA) with EU partners from Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal and are also looking at the best possible alignment of Fire Safety concepts to the IFC schema.

While basic stuff such as FireRating is foreseen, there are others where we have various options.
E..g., compartmentation can be presented as an IfcSpatialZone or as an IfcZone grouping IfcSpace entities, which we are testing with modelling software. But "escape route" is harder to map with IFC.

And also basic equipment like a Fire Extinguisher is often wrongly mapped as a Terminal, due to lack of better entities in the scheme.

Would be nice to exchange some approaches, so we could suggest schema improvements with buildingSMART.

[Moult]

Yeah it's always pretty embarassing when I talk to the fire engineer and say "uh, about extinguishers..." :) "... oh, yeah fire blankets too ..." :)

[RebeccaHedberg]

@stefkeB: We would be very interested in learning more about the "FireBIM" project and exchanging approaches. I am currently also part of the reference group for a project in Sweden which aims to set some national industry standard for how fire protection information is relayed parametrically and visually in models.
I am in charge of developing our fire models internally at my company, and while the models may still be immature, it is a pet peeve of mine that I have a concept for how to structure everything neatly on the Revit side but our ifc:s still turn out... less than impressive. And there really isn't much we can do about it on our end.

We would be happy to help push the needle toward a more better fire ifc in whatever way we can.