When Accusoft Headquarters wanted to renovate its existing building, the city of Tampa said the building needed a smoke control system unless a fire protection engineer indicated otherwise.
The scope of the project included modifying approximately 7,000 square feet of the first-floor office space and the atrium roof; the communicating space was not considered an atrium upon initial building construction permitting, and an interpretation of the code officials was that the modifications resulted in possible more hazardous conditions as they relate to life safety.
We performed a comparative fire modeling analysis, examining smoke movement and available safe egress times (ASET) based on the existing conditions to the proposed updates to the space. The modeling effort demonstrated that the new proposed conditions afforded an increase in life safety than the existing conditions.
We saved the client approximately $500,000 in construction cost, plus additional revolving annual maintenance costs.
Florida Building Code (FBC)
Florida Fire Prevention Code (FFPC)
Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)
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