Fire Safety Engineering + Systems Design

With a dedicated team of fire safety professionals across three offices in New Zealand, Jensen Hughes provides expert guidance and practical solutions to help keep your project on track.

Our accredited fire protection engineers have extensive design and construction experience, including fire alarm, mass notification, fire sprinkler, special hazard fire suppression, and other performance-based design capabilities.

To minimise fire risks, our expert fire safety engineers develop tailored fire strategies during the construction phase. This comprehensive approach ensures the fire safety strategy is integrated into the design from the start, aligning with the project's goals and the final building requirements.

For new or modified buildings, we work closely with you to craft the optimal fire safety strategy during the design phase. This collaborative process allows us to fully understand your needs and deliver the best solution.

If the building is already operational, we can review the current fire safety measures and inform the fire risk assessment process. This helps align the fire strategy with your organisation's fire safety policies and operational requirements.

Fire, smoke, and evacuation modelling is an essential tool for predicting the spread of smoke, heat, and flames in built environments, providing valuable insights for design and planning. Modelling can help to optimise fire safety strategies, ensuring proper smoke control, fire suppression, and safe evacuation routes. Our modelling services include evacuation simulations, which assess how occupants move in emergencies, identifying potential issues in escape routes and improving overall safety. We offer a comprehensive approach to enhancing building safety and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

With extensive experience in fire safety for underground transit systems, including train stations and tunnels, we employ a comprehensive, performance-based approach. This covers critical areas such as emergency evacuations, smoke control, fire compartmentation, and the fire rating of loadbearing elements - all grounded in essential fire safety principles. Understanding the complexities of infrastructure projects, our team collaborates closely with you to develop practical, cost-effective solutions that meet your objectives while ensuring full compliance with safety standards.

Integrating passive fire design early is crucial for ensuring fire safety, regulatory compliance, and seamless design coordination. By proactively addressing fire protection requirements from the outset, we prevent unexpected challenges and reduce the need for costly last-minute adjustments.

Third party peer reviews are often required in construction projects. This is because peer reviews can support submission paperwork under the building regulations or help you understand and evaluate a submission that a third party has presented to you. This review will identify the key drivers for the design approach, be it legislation, life safety or asset protection and insurance. We will then deliver an evaluation about the suitability of the design to achieve stakeholder requirements.

We consider each building's design and use and provide safe and practical design outcomes. This can facilitate greater design flexibility while maintaining the original architectural features. It can also accommodate the operational intent of a building that may not comply with the prescriptive National Construction Code (NCC) requirements. Our performance-based solutions are rigorously benchmarked against the objectives and intent of the NCC, ensuring that we can clearly demonstrate compliance with the relevant performance requirements.

The fundamental principle of building fire safety is that the building’s structure must be sufficiently resilient to withstand the expected fire conditions. This resilience is essential to ensure that the building can support the safe and efficient evacuation of occupants, as well as facilitate the intervention activities of fire brigade personnel during an emergency. In addition to protecting the safety of people, it is equally important to consider the long-term protection of property and the continuity of business operations following a severe fire. This comprehensive approach to fire safety helps minimise risk, safeguard lives, and maintain the integrity and functionality of the building even in the event of a major fire.​