SFPE Announces Program and Speakers for Upcoming Engineering Solutions Symposium for Fire Safety and Sustainable Building Design

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland – The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the world’s leading professional society for fire protection and fire safety engineering, invites fire protection engineering professionals to the SFPE Engineering Solutions Symposium for Fire Safety and Sustainable Building Design, hosted in partnership with FRISSBE, on November 29-30, 2023, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

This packed symposium will explore design concepts, tools, and approaches for fire-safe buildings, and highlight the role of fire safety in sustainable design and education. Speakers will share engineering solutions on topics related to sustainable building design, reducing embodied carbon, fire performance of sustainable construction products, fire testing, fire service opportunities, holistic building performance design, building information modeling (BIM), and more. The event will also present insight into external living walls, battery/energy storage systems, façade systems, photovoltaics, mass timber, and more.

The symposium will include opening remarks from SFPE President Jimmy Jönsson, FSFPE, on the Society’s new position statement that confirms SFPE’s commitment to engineering a sustainable and fire resilient built environment.  Symposium Co-Chairs Brian Meacham, PhD, PE, CEng, FIFireE, FSFPE, and Grunde Jomaas, PhD; along with SFPE Interim CEO Chris Jelenewicz, PE, FSFPE, will deliver opening remarks. The full program and speakers are as follows:

• Designing for Sustainability and Fire Safety, by Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Henning Larsen Architects
• Gaps in Science, Policy, and Legislation, by Chris Trott, Foster + Partners
• The Impact of Fire in the Context of Sustainability, by Birgitte Messerschmidt, Director, Research. M.Sc., National Fire Protection Association
• Framework for Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings (SAFR-B), by Margaret McNamee, PhD, Professor, Lund University
• External Living Walls – Sustainable and Fire Safe? by Wojciech Węgrzyński, PhD, Instytut Techniki Budowlanej
• Batteries and Energy Storage Systems, by Daniel Joyeux, Efectis
• Fire Performance of Façade Systems, by Jose Torero, FSFPE, PhD, CEng, University College London
• Fire Safety of Building Applied Photovoltaics and Building Integrated Photovoltaics – from Testing to Implementation in Standards, by Giombattista Traina, MSc, Eng, Istituto Giordano
• Research Facts and Myths Related to Mass Timber, by Rory Hadden, University of Edinburgh
• Life Cycle Assessment of Wooden Buildings in Europe, by Erwin Schau, PhD, InnoRenew CoE
• Fire Safe Design with Timber, by Joachim Schmid, Ignis Consulting
• Mjøstårnet – Timber Fire Safety in Practice, by Leif Tore Isaksen, Sweco Norway AS
• The FRISSBE Project and its Research Advancements Towards a Fire-Safe Sustainable Built Environment, by Grunde Jomaas, PhD, Andrea Lucherini, PhD, & Ulises Rojas-Alva, PhD, FRISSBE, Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG)
• AFireTest – Future of Design-optimized Fire Testing, by Ruben Van Coile, PhD, Ghent University
• Energy Storage System Research: Fire Fighter Response Safety Sean DeCrane, Director, Health and Safety, International Association of Fire Fighters
• SFPE Foundation and the Grand Challenges in Sustainability & Resilience, by Natalia Florez, PhD, Stellenbosch University
• Educating Sustainability Conscious Fire Safety Engineers, by Bart Merci, PhD, Professor, Ghent University
• Holistic Building Performance Design, by Benjamin Ralph, MEng PGDip PhD FIFireE FIMechE CEng, Foster + Partners
• Role of BIM in Sustainable and Fire Resilient Design, by Michael Stromgren 

The symposium will also include panel discussions on the role of fire safety in sustainable design, fire safety challenges of sustainable technologies, the role of timber in a sustainable built environment, and more.

This SFPE Engineering Solutions Symposium is being held partnership with FRISSBE and made possible with the support of Danfoss Fire Safety and Evox; a limited number of sponsorships and exhibit opportunities are still available. 

Early-bird registration discounts are available through October 27. To learn more or to register for the SFPE Engineering Solutions Symposium on Mass Timber, visit www.sfpe.org/fssbdsymposium today.