Safety is paramount. When you own or manage a building, it is crucial that your building and processes be properly protected. Fire safety is an absolutely vital aspect in this, but building safety, construction site safety and safe manufacturing process areas also deserve your attention. Volantis’ team includes in-house experts who represent many disciplines and who are here to make things easier for you with regard to safety.
Safety is more than
just following the rules
Buildings and their surroundings are subject to safety regulations that are enshrined in law. However, such regulations cannot entirely rule out emergencies, since there is no such thing as absolute building safety. Therefore, it is a good idea to be prepared for emergencies, on the off chance that something may go wrong some day. Are there any things you can do on top of the requirements laid down in the Dutch Environment and Buildings Decree (Besluit Bouwwerken Leefomgeving), to reduce the risk of (potentially severe) injury, minimise damage or prevent your company or organisation from having to cease its operations for some time due to a fire on its premises? What must be done to be able to resume production as soon as possible in such circumstances?
Rather than just focusing on the legal requirements, Volantis takes the client by the hand, raises their awareness of the risks and helps them create an even safer situation.
An integrated solution
Naturally, buildings and manufacturing process areas must meet the basic safety requirements at a minimum. Volantis has all the in-house expertise (representing many different disciplines) needed to be able to issue recommendations on this, and implement said recommendations.
The team will get together to draft an optimised safety concept that meets the requirements laid down in the Environment and Buildings Decree, if the situation requires it. They will jointly create the most effective solution, in which safe evacuation routes may be combined with, say, emergency alert systems for emergency response teams, sprinkler systems and smoke control systems.
Fire safety: A risk-based approach
Whereas the Building Code is merely designed to prevent accidents and damage to third parties and allows for a complete loss of burnt-down buildings, our risk-based approach also involves a look at limiting damage and whatever other (fire) safety objectives may apply, which may help you, for instance, get your primary process back up and running more quickly following an incident.
We do so by analysing, from various points of view, the characteristics and properties of fires, human beings, buildings, interventions and the building’s surroundings. In addition, we identify the safety risks and scenarios that may affect the safety of the building’s users and the processes that take place inside the building. In other words, when we use this risk-based approach, we will not only look at what must be done to meet the requirements laid down in applicable law, but we will perform a risk analysis to identify the things that must be done, from various relevant points of view, to reduce the safety risks to an acceptable level.
For instance, we can create smart, safer windows that prevent broken glass from being propelled into a room with people in it in the event of an explosion. In this way, the people in the room behind the window are protected after an explosion, and damage to the building is minimised.
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