Review on fire safety management and application to Hong Kong

Fire safety management is very important in the concept of providing total safety in a building. In this paper, different views on fire safety management were reviewed. For new buildings, fire safety management should be planned at the design stage of fire safety provisions using the ‘engineering approach’. The fire safety objectives should be stated clearly in a fire safety manual as proposed. For existing buildings, the fire safety provisions are recommended to be assessed with a ranking system on the passive building design and active fire protection system by comparing with the new fire codes. Fire safety management programme is then worked out with reference to the inadequacy on those hardware provisions. A fire safety plan should be drafted with clear understanding on the fire safety design philosophy and assumptions made. Control by legislation by a single government department is strongly recommended.