Designer’s guide to firefighting operations

Firefighting shafts in taller

buildings
F5-14 GD
Document Title: Firefighting shafts in taller buildings [info type (subject)]
Published: 14 January 2022
Document review date: January 2024
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This document is issued by Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
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© January 2022 Fire and Emergency New Zealand

 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations - Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

Table of contents
1. Context ................................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Definitions .............................................................................................................................................. 3
3. Design guidance for tall buildings........................................................................................................... 6
4. Challenges............................................................................................................................................... 6
4.1. Why standard solutions don’t suit taller buildings ............................................................................. 6
5. Recommendations.................................................................................................................................. 9
6. Related information..............................................................................................................................11
6.1. Designers’ guide to firefighting operations ......................................................................................11
6.2. Legislation .........................................................................................................................................11
6.3. Standards ..........................................................................................................................................11
6.4. References ........................................................................................................................................11

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

1. Context
Scope When we’re fighting a fire in a building, we rely on the building’s design to support
our operations. In simple buildings, we can use the stairs to get to upper levels. In
more complex buildings, we use additional systems, such as lift override, to take
control of the lift so we can access upper levels or building hydrants to help bring
water to the fire.
In taller buildings, standard provisions for stairs and lifts won’t be adequate for our
operations. Additional considerations need to be made.

Who this This chapter is for building owners, designers and other building practitioners and
chapter is for contractors. It provides guidance from Fire and Emergency’s perspective on
firefighting shafts in buildings over eight floors.

What is not This chapter gives building industry stakeholders an overview of aspects of our
included in this operations that relate to them. However, it is not an exhaustive guide to our
chapter operations, nor does it replace any statutory requirements. We recommend you read
it alongside other chapters in the guide.

Legislative We aim to reduce the risk to both firefighters and building occupants through
framework encouraging appropriate building design which allows us to achieve our statutory
objective (under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017) to reduce the
incidence of unwanted fire and the associated risk to life and property. Our functions
include responding to and suppressing fires, and attending to other types of
emergencies that may occur in a building.
Read this guide alongside the:
• mandatory requirements of the New Zealand Building Code (Building Code);
• requirements of New Zealand Standards (Standards); and
• Building Act 2004.
This guide does not replace any part of the Building Code or Standards or other
mandatory building requirements.
The Building Code Fire Safety – C Protection from fire, clauses C1 – C6 defines Building
Code performance requirements of the Building Act 2004. C5 is the performance
requirement on ‘Access and Safety for Firefighting Operations’.

2. Definitions
The following definitions apply for the purposes of this guide. Defined terms used throughout this
document are consistent with the Building Act 2004, Building Code and Acceptable solutions C/AS2.

Counterflow Counter-flow can occur on the stairs during the evacuation from buildings when the
downward flow of evacuating occupants passes the upward flow of firefighters
heading to the fire floor.

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

Fire control The principal location where the status of a fire detection system, an alarm system,
centre (FCC) and a communications and control system are displayed, and from which all systems
can be manually controlled.
Some industry standards and publications refer to the fire control centre as ‘central
control station’, ‘emergency command centre’, ‘fire service centre’ or ‘fire control
room’ (although different standards exist amongst these).

Fire engineering A formal process as outlined in the International Fire Engineering Guidelines for all
brief (FEB) stakeholders to define and agree on the basis and scope of work for fire engineering
analysis.

Firecell Building Code clause C regarding protection from fire defines firecell as:
Any space, including a group of contiguous spaces on the same or different levels
within a building, which is enclosed by any combination of fire separations,
external walls, roofs, and floors.

Fire floor The floor of the building on which the fire is reported by automatic systems or
observed/reported by occupants or other persons. The fire floor may change with
new information and the initial reports by occupants may be inaccurate, if the
observation is of the effects of fire (e.g. smoke spread), rather than the fire itself.

Fire resistance Building Code clause C regarding protection from fire defines FRR as:
rating (FRR) The term used to describe the minimum fire resistance of primary and secondary
elements as determined in the standard test for fire resistance, or in accordance
with specific calculation method verified by experimental data from standard fire
resistance tests. It comprises three numbers giving the time in minutes for which
each of the criteria stability, integrity and insulation are satisfied and is presented
always in this order.

Firefighter The place where firefighters gain access to a building. This must comply with New
access point Zealand Building Code Clause C5.6:
Buildings must be designed and constructed in a manner that will allow
firefighters, taking into account the firefighters’ personal protective equipment
and standard training, to:
(a) reach the floor of fire origin,
(b) search the general area of fire origin, and
(c) protect their means of egress.

Firefighting lift A lift or elevator designed for use by firefighters during an emergency, fitted with
systems to provide additional resilience to support emergency operations.
A full description of firefighting lift features can be found within F5-08 GD FFO Lifts.

Forward control A safe position inside the building from which to carry out firefighting operations. This
point (FCP) is usually one to two floors below the lowest floor of the building that is affected by
smoke and/or fire. The location becomes the last point to assemble personnel
awaiting deployment.
If the extent of the fire is unknown, or the fire develops and extends vertically, it
creates a situation where the boundaries between zones become dynamic.

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

Lift A moving compartment (also known as the lift car) housed in a shaft, for raising and
lowering people or things to different levels in a building. For the purposes of this
document, the terms ‘lift’ and ‘elevator’ are interchangeable.

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

3. Design guidance for tall buildings

Limits of Standard design guidance doesn’t currently capture lift design in taller buildings.
standard design Clauses C1–6 of the Building Code outlines how buildings are expected to perform in a
guidance fire. Clause C5 is particularly relevant, as it sets out clear expectations that buildings
should both facilitate access for and protect firefighters.
There are two ways for designers to comply with these requirements:
• by following a deemed-to-comply approach, such as Acceptable Solutions or
Verification Method documents, or
• through an engineered approach, which means using an alternative method
supported by appropriate evidence to demonstrate compliance with the Building
Code performance criteria.
The current deemed-to-comply solutions have a limit of 20 floors for the Acceptable
Solution C/AS2, or 60 m for the Verification method C/VM2. Buildings taller than
those limits are outside the scope of these documents. These must be designed as
engineered alternative solutions, in which case it is important to demonstrate that
the objectives of the Building Code are met.
Unfortunately, even for buildings lower than those limits, the compliance documents
don’t adequately address our operational needs for buildings over a certain size.

4. Challenges
4.1. Why standard solutions don’t suit taller buildings
Stairs F5-07 GD FFO Stairs in buildings outlines firefighting procedures in multi-storey
limitations buildings. This procedure relies on setting up the Breathing Apparatus Entry Control
Officer (ECO) in the stairway, one or two floors below the fire. The ECO’s location
becomes the interface between fully protected firefighters and incoming/outgoing
resources. If the ECO’s location becomes compromised by smoke, it must be
relocated.
The worst-case scenario is that the entire stair fills with smoke and the ECO has to
move outside the building. If this happens, firefighters must have enough air to reach
the fire floor, perform various tasks and retreat to the ECO’s location without running
out of air.
The BA cylinder typically allows us to breathe for 20 to 30 minutes, although this
varies greatly depending on individual fitness and the work required.
In practice, we would only be able to reach around level 6 to 8 of a multi-storey
building with sufficient air remaining to perform meaningful tasks and retreat. The
actual limit would depend on factors including the location of stairs, complexity of the
internal layout and floor area. We would not have enough air to perform search and
rescue or firefighting operations in levels above this limit.
This means that in taller buildings, it is essential that the ECO location is protected and
can remain in the stair.

Physical Even if the stair is adequately protected so that we don’t have to use up our BA
limitations resource on our way to the fire floor, it still limits our abilities. As we climb the stair,
we expend energy and become fatigued, which makes it more difficult to perform
tasks once we reach the fire. Carrying equipment upstairs makes fatigue even worse.

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

The higher we need to climb, the harder it is for us to work.

Lift limitations F5-08 GD FFO Lifts describes how firefighters use lifts and sets out the specifications
for the lift to be suitable for our needs.
Certain lifts require an emergency recall switch (sometimes referred to as firefighter
override). This lets us to take control of the lift and use it to support our operations. If
safe to do so, we will use the lift to access the upper floors of a building and ferry
equipment. Even then, we do not use the lift to reach the fire floor, only the floor
where the ECO is located. All travel from this floor up is via the stairs.
Even if lift controls are provided, the Building Code doesn’t require building design to
protect the lift itself or increase its resilience. This can cause problems during a fire
because multiple factors can stop us from using the lift, including:
• water from sprinklers or firefighting
• smoke entering the lift shaft
• power failure.

Relationship Since we use the stair to reach the fire floor, the lift’s location in relation to the stair is
between lift critical to our ability to use it. We must be able to easily access the stair from the lift
and stair and vice versa, otherwise we can’t use the lift.
There must also be a protected path between the lift and stairs to keep us safe.
However, the layout of most buildings doesn’t allow this.

Access to back In taller buildings, it is common to have one or more floors dedicated to services.
of house or Buildings occupants would typically not need access to such levels. It may not be
intermediate obvious to us how we can access these levels.
floors Services levels may have separate access provisions that aren’t directly accessible
from the lifts or from stairs that serve other floors. For example:
• Services levels can be sandwiched between other floors but have reduced access
provisions. Passenger lifts may not stop, or stairs may not have a door on this
floor.
• Services can be located at the top of a building, or in the basement, with reduced
access provisions for maintenance only. This could mean that only one of the
stairs serving the other levels may continue to the services levels.
Fires can happen in service levels, so we need the same access provisions to them as
to anywhere else in the building. It could be dangerous for us to be forced to exit the
designated access stair or lift and transfer to another one.

Bringing it Given the challenges described above, buildings over six to eight floors require
together additional provisions for us to be able to effectively carry out our work. In summary:
• We must be able to gain access to a safe location one or two floors below the fire.
• This must be done in a quick and efficient manner, so we need a lift.
• However, travel between the ECO location and the fire floor will not be via a lift so
a stair remains necessary.
• Lift and stair must be co-located to facilitate transfer between the two.
• The ECO location will become the forward control point and it must remain safe
for the duration of the incident.
• Access to and from this location, including both lift and stairs must also remain
safe for the duration.
• Lift and stairs must be continuous and serve all floors of the building.

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 Designer’s guide to firefighting operations – Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

The firefighting Although it is not currently mandated by the New Zealand compliance documents,
shaft concept firefighting shafts are a standard requirement in several other countries for buildings
over a specified height. They provide a robust solution that addresses the challenges
identified above.
A firefighting shaft is a vertical shaft that serves all levels of the building and contains
a firefighting stair, firefighting lift and a joint firefighting lobby. The following diagram
illustrates the simplest form although it can be varied to suit the specific
characteristics of the design.

Figure 1 – Basic firefighting shaft design where the FRR would be 120/120/120

The firefighting shaft is a tried and tested concept, with the following benefits:
• It increases protection to the stair, making it safer for firefighters and evacuating
occupants.
• It reduces delays to us gaining access to the fire floor and starting firefighting.
• It facilitates the incident management and staging of additional resources where
needed.
• It reduces the risk of smoke or fire spread disrupting our operations.

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5. Recommendations
General • Buildings over eight floors to have a minimum of one firefighting shaft.
• You should seriously consider providing a firefighting shaft for buildings over six
floors, particularly where the building’s size or complexity will impact on our
operations.
• The firefighting shaft to include a designated firefighting stair, firefighting lift and
a protected firefighting lobby serving both stair and lift.
• Larger footprint buildings may need a second firefighting shaft. This will primarily
depend on whether adequate hose run coverage can be achieved from a single
firefighting shaft. Regardless of coverage, you should provide a second firefighting
shaft if the floor area of individual levels of your buildings exceeds 900 m².

Continuity • The firefighting shaft should extend from the lowest level of the building to the
topmost enclosed floor (i.e. rooftop plant can be excluded).
• The firefighting shaft is to serve all floors in between.

Fire resistance • The enclosure of the firefighting shaft is to be designed to achieve a 120-minute
rating fire resistance rating.
• The firefighting shaft should be separated internally so that the stair, lift and
lobby are distinct spaces.
• The internal construction within the firefighting shaft should be designed to
achieve a 60-minute fire resistance rating.

Smoke control • To reduce the risk of smoke contaminating the stair, the firefighting shaft must
have a smoke control system. This can be stair pressurisation, or mechanical
extraction from the lobby.
• As an alternative, if the building layout is suitable, you can use a mechanical
smoke control system serving the floor, or area directly outside the firefighting
lobby, for the same purpose.

Firefighting • The stair component of the firefighting shaft should follow the recommendations
stairs set out in F5-07 GD FFO Stairs in buildings.
• The firefighting stair should open into a firefighting lobby on every floor so that it
doesn’t compromise the firefighting shaft.
• Firefighting stairs should not be scissor stairs. Scissor stairs have entry/exit points
that alternate on different floors, so it is difficult to design a joint lobby also
serving the firefighting lift.

Firefighting lift • The lift component of the firefighting shaft should follow the recommendations
set out in F5-08 GD FFO Lifts.
• The firefighting lift should open into a firefighting lobby on every floor so that it
doesn’t compromise the firefighting shaft.

Firefighting • The firefighting lobby should be big enough to allow us to work. However, it
lobby shouldn’t be large enough to contain furniture or be used for storage. It should be
at least 5 m² but no bigger than 20 m².
• We prefer that only firefighting lifts serve the firefighting lobby and not other lifts
such as passenger lifts. If you can’t avoid this, it is important to protect the other
lifts to the same level as the firefighting lift on every floor they serve so as not to
compromise the firefighting shaft.
• You may omit the firefighting lobby on the ground floor only, provided that both
the stair and lift are only accessible from outside. If these are accessible from the
building side, a lobby will be required.

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• The firefighting lobby must include provisions to prevent water ingress into the
lift.

Building • Building hydrant systems should follow the recommendations of F5-05 GD FFO
hydrant Building hydrant systems.
• If the building has a fully rated firefighting shaft, the building hydrant outlet
should be located within the firefighting lobby on all floors. This allows firefighters
to mount activities from the lobby, ensuring that the stair door remains closed,
which prevents smoke contamination.

BS9999 design • For further information on firefighting shafts and a full set of specific technical
requirements, refer to BS 9999: 2017 Fire safety in the design, management and
use of buildings – Code of practice, Section 20.

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6. Related information
6.1. Designers’ guide to firefighting operations
• F5 01 GD FFO Introduction
• F5-02 GD FFO Emergency vehicles access
• F5-03 GD FFO Radio communications
• F5-04 GD FFO Fire alarm panels
• F5-05 GD FFO Building hydrant systems
• F5-06 GD FFO Automatic sprinkler systems
• F5-07 GD FFO Stairs in buildings
• F5-08 GD FFO Lifts
• F5-09 GD FFO Fire Control Centres
• F5-10 GD FFO Evacuation and rescues
• F5-11 GD FFO Water supplies
• F5-12 GD FFO Construction, refurbishment and demolition sites
• F5-13 GD FFO Multi-tiered vehicle stacking buildings
• F5-14 GD FFO Firefighting shafts in taller buildings

6.2. Legislation
• Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017
• Building Act 2004
• Building Regulations 1992 > NZ building code > Fire safety

6.3. Standards
• AS/NZS 1668.1:2015 The use of ventilation and air conditioning in buildings – Part 1 Fire and smoke
control in multi-compartment buildings
• BS9999:2017 Code of practice for fire safety in the design, management and use of buildings
• EN81-72:2015 Safety rules for the construction and installation of lifts – Particular applications for
passenger and goods passenger lifts – Part 72: Firefighters lifts
• NZS 4332:1997 Non-domestic passenger and goods lifts
• SNZ PAS 4509:2008 New Zealand Fire Service firefighting water supplies code of practice
• NZS 4510:2008 Fire hydrant systems for buildings
• NZS 4512:2021 Fire detection and alarm systems in buildings
• NZS 4541:2020 Automatic fire sprinkler systems

6.4. References
• Australasian Building Codes Board, International fire engineering guidelines, Edition 2005, Canberra
Australia
Note: The legislation and Standards referred to in this guide (including the above links) are relevant at the
time that this document was published. Note however that the legislation/links may have been updated
since the publishing of this document.)

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Document information
Owner National Manager Response Capability
Last reviewed 14 January 2022
Review period Every second year

Record of amendments
Date Brief description of amendment
January 2022 Format update and SME content review
March 2018 Initial version

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