Performance-Based Designs Key to Managing Fire Risk by Sarah Si in Asia Insurance Review May 2026 with Dr. Ryan Hilditch and Ms Marie Otteren
According to Halliwell experts, performance-based design may be the answer to fire safety strategies that look beyond legislative expectations and take site-specific hazards into account.
In Australia, building acts and regulations are not federal legislation, and each state and territory has its own legislative framework. Despite this, Asia Insurance Review was told that all States and Territories refer to one national code, the National Construction Code, and its referenced standards, which outline both prescriptive and performance-based compliance requirements, serving as a recognised minimum standard for safety, health and amenity.
The statement above was made in an interview Asia Insurance Review held with a panel of experts from Halliwell, which included Halliwell Principal – Fire Science, Australia and New Zealand Dr Ryan Hilditch, and Halliwell Principal – Building Code Consulting and Regulatory Compliance Marie Otteren.
Evolving risk, but no triggers to upgrade buildings
Most states and territories “offer few or no retrospective actions, aside from provisions such as pool safety fencing in Victoria”, Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren said. “Therefore, there are generally no triggers to upgrade an existing building unless new building works are proposed,” they added.
In the case of fire, life and health safety, Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren said, “Such systems and installations are often required by law to be maintained for the life of the building; however, studies have shown that it is an industry often served by people lacking proper expertise and knowledge.”
“Complex problems are best solved using a performance-based design approach, in which generic, prescriptive building code requirements are insufficient, and analysis instead relies on assessing site-specific details and hazards.” This approach allows the firm to “understand the true nature of the hazard and to address fire safety problems in a way that best fits the needs of the site”, they said.
“This might mean modelling complex fire behaviours to demonstrate the suitability of installing fire systems that are not prescribed by the building code or undertaking research to mitigate hazards not addressed in the Australian Standards for system design,” said Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren. “Fire safety is a constantly evolving field and requires consideration of a wide range of subject matter. Traditional fire engineering has tended toward standardised and repeatable approaches to design, and sometimes this can lead to ineffective fire safety outcomes.”
Cladding Risk
Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren also said that “Australia is at the tail end of cladding replacement and rectification works”. “It is important to recognise that the risks and issues identified in Australia, whilst they share common themes with other jurisdictions, differ significantly due to strong building codes and compliance framework,” they said.
“Australian Codes and Standards have helped ensure that, while fires have occurred, they have not resulted in tragedies comparable to Grenfell in the UK. To date, there have been no fatalities of that scale, which is widely understood to be due to the effectiveness of fire protection and smoke management systems mandated by Australian building regulations.”
To that end, they said experts in the firm manage risk by keeping clients abreast of laws and legislative changes and providing clients with comprehensive, current advice on topics that include cladding issues on retention or replacement.
Combustible Cladding
Touching on combustible cladding, Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren said such fires have “occurred for over 25 years”. “Lightweight wall systems using plastics and combustible materials support rapid, energy-efficient building,” they explained.
“As is the case with many new construction approaches however, the technology tends to develop more quickly than building codes can keep up with. Unfortunately, this results in “ambiguity in code requirements and sometimes inappropriate measures are relied upon to determine the suitability of a product for use in particular cases”, they added. “The outcome is a large number of existing buildings, potentially, having inherently unacceptable fire risk baked into their very design,” they said.
Risk Mitigation
Using Halliwell as an example, Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren mentioned a Fire Science team that “helps mitigate fire risk by providing expert opinions to assist courts in identifying unacceptable fire hazards and support litigation for remediation costs”.
“We also analyse a building’s fire safety performance if external wall elements ignite, evaluating how the fire safety strategy performs beyond legislative design expectations,” they added. “This includes assessing the impact of non-compliant materials on fire development and overall safety measures like detection, compartmentation, smoke control, evacuation and firefighting.”
Dr Hilditch and Ms Otteren also said, “Only by undertaking a fundamental, quantitative analysis of the performance of the building-wide fire safety strategy can the fire hazard be adequately understood and be demonstrated to be suitably addressed.”
Mitigating Fire Hazards
According to Dr Hilditch and Halliwell Director – Forensics, Australia and New Zealand Nikola Sutarov, one of the most powerful ways to mitigate fire hazards and loss “is to take a fundamental approach to fire safety during design”. “This means to research, analyse and understand site-specific hazards, allowing us to design-in safeguards tailored to the needs of the site,” they explained. “This is also known as performance-based design, and is often the most powerful approach to demonstrating, and delivering, fire safety.”
For instance, in addition to forensic analyses post-loss, Halliwell helps clients design fundamentally safe site layouts and form fire safety strategies during schematic and detailed design stages. With batteries, such as BESS containers, they said it was “critical to consider possible extent of fire spread, the potential for combustible/explosive conditions and toxic concentration of smoke downstream of a fire source”. “Active and passive mitigation measures and effective plant layout can then be incorporated to protect life, property loss and local community safety,” added Dr Hilditch and Mr Sutarov.
Addressing Incidents of Battery-related Fires
With battery-related fires on the rise in Australia, Halliwell also spoke on the firm’s experience in investigating fires involving lithium-based energy storage, from single cell battery failures through to large scale incidents involving megapack battery storage facilities. “Drawing on this depth of experience, we regularly deliver educational workshops to insurers and legal professionals on the complexities of lithium battery fire behaviour and investigation,” said Dr Hilditch and Mr Sutarov.
Despite efforts to raise educational profiles of battery fire behaviour and investigation, they also admitted that “determining whether a lithium battery was the actual cause of a fire, or simply a victim, remains one of the most challenging aspects of modern fire investigation, particularly when multiple credible ignition sources exist within the area of origin”.
“Differentiating a faulty cell from an abused battery, or one secondarily affected by external fire conditions, requires a structured and evidence led methodology,” they said.
Using Past Data to Address Risk
Halliwell Regional Director, Group Market Strategy – APAC Wayne Bretherton said, “At Halliwell, forensic experts focus on root-cause and failure analysis to understand exactly why systems, structures and assets fail. “They catalogue patterns along with considering environmental factors linking failures to climate, usage, maintenance and design conditions, as well as understanding lifecycles when assets are most vulnerable.” This information was then shared with insurers as part of claim assessment reporting and provide recommendations for future underwriting considerations, Mr Bretherton added.
But because high value assets and uninsurable risks often suffer from limited historical loss data, high severity/low frequency events and often incorporate complex, interdependent models, he also highlighted that experts would need to “navigate these complexities by providing evidence-based engineering solutions”.
These solutions may include “scientifically based expertise, including modelling, to better understand material behaviour, design tolerances and failure thresholds to allow clients and insurers to make informed decisions”, he continued. “By incorporating data and evidenced based engineering certainty, clients are better placed to manage high value and complex assets and insurers can consider suitable pricing and policy conditions,” said Mr Bretherton.