The same concerns apply to any major development involving large numbers of visitors, including out-of-town shopping centres. As a result, just as it is essential to recognise that life safety considerations should form an intrisic part of the overall planning process from the outset, so new threats demand the inclusion of new, integrated risk strategies.

In the case of any large and high profile public project, there will undoubtedly already be in existence a significant level of external guidance for both specifiers and building contractors, related to the construction of public access buildings such as shopping malls.

Yet equally clearly, as the tender process gets underway, such guidance will need to be modified, updated and refined in the light of regulatory change, advances in technology and experience. Moreover, conformance will be mandatory, as any such 'guidance' will have regulatory force. This means that fire safety investment strategies should be inherently flexible, with sufficient 'headroom' to accommodate an almost inevitable increase in stringent safety and security imperatives.

Failure to take safety into account at the earliest planning stage carries with it a number of additional risks. From a financial perspective, any development may incur further expense, as the opportunity to ensure the most cost-effective solution disappears; and, in extreme cases, such as where there is a need for advanced cabling, it may prove cost-prohibitive to meet the necessary requirements if left too long.

There may also be the potential for manufacturers to develop appropriate and cost-effective bespoke solutions, perhaps involving new technologies which may be lost if not addressed early on in the project. This is especially critical for alarm systems, where sound quality will vary a lot, dependent on the environment.

For organisations and individuals the world has changed since the terrorist attacks on New York and London. As a result, it is important to address how they protect their business, their staff and visitors from a totally new type of external threat.

As a result, much work will already be underway to determine the potential scale of such threats and put in place appropriate responses - for we live in a commercial world and the scale of response must be in line with the level of perceived risk. Life safety systems will play a critical role as part of an effective co-ordinated response, both in making participants, spectators and staff aware of an alert and ensuring fast and safe evacuation from any part of the facility.

In this context, a fire safety system is no longer solely focused on detecting a fire and getting people out of a building. Rather, it must form part of a broader communications system responding to any number of risks, of which fire is only one.

Thus in the case of a bomb alert, a phased evacuation strategy will be required to get people out safely. In some circumstances it is unlikely that the stairwells of high-rise structures incorporating accommodation blocks, for example, will be able to cope with an unco-ordinated mass evacuation.

A simple example will illustrate the change in thinking. It may be necessary to operate an access control system, which restricts entry and exit from all venues. However, new risk strategies will significantly increase the need to override such systems, in order to provide a safe and effective evacuation. Here, the need to provide a flexible solution which meets the sometimes conflicting imperatives of security and fire safety has led to the growth of voice alarm and public address (VAPA) systems.

Unlike simple voice alarms, which use a set of pre-recorded messages, VAPA systems can bypass these, using a microphone to speak to individual areas or groups of people as and when the need arises.

There are other known changes on the horizon which can - and indeed must - be taken into consideration in building the necessary flexibility into any proposed life safety solution.

The implementation date for planned regulatory change, intended to rationalise the current legal framework, has yet to be confirmed. Yet it is likely to have a significant impact on who has responsibility for undertaking a fire risk assessment, embracing the professional design, installation and maintenance of the fire detection and alarm system.

Other legislation will also have an impact on the provision of fire safety. In addition to the construction of new sites, there is likely to be a requirement to refurbish and upgrade existing shopping centres. Here, the DDA will require building operators to ensure a visual means of warning for the deaf or hearing-impaired.

One thing is clear - in ensuring appropriate integrated responses to those new challenges and threats, it is especially important to supplant existing in-house experience with the best third-party life safety expertise.

l Brett Ennals is sales manager, UK and Ireland, for Notifier by Honeywell Fire Systems

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