Bridging the Knowledge Gap between Fire Engineers and Building Service Engineers - Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach

Architects are confronted with the priority of the early integration of natural smoke ventilation (NSV) and natural thermal ventilation (NTV) objectives in retail building designs due to several reasons including wide range of expertise and lack of fire safety knowledge. This paper presents the perception of fire engineers (FE) and building service engineers (BSE) regarding the conceptual priorities of the early integration for particular design decisions. This was achieved through surveying FE and BSE and conducting an analytical study using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. An experts’ panel was held for each profession for confirmation. The results showed that FE and BSE have agreed on the most and least crucial design decisions that should/shouldn’t require integration of NSV and NTV objectives in the early stages of the architectural design process