Problems We Solve
Complex Building Designs
Prescriptive code limits bold architecture—our engineering enables the designs you want to build.
Prescriptive Code Wasn’t Written For Buildings Like Yours
Architects push boundaries. Cantilevered structures, exposed timber, multi-story atriums, mega-factories where travel distances cannot be prescriptively satisfied, open floor plans that maximize space and light—these designs win awards and attract tenants. They also create fire and life safety challenges that standard code provisions—built around conventional, compartmentalized buildings—simply don’t address.
When your design doesn’t fit the prescriptive box, you need performance-based fire protection engineering that demonstrates safety without forcing redesigns or unwanted rated enclosures. Otherwise, the project risks losing the very features that define its value, functionality, and market appeal.
Why Complex Designs Challenge Prescriptive Code
Innovative architecture and demanding operational requirements create fire protection complications that prescriptive code doesn’t anticipate:
- Exposed structural elements – Exposed steel, mass timber, and other unprotected structural elements conflict with prescriptive fire-resistance requirements that assume protected or encapsulated assemblies.
- Large, interconnected openings – Atriums, communicating stairs, and multi-level voids create vertical smoke and fire spread pathways.
- Extended or unconventional egress routes – Open floor plans, long spans, increased occupant loading, and tenant-driven layouts frequently exceed prescriptive travel distances or egress arrangement rules.
- Irregular geometries – Curved, sloped, or non-uniform architectural features make prescriptive sprinkler spacing, detection coverage, and egress width calculations impractical.
- Mixed-use complexity – Blended occupancies—residential over retail, offices with assembly spaces, hotels with restaurants— introduce conflicting separation, smoke control, and fire-resistance requirements that prescriptive code treats as mutually exclusive.
- Special finishes and materials – Non-standard or decorative finishes, claddings, and materials often lack clear prescriptive classification, requiring expert code interpretation and, in some cases, facilitated testing to establish compliant use.
How Summit Fire Consulting Enables Complex Designs
Summit applies performance-based engineering and alternative compliance methods to show that your design achieves the required level of life safety—without conforming to prescriptive constraints that limit architectural freedom. Our engineers and consultants model fire dynamics, egress performance, and smoke movement within your unique building geometry to demonstrate equivalent or superior safety to the AHJ.
What we deliver:
- Fire and egress modeling – Computational analysis of fire growth, smoke spread, and occupant evacuation specific to your building design and layout.
- Smoke control engineering – Performance-based smoke management strategies for atriums, interconnected floors, and large-volume spaces where prescriptive designs are impractical.
- Alternative means and methods – Engineered solutions—supported by modeling and technical justification—that satisfy code intent through non-prescriptive approaches.
- Exposed structure analysis – Engineering evaluation to justify exposed steel, mass timber, or other unprotected structural systems when prescriptive fireproofing requirements conflict with design intent.
- Custom egress strategies – Performance-based strategies for extended travel distances, excess occupant loading, open stair connections, or unconventional layouts that maintain safe evacuation.
- Early-stage code consulting and plan review – Fire protection and life safety narratives, code gap analysis, and plan reviews conducted early in the design process to surface compliance issues before they become costly problems.
We’ve supported complex designs across high-rise, mixed-use, mass timber, and large-volume structures nationwide. Our performance-based engineering enables architects to realize their vision while giving AHJs the data and justification they need to approve innovative designs with confidence.
Build without boundaries.
We’ll handle the code path.