A fire strategy is the document that explains how a building is expected to behave in a fire and how people will get out of it. It is written for the building rather than for a point in time, which is what distinguishes it from the fire risk assessment, and it is the document a designer, a building control body and later a duty holder all work from.
What it is not
It is not the fire risk assessment. The assessment looks at the building as it is now, with its current occupants and current management, and records significant findings and actions. The strategy describes the design intent: the compartments, the escape routes, the systems and the assumptions. A building needs both, and the assessment should be readable against the strategy.
The sections a usable strategy carries
A description of the building and its use. The occupancy assumptions including numbers and mobility. The means of escape with travel distances and exit capacities. Compartmentation and fire resistance periods. Detection and alarm design including the category. Smoke control. Fire service access, water supplies and facilities. The management assumptions the design depends on. Any departures from standard guidance and the justification for them.
How the common building types differ
A block of flats built around a stay put strategy depends on compartmentation holding and is written in those terms. An office is written around simultaneous evacuation and travel distances. A care home is written around progressive horizontal evacuation and staffing. A warehouse is written around fire spread and fire service access. The section headings are the same and the content behind them is not.
The management assumptions are the part that rots
Every strategy assumes things about how the building will be run: doors not wedged, routes kept clear, systems maintained, a management structure that responds. Those assumptions are the first thing to change after handover and the last thing anybody reads. A strategy that lists them explicitly gives the duty holder a checklist; one that buries them leaves a building operating outside its own design.
Questions people ask about fire strategy examples
Who writes a fire strategy?
A fire engineer or a competent fire safety consultant, usually at design stage. For an existing building with no strategy, one can be written retrospectively from survey and drawings.
Does every building need a written fire strategy?
New buildings of any complexity produce one through the design process. Small simple premises may reasonably have only a fire risk assessment, which then has to carry the description of how escape works.
What happens when a building is altered?
The strategy has to be revisited, because alterations change compartments, routes and occupancy. Work carried out against an out of date strategy is how a compliant building stops being one.