FIREFLY™ PHOENIX OFFERS TEMPORARY FIRE PROTECTION FOR FENCHURCH STREET OFFICES

The refurbishment of two complete floors to one of the City’s largest office buildings is making use of the well proven and versatile TBA FIREFLY™ PHOENIX smoke & flame barriers, to create temporary fire barriers while the work is being carried out: protecting people and property across the rest of the five storey structure where business continues as normal.

The project at 30 Fenchurch Street, EC3 is being led by Overbury – one of the capital’s most experienced fit-out contractors, while the London office of HLW Architects is leading the design team. T&R Fire Protection meanwhile is the specialist sub-contractor carrying out the installation of the PHOENIX around the atrium, as well as other passive fire protection measures as the scheme evolves.

In total T&R has fixed 22 rolls of the lightweight PHOENIX material to create the two hour integrity smoke and flame barriers around the glazed edge of the floor plates at levels Three and Four of 30 Fenchurch Street. The lightweight barrier has been fixed to the bulkhead and at intervals down all of the existing columns, before finally being secured across steel angle sections bolted to the floor slab.

IFC Certification duly inspected all 160 metres of the temporary barriers – up to 3,300 mm in height - once installed, on behalf of Overbury and duly issued a certificate of compliance. The permanent works are expected to include creating fire breaks within the ceiling zones at 20 metre intervals, as part of T&R’s overall contract for Fenchurch Street in the region of £250K.

The Site Manager for T&R Fire Protection, Tom Port Smith, commented: “We’ve used PHOENIX and other FIREFLY™ products on many hundreds of projects in the past, but in this case it was the insurers for the project who insisted on the installation of the screens to protect the atrium while the sprinkler system was being replaced. The installation though was relatively straightforward and in our work generally, FIREFLY™ is our ‘go to’ manufacturer when it comes to fire compartmentation. We base our recommendations and design drawings on TBA FIREFLY™ standard details and, once they’ve been approved, go in and install the flexible fire barriers.”

Tom, like the majority of T&R Fire Protection’s operatives, has attended training sessions at FIREFLY's premises in Rochdale, reinforcing their trade skills and gaining valuable insights into the performance parameters of the different barriers in the range.