Bruce began his engineering career in fire engineering and is now NDY’s Director of Engineering and Operations.
He’s an advocate for a holistic approach to engineering design, particularly the application of science and engineering principles to ensure people and property are protected in the event of a fire.
Bruce shares his reflections on being part of the team delivering the Moore Park redevelopment (now FOX Studios Australia) in Sydney and talks about the role of technology in the future of fire engineering.
What inspired you to become an engineer?
I have always liked to understand how and why things work, or don’t work.
Why fire engineering?
While I was studying my degree, I had the opportunity to work at a fire research centre and meet people undertaking research in the field of fire engineering and who were providing guidance on the formation of the first version of the fire engineering guidelines and performance based building code. It was a truly inspiring opportunity to be able to interact and work with people who were leaders in the field.
What’s your career highlight project?
There have been so many projects I have really enjoyed and I have been fortunate to use my broad engineering knowledge in design fire systems, undertaking fire engineering and leading design teams. But so far as fire engineering is concerned, the project I have fond memories of was the Moore Park redevelopment to become FOX Studios. Finding the balance between renewal and heritage was a key challenge.
Tell us about the fire engineering on this project.
There were so many challenging aspects for the project, but placing amusement rides inside a heritage building and needing to ensure the balance between life safety and heritage management was a challenge. At the time, CFD modelling for fire dynamics was a new field, so after doing all the calculations by hand, I then had the opportunity to work with the new technology to test the solution. Given the uniqueness of the situation, the fire brigade also required a large scale fire test, with engineering predictions on smoke movement and depth prior to the test being undertaken. The final outcome was as modelled and resulted in co-authoring a paper of the real world application of CFD modelling for fire situations. This is now common place, but was unique at the time.
What innovative new approaches are you seeing when it comes to fire engineering?
I am working with our team on how we can use artificial intelligence (AI) and automation into calculations, so many different scenarios can be considered and highlight the outliers for closer attention. We have made some early progress, but I can see the potential is significant and allow the fire engineers to spend more time focusing on engaging with the rest of the design team and tackle larger more complex issues.
Where do you see the future of fire engineering heading?
Since the late 1990s, we have seen technology play such a huge impact in fire engineering resulting in the breadth and scale of project a fire engineer can work on today being so large by comparison. This has led to design teams expecting answers and certainty much quicker, which is consistent with other engineering fields. I see this continuing and tools which support the fire engineers continuing to be more powerful.
What is the difference between fire protection engineering and fire engineering, and how do they work together?
Fire safety engineering is the application of science and engineering principles to establish an overall solution to ensure people and property are protected to a level of safety which meets or exceed the community expectations. Fire protection engineering is the engineering field which focuses on implementing the fire detection, suppression and mitigation strategies developed by the fire safety engineer.
What advice do you have for the young fire engineer?
There is a real challenge to master not only the technical aspects of fire engineering, but being able to engage fully with all the design team and understand what they are proposing and how that may impact your fire engineering solution. I feel the fire engineer has a responsibility to understand the systems they are using and modifying so they can contribute to practical solutions with the design team.
