Fire & Emergency New Zealand

Fire Engineering Unit

Introduction

The Fire Engineering Unit (FEU) was formed in 2005. There are 12 fire engineers and administration located throughout the regional headquarters at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The FEU sits under the National Risk Reduction Group at Fire and Emergency New Zealand. Our fire engineers are qualified either locally and/or internationally with at least a Master of Fire Engineering Degree along with expertise on structural fire protection, human behaviour, risk management etc.

Fire and Emergency supports professional engineering development for all engineers. It is worth mentioning that we provide a number of full scholarship opportunities every year at the University of Canterbury (http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/get-started/scholarships/).

Core responsibilities

  • Design Review: The FEU reviews the fire safety design at the consent stage and provide advice to Councils/building consent authorities (BCAs)/territorial authority (TAs) throughout the country.
  • Fire engineering brief: FEU is engaged at the fire engineering brief stage to provide feedback on the proposed design methodology used for the building.
  • Post incident analysis (PIA): FEU is involved in post incident analysis based on real fire incidents.
  • Fire station design: The majority of fire safety designs for our fire stations are undertaken by fire engineers from the FEU.
  • Technical advice: FEU provide technical advice internally for our operational staff and externally for professional consultants or relevant agencies.

Contact information

History

The Fire Engineering Unit (FEU) is also referred to as its old name, Design Review Unit (DRU) in the building code documents.

The unit has been audited several times in the past. Although the audit reports are from some years back and a lot of changes through internal organisation and external requirement have been implemented since, some of the findings are still valid for the Fire Engineering Unit and the Fire Engineering designer field as a whole. Please refer to the audit reports for details:

Aurecon

Mills

Qstar

Victoria University

Warrington Fire Research