Today, the owners of a growing number of nonstandard building designs, like museums, arenas, stadiums, and structures with atria or large open spaces, are turning to performance-based design for substantial cost savings and enhanced safety while maintaining architectural concerns.
As an International Code Council (ICC)-accepted alternative, performance-based design allows “alternate materials and methods” that offer equivalent or superior fire safety performance. In terms of enhancing fire safety, this often involves using scientific calculations and engineering approaches as well as computer fire modeling to determine how a building would respond to fire. With this approach, a design is considered acceptable if the fire engineering analysis demonstrates that it meets the measurable performance criteria set at the start of the process.