Is your office safe?

The recent fire tragedy in Bangalore’s Carlton Towers claimed nine lives and left 60 injured. In most high rise office spaces, it has increasingly been observed that fire safety has a low priority. Future office spaces too will be taller but are they really fire safe? Do we really take measures against fire protection while building our buildings?

Even though fire is one of the most common disasters to strike corporate offices, it is also the most preventable. Most companies think they are well protected, and most believe that fire could never happen to them. Yet, 70 per cent of businesses involved in a major fire either do not reopen or fail. Fires often start in unlikely places because those are the areas where fire safety has been overlooked.

Innovative building solutions in interior construction can go a long way in aiding passive fire protection. Fire protection is achieved through a combination of active and passive fire

protection. Active fire protection operates at the shortest possible time after detection of a fire and is often given good importance in building design. It includes things like smoke detection and alarm systems, fire extinguishers and sprinklers etc.

Passive fire protection is the art of compartmentalization of the fire through the use of walls, floors, ceilings to limit the spread of fire and ensure evacuation of people and protect data for long enough for it to be rescued or fire to be put off. If a simple concept such as this had been implemented at Carlton Towers many lives could have been saved. Recognizing the perils of fire and the consequent importance of using fire resistant materials to minimize damage, the National Building Code (NBC) regulations prescribe stringent fire safety protection norms.

Role of drywells

Gypsum products have been used over centuries in the construction space and are the material of choice because of gypsum’s unique properties. Gypsum is a light weight material which is formed as the result of evaporating sea water in massive prehistoric basins.

Gypsum is used as Plasterboard to create false ceilings and high performance drywalls and partitions. Gypsum based products and systems (Drywalls) provide excellent passive fire protection solutions ranging from 1 hour to 4 hours taking care of all 3 elements of fire protection - stability, integrity and insulation requirements of the system in equal measure.

Gypsum contains approximately 21% water content and about 79 % calcium sulphate which is inert below a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius. The bound crystalline moisture in gypsum content plays a significant role in excellent fire resistance properties which makes gypsum a material of limited combustibility.

Over 80% of all interior construction in the developed markets across all applications is with Drywalls. Gyproc Fire Protection solutions are achieved through a combination of Gyproc Fireline gypsum plasterboard and Gypsteel ULTRA metal framing systems. The Gyproc Fireline plasterboard is made of a pink paper liner wrapped around an inner core made primarily from gypsum plaster.

Three key factors influence the performance of Gyproc Fireline plasterboards:

1. The quantity of gypsum - i.e. board density
2. Board shrinkage - preventing gaps opening between boards and board pulling away from fixings
3. Board integrity - preventing boards from falling. The inclusion of glass fibres and shrinkage inhibitors of fire rated products give a much higher fire protection by limiting the board shrinkage and improving the integrity

Well known brands such as Saint-Gobain Gyproc have a range of drywall solutions which are very popularly used by India’s leading banks, offices, data centre providers etc. to provide 1- 4 hour fire protection for its walls. Saint-Gobain Gyproc India Ltd. is part of the 43.8 billion Saint-Gobain Group and provides innovative building solutions and state of the art products backed by world class technical and service support.