The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) has released two continuing professional development (CPD) courses on fire safety systems and passive fire protection.

Fire protection practitioners play an important role in the fire safety community, particularly when it concerns the safety of our buildings and our homes. In many circumstances, loss of life can be eliminated through effective fire protection.

A good and up-to-date understanding of the National Construction Code (NCC) and its holistic approach to fire safety plays a critical role in this protection. These new online, one-hour courses can help you maintain and build on your NCC knowledge.  While these courses are created with fire protection practitioners in mind, they may be relevant for other practitioners too.

What do the courses cover? 

Fire Safety Systems

This course covers fire safety systems for multi-storey residential and non-residential buildings.

To start off, you’ll be introduced to the NCC’s holistic approach to fire safety, the importance of fire safety systems and active and passive fire systems.

Next, you’ll explore NCC compliance, Volume One fire provisions and key fire terms. You’ll gain an understanding of the Governing Requirements, the NCC’s rules and instructions and learn the importance of the Performance Requirements. You’ll also learn how different compliance pathways may impact installation.

The course then looks at performance and the importance of building classification. You’ll learn why a building classification is a critical factor to help determine whether the Performance Requirements have been met.

Through examples, you’ll see how classification is central to a broad range of fire provisions that form the building’s fire safety system. This includes covering multi-classification scenarios and how fire separation and compartmentation may be affected.

Passive fire protection

This course focuses on Volume One provisions covering the NCC Performance Requirements for multi-storey residential and non-residential buildings. You’ll gain a broad understanding of the NCC’s passive fire safety measures, their importance in the construction of buildings and how they’re applied by installers.

You’ll learn, through examples, about the NCC’s extensive fire provisions and what key aspects you need to be aware of. The course also explains how building classification determines the required Type of construction and required fire resistance levels (FRLs) for different elements.

This course will help you understand how passive fire safety measures work together as part of a comprehensive system to help save lives.

Where to purchase the courses 

You can purchase each course for $44 from the NCC CPD website – 20% off as a special introductory price available for a limited time.

Access the new courses on the NCC CPD website cpd.abcb.gov.au