Current Views from Past Higgins Award Winners: Michael Engelhardt [E8a]

There is growing world-wide interest in transforming practices for building fire safety from a prescriptive-based to a performance-based approach. This interest is being driven by the need to reduce the high cost of building fire safety; to accommodate the increasing complexity, size and architectural diversity of buildings; and to more clearly define building performance expectations in major fires. Structural engineers will likely play an increasingly important role in this process in the future by developing engineered approaches for structural fire safety. This presentation will examine, in a broad manner, the fire problem in the U.S. and the role of the structural engineer in solving these problems, both at present and in the future.

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