Proteger 2016 - Estoril

It was a great pleasure to have been invited to the 5th Safety & Security conference in Estoril, Portugal, the last 18,19 and 20 of October.

Many areas of fire safety have been covered during these 3 days, from passive protection to prevention and emergency in Industrial Environment, Competence and Quality in Fire Safety Services, Building Rehabilitation and Fire Protection, Technologies and Innovation in Fire Extinction and ultimately Performance-Based Fire Safety Design.

My session, moderate by José Oliveira, National Director of Emergency Planning (ANPC) was an overview of how Performance Based Design is established, used and allowed in different country. Adam Cowlard (TAEC Engineering) gave an overview of the situation in UK, Michael Strömgren (SP Technical Research Institut of Sweden) discussed about Sweden, Paulo Ramos (ETU lda, Ordem dos Arquitectos) about Portugal and myself about the current situation in Spain.

From Paulo Ramos talk: "Once upon a time there were an English, a Swedish, a Spanish and a Portuguese. Everyone could do performance based fire safety engineering but the Portuguese". 

Although an evolution towards Performance Based Design exists in Portugal, especially thanks to the work done by the Order of Architects, there is still work to do especially in convincing the national authorities and providing the country with a solid education in this field. 

Portugal is an essential actor in Europe and I am sure "...but the Portuguese" will be soon taken out from the sentence.