Exova wins Qatar fire engineering consultancy deal

Exova Warringtonfire, a leading UK-based fire testing and fire engineering organisation, said it has signed up by top Asian architecture firm DP Architects (DPA) to provide fire engineering consultancy on residential and commercial projects in the new city of Lusail, Qatar. DPA said it is designing plans for 60 plots of land on Commercial Boulevard in Lusail. Comprising 30 residential plots of apartment buildings and hotels and 30 commercial plots, including restaurants, retail space, office buildings, cinemas, and medical and educational facilities, every plot will be a mid-rise building and will be uniquely designed. As part of the deal, Exova Warringtonfire will review the design of each plot and provide fire engineering consultancy to DPA over a period of two years. Working from the Dubai office, the team will use innovative computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling and demonstrate live fire scenarios in proposed designs to ascertain the safest, most efficient, and cost effective methods of smoke control and ventilation. Toh Sze Chong, the director at DPA, pointed out that the Commercial Boulevard in Lusail City was a landmark project in Qatar. "Exova’s support for our design teams as our fire engineering consultant is crucial. Their expertise goes beyond advising fire engineering solutions to overcome fundamental design issues; they are also able to take further steps to help our teams with unconventional and workable fire engineering solutions in order to realize certain architectural design ideas," he noted. Dermot Gallagher, senior fire engineer at Exova Warringtonfire, said: "The Commercial Boulevard project is an enormous undertaking and we’re happy to support DPA on the development of fire engineering strategies and solutions for its designs." "We are proud of our existing relationship with DPA and know that our experience working on a variety of building types means that we will provide comprehensive guidance on meeting the regulatory requirements of each individual plot," he added. Headquartered in Edinburgh, UK, Exova is one of the world’s leading laboratory-based testing groups. It operates 136 laboratories and offices in 33 countries and employs around 4,200 people throughout Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia/Asia Pacific and Africa