Fire safe­ty con­sult­ing

Fire safe­ty con­sult­ing

IFAB offers fire pro­tec­tion con­sul­tan­cy for all kinds of rail appli­ca­tions. IFAB’s expe­ri­enced engi­neers are the right part­ners for con­sid­er­ing the fire safe­ty aspects for all kinds of rolling stock, such as
 • loco­mo­tives,
 • light rail vehi­cles,
 • dou­ble deck coach­es and
 • spe­cial rail vehi­cles.

We have com­pre­hen­sive expe­ri­ences in the devel­op­ment and con­duc­tion of
 • Fire safe­ty con­cepts and fire risk analy­ses,
 • Con­sult­ing on stan­dards (TSIs, EN 45545, NFPA 130, UNI 11565, ARGE guide­lines),
 • Evac­u­a­tion con­cepts and run­ning capa­bil­i­ty con­cepts,
 • Seminars/Trainings and
 • Use of engi­neer­ing meth­ods,

that were gained in projects of over 1000 rail vehi­cles.

IFAB uses tools and meth­ods that com­ply with rail require­ments and stan­dards. This ensures that the ser­vices it pro­vides, lead to effec­tive rail appli­ca­tions and not only in terms of cost. IFAB ser­vices are not lim­it­ed only to rolling stock but also cov­er the inter­faces with infra­struc­ture (tun­nels and metro sys­tems). This enables IFAB to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive fire safe­ty solu­tions that lead to high safe­ty with low costs.

IFAB ensures with rec­og­nized engi­neer­ing meth­ods, such as
 • smoke tests (ARGE guide­line part 1, EN 50553),
 • fire tests (ARGE guide­line part 2, UNI 11565),
 • CFD sim­u­la­tions,

that the effi­cien­cy of the fire-fight­ing sys­tems as well as fire detec­tion sys­tem for spe­cif­ic rail appli­ca­tions in machin­ery rooms, pas­sen­ger areas and tech­ni­cal cab­i­nets is approved.
Due to the numer­ous exper­i­men­tal expe­ri­ences by smoke tests and fire tests for rolling stock appli­ca­tions, IFAB is able to car­ry out con­for­mi­ty assess­ments to prove the trans­fer­abil­i­ty of fire safe­ty mea­sures from one rail vehi­cle to anoth­er one with sim­i­lar design in order to pre­vent fur­ther cost-inten­sive test­ing and sim­u­la­tions. Such assess­ments usu­al­ly are sub­ject for fur­ther proof by author­i­ties.

 

Con­sult­ing on stan­dards

Cov­er­ing all rel­e­vant stan­dards, norms, guide­lines and direc­tives is an essen­tial part of fire safe­ty design for rolling stock. There is often uncer­tain­ty about which fire pro­tec­tion mea­sures apply, due to the range of fire safe­ty require­ments for rolling stock and their devel­op­ments. IFAB offers con­sul­tan­cy on using and imple­ment­ing fire safe­ty sys­tems in accor­dance with cur­rent leg­is­la­tion such as TSI’s, EN 45545, NFPA 130, UNI 11565, ARGE guide­lines and oth­er rel­e­vant fire safe­ty stan­dards for rolling stock.

 

Sem­i­nars

IFAB orga­nizes sem­i­nars on rail fire safe­ty. Our sem­i­nars are tai­lored to cus­tomer needs and can be held at IFAB’s or the customer’s premis­es. The experts con­duct­ing the sem­i­nars are either IFAB per­son­nel or from a pool of IFAB net­work con­tacts.

 

Mate­r­i­al assess­ment

Besides pro­vid­ing con­cepts relat­ed to fire safe­ty in rolling stock, IFAB offers sup­port for mate­r­i­al data bases and mate­r­i­al lists (FCIL – Fire Cer­tifi­cate Inven­to­ry List). In addi­tion we can help sup­pli­ers or sub­sup­pli­ers to check cer­tifi­cates and/or man­u­fac­tur­er dec­la­ra­tions for fur­ther assess­ment dur­ing the approval phase.

Rail