Dr Matthew Bonner receiving the award
A Mechanical Engineering research project has received an award from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
The project led by Dr Matthew Bonner and Prof Guillermo Rein was recognised of its outstanding achievements on fire safety engineering. It explored experimentally the global diversity of fire testing standards for building facades, aiming to understand why so many different national approaches exist and whether there was consistency among them.
Dr Bonner, now a fire engineer at Trigon Fire Safety of UK, said: “It is an honour to receive this award for the research started during my post-doc at Imperial that I have also continued at Trigon. I feel very lucky to work in a role where I can continue doing research and also have first hand experience of designing fire safe buildings”.
Initiated and completed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and funded by Berkeley Group of UK, the research completed a series of 25 large-scale facade experiments according to the standards from UK, Germany, USA, Poland and ISO. It highlights the challenges posed by the lack of global harmonisation and offers insights to guide future improvements in understanding facade fire standards.
The project was carried out in collaboration with Dr Wojciech Węgrzyński of ITB Poland, whose testing grounds were key to the conduct the experiments. He said: “While seeking the new, biggest and most comprehensive test is perhaps attractive, I find immense value in finding out the test that gives maximum knowledge, but does that in a cost effective manner.”
The award was presented at the SFPE European Conference on Fire Safety Engineering, held this year in Edinburgh. Organised by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the conference is a leading event that brings together experts and practitioners to share advances in fire safety science and engineering.
Professor Rein said: “Everyone has the right to safety, no matter where they live. That is why effective and consistent fire standards, grounded in science, are essential to building a safer world for all.”
This recognition celebrates the team’s commitment to rigorous, relevant research and marks a significant contribution to global fire safety.
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Reporter
Nadia Barbu
Department of Mechanical Engineering
