Fire safety design requirements
The requirements for managing fire risk at school are set out in our Fire and Safety Design Requirements for Schools document – it’s known as 'the fire policy'.
The fire policy tells you how to protect your school from fires, and covers:
- building design
- fire alarm systems
- use of sprinklers
- minimum separation distances between buildings, and
- maximum allowable firecell size.
In some areas, we have requirements that are specifically related to school application, so they may be in addition to minimum building code requirements. Make sure the consultants your school uses on a project – like your project manager, architect or engineer – have a copy of the fire policy, as some information is technical and the document sets out the requirements in full.
Download the guidelines
The fire policy is dated 2008, and includes addendums from July 2017 and June 2018 at the beginning of the document.