A fire occurred in a corner of the first floor men's changing room which contained rows of steel lockers fitted with clear plastic doors.

The room construction comprised of a timber floor incorporating ply-web engineered joists supported by a steel frame, and the ceiling was of timber joist construction under-drawn with two layers of fire-resisting plasterboard. The walls consisted of our insurer-approved PIR core insulated panels.

Protection against fire spread

During their operations the fire service cut open the wall panels, to ensure there was no continued burning within the construction or the voids. This showed evidence of very limited charring of the PIR core with no suggestion of any fire propagation within the core material, despite the fact that the fire generated a localised severity equivalent to over 30 minutes exposure in a standard fire resistance test.

Whilst there was some fire spread beyond the room of fire origin this was via the void in the timber floor. Our panels appeared to have provided an effective barrier to fire spread, i.e. there was no fire spread through the panels into adjacent areas.