Fire Safety Engineering

In line with the mandate of the HSE Department and the OHS group, the Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) team’s mission is to ensure the highest harmonised standards of fire safety across CERN’s facilities throughout their lifecycle—from design and construction to operation and renovation. We provide expert support and guidance across multiple domains, as outlined below:

Support and Expertise on fire Safety

• Advisory and technical support for fire safety concepts in new projects and building modifications (standard buildings and beam facilities).
• Expert input for the design and commissioning of fire safety systems, including:
• Smoke extraction systems
• Fire-fighting cubicles (in collaboration with CFRS)
• Fire doors, partitions and extinguishing systems

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Advanced Fire Safety Engineering

• Fire and smoke modelling using CFD and simplified methods
• Fire resistance analysis
• Intervention modelling and studies with CFRS
• Evacuation modelling and assessments

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Regulatory Conformity and Assessment

• Evaluation of regulatory compliance, including:
• Performance comparisons (in-kind contributions)
• Identification and follow-up of major life safety non-conformities
• Support in global consolidation planning
• Instruction and support for CERN regulations:
• Derogation handling for IS41, Code E
• Fire Risk Assessments in line with SSI-FS-2-1
• Advice and verification for fire detection system needs (via Snow ticket system)

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Fire Safety Rule Development and Monitoring

• Monitoring of CERN fire safety rules implementation
• Maintenance and updates of existing rules
• Development of new rules within the Fire Safety Cluster
• Regulatory monitoring (host states, EU, member states)

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Specialized Assessments & Research

• Fire-Induced Radiological Integrated Assessments (FIRIA) for new and existing facilities (with RP and CFRS)
• Review of fire safety concepts and risk assessments for facilities and systems
• Fire incident analysis and reconstruction (with CFRS)
• Applied research in fire safety engineering for CERN infrastructure

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Collaboration & Outreach

• Knowledge transfer via international conferences and publications
• Team training
• Participation in international collaborations in Fire Safety Engineering
• Leading and ensuring fire safety exchange in particle physics facilities across the world via the FiReLabNet (Fire Safety for Research Laboratories Network – Collaboration)

Together, we’re building safer environments through smart, consistent, and collaborative engineering practices.

The first safety team maintains a dedicated Gitlab page where the resources, projects and other useful fire-safety related information is published. From 2026 onwards, the FSE team has also started using the ServiceNow (SNOW) platform to manage FSE related requests.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Answers can be found in the fire safety section of the CERN Safety FAQ pages.