Passive Fire Protection in Textile Industries: Bangladesh Perspective

Passive Fire Protection works with the slogan of “Prevention is better than cure”. Passive fire protection is the approaches that locks the possible ways to ignite a fire. And where there is no ignition, there is no fire and there is no need of firefighting. It is No Fire approach and opposite of Active Fire Protection that works after fire to suppress it. Passive Fire Protection is the most accepted technique that can be practiced more in our textile industries in Bangladesh because it is more reliable and cost effective with minimum maintenance efforts.

Bangladesh is blessed with the Textile Industries and now it is the time to make this sector more sustainable, safe and people worthy work environment. Fire Safety is a great challenge that we are facing and surely, we have a good achievement to make our factory fire safety compliant through massive active fire protection system installation like installation of fire protection and detection system - hydrant system, automatic sprinkler system, gas suppression system, portable fire extinguisher etc. But still there is challenge to make these traditional active fire protection systems functional during the fire incidents. Also, it is found that in some factory establishments these active systems have been installed with a huge expense to have compliance certificate and make it functional during audit and seasonal fire drill program. But our fire fighting engineering objective is to save live, property and business not to have the compliance only.

Passive Fire Protection includes but not limited to the as-built mechanism within the building structure, planned uses and application of fire hazardous materials in the building, standard design and construction of electrical system- a single most responsible source of fire incidents, the approach to handle and keep the hazardous materials in a systematic way- called housekeeping, compartmentation and separation mechanism, no smoking, well ventilation and finally public awareness. The above-mentioned approaches don’t require much investment but work well independently as an immunity against fire incident. Initial investment may be higher but its operation and maintenance cost is significantly lower.

Passive Fire Protection is a comprehensive approach that starts from design phase and work continuously till the life of the building and structures. We all concerned should come out from the traditional style of building construction and practice integrative approach to design and implement the active fire protection systems in our industries specially the Textile Industries to make it more global.

Since 2016, Axis Safety Engineering Ltd. is serving and providing the applicable ways to implement the Passive and Active Fire Protection System in your factory. For more detail, please contact us.

Engr. Md. Shahjahan Alam

B. Sc. Engg. (Mech/BUET), MBA, M.Sc. in Env. Sci. 

FIEB/11322, RAJUK Registered. LEED Green Associate

Chairman- Axis Triangle Group & Sajan Metal Industries Ltd.

Principal- Zohura Memorial Technical School

National & International Mechanical Consultant of the projects financed by JICA, ADB, WB.