On Jan. 9, the American Society of Civil Engineers approved for publication its first manual of practice for performance-based structural fire engineering. For Kevin J. LaMalva, the structural and fire-protection engineer who led the volunteer effort for the ASCE manual, the approval represents a milestone along the road toward legitimizing PBSFE in the U.S.
“We are very excited,” says LaMalva, a senior staff consultant at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. and, since 2014, chairman of the fire-protection committee of the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute (SEI). “I know this is a technology that has far-reaching benefits.”