Hot Smoke Testing and Australian Standard AS4391 – Thoughts of Stacey Agnew

As fire and ventilation engineers, we have been involved in hot smoke tests for several years. Since 2010, we have built our own capability in hot smoke testing, starting with methylated spirit pans and moving on to what we see as improved techniques. We are focussed primarily on tunnels and underground transportation stations. For those applications particularly, it is apparent to us that the Australian Standard for Hot Smoke Testing (AS 4391:1999) is not particularly relevant in its current form and that there are more convenient and safer alternatives for meeting typical commissioning objectives. We record our thoughts on that here and invite anyone with strong opinions on the matter to contact us (admin@staceyagnew.com) with a view to making a coherent representation to Standards Australia on amending or replacing the standard, specifically for tunnels and stations.