Call for industry experts to join ‘Hackathon’ and drive new solutions for radical shift in fire safety

Developers, engineers, building owners, tech start-ups and coders are needed to join a central London ‘Hackathon’ that will bring experts together to develop new, commercially viable solutions that will radically change the face of fire safety within buildings in the UK and around the world.

Hosted by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Association for Project Safety (APS) and Hack_Construct, the free to attend, two-day ‘Hackathon’ will take place at the IET London: Savoy Place on Thursday 23^rd and Friday 24^th May 2019 and will build on an initial concept day, held last November.

Rick Hartwig, Built Environment Lead at the IET, said: “Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, and subsequent recommendations by Dame Judith Hackitt in her ‘Building a Safer Future’ report, the construction industry is now looking to offer potential solutions to improve fire safety design and regulations.

“Tech skills, new technology and traditional engineering know-how are set to revolutionise the traditional world of fire safety within buildings by tapping into new technology. We want to bring all these industry experts together to come up with new proposals which can be taken forward for further development to radically improve fire safety, which could save lives.”

Bobby Chakravarthy on behalf of the APS, added: “Our collaboration is looking for solutions to fire safety that can be developed commercially. The IET, the APS and Hack_Construct believe that, together, we can speed up the pace of change to deliver radically safer buildings. Our aim is to harness a powerful combination of gaming and new technology with the traditional engineering and safety skills in the construction sector to find new tools to ensure fire safety is built in right from the design and development stage.”

Ryan Tennyson of Hack_Construct, said: “In aerospace, aviation and automobile industries unattended high-risk safety issues or unsafe working practices are relatively unheard of. Digital design, fabrication and manufacturing processes combined with sensor-based technologies are integral to this. The ‘Hackitt’ report identifies the baseline problems within the current construction and asset management industries. This hackathon offers a unique environment to utilise cross-industry best practice knowledge, skills and technology to help develop digital solutions to these problems, rather than just evolve traditional regulatory pro-forma.”

To register to attend, please visit the Hackathon webpage – registration will close on 20 May 2019.