The Fire Engineer Behind Your Strategy, and the Competence We Can Evidence
This practice produces fire strategies for buildings across England and Wales. The appraisal, the narrative and the drawings are the work of our fire engineers, and the standards they design to are named on this page. Since Grenfell, the regime asks who signed a life-safety design and on what basis. Our answer is printed here.
Who puts their name on the document
SustainPlan operates firestrategyplan.co.uk as a single-discipline practice. Fire strategy is the whole offer. Nothing else has been bolted on to pad out a brochure, because a discipline this consequential does not sit well alongside a list of forty other services.
Our fire engineers carry out the appraisal, write the strategy and issue the supporting drawings. BS 8670-1:2024, the code of practice setting core criteria for building safety competence frameworks, frames how competence for these roles ought to be judged, and being judged against it is the point of naming the author on the document at all. Where a building falls outside what that competence honestly covers, you will hear it at enquiry stage, not a fortnight into a fee.
Technical questions and written enquiries both go through the enquiry form on the contact page. Send your drawings with the enquiry and the reply can address your building rather than the general case.
The bodies and the rulebooks we answer to
The Institution of Fire Engineers is the professional body for this discipline in the UK, and chartered status is conferred through the Engineering Council. Both maintain registers. A grade of membership or a registration number can be looked up by anybody who cares to look, and you should look.
Design references Approved Document B, BS 9991:2024 for residential buildings and BS 9999:2017 for the wider stock. In England the Approved Documents are the 2019 edition incorporating the 2020, 2022 and 2025 amendments, published on 11 March 2025 and already carrying further amendments dated 2026 and 2029; Wales publishes its own, still based on the 2006 edition and last amended with effect from 20 December 2025. PAS 911:2007, which older specifications still name as the framework for assembling a fire strategy document, has been withdrawn by BSI and is not used here. Duties arise under the Building Safety Act 2022, whose higher-risk criteria are set separately in England and in Wales, and under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which extends to England and Wales and has been in force since 1 October 2006. On a higher-risk building the gateway process changes what evidence a strategy has to carry with it, so the document is built to withstand that examination rather than to read neatly inside a planning bundle.
None of this is a marketing claim. Every item is a register entry, a published standard or a piece of legislation you can read for yourself.
Work that has actually gone out of the door
Instructions come from architects, developers, principal designers, main contractors, building control bodies and approved inspectors, responsible persons under the Fire Safety Order, and owners who have inherited a building with no documentation attached to it.
How an instruction actually runs
The first step is a conversation about the building, not a price list. Once the drawings, use class, occupancy profile and construction are understood, a fixed fee goes out in writing and does not move unless the brief moves. Whether attendance on site is necessary is confirmed with the fee, and some retrospective work genuinely cannot be done without it.
We will tell you the timescale when we quote, once the building has been looked at. Anybody offering a guaranteed date for a life-safety document before they have looked at the building is guessing at your expense.
Questions raised by building control after issue are dealt with as part of the instruction, not billed as an extra. If a project needs a specialism this practice does not hold, that gets said out loud and the work goes to somebody who does hold it.
What this practice gets instructed for
Fire Strategy Report · Fire Strategy Consultant · Fire Strategy Drawings · Retrospective Fire Strategy · Fire Strategy Plan · Fire Safety Strategy · Fire Statement · Fire Engineer
Frequently asked questions
Who writes the strategy for my building?
The fire engineer who carries out the appraisal writes it, and that author is named on the document itself. No other name goes on it.
Can I check that credential independently?
Yes, and please do. Ask for the registration number and put it through the IFE or Engineering Council register before instructing anyone, this practice included.
Is a fire strategy the same thing as a fire risk assessment?
No. A strategy describes how the building has been designed to perform in a fire. A risk assessment examines how an occupied building is being managed day to day. Separate duties, separate documents, often confused.
Are you limited to one region?
No, instructions are accepted across England and Wales. Building regulations and the higher-risk regime are genuinely different in the two nations: England works to the 2019 edition of Approved Document B and treats a building as higher-risk at 18 metres or 7 storeys with at least 2 residential units, while Wales works to its own 2006-edition Approved Document B and applies its own higher-risk criteria, which one residential unit, a hospital with an overnight bed, a care home or a children’s home is enough to trigger. Where the position differs we say so rather than generalising. Travel and any site attendance are priced into the fee before you agree it, so nothing appears later as an extra.
How long should I allow?
The timescale is confirmed when we quote, counted from the point usable drawings arrive rather than from first contact.
Would you take on a building outside your competence?
No. You will be told plainly what specialism it calls for and pointed toward somebody who holds it.
Get in touch
Send your drawings, get a fixed fee
Tell us about the building and what stage it has reached. Enquiries arriving in working hours are normally acknowledged the same day, with the fee following once the drawings have been read properly.
- We will tell you plainly if your project does not need one
- Fixed fee confirmed before any work starts
- Building control queries handled as part of the instruction
Everything routes through this form, so your enquiry reaches the engineer rather than a general mailbox.