Fire Safety (Buildings) Ordinance: what an older building is expected to upgrade
Cap. 572 applies fire safety standards to buildings constructed before they existed. For an Owners' Corporation the difficulty is rarely the works themselves — it is scope, cost and getting a decision made in time.
The Fire Safety (Buildings) Ordinance (Cap. 572) exists to raise the fire safety of older composite and domestic buildings to a standard closer to what is required of new ones. Its subject is buildings constructed before the current requirements applied — which in Hong Kong is a very large number of buildings.
What it asks for
Broadly, two categories. Fire service installations — hydrant and hose reel systems, automatic sprinklers in some cases, emergency lighting, directional signs, fire detection where required. And fire safety construction — the fire resistance of walls, doors and enclosures, and the protection of means of escape.
The second category is the one that surprises owners. It is not equipment you can buy and install; it is the fabric of the building, which means construction work in occupied common parts.
Directions, not deadlines you set
Enforcement proceeds by direction served on owners, specifying what has to be improved. The timing is not the Owners' Corporation's to choose, which is why the meeting calendar matters so much: consultants have to be appointed, a scope agreed, tenders sought and funds raised, all inside a period that has already started running.
Why scope is the hard part
Two buildings of the same age on the same street can need very different work, because what matters is the existing construction and layout rather than the year. Older buildings have also usually been altered — shopfronts changed, corridors partly enclosed, doors replaced — and each alteration affects escape routes and compartmentation.
Establishing what is actually there is therefore the first task, and it frequently turns up unauthorised building works that have to be resolved before the fire safety scope can even be settled.
What an Owners' Corporation should do first
Get the building surveyed against the requirements before the tendering conversation starts. A survey gives the committee a scope, a cost range and a sequence — which is what a general meeting can actually vote on. Without it, the vote is on an unknown.
Opulence Management carries out fire safety assessments and supervises the resulting works as part of building surveying. Where the assessment involves external elements, we survey them with drone capture.
