Matthew Bonner: About Fire Science & Fire Engineering

“I joined Trigon in 2022, having completed my PhD at Imperial College London in 2020, and spending a further 15 months working as a post-doctoral research associate. My PhD project was originally advertised as “Optimizing the fire safety of facades using AI and multi-objective optimization”, and I chose to apply primarily because I was interested in learning more about AI and optimization, as well as some curiosity about how in four years of studying physics we had never once touched on the topic of fire. Nine months into my PhD, Grenfell happened, and I realized that what I was studying could dramatically impact people’s lives—not something I’d felt during my time studying theoretical physics.

I completed the final year of my PhD during The Pandemic, and I wasn’t really sure what to do next. I could still feel the importance of fire safety, but I felt that the language I was speaking wasn’t aligned with people I talked to in industry or governance. By the time I got to the end of my post-doc, I really felt that I needed more experience with fire engineering in practice but didn’t want to leave behind research entirely. Trigon has given me the opportunity to explore the intersection of both. 

My biggest shock from moving to industry was realizing how much legislation and guidance influence the design of buildings, compared to fundamental science and engineering. From my perspective, it seems that there is still a lot of disagreement on what constitutes “adequate” fire safety in a building, and even more on how this should be demonstrated. Right now, we are still trying to agree on what a fire engineer or a fire strategy is, how competency should be demonstrated, and who oversees this. As such, prescriptive guidance is still often the starting point for fire safety design—even when some aspects seem arbitrary or outdated.

I find it exciting to be part of this conversation though. Our industry is going through a shift in how it operates, and I want to help push that change towards decisions grounded in fundamental fire science, rather than “because they were done that way historically”. None of the research team at Trigon are full-time researchers (we all spend half our time doing engineering and working on building projects), but nor do we feel the pressure to apply for grants or hit particular publication or citation metrics. We have the freedom to work on problems that impact our engineering work, and to act as an interface between industry and academia.

Going forward, I would love to develop more research into how adequate fire safety could be demonstrated in the absence of prescriptive design. The sustainable design and use of buildings, particularly the re-use of existing buildings, is a critical part of creating a liveable future on this planet, and current prescriptive approaches do not adequately address the challenges of re-using existing buildings and systems or introducing new materials and energy storage devices. Rather than looking at these problems individually, I’m interested in how the system could move away from a reliance on guidance more broadly. I’m also hoping to apply to be a Chartered Engineer within the next year.

I’ve loved my time working at Trigon so far. It’s wonderful to feel part of a team that supports each other and wants to produce high-quality work and provide great service without giving clients unrealistic deadlines or taking on more work than we can handle. I’m also pleased that I am able to be openly non-binary without judgement or being asked to “fit-in” to a particular culture. I think there is always more to improve, but the company is still small enough that it’s easy to talk to people and raise an issue without wading through bureaucracy. When I started working here, I was told that our key values were People, Service, and Solutions, and I’m happy that I’ve seen the team continue to live up to those values during the last four and a half years.”