Dollar Academy, Clackmannanshire

The existing school had a building warrant application to convert the current gym hall into a new sixth form study centre. In application process, the approving authority raised issues regarding the occupancy capacity of the assembly hall on the first floor. The concern was that in the event of a fire in the historic Playfair Building, the occupants within the hall and gallery would not have sufficient fire escape capacity. Applying the current standard guidance for escape would limit the use of the hall and Gallery to 600 students from the current use of 800 people.

The historic assembly hall in Dollar Academy’s Playfair Building benefits from having a vaulted high ceiling and Atelier Ten used this to act as a smoke fill reservoir and through the use of advanced computer fire simulation calculated the time for the smoke from a fire to fill the area and block the escape routes. By establishing this smoke fill time, Atelier Ten were able to compare this to the actual evacuation time for the hall. This was achieved with both computer simulated evacuations and real-time evacuations conducted by the school. It was successfully demonstrated that as the occupants could evacuate the Assembly Hall before the escape routes were blocked by fire/smoke, the School could use the Hall for its original function and purpose.