READOS / Engineering / KEVOS® original book
Performance Solutions by the Numbers
Reading Performance Requirements, building a design brief and testing a solution against the Deemed-to-Satisfy benchmark
Follow one mezzanine stair through the NCC's Performance Solution process: requirements, design brief, assessment methods, evacuation arithmetic, evidence and final report.
Start readingAbout this book
The National Construction Code lets you comply in two ways: follow the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, or show by another route that the Performance Requirements are met. That second route, the Performance Solution, is what makes the code performance-based. It is also widely misunderstood. Owners hear of it as a way around an inconvenient rule. Some designers treat it as a report that is written after the design is fixed. Neither view survives contact with the process the code now requires.
This book explains that process from the inside, using one small and deliberately ordinary example. It is written for engineers, designers and project managers who commission or review Performance Solutions, and for owners who will live with their conditions. It assumes you can follow simple arithmetic and are willing to read code clauses carefully. Fire engineering theory is introduced only as far as the example needs.
The running case
This is an illustration. A precision-engineering business is fitting out a single-storey Class 8 workshop, 50 m by 30 m, in regional New South Wales, with a separate Class 5 office behind a fire wall. Inside the workshop is a 190 m² storage mezzanine, 19 m by 10 m, with its deck 3.0 m above the floor. The owner wants the mezzanine’s only stair at its east end, where the stair foot lands beside an external exit and away from forklift routes.
With shelving on the mezzanine, the farthest point is about 28 m from the top of that stair, measured along the aisles. The Deemed-to-Satisfy limit is 20 m. Moving the stair to the middle of the mezzanine’s south edge complies, at about 18.5 m. The owner asks whether the east-end stair can be kept with a Performance Solution. The chapters follow that question from the first reading of the Performance Requirement to a final report with conditions.
The same building is the running case of the companion READOS book on building approval for factory projects, where the Deemed-to-Satisfy answer was chosen. This book shows what the other path involves.
Source limits and professional responsibility
Code text comes from NCC 2022 Volume One, read on NCC Online in October 2026, because NSW adopts NCC 2025 only from 1 May 2027. Clause numbers and requirements may differ in NCC 2025 and in other states’ variations. The ABCB’s Fire Safety Verification Method Standard and Australian Fire Engineering Guidelines are named but were not read, so no values are taken from them.
Every evacuation input in this book, including detection times, walking speeds and flow rates, is a teaching assumption chosen to make the arithmetic visible. None is a design value. A real Performance Solution for fire safety must be prepared by an appropriately qualified and, where the law requires, registered fire safety engineer, with inputs drawn from recognised data and agreed in the brief. This book is educational and is not advice on any building.
Who this book is for
Engineers, designers, project managers and owners who commission, review or rely on Performance Solutions under the National Construction Code and want to understand what a sound one contains.
What you will learn
- Read a Performance Requirement and identify every requirement a proposed solution affects.
- Set out a performance-based design brief with stakeholders, scenarios and acceptance criteria agreed before analysis.
- Choose and combine the NCC's four Assessment Methods and explain what each can and cannot prove.
- Build a comparative evacuation-time check with stated assumptions and test it for sensitivity.
- Write a final report whose conditions can be maintained for the life of the building.
Inside this book
Chapters
- 01What a Performance Requirement actually asksRead a Performance Requirement clause by clause, separate its outcome from its factors, and turn the words into questions a design can be tested against.
- 02Finding every Performance Requirement a solution touchesUse the NCC's three-step method and a factor sweep to list every Performance Requirement a departure affects, including the ones in other Parts that are easy to miss.
- 03The Deemed-to-Satisfy layout as a benchmarkBuild a fair reference design for a comparative Performance Solution: what must stay identical, what may differ, how to measure both the same way and how to avoid a straw man.
- 04The performance-based design briefAgree the scope, scenarios, inputs and acceptance criteria with the stakeholders before any analysis, and see what happens to a solution whose numbers were run first.
- 05Choosing and combining the Assessment MethodsCompare the NCC's four Assessment Methods, see what a Verification Method looks like in the code, and choose a proportionate combination for a small egress departure.
- 06Escape time by the numbersBuild a time-line of awareness, response, walking, stair travel and queuing for the reference and the proposal, and find the fire scenario in which detection does not help.
- 07Margins, sensitivity and the case that failsTest a comparative result against slower people, slower detection and failed detection, connect escape time to survivable conditions, and decide what to do with a scenario that fails.
- 08Evidence for the products and systems a solution relies onMatch every product and system in a Performance Solution to a form of evidence the NCC accepts, check that the evidence covers the installed configuration, and evidence the conditions too.
- 09Expert Judgement and peer reviewWrite Expert Judgements that state their basis, reasoning and limits, see how a peer review finds the combustible floor under a non-combustible storage rule, and record reliance.
- 10The final report, its conditions and the owner's decisionSet out what an NCC final report must contain, write conditions an owner can actually keep, and weigh a supportable Performance Solution against a Deemed-to-Satisfy fix.
References and source notes
The manuscript and worked examples are original KEVOS® writing. References inform particular concepts; their authors do not endorse this book. Web references were consulted on 25 October 2026.
- Australian Building Codes Board. National Construction Code 2022, Volume One (NCC Online) (2022). Primary source for Parts A2 and A5 (compliance and evidence of suitability), the Performance Requirements and Verification Methods of Parts C1 and D1, the D2 and D3 Deemed-to-Satisfy values used in the case, and the Schedule 1 definitions. Clause text is paraphrased with clause numbers.
- Australian Building Codes Board. Fire Safety Verification Method Standard 2022 (2022). Named in Chapter 5 as the standard that C1V4 and D1V4 call up. Its full text was not read for this book, and none of its values or scenarios are quoted.
- Australian Building Codes Board. NCC 2019 Volume One, Schedule 7 Fire Safety Verification Method, clause on fire modelling (2019). Superseded edition, used in Chapter 7 only for the principle that available safe egress time must exceed required safe egress time. Its tenability values are not presented as current requirements.
- Australian Building Codes Board. Australian Fire Engineering Guidelines (2021). Named as the current Australian fire engineering guideline, which superseded the International Fire Engineering Guidelines in Australia. The document was not available to read for this book; no content from it is reproduced.
- Australian Building Codes Board. BCA 2004: Building Code of Australia, Volume One, and the Guide to the BCA 2004 (2004). Supplied copies reviewed for the history of Alternative Solutions, Assessment Methods and documentation of decisions in Chapters 1, 5 and 9. BCA 2004 is superseded; its text is Crown copyright and is not reproduced.
- Standards Australia. AS 1670.1 Fire detection, warning, control and intercom systems (edition as referenced by the applicable NCC). Named by number and scope only as the installation standard for the case's added detection. Not read; no values quoted.
