Towards a better understanding of fire performance assessment of façade systems: Current situation and a proposed new assessment framework

•Existing compliance methods are not adequate for assessing façade systems in fire.•External fire spread risk can be characterised using the framework proposed.•An extensive database of quantified fire performance can be used as evidence.•Building professionals must be upskilled using a competency framework.•Substantial amounts of research will be required to understand external fire spread. This manuscript presents tools and data that serve to enable an evaluation of the risk associated with vertical fire spread on buildings. A highly detailed context to cladding fires is described to unveil the complexity and magnitude of the problem and to identify gaps of information. An engineering framework is then developed which delivers required information that fills some of those gaps and that needs to be used towards achieving quantified fire performance. The data itself has been published as a publicly available database, entitled the Cladding Materials Library (www.claddingmaterialslibrary.com.au). This data can be used to support building fire risk assessments or as the basis for more in-depth research into façade fires. This paper presents the context of the data together with the competency framework necessary for upskilling building professionals to have the capacity to implement the engineering framework.