Prof. Asif Sohail Usmani, Head of the Department of Building Services Engineering, shared his research enthusiasm for structural engineering and fire safety.

How did your background attract you to study engineering?

My father is a civil engineer, so I grew up with stories of building and construction. During my primary education in Delhi, my daily walk to school was flanked by the Red Fort and the Jamia Mosque, iconic specimens of Mughal architecture, which piqued my interest in the field.

I opted for a first degree in civil engineering. I still recalled the immense feeling of satisfaction that I felt after solving knotty problems in mechanics. After graduation and a short stint of work, I enrolled in the Master of Science in Structural Engineering programme at Stanford University.

Did you develop your abiding interest in finite element methods while at Stanford University?

At Stanford University, I was exposed to many efficient ways of solving the problems of structural engineering using computer-based finite element methods, rather than the highly tedious hand calculation based classical approaches.

Then, after a few years of working in bridge and building design and construction in Saudi Arabia, I joined Swansea University where the most active development of the finite element method was taking place. This was an eye-opening experience because there I found this method a general mathematical technique for solving differential equations in any field!

Your research has since crystallised around fire safety engineering. What are the major challenges involved?

Structural engineers bear ultimate responsibility to ensure compliance with the required standards of structural safety under normal loading and foreseeable exceptional conditions such as fire. Yet, often the severity of the loading cannot be precisely determined and neither can the response.

Because of the increasing complexity of modern architectural spaces and structural systems, the traditional approaches for ensuring fire resistance are being recognised as inadequate. A great deal of research needs to be done before new design methods for structural fire resistance are developed that accurately balance estimations of fire and load demand against those of structural capacity.

After the World Trade Center in New York collapsed, how did your research change the approach to designing large structures?

The key finding from my research has been that the prevailing one-sizefits-all approach to fire resistance design is both wasteful of materials and potentially unsafe. The rational alternative is to adopt performance-based engineering methodologies.

One of the first instances of using such an approach was my work with consultants Ove Arup & Partners on Plantation Place in London. The structure was shown to meet all safety standards under all scenarios while also saving £250,000 in fire protection costs. Arup and other large consulting firms have since applied this methodology to many other projects.

Was Hong Kong’s extensive urban landscape and the engineering challenges involved a key factor in attracting you here?

The high density living environment in Hong Kong makes fire risk potentially great. Working with my colleagues in the Department and the Faculty of Construction and Environment, I hope to make a meaningful contribution to the safety and resilience of structures in this city.

How will you achieve that?

The Department has developed a vision that will present building services engineering at the forefront of addressing the enormous challenges of providing sustainable, safe, comfortable and healthy city environments. We have thus recast the Department’s research into three clearly defined themes: building environment, building energy, and building safety and resilience.

We are also developing exciting new undergraduate programmes to educate a new breed of engineer capable of devising innovative solutions to human habitation challenges. ♦