This International Standard provides general principles and requirements for fire safety engineering, and is intended to be used by professionals involved in (1) performance-based fire safety design (of both new and existing built environments), (2) implementation for fire safety design plans and (3) fire safety management. This International Standard is not intended as a detailed technical design guide, but does provide the key elements necessary for addressing the different steps and their linkages in the fire safety design process. The International Standard also provides key elements linked to the implementation of fire safety design plans and fire safety management. The material contained in this International Standard is intended not only to be useful directly, but with a consistent set of fire safety engineering documents covering methods in performance-based fire safety design, implementation and management. The general principles and requirements of fire safety engineering in this International Standard can be applied in any other document addressing phenomena associated with fire (e.g. fire growth, hot gases and effluents movement, structural and compartmentalization behaviour). Fire safety objectives covered by this International Standard include: – safety of life; – conservation of property; – continuity of operations; – protection of the environment; – preservation of heritage. Furthermore, the general principles and requirements of fire safety engineering can be applied to all configurations of the built environment, i.e. buildings or other structures (e.g. off-shore platforms; civil engineering works, such as tunnels, bridges and mines; and means of transportation, such as motor vehicles and marine vessels). Because prescriptive regulations covering fire safety design will commonly co-exist with performancebased design, this International Standard acknowledges that fire safety designs conforming to prescriptive regulations can become the basis for comparison of engineered designs of built environments.