SFS Customers Commend New Version of ConnectSuite FP Visualiser

AS A well-respected manufacturer of fall protection systems, and the company which created the SFS Fall Protection Installer Network, SFS Group Fastening Technology continues to make significant investment to support specifiers and specialist contractors, with the launch of its new and improved SFS FP Visualiser design tool being a recent example.

Originally introduced last year as a prototype package, industry partners highlighted possible areas for improvement; namely, around the Fall Protection Visualiser software’s capabilities in terms of rapidly inputting and processing project specific information. Now, SFS has relaunched the tool with a radically reconfigured portal which offers significant benefits over industry alternatives and responds to recent changes in terms of construction specifier’s liabilities.

SFS FP Visualiser

The industry is currently seeing arguably the most important change in decades with the shift in building regulations last year aligned to The Building Regulations etc (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023. It is now the duty of the principal designer to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to ensure all design work for a project is co-ordinated to comply with the building regulations. This means that it is upon the specifiers to ensure that their designs are adequate.

In an article in RIBAJ, Paul Jolly explained: “Under the Building Regulations, the principal designer is required to ‘plan, manage and monitor the design work during the design phase’ and to ‘co-ordinate matters relating to the design work comprised in the project so that all reasonable steps are taken to ensure that the design is such that if the building work to which the design relates were built in accordance with that design the building work would be in compliance with all relevant requirements’.”

The introduction encompasses two variants to FP Visualiser, with the core tool being aimed at architects and other building specifiers, who are seeking to provide protection on their project or client property. They need have no specialist knowledge of the roofing industry and will simply be invited to input essential parameters such as the building height, roof type (e.g. composite panels), the crown centres and pitch angle.

Once the details have been submitted to SFS, the user receives a notice that a full roof design document will be provided within 5-7 working days. The highly user-friendly tool enables specifiers to store details on a portfolio of projects, with any amendments automatically creating updated versions which can be reviewed at any time in the future.

The solution supplied in due course not only includes a PDF document with scaled drawing of the roof concerned and a list of materials, project number, date, roof type, and the potential system deflections, it also references all the technical approvals which support the system itself. There is also a QR code and links to the SFS website and the technical support available.

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