Unpacked: EV Battery Fires - Risks and Regulatory Gaps with Halt Fire Engineering

Bill Gleeson is a Registered Fire Engineer and Principal Fire Engineer at Halt Fire Engineering, Bendigo. His background is unusual for the field: 12 years as a firefighter and instructor with NT Fire and Rescue Service, followed by two years as a Fire Engineer with the NT Fire and Rescue Service reviewing other engineers' work as the approving authority, then almost six years as Senior Fire Engineer for a Melbourne based engineering firm. Bill holds a Bachelor of Science and a Graduate Diploma in Fire Safety, is an Associate of the Institution of Fire Engineers, and has received the Australasian Fire Authority Council, Knowledge and Innovation Award and Fire Fighter of the Year. That mix of firefighter, authority reviewer and consulting engineer gives him a practical read on fire safety from every side of the table.

EV and lithium-ion battery fire safety is one of the fastest-growing risks in the built environment. In this session, Bill will walk through where EVs and battery storage currently sit in the National Construction Code, and why the catch-all "special hazards" clause leaves real gaps for anyone making decisions today. He'll cover the guidance industry bodies have put together to help fill that gap in the meantime, and why it's a helpful reference rather than something you're required to follow. He'll then give a plain-English rundown of EV and charging hazards, illustrated with real-world case studies, before closing with a segment on fire safety for battery energy storage systems (BESS), drawing on Tesla-related fire incidents.