There is no fee scale, and that is the first thing to understand
Unlike some professions, fire engineering in the UK has no published fee scale and no percentage-of-construction-cost convention that anyone actually follows. Every fee is built the same way underneath: estimated days multiplied by a day rate, then presented as a lump sum, a percentage, or a stage-based fee.
This means the only way to compare two quotes properly is to work out what days each one contains. A fee that is 40% lower is either a different scope, a different seniority mix, or an optimistic estimate that will come back as a variation.
Day rates
Blended day rates across UK fire engineering consultancies in 2026 commonly fall in this range. "Blended" means the mix of director, senior engineer and engineer time actually charged to the job, which is what determines the fee, not the headline rate of the person who attends the meetings.
| Level | Indicative day rate |
|---|---|
| Graduate / assistant engineer | £350 – £550 |
| Engineer | £550 – £750 |
| Senior engineer | £750 – £950 |
| Associate / principal | £950 – £1,300 |
| Director | £1,200 – £1,800 |
| Typical blended rate on a project | £650 – £1,100 |
London and the south east sit at the upper end. Expert witness and litigation support sit above all of it. Rates for a chartered engineer signing a complex higher-risk building are at the top of the range or beyond it, because the scarcity is real. The number of people who can competently sign that work is small and the demand is not falling.
What a fire strategy costs
Indicative ranges for the fire strategy itself, taken from concept to technical design, excluding modelling and excluding construction stage support:
| Project | Indicative fee |
|---|---|
| Small single-storey commercial unit, prescriptive | £2,000 – £5,000 |
| Mid-size office, 5,000 m², prescriptive | £8,000 – £18,000 |
| Block of flats under 18 m | £8,000 – £20,000 |
| Higher-risk residential building, over 18 m | £25,000 – £70,000+ |
| Complex mixed-use with performance-based elements | £50,000 – £150,000+ |
| External wall remediation, FRAEW and strategy | £15,000 – £60,000+ |
These are order-of-magnitude figures for comparison, not quotations. Use the fire strategy cost calculator to build an estimate from your own day rate and effort assumptions, which is a far better basis than someone else's ranges.
Why higher-risk buildings cost two to three times more
The uplift is real and it is not opportunism. It comes from four specific places:
- Design maturity is pulled forward. Gateway 2 requires a complete design before construction starts. Work that used to be resolved on site (cavity barrier locations, penetration details, specialist system design) has to be done, and paid for, earlier.
- Departures must be justified in writing. Every one. That is analysis and drafting time that a prescriptive design does not incur.
- The application itself is a deliverable. Competence declarations, construction control plan, change control plan, mandatory occurrence reporting procedure, plus responding to requests for information over a determination period measured in months.
- There is a tail. Change control applications during construction, golden thread maintenance, and Gateway 3. On a conventional job the fire engineer's involvement tapers; on a higher-risk building it does not.
The expensive mistake clients make. Appointing the fire engineer late to save fee, then paying multiples of the saving in redesign. Core positions, stair counts, façade openings and compartment lines are all fire-driven and all fixed early. A fire strategy commissioned at RIBA Stage 3 is documenting decisions rather than informing them, and the ones that were made wrong have to be unmade.
How fees are structured
- Lump sum by stage. The most common. Clear scope, clear deliverable, priced per RIBA stage. Watch the exclusions list; that is where the variations come from.
- Time charge. Used for existing buildings and remediation where the scope genuinely cannot be defined until the wall is opened up. Honest, but needs a cap and a reporting rhythm.
- Percentage of construction cost. Rare in fire, and generally a bad fit: fire engineering effort scales with complexity and regulatory burden, not with the cost of the finishes.
- Retainer. Increasingly used by housing associations and large landlords with continuing remediation and safety case obligations.
The exclusions that turn into variations
When comparing quotes, check explicitly whether each of these is in or out. They are the usual sources of a fee doubling after appointment:
- CFD smoke modelling or evacuation modelling
- Structural fire engineering analysis
- Gateway 2 application support and responses to requests for information
- Change control applications after approval
- Construction stage inspections and site queries
- Fire strategy drawings, as distinct from the report
- Intrusive survey and opening-up on existing buildings
- Attendance at design team meetings, and how many
- Number of revisions included before additional fee applies
Last reviewed 25 July 2026 against the editions named above. Standards are revised; check the current published edition before relying on anything here in a design.