The two most commonly used regulatory approaches in fire safety are prescriptive and performance-based. Prescriptive approaches provide a set of rules that, if followed, are deemed to produce a design that has a sufficient level of safety. Performance-based approaches require the analysis of conditions (e.g. fire conditions) and performance (e.g. evacuation time) to determine (to quantify) whether the design affords a sufficient amount of safety (e.g. whether occupants get to safety before conditions are deemed untenable). Prescriptive approaches are designed to function for a predetermined set of scenario elements - building types, uses, fire threats and population types. The derivation of prescriptive rules must account for these elements. There is the potential for using performance-based approaches to quantify the impact of changes to prescriptive rules on safety levels, or to support the application of a prescriptive approach on specific designs. This presentation will discuss the potential for crossing the streams of the two approaches to enhance regulatory development and fire safety practice.