Who is a Fire Safety Engineer? And when do you become one? How do you know the person on the other side of the table at the project meeting has the necessary competencies to judge fire safety solutions of a building you design?

That is a problem with (a) the definition of the profession and (b) the definition of the core competencies related to the profession. And both of these issues are close to the heart of my guest, Jimmy Jönsson, Director at JVVA in Spain and a member of SFPE Board of Directors. Jimmy has led an SFPE "Core Competencies" task group which created a reference document - Recommended Minimum Technical Core Competencies for the Practice of Fire Protection Engineering. 

In our talk, we dive deep into the competencies of fire engineers, and to what particular tasks these competencies are required. You will learn where one can obtain the broad view over a fire science, and why Jimmy would rather hire someone with wide but shallow knowledge, over a specialist without a fire engineering background.

If you are looking for more resources, SFPE has some goodies for you:

• almost every good FPE university has now an SFPE Student Chapter, and you can find the list of all of such chapters here
• Pathways to a career in FPE
• Higher education in FPE

Thank you to the SFPE for recognizing me with the 2025 SFPE Fire Safety Engineering Award! Huge thanks to YOU for being a part of this, and big thanks to the OFR for supporting me over the years.

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.