Fire Code Tech

Drew Slocum has been involved with the fire protection industry for 17 years. He is the co-founder of Inspect Point, a remote inspection platform, and the host of The Fire Protection Podcast. On this bonus episode of Fire Code Tech, we talk about remote inspection, NFPA 915 and the fascinating work Drew is involved with. We speak about the fire protection podcast scene and discuss some inside baseball about podcasting and what is next for Drew.

Inspect Point

The Fire Protection Podcast

Tell me a little bit about your background? Tell me a little bit more about your background and how your systems engineering background dovetails with fire protection? Do you have a project example or a career example of a big learning experience for you? Tell me about your work on NFPA 915 committee? What is the line between what can be and what can't be inspected remotely? Tell me about your work with the new york contractors association? For those who don't know what is Inspect Point? Would you speak a little bit about the Fire Protection Podcast and the impetus for the show? Where do you see the Fire Protection Podcast going? What are some resources that you recommend to professionals? What piece of advice would you give to yourself just getting into the industry?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the.

You're in the right place. Hey, I just wanted to check in with everybody before the episode, we are releasing a separate bonus episode this week. We're still gonna have our two regularly scheduled episodes, but I wanted to release an additional interview for your enjoyment. October's a big month for. Fire safety and fire protection.

So I wanted to, uh, pay homage or a tribute to the month and release another episode for you guys to enjoy. On this episode, we have drew locum. Drew is been in the fire protection industry for over 17 years. He is now the host of the fire protection podcast. Drew talks to us about N F P. Team, which is the standard for remote inspection.

We get into interesting topics about the fire protection podcast and also a little bit more about what he does at, in inspect point. If you're a big fan of other fire protection podcasts, you're gonna like this one, because we talk a little bit about behind the scenes and the inception of the fire protection podcast.

Fire code tech. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Also, if you want to drop me a [email protected], I'd be interested if you have any suggestions for guests or topics you'd like to hear about let's dive into the show. Well, welcome to the show drew.

Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me been, uh, looking forward to this since you, you, uh, we connected, uh, you know, not that long. Yeah, it's exciting. I'm excited to talk to, uh, a fellow fire protection podcaster. There's not too many in the game, but, uh, it's a exciting time, but I'm excited to get into it with, yeah, I think you're the, the newest to the clan, right?

Or one of the newest there's about, it's like four or five of us now. Yeah, it's exciting. I like, uh, I'm aware of the, uh, fire sprinkler podcast, uh, um, the fire protection podcast. I remember hearing Chris Logan talking about, uh, bison. Oh yeah. Rock Reed. Yeah. I had him on, yeah. And, uh, I've also seen little snippets of some starting and whatnot, but yeah, it's an interesting time.

Yeah, definitely. so cool. So I just wanted to get started with, uh, a little bit about your background and kind of, uh, how you got started in. Yeah, sure. Sure. So I've been in, um, Fire protection for, I think it's 17 years. Hold on. What, what? Yeah, I think it's 17 years, 17 years at this point I started really right out of right outta college.

I went to, uh, the better of the Polytechnic institutes, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Uh, I know there's probably a lot of WPI, uh, listeners out there. So, um, you know, Reder, doesn't have a, a, a, a great fire protect. Uh, they don't have one at all fire protection degree, but, um, you know, the, the godfather of the sprinkler Frederick Renell went to RPI.

So I gotta, I gotta give a shout out there. So, you know, I was an industrial, um, engineer coming outta school, uh, went to work for Tyco, you know, the big manufacturer of, of fire protection equipment. So actually went into manufacturing. I was manufacturing their, their dry pipe valve out of hu Houston, Texas.

Uh, right outta school, um, went into their management leadership program, kind of moved around the, the, the west coast with them, went to another valve manufacturing plant. Then, uh, went down to Arizona manufactured, uh, sprinkler pipe, you know, with allied allied tube and conduit, which is now part of at.

While I was there, kind of dipped my toe into sales a little bit. And, um, then 2008 happened with the, the little bit of a crash there. I was looking for positions of fire protection products out of, uh, New York, uh, took a position with them. Uh, doing more technical sales, selling, selling to contractors, engineers, owners.

So I worked there, you know, moved to New York city, which is quite a change from Arizona. And I went there and, um, I've worked that market for about five years with Tyco. Uh, at that point, you know, Tyco was in kind of in flux at that point. So I, I went over to their competitor, uh, Viking. So I went to Viking mini max for about four years and everything was great with both Tyco and Viking, still great companies.

And, um, uh, while I was, I actually had the idea when I was at Tyco, but, um, Had an idea, you know, was it sitting in an NFP 25 class and, uh, uh, wondered why, why everything is still on paper. So. You know, why not dig, make things more digital in the workflows with, with inspections. So that was, that was way long time ago.

Um, partnered up with some, uh, high, high software developers that I, I went to school with, uh, and some people around upstate New York and we kind of put our heads together with this software platform. We had a, uh, a mutual friend that was a fire protection contractor and, um, Yeah, kind of been doing in spec point for, uh, six years or so now.

And, um, yeah, it's been, it's been a lot of fun. It's, it's kind of the new wave of things and, um, you know, selling sprinklers and, and the technical side before is great. But, uh, the new wave is a lot of the digital technology. Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, definitely. That's a huge trend in the industry. Yeah. I thought it was kind of interesting, uh, looking at your work history and, you know, seeing your background in industrial engineering, you know, it seems like, uh, kind of the through line in your career is, you know, refining processes and trying to make things more E.

And, you know, I see, uh, in inspect point as just a extension of that, uh, of your career in that regard. So I find that really interesting to, to hear about, yeah, it's weird. And I, I, I got my six Sigma black belt and that's kind of what I went to school for. Got my six Sigma black belt, which is like a process improvement, um, you know, certification.

And, uh, I got that and then got into sales and I kind of put two and two together. Brought fire protection to the process improvement side. So it's, uh, it kind of fits right. for sure. Yeah. Um, I think that, yeah, for people on the podcast probably hear me say this a lot, but you know, fire protection has a lot of room for advancement in the digital age and just, um, just that whole can be refined and, and done more up to date to, it seems like, uh, it stages, it's just a little bit a tick behind some of the other engineering disciplines.

So I'm glad for entrepreneurs and people who are trying to. Uh, push that forward. But, um, anyways, so I talked about a little bit about, um, so your specialty in the industry seems like, um, big in fire protection and for different manufacturers and for, uh, sales and just, um, that seems like, you know, where you would.

Have kind of built your expertise and just your knowledge base in the industry, but yeah, I don't know. Um, do you have like, uh, a specific, uh, project example or like, uh, anything that you could, um, refer to as like a big building experience for your career? Uh, I don't know if, uh, it makes as much sense in the context since you've been in sales or one.

Yeah. I mean, um, obviously the, the six Sigma thing has, has helped out with the process improvements and kind of gotten back into that with this whole inspect point platform. But, um, you know, I worked on a lot of big projects when I was with Tyco and Viking, so, you know, that's more new construction, so it, and it's funny that the, the whole fire protection industry.

It seems, you know, it is driven a lot by manufacturers, right? They're the, they're the big, the big honchos of everything. They've got a lot of the, a lot of the cash, a lot of the capital and they, they control a lot of the process too, which is, is not bad. You know, it fire protection's in a, in a great spot.

Um, But a lot of that's tied to new construction. So like what you're doing engineering wise, a lot of that is tied to new construction. Um, there's a whole aspect of the business on the inspection and service side that it, it doesn't get forgotten. It's just. Um, you need to maintain systems, right? You can, you can put a lot of money into, uh, designing one, uh, correctly, making sure the product is great, but if you're, if you're not regularly maintaining it, it's gonna fail.

And you know, it could fail within a couple years. It could fail 10 years from now. So that, that I, the ITM and the service. Is, um, you know, it's, it's becoming more, um, of a topic lately or, and it's a sector of business. That's that's has a, um, you know, with everything going on right now and just that reoccurring revenue model, I think the, and inspection and service side's more, um, uh, looked at now, um, than it was before.

So I dunno if that answered your question, but, um, No. Yeah, that was a, it was a nebulous question. And I, uh, appreciate the insight that you gave from, you know, your background in ITM. You know, I think that's a good time to just talk about, you know, ITM some more and like, you know, trends in the industry. I think that you touching on like COVID and, and what's going on right now is driving things further and further into.

Technical age is a great time. Yeah. I get asked a lot of times of where, where the industry's heading and, you know, what's the next thing. And I, um, you know, again, the manufacturers drive a lot of that, right? They drive the new innovations. Um, code is always behind innovation, which is unfortunate. And the cycle of code takes it's like seven to eight years until something.

Is fully enacted into a code, which, you know, it it's good. It goes through that long process from, from start to finish, uh, just to make sure, you know, uh, something that is brought into code is, is relevant and important, but, um, it also, you know, you, the, the new kind of technology for, for manufacturers has always.

Let's make a new sprinkler. Let's make a new fire alarm system. Let's make a new, you know, type of extinguisher out there, whatever your fire protection needs are, but that's gonna transition, I think, in the next five years, if it already, hasn't already into the more of the digital space where, um, you have connected systems, uh, whether it's internet of things, O T whether it's gathering data from different systems to make better decisions on design.

Do we even need to, um, have systems, uh, in certain areas? I don't know. So, uh, you know, a lot of the data, a lot of the, you know, the digital side, it seems like that's, that's really the seems to be the wave of the future. And I manufacturers are starting to get on it, but, um, , you know, I sit on NFPA nine, 15 now for remote inspection, which is a very interesting standard cuz it's, it's newer and it's gonna drive some of the other standards as well for, um, remote inspections, which is, you know, inspection is a big P piece of the business, but it's gonna start connecting these systems to, um, do things virtually, which.

You know, even virtually is a, a big turn lately. Right. So, uh, it might, it might kick it into gear more, but even with that, you know, that code, like getting back to that code cycle, it's, it's still gonna be seven plus years until something takes off. So, um, wow. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah. And, and for those, those who don't know.

N FPA, um, nine 15 is the standard for remote inspections. Is that the, the formal name for, yeah, it's the standard for remote inspections and it's a, it's a pretty broad, generic, um, standard. And I think they're, they're just trying to get some technology out there for HJS for building owners that, um, can utilize.

You know, virtual technology to, to do inspections. Um, then I don't think it's really being driven toward the regular ITM, you know, required for NFP 25, 72. Um, some of the other codes, it's more just leaving it open for the HJ to, um, kind of determine what they need to do. So in like, uh, you know, we've had this pause and.

You know, with whatever's going on. Um, there's opportunity. Do, do people do, do building facilities, want people in their facility, so to do an inspection? So that's kind of, it's giving an HJ. All right. Maybe I can do a, a visual inspection with a camera or, um, you know, uh, have a, um, facility manager walk around with.

With an iPhone, just to be on FaceTime, to do a, just any type of inspection, not fire protection, ju a building inspection. Um, so it's kind of covering a, a big basis, which is good. I think it's, you're just trying to, to get a lot of new thoughts going and we'll, we'll refine the code as it, as it kind of comes, uh, around more hasn't even been out for public, uh, comment yet.

So. Yeah, I understand that that nine 15 is in like the extreme early phases of the, of the process, but, and, you know, just like fleshing out the, um, idea of what the standard is gonna be. And. Yeah, that sounds really fascinating. And, uh, just hearing about that, but yeah, I think that, uh, the topic of, um, remote inspections has been coming up a lot lately and, um, you know, I've heard, uh, a little bit of talk of, you know, what's appropriate for remote inspections.

You know, what kind of things can people expect to, you know, be able to conduct remotely and what stuff really has to be done in person or, you know, like where's that line kind of, I'm sure you're pretty aware. Oh yeah, there, you know, there's a big line. I mean, um, and it, you know, business is kind of driven off of, of inspection and service as well.

So there's. There's also a business line there with an actual, um, you know, risk line as well. So, you know, it, it, it all, you know, that all depends. Um, that's, I, I think it's going to push it down to the HJ and, and let them the HJ, whether it be the owner, um, be the fire fire officials to make that determin.

You know, a lot of it right now is, is just a, a general building inspection. It's um, you know, a general, a walkthrough, you know, why, why do you need somebody on site to do a walkthrough when you can do that verse, you know, doing FaceTime or do you need to have somebody on site now when you get into the scheduled maintenance and the schedule inspection, that's a whole different ballgame.

It's, that's all tied to the code, the different NFPA codes. Which that may change over time as well with remote inspection. I mean, and some of the data will, will help that out. Like, um, do you need somebody on site to do a visual? Can you put a camera there? Right. I mean, a lot of that's being discussed by a lot of big professionals in the industry, um, that sit on nine 15 with me and have done some other webinars on it.

It's again. You're right. It's, it's in the early process, but it needs to happen because the technology's already been around for five years. So yeah. Why is it taking so long? Um, so N FPA is starting to get it, um, yeah. And trying to push, push faster and, and, uh, more thoroughly. Definitely. Yeah. It's interesting seeing, you know, I mean, some of these.

You know, fire alarm devices have, uh, testing mechanisms already integrated into it. Correct. You know, so formalizing some of these, uh, inspection standards and yeah, I mean, for a visual inspection on a pressure gauge, you know, why do you need to be there in person to do that? You know, I can see a lot of these visual inspections, um, can just be conducted remotely and yeah.

See a huge benefit and probably they'd get done more often. And like you said before, we'd have data to tie to the event, you know, uh, uh, It's so hard to get, um, proper documentation of inspection data. I, I see it all the time when we're working in existing facilities. And to your point earlier about, you know, it's easy to install a new system and make sure that it's done right.

But the hard thing is maintaining it for 50 years and. Proper documentation of management of change within the facility. And so I think that the digital aspect of it only makes sense. Yeah. You know, it's, it's um, that data and leaving that trail of concrete evidence that this is happening can only protect, you know, people's life safety can protect the building owner.

Well, a lot of, you know, uh, a lot of frequency of inspection in N F P. Kind of created by, you know, seasoned industry for professionals determining it, but they're kind of pulling it out of the air. They didn't have any data to back it up, um, which gets into the whole, you know, a lot of what I've, you know, my degrees in the six Sigma stuff I've done is you need data to prove, um, why you're making a.

So, you know, let's, let's let the data talk for itself and make the decision off of that. Does something need to be monthly? Does it need to be weekly? Does it need to be quarterly? You know, that gets beyond remote inspection, remote inspection, something else, but, um, the data side, there's a whole another set of, um, an FPA standards for, I think it's nine 50 and 9 51.

That's starting getting into the more data collection side to determine. Um, you know, to make decisions on, on future, uh, revisions of the code. So, yeah, that makes sense. I think that data driven decisions and, you know, I was just talking with somebody recently about, you know, how energy storage systems or a new hazard for fire protection and, you know, uh, what can we do?

How do we determine, you know, how to, uh, protect these hazards? Well, Rigorous testing, looking at the data and having data driven decisions, you know, about these, um, new things, uh, that pose a hazard and these new processes. So I think that's just the new way of doing businesses. Hey, let's look at the data.

Let's analyze the data and let's decide from there instead of just rule up thumb or, you know, That, that sort of thing. So I definitely get it, but, uh, very interesting. Very interesting. Well, um, so I saw that you are, uh, on, or you are part of the, uh, New York fire sprinkler contractor association. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, it's uh, so I've been in a New York market for, uh, Going on 11 years now. Um, I moved outta New York city last year, but I'm still heavily involved with the HJS there FD and Y do B, but I'm, uh, there's been an, Association's been around for 84 years. It's one of the, it's probably older than N FSA and, and a FSA even.

Um, it's a New York fire, sprinkler contractors association, all the contractors, um, around New York either have been a part of it, or it's kind of transitioned over the years, but, um, it's a group of contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, and HJS all getting together. Um, used to be in a room now we're doing it virtually, but, um, Yeah, just getting together to put all our ideas on and get on the same page.

So I think that's a great way for jurisdictions to, um, really progress, right. Is if all, all stakeholders and all parties are all on the same page and put their ideas together. So, you know, F D and Y bounces a lot of ideas past the. so, um, you know, because they wanna make the right decisions for the city that, you know, that they're protecting.

So it, it, it's a great camaraderie that we have with, uh, you know, the different jurisdictions around New York city and, um, the Metro area. So, um, yeah, so I'm the executive director for that. It's, it's similar to like an a F S a and FSA, but we are fully independent. We've been around for again. 84 or so years.

And, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's fun, but it's also very, um, uh, localized too. So that sounds awesome. That's cool to be involved with the professional society and, and one in such a, you know, a place that, um, definitely on the cutting edge of what's required for the industry. You know, I've, I've had work in.

In New York and New York city. And, uh, definitely seems like they are far more, you've done engineering in New York city. Uh I've I had a project at the LaGuardia airport. Um, but, uh, so yeah, so it's definitely, uh, placed that is more progressive, you know, they're not as keen on the idea of delegated design and they're, you know, just, um, interested in.

Doing things, uh, I'd say, uh, more by the book than some jurisdictions. Yeah. They've got their own, they've got their own rules and, um, you know, rightfully so. It's a, it's a different, uh, city than the rest of the world. So, um, but they, they, they, they, um, adopt pretty much the standards as is, and a few exceptions here or there to, to, you know, kind of New York eyes.

It, so. I wanted to talk a little bit more about, um, the work you're doing at, in spec point. I know, uh, you mentioned a little bit, um, before you know, about, uh, your work there and, you know, for those who don't know what is inspect point. Oh, so, um, yeah, I, I guess I probably should have started with that.

Right. So in spec point is a cloud based, uh, software solution for, uh, fire protection essentially. And what it does is it. Kind of, uh, you know, from a contractor's point of view or a facility's point of view, it keeps you in compliance or it runs your inspection, um, process. So from all the NFP 25 72, 2001, uh, 10 for extinguishers.

So. If you're in that business as a contractor, it runs all the inspection. You can, uh, it's a mini CR CRM as well. So you can have all your customers in there. You can send proposals, you can send quotes. Um, you also can dispatch your technicians out of there to follow up with work, to make those fixes. So it kind of, from a contractor's point of view, it, it runs your.

Recurring revenue stream and for facility side, it, it keeps you in compliance and we kind of tie everything back to the code, but it it's fully customized as well. So if you're a, you know, if your, your own jurisdiction or, or want to, uh, see your own kind of inspection templates, we can do that. So, um, it's been fun.

We're very cutting edge. We, we, it, it's funny when coming from the manufacturer's world. You know, what, if you came out with, you know, five to 10 new products a year, it was good. Um, it was a good day. It was a good year to, to go to your customers with those new products. Well, we're putting out about 20 new features or 20 new products every month.

Um, and we're able to do that because it's, you know, it's, it's a software and, uh, a lot of that's my team, my, my software team and my customer success team is, is impeccable. Um, and we've been. You know, we're still a pretty young company, but, uh, we're highly looked at throughout the fire protection community.

Without a doubt. That's very interesting. It seems like, uh, the idea of inspection testing and maintenance and the, the burden. It can be, it seems like it's a burden on, um, certain jurisdictions. Mm-hmm , you know, to have the fire department, you know, uh, engage in, you know, do inspections or whoever the authority having jurisdiction is.

You know, engage in ITM and, you know, for the building owner, it seems like it's a, it's a big, uh, expense and it's something that I think could be done better. So it's, it's cool to hear you talk about and spec Bitcoin and yeah. That you guys are so embracing tech and just, uh, that digital, uh, aspect of, yeah, there's a lot coming.

We're always innovating, you know, IOT's. Uh, potential next step platform, as well as, uh, integrating with some of these HJ softwares, um, software platforms as well, HJS have their own, you know, compliance platforms. So we're, we're working very aggressively to, to, um, you know, make things easier for the HJ, the contractor, the building owner.

So just makes sense. Yeah. And so you guys inspect, you know, not just your, uh, typical fire alarm and fire sprinkler, but I mean, you guys pretty much inspect like the gambit of, uh, everything that you can think of fire protection, like. Pre action, deluge, fire pumps, you know, stand pipes, you know, fire hydrants.

So I think that's pretty interesting that it's a whole spectrum. It's, you know, fire alarms, special hazards, you know, kitchen, suppression systems, um, extinguishers. Uh, fire doors, fire doors is a whole different market. You know, fire dampers is a whole different market, uh, smoke control systems. Those are so, so they're different sectors.

They're, they're run differently. The compliance is different. So every feature and module in our software is kind of geared to that NFPA quote, unquote code or the actual style of in. um, and then we have a full, customized solution where you could run your OSHA, you know, inspections off of it, even so, oh, wow.

The OSHA that seems like a whole nother can of worms. There's a lot of, there's a lot of compliance, especially now with all the, the safety and, and health and safety going on with, um, with buildings. There's a lot, there, there's a lot of compliance, so it, the, the platform's there, we just, um, you know, you can customize whatever you need.

Well, awesome. Well, I wanted to, I, you know, uh, talk to you about the fire protection podcast and, you know, talk about, you know, your inspiration for the fire protection podcast and yeah. I'd like to hear more about it. Yeah. I, um, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Um, I'm a big golfer, so I listen to a lot of book golf podcasts, which, you know, it can be a little boring golf sometimes, but the podcasts make a little.

um, you know, I listened to some business business podcasts out there and Joe, Rogan's a big one big fan of big fan of his. So, um, the, the idea, uh, probably was a couple years ago, we didn't start it until, or I didn't start it until last year. Uh, around this time, maybe April of 2019. But we, we had the domain, um, uh, uh, one of the, one of the partners in, in spec point, pat Doyle, he's a big podcast guy too.

So, um, , you know, we, we threw it around and we're like, let's just toss some information out there. And, um, at that time I think Chris Logan was probably five episodes or so in, at that point and with the fire sprinkler podcast. So I was like, you know what, there's another podcast going. We better, we better get on this.

So, uh, You know, it's, it's been fun. We're 21 episodes in, um, we talk a lot about, uh, generic, uh, fire protection, the whole, all the different, there's a lot of different fire protection sectors. Right? So I, I could go a lot of different ways. It's not just sprinkler. It's not just alarm, it's not just suppression, but we get into the business sides of it too.

Um, and you know what we're dealing with right now with, uh, what's going on globally. So yeah, it's, we don't really talk about in spec point. It's more new technology out there, new ideas, you know, you had Andy Lynch on from fire, um, uh, fire solutions group. And I had him on pretty, I, I never knew about that technology, augmented reality.

So, um, I had him on it's a really cool. Um, and I think there's, there's an avenue for, it's just, uh, uh, finding the customer, finding the market for it. So, um, just getting information out there has been pretty powerful for that. So, uh, it's been fun. I did, I did a, a podcast at NFPA last year at a, at a tequila bar.

I dunno if you heard that one, but we did a Facebook live and it was actually a controversial topic. It was. Nitrogen and, um, nitrogen and, and air compressed air and, and dry and pre-action systems and, uh, pros and cons to both. And, uh, you know, it's a pretty controversial topic. So why might as well throw some beer tequila at it and see what happens right.

That sounds like always a great time. I wish I could do more of 'em and you know, with everything happening right now, there's, there's not a lot of face to face, but we'll, we'll still be back there. . Yeah, that's awesome. No, uh, it's funny cuz I was, uh, I'm a big fan of podcasts too. And when I was thinking about, uh, doing one, I didn't know yet about the fire protection podcast and I was thinking about names and I was trying to get my domain in order and I, uh, I was like, oh my gosh, the fire protection podcast, it makes so much sense.

And I typed it in. And you had a, I think you were two episodes in, it was last April. And I just, just was like, oh my gosh, I missed it by that much. And I was like, what a genius name we had pat had pat grabbed the domain probably a year and a half before. So just sitting on it and then, you know, we just, you know, he, he let me run with it, so it's been good.

That's awesome. No, it's, that's great. And I think it's, I think it's all good stuff. Like you said, that there's so much room and for just people to get more knowledge. Fire protection, or I think that there's not enough spaces where people just kind of talk shop about, um, different stuff in the industry and you know, what their thoughts on it and getting to hear professionals, uh, speak their mind and whatnot is a huge deal.

And you know, if you look at big industries, like you. Tech and other industries, it's like, Hey, these guys have have podcasts. And these guys, you know, a lot of different people, you know, there's not just one, like you said, Joe Rogan, there's not just one comedy podcast. There's like, you know, 20 of them, there's three of 'em.

And so there's a lot of room at the table for people to, you know, uh, have these conversations. And I just think it's good. Yeah, it is. It is good. It's something to listen to, you know, and you get a lot of, uh, I get listeners all over the world. I mean, most of them are north America in the us, but, um, a lot of 'em are, you know, over in Asia, over in, you know, down in, um, Australia, New Zealand, it's, it's weird where you connect with these people.

So, um, yeah, it's interesting. It's a, it's a global. It's a global spread on podcasting. So it's, uh, it's been good. So if you ever need any, you know, feedback or whatever, um, you know, or any assistance with that, and are you doing this all yourself? Yeah, it's all me. I'm doing all the, all the, all the, uh, yeah, pretty much all of it.

Yeah. My, uh, fiance helps me out. Um, she's. PR and marketing professionals. So she helps me out with some of the social media stuff and, and, uh, will read my terrible writing and make it look good. But other than that, it's me editing it's it's me, uh, booking and yeah, well, I was that's, you know, that's what happens and, uh, That's definitely what happens and you'll get, you know, if he gets big enough, then you'll get a team behind you.

And Chris is still doing his on his own. Um, it's kind a one it's, you know, podcasting a lot of times a one person show. So, um, but it is good. It's good to get information out. Um, and, um, I, I, it also ties back to what you're doing professionally a little bit too. Yeah, I feel a little bit, uh, it's a little bit of a selfish goal because, you know, I get to ask people questions, but you know, not only are these things that I think are interesting, but you know, these things, I don't know.

So I get to, you know, reach out to people who are professionals in their field like you, and you know, you, you're sitting on N FPA at nine 15, you know, you're gonna be a part of a standard. That's gonna be a part of history and we get to sit down and have a conversation and. I come away with, uh, you know, knowing more about it all.

And it's like, man, this feels like a life back. Yeah, yeah, no, it's good. It's, uh, I'm glad you're doing it. And um, well, there'll be a few more that pop up here or there it's, and it's fun that people are doing it kind of, you know, there's, there's a few manufacturers doing it. N NFPA is doing it, but I feel if you're tied to one of those big, you know, no, I'm not taking a shot at any of those big players, but you're kind of, uh, I don't know, you're, you're kind of strapped sometimes in what you can discuss or what your opinions can be on certain things.

Cause it's, you know, you're tied to that bigger business and which is not a bad thing, you know, there's still room for that. It's just, um, you you'd rather have it more open and honest and kind of coming from, coming from the heart a little. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, ICC has a international, uh, code consortium has a, a podcast and, you know, uh, I listen to it and, you know, I think it's interesting and they cover some topics that are.

you know, I'd put on the same level as like what, uh, S F P E, and one NF P a likes to talk about in the regard that, you know, they talk about what's really trending in the industry. And like, in my mind, I'd be interested if they would just do a podcast talking about like different chapters in their standard, you know, it's like, and I think that part of that is like you're saying, uh, because they are such a large organization, you know, it's not as.

Personal as that. Sure. But yeah, it's interesting. I, I, I definitely think there's, I I'm I'm for all of it. I'm for Viking doing a podcast I'm for I doing a podcast. Yeah. I, you know, And, uh, yeah, I think it was interest really interesting. What you were talking about earlier about people around the world listening.

It's like, I think that we, we, uh, forget, you know, like ICC or, you know, like we talk about building code issues or NFPA standard issues. And like we forget there's, you know, Uh, so many countries around the world that adopt the same model codes as we do. And, you know, uh, ICC is a phenomenon that's, uh, mostly developed by people from, uh, north America, predominantly the us, but there are countries, you know, like all around the world that gives you same codes and standards.

So it's uniquely, uh, a north American thing, but it's also. Pretty global, like all this that we're talking about. So yeah, definitely.

Cool. Well, uh, yeah, so I just like, uh, on the topic. To fire protection podcast. Like where do you, where do you see it going? Or like, where do you want to, to take it? You know, like, I like what you're doing now, but like, do you have a, a big goal for it? Or like where you wanna go with it? I want Spotify to gimme a hundred million dollar contract.

That's what I want. Yeah know, I think that that deal was low. I think they give more than a hundred, but yeah, I hear you about that anyway. Um, no, I, I, I keep getting ideas out there. Um, I, I mean, I haven't even attacked any of the fire alarm stuff, so I wanna, I wanna, I have a lot of fire alarm ideas that I want to get out to the market.

And, um, that's such a big mark that we haven't, um, touched and, and a lot of, you know, sprinklers separate than suppression. That's separate than fire alarms. So, and a lot of those don't cross lines too often. So, um, there's different avenues. Uh, I mean it's a fire protection podcast, so there. You know, potential six different sectors to fire protection.

Um, you know, it could, it could be split out even more. And then, you know, there's a lot of categories that haven't touched. I haven't had a fire door podcast yet, so, um, you know, there's, there's a lot there and, um, you know, it'd be nice to integrate it back with what we're doing at inspect point, too. And to drive some of that.

Yeah. So. Yeah, it's just a, it's it's fun right now. And becoming an industry, um, market leader been been fun and, um, you know, I would like to do some more live ones at some of the shows, uh, hopefully next year. But, um, it, it it's a lot, there's a, there's a lot of work into it. And as, as you know, there's a lot of work to, to get 'em out and to do 'em right as.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. It's a lot of work to do. 'em right. You don't just wanna put out something that's, you know, not quality and not thought through and yeah. On your, uh, remark about, you know, the different avenues of fire protection. I mean, yeah. If you're looking at. Building holistically, or even, you know, if you're not looking at a building, I mean, there's, uh, fire protection now for, for wildfires and for, you know, I mean, there's so many different things you could talk about and, and people you could talk to.

So yeah, I definitely think that's, uh, that's a good point. Yep. But anyways, I know we've talked a lot about, uh, remote inspections and, um, ITM and where that's going in the digital age, but I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit about, you know, what you see as, uh, any other meaningful trends in the industry right now.

I know we talked about COVID and what that's doing to. Uh, fire protection right now, but yeah. Yeah, I think, um, I mean the industry's gonna gonna change through this. I, um, you know, I'm on the sales and marketing side a lot and, and just the business side, um, I don't think, you know, fire, protection's not going away.

It's always gonna be driving forward with the code, which is a good, great part. Great part of the industry, you know, we'll through ebbs and flows with the economic cycle with new construction. I think we're on the, uh, the brink of a, a pretty big new construction decline. Um, you know, there's a lot of backlog right now with current projects out there, but what's happening after that.

And I think, uh, there, there should be con concern over that, cuz there's, there's not a lot of funding. Um, or it's kind of left because of, uh, what the economic fallout from this, uh, situation we are in. So, but that could be only, you know, eight, 18 month, 12 month blip. You, you know, maybe even shorter. So it'll come out of that even stronger.

And, but it'll change the way we do things. On a business side, on the sales side on just working, you know, all the remote working and, uh, virtual stuff. Um, cloud based systems. We have a cloud based system from, from day one. That's like a, that's a huge thing now. Um, you know, a go-to meetings, Microsoft team zoom.

That's like a, nobody would've thought of that six months. No people would still used it six months ago, but now everybody's having to use it. Um, are you working from home? Gus? Are you in the office? Mm-hmm uh, so I was working from home for. Almost three months. Um, just went back in my company's doing like a phase return, but, uh, you know, it's, it's definitely pretty, pretty wild.

Yeah. It's gonna change work. And, and does that impact the, you know, construction landscape a little bit? um, you know, you know, I came from the sales and marketing side. And how does that, how does that affect it? Because before, when I worked, when I saw engineers like yourself at taiko and biking, I'd go into the office, I'd buy, I do a lunch and learn, you know, all that buy 'em lunch, hang out, you know, after work occasionally.

And that's not going to you you'll, you'll still have that, but not as much over the next year or so. I think. Um, yeah, so, you know, the companies have to be a little bit more nimble and, uh, think outside the box a little more. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely hear what you're saying about, you know, what is this gonna mean for the.

For the built environment or for, you know, the production of new buildings in the next couple years. I, you know, right now, uh, we're fortunate that the, uh, the economy was so white hot before all this hit, or, you know, I don't know what kind of, uh, backlog anybody in the industry would be working on. Um, so I think it'll be interesting.

I don't know. What the, what that there's gotta be, you know, a time where we see the impact of this for people, you know, constructing new buildings or even maintaining, you know, existing buildings. Right. So that we're, we're gonna see that. I don't know when that ripple, you know, hits everybody, but the, the Stone's been dropped into the, um, but yeah, it's very interesting to think about.

And, uh, Another topic I wanted to ask on the fire protection, professional development side of things is, you know, what kind of, uh, resources would you recommend or where do you like to go to find out information about fire protection? I know you've mentioned a lot of really that you've worked for really great, you know, larger companies there's Tycos and, and Vikings.

They all have great stuff online. Yeah. Where do you like to go to consume information or resources or tools for fire protection? Well, I mean, fire protection podcast is a great one. uh, um, yeah, I can plug there. Um, you know, yes, the manufacturers, again, they're the ones driving the industry, um, because you know, that's where the, that's where the money's at and, uh, they're the big public company.

So they're driving a lot of the innovation technology. So keeping in loop with. Whether you're local, uh, business development or territory salesperson, that's, that's always key seeing those webinars, uh, online, uh, once they're back get to a trade show, trade shows are, you know, you see the big, uh, the powerful companies out there, but you also see the smaller companies like myself, like in spec point, like some of the, you know, other startups, other manufacturers out there, and you actually get to put your hands on and, and see the products.

If you can get to a trade show, you know, every couple of years or whatever, wherever it's at highly recommend it, whether you know, your, your company pays for it, or you just pony up, take a few days off and, and head there. Cause it's usually in a, a decent location. Um, but highly recommend going to a trade show.

Um, you know, I'm going to too many of 'em. It gets a little over overdone, but, um, you know, N FPA is a pretty, pretty, uh, massive conference. Um, a lot of, you know, and all the industry leads are there. So, um, online, I mean training resources, fire, Tech's a great resource for fire, uh, fire protection training for fire, alarm, sprinkler, all that, um, fire techs.

And yeah, I, I, I didn't think of it until you asked me that, but trade shows is a, is a pretty good one. Um, you meet a lot of people too. So those that face to face and, uh, you know, you're there for a day or two and, uh, you should get a lot out of it by even just walking the show for sure. Yeah. I think that's a great note.

I mean, I haven't got that. Chance yet to go to N FBA, but it seems like the opportunity to connect with people and to, you know, see what's going on. Get a sense of the pulse of the market is, uh, there's not too many better opportunities. Another, another one now that David, uh, you know, every, every place, every region in the country, uh, and outside the country has, has local Associa.

You know, I'm part of the, you know, head of the New York sprinkler one, that is a great opportunity for young professionals to get involved in the industry. And I learned that early on at Tyco to go to these association meetings, cuz you, you, you create those relationships with, with everybody in the industry and, um, You know, I hate to say relationships is, is a great way to progress, but it, it is, um, you know, get involved, volunteer your time to do some charity work for those associations, you know, uh, be on the golf committee team, you know, um, whether it's S F P E N FSA, a FSA, a FAA for fire alarm NAED for, for suppression, those are, uh, you know, getting involved in those associations.

You know, you're not getting paid to do. But it's very valuable. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you're not getting paid to do it, but you know, you're getting to be around like-minded professionals and you can make connections that are, uh, you know, more meaningful than. You know, any kind of compensation, you know, just, uh, being able to know somebody from S F P E and be able to call 'em up and pick their brain about some piece of technology or some piece of code is pretty invaluable.

So exactly. Yeah. I like that suggestion a lot. Cool. So, um, yeah, I really like, um, it seems like you are. Very well versed in, um, sales and in marketing and have a good sense of like, uh, just a business development. So I'm really kind of interested in, you know, um, just thinking about yourself or your own career what's, you know, what, what would you have told your like younger self or what's one piece of advice that you would give to somebody who's just getting into the business?

You're just getting in the business. I mean, absorb as much as you can. uh, getting involved in those associations is a key, key part of that. I think, you know, just don't do your nine to five and go home. And, um, you know, getting those associations are in the evening hours a lot of times. So, you know, volunteer your time to get involved with that.

I think that's, that's a big piece, you know, I did that early on and it, and it benefited, um, You know, uh, I, I, I got a piece of advice and this is how I got into sales. One time is, you know, uh, a lot of business and a lot of these associations happen with golf tournaments. So, uh, get yourself a set of clubs, take a few lessons.

And you, you wouldn't understand how much that that does on the, on the business side of. Uh, on the tech side, maybe not as much, uh, you know, on the tech side, obviously get, you know, get involved in certifications, get involved in the NFPA code cycles too. I didn't get, I didn't know that too much until recently the NFPA code cycle.

So I wish I knew that. Um, and then you can drive decisions that way, whether, whether it's just a designer, whether you're a technician, you can, you can input to NFPA. Um, so. I never knew that until a couple years ago. So, um, yeah, I mean, uh, another big piece of advice, get your LinkedIn profile up to date.

It's it's. I mean, even if you're very happy where you're at, if you wanna be involved in the industry, make sure you're present on LinkedIn cuz that's, uh, that's pretty important just to knowing those connections. Um, whether it's on the business side or just a technical resource side, pretty important.

Yeah, without a doubt, you know, you gotta dig that well before you're thirsty. If you're just, you know, waiting to develop your LinkedIn profile and, you know, make some meaningful connections when you need a new job, that's not really, really when you need to do it. So that's great. Well, awesome drew. Uh, I appreciate you coming on the show.

Uh, where can people find more information about you and inspect point and the fire protection podcast, inspect point.com? Um, my email is [email protected] pretty easy, and the fire protection podcast. Uh, you can find it on apples or, you know, It's apple podcast, apple podcast, Google podcasts, uh, Spotify, Stitcher, uh, any, any podcast environment you actually can go to our website, inspect point.com too, and, and find it there.

But, um, and then find me on LinkedIn connect. You know, that's always a good place too. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much, drew. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks GU. Great talking to you. Thanks for listening, everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved. Fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time.

On this episode of Fire Code Tech we have Anand Kumar. Anand is a loss prevention specialist with over twenty years in loss prevention and insurance. In my conversation with Anand we talk about his professional experience. How to approach design with FM Data sheets, codes and standards outside the U.S and much more.

If you want to find out more about Anand follow these links. 

Anand's Consulting Company Website

LinkedIn Profile

Tell me a little bit about your background and your career in loss prevention? Would you tell me a little bit about any certifications that you have? How would you describe your role as a loss prevention specialist? Could you describe management of change and what that means in the context of fire protection? What would you consider your specialty for loss prevention and fire safety? Do you have any tips and tricks for designing a job that complies with FM Data sheets? Would you speak about your consulting practice and the work you are doing now? What is your perspective on fire protection outside of the U.S? What do you see as a trend in the industry?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Welcome to episode 12 of fire code tech. On this episode of fire code tech, we have a non Kumar, a non is the loss prevention specialist with over 20 years in insurance. In my conversation with the non, we talk about his professional experience and some of the lessons learned. We talk about the complexities of designing with FM data sheets and some tips and tricks you can use while you are designing a project with these data sheets.

In addition, Anan, and I talk about codes and standards outside of the us. This episode is very interesting. And I think if you are a insurance professional, or if you're in the construction side of things and you wanna know a little bit more about how loss prevention works and what that process looks like, you're gonna enjoy this.

Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on social media. And if you want to help out the show, tell a friend about fire code tech. Let's dive in the show with AAN Kumar. And if you wanna find out more about him, there'll be links to his website and his LinkedIn in the show notes. Welcome AAN. Thanks for coming on.

Um, thank you for inviting me, you know, um, I'm really, uh, I guess anxious and, uh, happy to be here. well, awesome. I'm glad that we could have you on the show. So I wanted to start off with, um, asking you a little bit about your background and how you got into loss prevention and fire safety. Would you tell me a little bit about that?

Like, you know, like we were talking earlier about how not nobody actually kind of, uh, aspired to be, I guess, in loss prevention of high protection. Uh, for me it was, I guess I stumbled into the industry. I started off my career in, I would say, uh, maintenance and, and, uh, systems engineering, attached to oil tanker, doing maintenance on diesel engines.

Uh, I was also, um, a project engineer on, uh, power plant, uh, in my early days after graduation, I always wanted to do something, which I. Was not so routine, I stumbled, uh, into, I guess, loss prevention. Uh, and at that time this was 18 years back, uh, Alliance. I'm not sure whether, you know, Alliance Alliance is a German insurance company.

Um, they belong to, I guess, the, the same, uh, group or same tier of insurance companies like AIG and FM and all that. These are the, the big boys who, who ensure, uh, the big plan, the power, the oil, gas, and, and so on, so forth. So, uh, they were looking for someone who could, you know, do, um, uh, risk assessment or loss prevention for, for the, uh, power plants.

They, they were ensuring in, in Malaysia. And, um, I saw it as a, as an opportunity to do something different, uh, got into it. Uh, I lived it because. Every time I was meeting different people, uh, seeing different power plants, uh, seeing a steam plan or a fossil plant, uh, seeing a combined cycle plan, seeing, you know, a gas plan.

So on. So it, you always had something to look forward to or, or something that was going to intrigue you or, or something like that. Uh, so that's how I, I stumbled into the industry, uh, 18 years back, uh, and, uh, it has been, uh, I guess, a pleasant journey. For me, uh, to now that's, uh, interesting to hear. Yeah. I resonate with the idea that, you know, there's a lot of funny paths into, uh, fire safety or, you know, in your case loss prevention.

But yeah, I like your story about how you, you know, started off and you got to, you know, experience some of the projects with, uh, some hazards like, uh, power plants. And so I'm sure those have some unique. Hazards or they have some unique, uh, considerations in compared to, to other buildings. But yeah, that's, that's very interesting.

I like hearing about that to add to it. You know, when I was actually working in a power plan, uh, you never paid attention to the hazards, right? You were more interested in the operating plan. You are interested more on the operating parameters or, or you actually planning for an outage. Uh, so the, the focus and the perspective was, was different.

And then when you come and join an insurer, uh, the focus and perspective. Is on the hazards and how are those hazards protected? What is the reliability of the protection? What's the adequacy of the protection and so on, so forth. So it gives you a different, I guess, uh, view of things and a different appreciation of things.

So that kind of complimented, I guess, my. Uh, experience that I had, that I, I, I brought to the table. Very interesting. Yeah. I like, I like hearing about that perspective shift of, you know, you, you saw it as, you know, uh, somebody who was in the operations at the facility, um, for a power plant, and then, you know, you kind of you'd put on a different hat with, uh, loss prevention and yeah, I, I think that once the fire safety switch is turned on in somebody, I don't know if it can ever be turned off, but, uh, next thing, you know, you're staring at ceilings, looking for a sprinkler protection while you're at dinner with somebody.

So yeah. And, and sometimes, you know, you have to, uh, tell yourself, you know, stop looking at the ceiling. I know I've been in trouble with that before. Yeah. You know, every time you, you walk into a building, you're always looking like you're looking for the fire, right? , you've been programmed, you know, to, to look for certain things and evaluate certain things.

And sometimes, you know, it gets, I guess you wouldn't wanna go to a date and talk about this stuff, you know, where's the final, it'd be pretty dry. Yeah. . Yeah. So, yeah. So I saw that you, uh, just a little bit more about your, your background. Um, I saw that you have some, uh, certifications that I'm not, um, very familiar with.

I was wondering if you would tell me a little bit, a little bit about some of those, uh, certifications you have, um, like the, I see the, it seems like I've seen out of the, the states, the MI fire E uh, fairly frequently, but yeah, I didn't know if you could speak a little bit on that. You know, you, you, you talked about, uh, earlier about, uh, fire protection, uh, being, uh, I guess, uh, a career that people would actually focus on.

Uh, and I guess, uh, one of the reason it isn't is like you, you did mention earlier was that it's a new, uh, I wouldn't say a new profession, but a new, uh, specialization, I guess. In in Malaysia, um, unfortunately fire protection is in a recognized, um, subspecialty, if you wanna call it that way, we're still very much divided based on the, how do I say the, um, the olden olden divisions, like civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, uh, you know, so it's, it's, if you want, if you wanna practice fire protection, you would have to go and apply under the mechanical engineering umbrella.

So the majority of fire protection designers and installers in the country are pretty much mechanical engineers who do fire protection stuff. So there's no real specialist fire protection, uh, designers or installers, uh, per se. Right? So, uh, that's, that's one of the issues. The other issues, if you actually.

Have a career in the loss prevention industry, uh, or you do primarily fire perfection. It's, it's, um, difficult to actually sit for what I would call a jurisdictional, uh, registration. Uh, you, you talked about, uh, you know, yourself, uh, uh, getting your PE and getting and all that. So if you do loss prevention and you do, uh, you know, purely five protection, it, it's very hard to get ed, uh, within the Malaysia context, right?

So a lot of people who do something out of the traditional engineering fertility typically fall Malaysia. I'm not sure how much know about Malaysia. Malaysia is very much, uh, uh, a Commonwealth country. You know, we are, we were ruled by the British, in fact, we were ruled by the Portuguese. We were ruled by the Dutch.

We were finally ruled by the British. So very much everything we do is. Uh, very, uh, British centric. Uh, our politics is, is, uh, parliamentary type politics. Um, you know, the administration is, uh, um, is something that has been, uh, given to us by the British, before independence. So even when we, we might talk later about codes and standards, even the codes and standards that we adopt are very much, uh, British code and standards versus the north American, uh, I guess N FBA and ASME and, and, and so on.

So, uh, so, uh, the long story short was, uh, because I was not able to actually get, uh, I guess, professional recognition within my own jurisdiction. Uh, I decided to join the Institute of fire engineers, which is actually a ed, um, uh, professional organization in, in the UK. Uh, which actually, uh, it caters for, uh, the fire protection profession.

Uh, and, um, you know, uh, it's basically an, uh, organization that is, um, similar to the SF in, in the us. You are familiar the S right, right. Yeah. SFP is, uh, very big in the, in the us, I'm part of a local chapter, the Oklahoma SF P E group. It's, it's not very big, it's only maybe around 30 members, but yeah. We get together and have, um, talks sometimes.

So, yeah. S be interesting. Yeah. So the IFP is actually, I would say a peer of SF P E but based in the UK. And, uh, it's more prevalent. In, uh, Commonwealth countries. So if you, if you talk to fire protection engineers in India, you'd find that most properly, they would be a member of to, wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah. I appreciate the information on that for sure. Hey, no problem. Uh, in fact, um, uh, I think in SFP, you know, you have a member grade and then you have a, a professional member grade. Believe I believe so. There's different gradients of membership based on, you know, voting rights and some different things like that.

Um, to my understanding. Yep. So the, if E has something similar, they just call it an associate or a member, uh, and then, you know, they have a fellow and, and so on. So if, if you had, uh, uh, recognized academic, uh, uh, background, you could always join an associate member. And then if you wanted to be a member, you'd actually have to write, uh, um, basically what they call a professional review.

Uh, you know, that outlines, what have you experienced in say the last four or five years in fire protection? What focus you have done in fire protection and so on? So. To kind of, um, uh, I guess convince them that you have actually, um, you know, uh, been actively involved in this profession and you have actually gained knowledge, um, beyond your academic training, I guess, uh, before they make you, uh, like a full member and, and so on.

Hmm. Wow. That's very interesting process. I wasn't aware of that. I appreciate the, the background on, uh, Malaysia and, uh, yeah, just, just I, yeah, I didn't know a lot of that. It makes sense to, I just I've seen the, in my, uh, fire E designation on. Some people from, uh, different parts of the country or different parts of the world.

So, yeah, that's very interesting to learn about that. I wasn't aware I was, I guess I was aware of the organization, but not about some of the application process and some of the intricacies about that. So that's very interesting to know about, I'll have to keep an eye out for more professionals like yourself who, um, are qualified, like.

Yeah, no problem. But yeah. So, um, you spoke a little bit about your career, um, as a, like an insurance professional or a loss prevention specialist. I don't know. What would you, how would you describe your. Um, your role, like sometimes I, I feel, I feel bad cuz I'll say, you know, fire protection is a blanket statement and then my guest will be like, well, you know, I'm not a, a fire protection professional.

I'm a, uh, you know, uh, certified fire investigator or I'm a, you know, uh, uh, somebody in fire safety or, you know, they'll have a different designation for what they consider what they do. So I always feel like I have trouble like kind of dancing around, oh, are you a loss prevention specialist? You consider yourself a safety engineer, you know, but, uh, yeah, maybe you could touch on that.

Um, while you answer also, um, you know, what does that role look like? You know, uh, we talked a little bit about risk assessments and some of those, um, different parts of hazard analysis and kind of taking in the different components of the buildings, fire safety features and, you know, compiling them. But, uh, yeah, I don't know if you could touch on that.

Yeah, sure. Um, uh, loss prevention, basically, especially if you work for, uh, I guess an insurer, uh, I I've seen loss prevention for professionals working for, you know, the oil and gas, or even with the power sector directly. But if you work with the insurer, uh, it's a bit more broad because when we talk about loss prevention, There's multiple pers and in pers means, you know, things like, uh, fire fire is a peril, uh, or earthquake is a per, uh, flood is a per so when, when I, I visit a site, uh, my, um, I guess task would be to kind of evaluate the potential of a loss exposure, uh, based on this different pers.

So let's say if I go to a machine shop and they were actually just doing, uh, you know, uh, cutting and welding of metal, uh, or steel steel products, um, the, the fire hazard is really, I guess, relatively lower because, you know, you don't really have combustibles to burn. Then my focus would be on the other pers for example, you know, is the location.

In a, in a flood zone, if it's in a flood zone, what would be the exposure and so on, so forth, or if it's in a, uh, windstorm zone or, or a typhoon zone, you know, what would be the damage to that facility? Right. So when you talk about loss prevention, loss prevention and encompasses, uh, a slightly bigger, uh, uh, I guess framework, uh, that fire constitutes a big part, uh, because typically people buy and, and, and this can be different in different parts of the world.

Uh, in Malaysia, uh, we have what we call a fire policy, and then we have a, a property policy. So it basically, you know, if it's a fire policy, uh, fire, fire is the only thing. Probably covered, uh, if it's an all risk policy, that means I cover for fire. I cover for flood. I cover for earthquake, you know, so it, they there's, there's so many policies out there, you know, um, I'm at loss too, because, you know, I'm, I'm into loss prevention and not into, so, um, what I see with the pinch of salt, but, um, the, the fire per real kind of constitutes a big part of that insurance policy.

Uh, so when I'm on site, even though I'm doing a lot of, uh, I guess risk assessment that could be non-fire related, uh, fire tends to be, um, one of the things that you spend more time on because we evaluate, uh, you know, if you had a sprinkler system, whether the sprinkler system was adequate, uh, because one of the things that, eh, people don't realize is, um, I'm sure you're familiar with management of change.

Right? Uh, management of change is, is, is a very, it's a word that I've been hearing for 20 years, but, uh, in, in loss prevention and in fire protection, uh, when people build a facility, they, they, they build a code. Okay. But once when they change the operation within the plant, um, they might do MOC on their process, but very few of them actually do MOC on the fire protection that's been installed.

Mm-hmm . So, uh, a system that has, has met code when it was built, may not need code after a couple of years because, uh, you know, the intent, the process or the storage or whatever has changed. And very few people actually, um, pay attention to that or even, uh, you know, um, think about it. And I think if, if you've seen one of my LinkedIn posts, I kind of touched about it about, uh, you know, occupancies changes and, and sprinklers.

Uh, I, I did a, uh, um, a short post on LinkedIn on that. So, um, that's the reason why, I guess there's, um, there's a need for loss prevention, people like myself to go out and make sure that what's been, uh, designed for intent in the beginning actually still meets its intent after a couple of years.

Definitely. Yeah, I, yeah, I deal with that every day. So I understand what you're saying. Um, existing construction can, you know, we. You touched on a couple of really good things, but, you know, I, I can understand the, I don't know what to say about it. Pain points of dealing with existing construction and, you know, I think it's interesting.

You talk about management of, of change, you know, that's for those who might not know, it's more of like a, a process safety or kind of a, a systems engineering, uh, type of term, but, um, just kind of means, yeah. How would you describe that for the people who don't know? I'm not even sure I fully understand it.

I guess in, in simple terms is, uh, if you had an office. And your sprinkler. I mean, you're not, you're gonna design your sprinkler to protect that office. Right. And in, in, in, uh, fire protection terms, we'd call it a light, uh, hazard occupancy, because you have, I guess you have combustibles, you probably have a chair, you have a table that's wooden, or maybe have some carpet, you have some on the wall.

So, uh, you know, the protection design would be, uh, catered for that light. Um, I guess, um, uh, combustibles, uh, but I, I desire to, you know, uh, use part of my office to, uh, let's say install some toy products, which, um, I ordered from, from, from China. And I was going to do some online business where people could, you know, buy from my website and, you know, uh, my, my office is now a storage and transit point.

Uh, for delivering those, those goods, um, I've basically introduced new hazard into, uh, the office OFCY because, um, the toys are probably made of plastic and plastic has a higher, um, heat content rate, uh, in comparison to wood. And I have also now introduced, uh, the concept of storage within an office type occupancy.

So, uh, I guess in a simple terms, uh, management of change would be, if you knew you were going to do that, you would actually, um, get the five protection consultant or five contractor to look and evaluate if that, uh, light hazard design, uh, of the sprinkler system would cater for the new, um, new storage and, and, and plastic, uh, commodity, I guess.

I see. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, you know, when you contextualize it with the fire suppression example, yeah. I'm a huge fan of fire suppression and we deal with that all the time. People trying to store things in spaces where, you know, there's not designed for that. Um, it can get, uh, pretty hazardous very fast.

So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Another thing you touched on that I really liked hearing about is, you know, how loss prevention is kind of an umbrella of, of hazards to a facility that encompasses a little bit more than what fire is and, you know, so you talked about like earthquake and flood and fire, you know, I, I never thought about the holistic approach of the, the risk for a building kind of being, you know, more.

More than what fire is, you know, I I'm, so needle focused on, on fire protection and safety, you know, when I think of industrial loss prevention, I just am thinking about the big facility hazards. And, you know, I guess, uh, you probably look at it from a more holistic approach and about all the hazards for a building, not just the internal internal hazards.

So that was interesting. Oh yeah. I mean, because you know, a lot of people don't realize it that, you know, um, sometimes having a fire pump room in a basement area is actually, uh, the easiest place to get, uh, fluid. And then you have an impairment to your fire protection system. And, um, in, in this part of the world, I mean, NFPA, the team has a section on, uh, seismic protection for fire protection, but, um, uh, lot of people don't actually.

Pay attention to it. Uh, uh, and, um, and, and one of the things that I guess it's, it's difficult to sell something like a seismic protection for fire protection is because, um, as you know, you know, there's different intensities to, uh, quick, uh, so a lot of people feel like, you know, oh, I'm not, you know, I'm not like in San Francisco, you know, uh, the educate we feel is just, you know, minor tremors.

So, you know, it's not gonna damage my fire protection. So, you know, I don't need to kind, uh, abide to code on, on such things. Uh, so you know, that, that, that's kind of the challenge of, you know, trying to, I guess, uh, convince people that, you know, earthquake could, could actually now, if, if the fire protection was damaged, instead of having a fire loss, we have.

I guess from an insurance perspective, we have a loss because all the equipment and all the, probably the goods have been read by the sprinkler system. So then seism speed. Protection becomes critical. Yeah. It's interesting. Um, before working with the firm that does engineering, you know, I, you know, never quite understood, you know, I, I knew that if you were in a certain seismic category and you needed seismic testing, but I didn't know that the, you could get, um, Soil characteristics in, uh, essentially almost any part of the world with, you know, these, um, ex expansive soils or these where these seismic conditions could be possible.

So it's not something where you could look at a map and say, oh, this area is seismic in this area is not, they have to do the geotechnical work to, you know, determine that. And there's usually report, um, definitely always for new buildings, but, um, sometimes. Less frequently for existing construction. But yeah, I, I like that point.

You made about how seismic is a struggle because I've dealt with trying to educate people, uh, myself about the topic. And it's something that I didn't know about early on, but you know, now I just know to when I'm producing drawings to go search for the structural engineers drawings and see what the seismic class.

Category is, and, you know, um, take that into context when I'm designing systems. So yeah, I like that. Thanks. um, so I wanted to get into a little bit of a bit about, you know, what would you consider, you know, the type of facility that would be your specialty? It seems like, you know, you've talked about power and some different high industrial type facilities, but yeah, I didn't know if you would speak a little bit about, you know, what your, where your experience was or, you know, that sort of thing.

When I was in FM, um, I pretty much did everything under the sun. Uh, but, um, I, I did a lot of work in with the, um, basically electronic industry, uh, manufacturers, you know, uh, like in Intel and, um, uh, Johnson control and so on where they were building plants in, in, uh, this part of the world. And, uh, since they were actually clients with, uh, FM, uh, FM had a very strong philosophy that, uh, they always wanted to kind of influence, uh, the fire protection design, uh, at construction stage.

So I did a lot of work with these companies to, I guess, uh, convince them to, uh, adapt the FM data sheets, um, and, you know, uh, design to FM, uh, standards, uh, versus, you know, trying to, you know, take a shortcut and, you know, build to local jurisdictional, uh, requirements and so on. Um, so that was my, my early part of my, I guess, um, project type work related to five direct.

So I, you know, I still enjoy doing stuff like that. You know, getting involved in projects, doing peer review, because that's what we did a lot in, in FM, we did a lot of peer review work, uh, meaning that, you know, design or projection that came in, uh, we, you know, look at it and we would kind of comment if we felt that, you know, certain areas of the design were not, uh, consistent with FM data sheets, um, or, you know, had some, uh, deficiencies or something that was missed out and, and so on.

So area of, uh, involvement that I had and, you know, I still enjoy doing that. Uh, I also did a lot of, uh, power plan, uh, project. Especially in Singapore and Hong Kong, uh, in Hong Kong specifically, you know, there was, um, this company called China light and power and they had, uh, two major plants, uh, a castle peak power station and black point power stations.

They had about 16 units. And, um, this was in, I guess, uh, maybe the mid, uh, two thousands, uh, when FM actually came up, uh, with some research about, um, three dimensional fires and, and, and spray fires and, and, and pool fires, uh, from a, from a turbine generator. Uh, so, uh, FM did some mock up test the, uh, lab in the us, uh, and it produced a video.

I think you can find that video, um, uh, in YouTube or probably, uh, it kind of demonstrates, uh, because, you know, uh, turbines actually rotating missionaries and in any rotating missionary, you need a lot of. I guess lubrication, uh, oil or oil systems. And, um, uh, this oil systems sometimes are, you know, in, in, in pressurized conditions and so on.

So, uh, if you did have a fire with a Turine generator, uh, it was, it becomes a very challenging type fire. So FM kind of spearheaded the research on it and shared that information with a lot of clients and China light and power was one of the, the, I guess, pioneer clients, at least in this part of the world that, um, uh, bought into that idea and, you know, wanted to upgrade their, uh, fire protection system for the Turine generators.

So I. Kind of tasked to help them, um, you know, improve their fire protection system. And I, I was based in Hong Kong for two years, just, you know, supporting the entire project on the 16 units. So that, that was probably one of my, I guess, um, memorable times in, in, in, in my, I guess fire protection and project type work, uh, one, because it was a, it was a running plant.

So, um, we had to schedule installation, uh, whenever there was, um, uh, unit outage. So, uh, uh, timing and, and so on made it, uh, I guess, more challenging than a Greenfield type project. Um, I also did fire protection work for a couple of power plants in Singapore, uh, notably to power and, and, uh, One of the things that, you know, you get involved in, in these projects as an insurer is, um, we are always interested in what we call validation.

Um, when I say validation is in, in this part of the world and I, I not, I won't speak about the rest because I I'm, I'm quite familiar with how practices are over here. People tend to forget about, uh, testing and acceptance, you know, commissioning testing, and acceptance. So people install fire protection systems and they don't really see the need to actually do, um, uh, the testing and commissioning and acceptance to establish if what they had intended was achieved.

Um, you would out of 10 projects, if you find one project that is actually. I've done a proper acceptance test that's, uh, you know, amazing. Right? So the, the culture of acceptance testing was not big in fire is still not big in fire protection, even for large projects, like a power plant projects. Um, so I, I remember very well, uh, when I was involved, uh, with the project in Singapore and they were installing, uh, uh, CO2 systems for the gas turbine enclosure and, uh, I was working with FM that time.

So, uh, uh, we asked them, you know, if they were gonna do, uh, discharge tests and they were going to, uh, measure the amount of concentration of CO2 in the enclosure. And they said, no, you know, uh, we are not because, you know, we have already done our, uh, I guess, uh, computer or modeling simulation, and we know we can get the concentration.

So we are not gonna, uh, discharge, CO2 and waste CO2 and so on. Um, so I mean, coming from an insurance company, you typically know, uh, you know, you have statistics that kind of support that, you know, when systems are not properly installed and you don't do proper acceptance, what is the failure mode? What's the failure rate and so on.

So, um, uh, there's a kind of heated discussions between, I guess, the insurers and, uh, uh, the project manager, uh, but finally, you know, uh, we were able to, I guess, Put our foot down because we kind of, uh, uh, told them that, you know, we would advise, uh, the authority having jurisdiction in, in Singapore. It's the CF that, you know, um, uh, from an insurance perspective, uh, uh, acceptance and discharge test would be ideal.

So, so they finally did it and they failed the test and believe me in every, uh, CO2 discharge test I have done at various projects in power plants. They have always failed the first time, uh, in, in, in, in the case, in that particular case, the concentration levels were not achieved in another case, basically the, um, enclosure bulged and, uh, started leaking CO2.

Uh, so there, there were different, different, I. Uh, failure modes that happened in, in different projects. Uh, but you know, these are the ones that are memorable because, you know, it's like, you, you, you try to, you know, kind of, um, convince people what the right thing to do. And you finally, you know, I mean, you, you don't wish the customer to have a failure during the test, but, you know, by, by that failure, you kind of prove a point.

Right. So, so that, those, those were kind of some of the memorable experiences. Wow. That's a really powerful story about, you know, when you're saying preliminary testing or commissioning or acceptance testing, um, I, wasn't thinking of, uh, kind of a more special hazard system, like, uh, carbon, uh, monoxide or not carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide system.

Gosh, carbon monoxide system. That sounds terrifying. um, no, but, uh, yeah, and you know, talking about the different. Areas for the system to, to fail. And yeah, it's often a very hard task, even in the us to, you know, not just have the test be done, but get the right documentation and to, you know, verify, like you were saying that the system was installed properly, you know, oftentimes for, uh, fire suppression, it's, you know, getting, uh, finding a way to hydrostatic test, uh, new piping added to a system or, you know, with fire alarm.

Um, the company I work with does, uh, you know, third party commissioning. So oftentimes we'll get, uh, into situations where we might retroactively go through and commission a system and, and verify that all those devices and systems are, are working. So, uh, yeah, I like that note a lot and yeah, I really want to.

More about your, uh, time at FM. I know you're not with FM anymore, but, um, I've spent some time recently dealing with FM data, FM global data sheets and designing with those data sheets. And so I really am very interested in that part of your career and just, uh, yeah, I wanted to know if you had any, um, like tips or tricks for, you know, I feel like it's so difficult to understand all of the data sheets that FM has and you know, when know when to use them during the design process.

So, yeah, I didn't know if you had any, um, tips or tricks or just, you know, how what's a better way to approach designing a job, um, per FM standards. Uh, well, you know, that's a good question about trips and tricks. Uh, I never actually thought of that before, but, uh, when you compare, uh, FM data sheets to NPA, uh, I think the FM sheets have been laid out in a much more straightforward manner because, uh, I think NFPA the team is probably just a huge document, uh, which tries to address every single, uh, occupancy out there that needs, um, I guess printer protection, uh, the FM data sheets are more what they call occupancy specific data.

So, you know, if I wanted, uh, uh, you know, the sprinkler design for, for a power plant, I would go to NF, uh, sorry, uh, FM data sheet 1 0 1 or 7 79, uh, you know, 1 0 1 would be for fossil plants, steam turbines, and, uh, 79 would be for, you know, combined cycle plan or, or, or, or, uh, gas Turine plants. So, um, I guess that's where the major differences it's it's, um, uh, it's not all under, uh, one umbrella.

You gotta go to different data sheets. Specific data sheets, uh, and they call it occupancy specific data sheets, uh, to, to, to find stuff. So, um, they also break it up into different categories. So for example, if you wanted to look for, uh, construction type hazards, you would go to, I guess, um, the one series, hopefully it's still the same because, you know, I left FM about six years, six, seven years back.

Uh, and then if you wanted anything to do with, uh, water base fire protection, you'd go to, uh, the two series. And then if you wanted to do anything, but, uh, extinguishing type fire protection, whether gases or water spray systems, you'd go to the four series. So it's, it's kinda split into, uh, that manner. And, uh, the FM data sheets.

Uh, where it, it kind of, uh, I guess diverges from the NFPA is it also has data sheets on, uh, other hazards. So, you know, they have data sheets on flood. They have data sheets on earthquake. They have data sheets for, uh, what we call machinery breakdown. That means how to evaluate, uh, combustion controls for, for boilers, uh, for furnaces and so on.

Cause I, I did mention to you that, you know, loss prevention is just, is beyond fire it's it's it's anything that can cause, uh, a loss. So, um, uh, I think if I'm not mistaken boilers and ovens and all that comes under the six series, uh, so, so it's, it's kind of broken up in that way. Uh, and it's, it's, it's not difficult, you know, maybe one day, uh, if you have time, you know, uh, we can get on a zoom call and I can do a quick demonstration to you, how to.

Uh, the, or how to approach the, the, the data sheets. Oh yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate that. And yeah, I just think that some of my, the difficulties come in from a, um, a more in the us, uh, traditional approach of, you know, um, going to 13 for all of your sprinkler, um, hazards, you know, unless there's something very special for the facility or, you know, um, going to 72 for, you know, pretty much all of your fire alarm for your standard commercial building's, uh, I think you get in this habit of, you know, going through those channels.

And then, you know, I just had a job recently where we designed to, um, FM global data sheets, and now, you know, uh, you have, of course, Yeah, I think it's two dash six, which is your, how you classify your hazards. And the hazards are classified, um, differently than N FPA 13, you know, uh, uh, a shop for a car or car maintenance, you know, might be a HC three, which, you know, translates to an extra hazard group, um, which in N F P a 13, it's only a, uh, you know, could be an only, an ordinary hazard and maybe even oh one or, you know, maybe oh two, but.

You know, so you find a lot of these differences and, you know, and then to make it even a little bit stranger, you know, you have a generator room and then, so you're going to a whole different data sheet for ignitable liquids operations, which has a, you know, a dramatically higher, uh, density and, you know, area of operation.

So it's just, uh, it's a little bit difficult to, you know, grab all these data sheets when you need 'em for FM. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't wanna harp on you too much on it. Like you said, cuz you worked there six years ago, but yeah, I just thought that was interesting and yeah, I just had some, some struggles recently with trying to navigate those as effectively as I could.

So no, no worries. I mean, it's just interesting to talk about it and I, I do deal with the sheets off and on, but maybe. Not on a daily basis, uh, even now. Uh, and then I, I sometimes when, you know, I don't find the answers in FPA. I tend to go back, uh, and thank God it's, it's now publicly, uh, accessible, you know, 10, 15 years back.

It was, uh, not really, uh, on, uh, accessible to, to public. It was only to those who, clients of FM. Um, but one of the major things that I kind of felt why I like the FM data sheets was, um, you know, when you come to stuff like, uh, flavorable, liquid hazards, right? Um, the FM data sheets kind, uh, intuitively guide you to look at it beyond just, um, the, the suppression system, but also to think about, um, if, if let's say you had, uh, a water spray system, uh, on some flammable liquid and that flammable liquid.

Um, was ignited the, uh, the detection system triggers and water gets discharged. Um, uh, now the mixture of, um, water and, and burning liquid, where is it gonna flow? So you gotta talk about, you gotta think about containment. You gotta think about drainage and so on. And I, I think when you, you, you just, you in the NFPA, uh, document, uh, it it's there, but it's not.

So I guess obvious, and I find a lot of people when they actually design, um, by protection for, I say, special occupancies, like flavorable liquids. Um, you find that containment and drainage is not something that they have actually catered for, uh, many times. And, and again, uh, I would say this is specific maybe to, to this region.

Uh, but if you use the data sheet, I think, uh, it kind of, uh, guides you toss. Considering those, those, those factors. Um, so, and, and maybe I'm, I'm being biased because, you know, I was 10 years, uh, plus minus, uh, in FM. Uh, and then, you know, so maybe I did brainwashed me a bit too much. That's okay. I mean, you, you can only know what you're used to and, uh, and you know, that's why I probably think that, you know, the NFPA is the easier road cuz it's just been beat into my head for so long, but no, uh, that's awesome.

That's good. Yeah. I like, I think, you know, you're right. FM is a more concise document and if you are just looking for very, um, specific hazards, um, I think that FM is easier. Yeah. So yeah, I, I can see what you're saying about the, just uh, for one stop shop, if you will, for, um, the more holistic approach to a building for the FM data sheets, but yeah, that's interesting stuff.

So that's another thing don't mind just in, um, there's another data, uh, uh, I guess, uh, resource that, um, I still use is the, uh, Excel, uh, gap. Data sheets, which I also find, uh, very easy to understand and, and, um, very easy to, um, I guess, uh, adapt. Uh, and, and in fact, uh, after using the Excel gaps, data sheets, I find them even more, um, I guess, uh, layman then, then, then the FM data sheets or, or, or an FBA.

Um, so that's something, you know, you probably may, I'm not sure whether you've seen those, uh, but you know, you haven't, you might see them in future. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm only kind of a peripheral. Lee peripheral Lee. I don't know if that's a word. Um, I'm only kind of aware of the, um, Excel gaps, data sheets, or the, you know, I guess they're probably not data sheets, whatever they're, how have you classified their, um, standards?

Uh, mostly because, uh, they are big in the S F P E community, and I've seen some of their, you know, just through, um, Googling and trying to find out information on fire protection. I've seen some of their papers before and been really impressed about the detail and, uh, you know, but yeah, so I'm kind of aware of them, but yeah, that's interesting.

I'll have to take a look at some more of those. Again, I haven't had a project yet come across my desk where they've been required, so. Okay. How about to see there are also kind of in the, um, I guess occupancy centric kind of, uh, approach, ah, I see, I like that. Um, so yeah, I wanted to get a little bit about, um, what you're doing now and, uh, you know, uh, I know, understand that you have your own kind of, um, consulting practice now, but yeah, I wanted to talk about, um, the kind of work you performing now.

I know you're you were saying that you still like to get involved with peer review and so get into that sort of thing. So, yeah, wouldn't, I.

Organization or insurer, uh, I'm just, uh, doing it independently now. Uh, because there's a lot, there's a market for, uh, insurance comp, a lot of insurance companies don't like to keep inhouse, uh, engineers or in-house consultants, because that becomes an overhead that becomes, uh, uh, a fixed cost. Uh, so they, they rather, you know, uh, employ, uh, someone on, on a, a me too basis.

So there's a market for that. Uh, so, um, last year when AIG was downsizing, you know, I, uh, I guess I was one of the lucky ones, so, um, and I was kind of thinking, you know, what should I do next? Or should I go work for another corporate or, you know, try something different. And, uh, I decided, you know, trying something different would be, um, I guess, more fun.

So, and, and you, you tend to do things, uh, Uh, I guess more variety. Uh, when I say variety is, um, sometimes, you know, clients ask me to do risk assessment based on, on the British standards. Sometimes a client ask me to do, uh, risk assessment based on an FBA sometimes based on FM. Uh, so, uh, it gives me a bit more broad base exposure to the different requirements.

Currently, I'm actually doing a peer review for a client, uh, in, in the middle east. Um, and it's actually a, um, uh, sugar refinery. So, you know, it was fun because, you know, it reminded me of the Imperial sugar incident back in two and eight. So, you know, I was doing a lot of read up about that loss and, you know, uh, as part of my, my peer review exercise.

So you, you do a lot of, uh, um, uh, a variety of work. Uh, I had a client that, you know, they insured told them that, uh, there. Fire protection or their sprinkler systems were inadequate and, uh, they didn't believe the insurers. So they wanted, uh, a kind of, uh, uh, independent, uh, Obed. So I got involved and, uh, uh, probably after what I shared with them, they got even more upset because, uh, they were actually dealing with flammable and combustible liquids.

And, uh, the sprinkler system they had installed was probably only fit for oh one. Uh, so, uh, so yeah, so, uh, in that perspective, you, uh, what I found in the last one year is, um, I've been doing, um, lot more variety type of work. And, uh, instead of having a standard scope, because if you work for an insurer, it's typically you're going out, you're doing a risk assessment.

You're trying to quantify the risk and you're producing a report. Right. So it's kind of. Every job is kind of, uh, free set in its nature. It's been defined, but in, in the independent market, it's typically what your client or your customer wants you to do. So, like I said, you know, they may want you to just bench benchmark, the local codes, they might want to, you know, you to benchmark against international codes, or they might just want you to, uh, uh, like I said, the sprinkler analysis.

So, you know, it it's, it can be split, it can be D it can be broken up into different things and, you know, uh, they define what they want. So you, you know, uh, you, you do it to what you've been asked to do, uh, and that, that kind of, you know, uh, keeps it interesting. I think that's one of the best parts about consulting is the variety of the work.

You've mentioned a couple times how you've gotten to have fun and by being involved with a lot of different types of projects and very interesting projects and hazards, that's pretty cool about the, the sugar plant. And yeah, I imagine that there are some combustible dust hazards, which I always like to hear about, but yeah, no, I wanted to, I feel like I would kick myself if I didn't ask you about, um, you talked about benchmarking to different standards and you know, different qualifications for systems, but yeah, I really wanted to ask you about your sense of, um, how to navigate codes and standards.

Really. I. Super fascinated with, um, the codes and standards process, um, outside of the us. So, yeah, I just wanted to hear a little bit about how you navigate codes and standards when you're, you're going into, uh, somewhere new or, you know, maybe it could be like a, a country you're not used to, or yeah. I, I don't know.

I'd just like to hear more about, um, your sense of the codes and standards outside of the us and, and kind how you navigate that, I guess. Yeah. So, well, um, I think NFPA is quite adopted. I'll say it's quietly, widely adopted, but, uh, it's not widely implemented to the letter. Okay. So that's, that's, that's one of the, the challenge.

Right. So if someone tells you, you know, oh, our design is to N FPA, you can't take it to face value. That's, that's one of the challenges in this part of the world. Um, the, the second thing I'd probably like to share is, you know, yeah. You know, we have the Australian standards, we have the British standards, we have the European norms and, and so on.

Uh, I mean, fire protection is so huge, but let's just talk about like sprinkler systems. Um, the, when you talk about sprinklers, you have the, uh, I guess the, uh, design specifications, and then you have the installation and you have commissioning. So, um, when you talk about installation, uh, regardless of, of, of I guess, um, uh, standard, whether it's the European standard or it's the Australian standard or it's the NFP or it's the local there's very little, um, I guess difference.

I mean all, all standards recognize that, um, uh, the further away you put your sprinkler head from the ceiling, the longer it's gonna take to discharge because heat and smoke accumulates, uh, below the ceiling. And if it's too far away, you know, it's, you're going to delay activation. So you have to install it as, as, as, as close as possible.

Uh, MF P a gives I think, uh, 300 mm. Or something like that, if I, if I'm not mistaken. So, um, so even it comes to installation, it's, uh, you hardly find major, uh, uh, I guess, differences. And then when you come to the commissioning and testing, you know, it it's again, uh, pretty much consistent. Um, you know, if you had, if you had sprinkle piping, you wanna do a, you wanna flush the system, you wanna do a pressure test, uh, and so on.

So all standards talk about the same thing. Where it differs is actually where the design specification is, uh, you know, European, uh, nor may ask for a different density. The British standard may ask for a different, different density. An FPA may ask for a different density. Uh, you know, the Australian standard may ask for a different density.

So if so, I guess if you have used them, uh, frequently enough, then, you know, you realize that you know where the difference are, and then you just focus on where, uh, it matters. And that kind of, you know, uh, as time goes by, I guess you just get, uh, familiar with it and you get used to it and, and it helps you, I guess, a bit in your analysis.

Uh, and, and so. Yeah, definitely. I, I understand what you're saying. I was talking with somebody, uh, recently about, you know, this same kind of topic and they were saying, well, you know, fire science is fire science, no matter where you go around the world. So there's a lot of similarities. And as long as you have a strong understanding of the fundamentals, um, there's a lot of crossover.

In these, um, in the different parts of the world. So yeah, I like what you said about that, but I wanted to end with the question about, um, professional development for you, but yeah, I've seen you post a lot of really good stuff on, on LinkedIn, and I feel like you have a, a good sense of what's happening in the industry and it seems like you read a lot of the same good, uh, publications I enjoy, but yeah, I just wanted to know, um, what do you see as a trend in the industry right now, or, um, you know, where do you, where do you kind of see your profession going in the future?

Well, you know, um, one of the things that I'd kind of like to highlight was, um, when I started in this profession, uh, information was not so easily available. Right. Um, when I say information was not so easily available was like, you know what we have today, social media, LinkedIn, uh, has kind of changed the landscape of professional development.

Uh, I, I think, uh, in today's world, it's whether you have the yearning to improve yourself, if you, if you wanna improve yourself, it's out there, you just have to look for the information, you know, it's, it's, it's that easy, uh, 20 years back, you know, I guess it was there. It wasn't so easily available. It was probably in a book.

Uh, you probably need to know by the book or the book by the book or, or, or something like that. And there was less webinar. So, you know, there wasn't, uh, information was not so easily, uh, available compared to what it's today. And especially during this pandemic period, uh, you find that, uh, a lot of classroom based trainings are now being posted on, on, on, on the web, on, on, on LinkedIn or, or, and so on.

And it kind has, it has made it so much easier for someone who is, uh, looking for, for information or looking to improve themselves to, to have it, um, at their fingertips. So that that's, that's, I guess, the, the, the biggest change and, and I'm, I'm a strong believer that, you know, professional development doesn't have to be formal.

It can be in a very informal, uh, uh, means, uh, when I say informal means everything doesn't have to be a certification. Uh, process, uh, it can always be bits and pieces and you will, you know, it, it all add up one day. So that, that's my, my bit about, about, uh, professional development. I think, you know, in, in today's environment, uh, it's at your fingertips.

It's whether you want to tap on it or you don't, you don't want to, uh, if you, if you're still waiting for someone to spoon feed you, then I think, uh, that's never gonna happen. Right. uh, or it probably take longer than it should be. So that, that's my, my bit about, uh, professional level. Yeah. Yeah. I like that.

I definitely am with you on the fact that there's, there's more, Reese's NA resources now than there's ever been. And you know, if you, if you are having trouble, you just need to look a little bit harder because, um, I don't know. I, I think that there's a lot out there and, you know, I. I've kind of got into this whole podcast thing for, um, helping, putting out one more informal resource.

And so, yeah. So I hope people enjoy it and, but yeah, anyways, AAN, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really, I really enjoyed speaking with you. Um, we didn't get to all our topics, but maybe we'll have to do this again sometime in the future. Thanks GU you know, I really enjoyed, uh, chatting with you and it's always nice talking to someone, uh, about, you know, stuff that, you know, kinda picks you.

So yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time.

Tell me about your background and how you got into the fire service? What is the difference between legacy construction and light weight modern construction? Would you go over your upbringing in the fire service? What is the approach for fighting a fire for a sprinklered building? When do you use the FDC? What do you see as an impact of the Grenfell Towers Facade fire? What kind of resources would you suggest for somebody who wants to know more about fire suppression and the fire service?

Bill Gustin is a Captain of the Miami Dade Fire Department and a 39 year veteran of the fire service.  In this episode of fire code tech we get into bridging the gap between fire service and fire prevention professionals.  Bill gives riveting accounts of his time in the fire services while contrasting legacy and modern construction and its impact of emergency response. 

If you want to learn more about Bill you can check him out at https://www.gustinfiretraining.com/

Also he is a regular on Hump Day Hangouts https://www.fireengineering.com/humpday-hangouts/#gref

Here is a great fire suppression training video and how I found Bill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi7cysxXn5A

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Guss Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Welcome to episode 11 of fire code tech. Today we have bill Gustin. Bill is a 47 year veteran of the fire service and a captain of the Miami dad fire rescue department. He began his fire service career in Chicago area. And as a lead instructor in his department's officer development program. In this episode of fire code tech, we talked with bill about his mission to join the gap between fire suppression and protection professionals and the fire service bill presents a stark contrast between natural materials in legacy homes and legacy construction, as opposed to the new and advanced, lightweight construction and plastics that are found in commercial and residential occupancies everywhere.

Today, bill is an absolute fire hose of information about the fire service. If you have any interest in learning more about the interface point between fire protection and the fire service, you're gonna love this episode. I hope you enjoy the show and don't forget to subscribe and like us on social media.

Let's dive in. Well, hello, bill. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on the show. Well, thank you for the invitation Gus. Well, I just wanted to get started with a little bit about your background bill and how you got into the fire service. I didn't know if you could speak on that a little bit. Sure. I could.

I was blessed. Uh, my father was a Fireman's fireman, uh, a good family man, a world war II, south Pacific veteran. Uh, but also a Fireman's fireman entered the Chicago fire department in 1948 and he instilled in me certain values. That made me a student of the fire service very early in my life. I was fascinated with it.

And when I was in grade school, I was reading some of his reference or study material that he was using to study for the captain's exam. And, uh, , it's one of the books. I remember it was called the Ohio manual and it was basically basic overall, uh, fire prevention, fire behavior. I mean, this is like late 1950s vintage material, but I was fascinated as a young age.

And, uh, I, I grew up in a small town outside of BI Chicago. And, uh, every time that siren would, would, uh, would blow for the volunteer fire department, I would, uh, run to the fire station and I felt like I was a part of it at a very early age. So that's basically how I got started because, because of my dad.

That's awesome. Very interesting. Sorry, you were gonna go on, I've had a, a lot of blessings in my life. The, uh, area that I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago had a, uh, community college, college, U DuPage that had, and they were just starting out, just starting out in the early seventies and AB I didn't realize how good the two year fire science program was until much later in life.

How they get it. I still look at my notes that I rewrote. That's how I would study from 72 73, 74. I cannot believe how spot on these instructors were about alarm systems, uh, suppression systems, building construction, all things that, uh, at the time, we didn't know why it was important to become a lifelong student of fire suppression systems, detection systems, and building construction.

Well, before you can teach, you have to motivate, well, these instructors were motivators and they, uh, They instilled in me the desire and the knowledge that, uh, we need to know about these things, because they're basically dry subjects understand that firefighters people involved in fire suppression are surpr are, are adrenaline junkies, and they tend to find codes, uh, details of, uh, construction, uh, prolonged reading of, uh, technical, dry material, pretty boring.

What, in fact, it's a necessity. And, uh, now I will tell you this, uh, this also made a big impression on me is I said my dad was a Fireman's fireman. When he was on squad two in the skid row section west of downtown Chicago. They had the greatest loss of life per square mile area for fires. Of any industrialized country in the United States or I, uh, in the world, in the world.

And, but when he made Lieutenant, he went right into the fire prevention bureau. That's what you did. And he told me he hated it. He was in there almost two years, but in retrospect, it made him a much, much better fire officer. Well, how do, how does fire prevention relate to fire suppression? It's got everything to do with fire suppression.

How do you know how far your steroids are apart? How far your standpipe outlets are the construction of a building suppression system? Do you know the difference between a fire alarm, a supervisory signal and a trouble alarm? There's a vast number of fire suppression folks out there that don't know how to decipher what they're looking at on a fire alarm control panel.

Where do they learn that in the state curriculums, most states become a certified firefighter. There is very little about suppression systems, alarm systems, and fire codes in that curriculum. It's mostly ropes and knots, of course, heavy of course, into emergency medical services. Extrication of course, you know, with the jaws of life search and rescue hydraulics building systems, very, very, very little.

That's very interesting. I like hearing you talk about your, your background and it's, it's fascinating to me. I can tell from watching your instructional videos online, that you have a very good grasp of fire science. Um, I was watching a video. You sent me yesterday and you were talking about, you know, the off gassing element of the fire and how that you can't extinguish a fire without, you know, cooling these basically heated gases from the fuel.

And it was just clear to me that not only. You know, do you have great experience in firefighting, but you have a really strong knowledge of fire science. So that's really fascinating. I do. And you know, I am I bragging? Yes, I am bragging, but it's been my lifelong work and I've spent my whole life doing this.

You know, fire is a gases phenomenon. Uh, it has to be the fuels have to be vaporized in order to burn. And I've experienced this. If you don't think fire is a gases phenomenon, just take a look and see what happened in Los Angeles. Over the weekend. It's a gases phenomenon and, uh, solids have to, uh, firmly decomposed ized and, uh, in our petrochemical environment today.

See, I'm an old bull here. Now. I was a firefighter in the early seventies. Early early seventies and we didn't even wear a breathing apparatus. We could put out a room content fire without a breathing apparatus, without a hood, a Nomex hood, or a PBI hood with Gardner gloves with a 65 gallon, a minute nozzle with an inch and a half hose line.

Why? Because back then just about everything in a, in a household was a naturally occurring material. Woo wood cotton. And, but today, just think in your lifetime, I don't know how old you are Gus, but, uh, I know I'm older than you. I'm probably the oldest guy in the room right now, but even in your lifetime dust, think of how many things that used to be made out of metal.

Are now made out of plastic. The whole environment has changed when you take a look at that underwriter's laboratory side by side, uh, comparison of, uh, the legacy, uh, like the 1960s, seventies living room, uh, versus the modern furnishings of today, which are basically polyester, poly chloride polyurethane foam, where the time for flashover years ago with naturally occurring materials was like 24 minutes today, less than three or four.

Four minutes. The whole thing has changed. It used to be that you could have a small volunteer fire department, have a, a fire in your house. And let's say it takes 'em 20 minutes to get there at best. The fire is still basically in the incipient phase today. No it's post flashover. And in many cases, because of the building being closed up, it's ventilation limited oxygen deprived.

In other words, the fire reached a crescendo, but then it ate up the available oxygen because petrochemical base material, in order for it to be converted into energy, has to unite with oxygen. Well, the amount of oxygen released or the energy released has to. Depended upon, do you have enough oxygen? Well, very quickly fires in today's structures, which have never been tighter in terms of energy efficiency, uh, weather tinting, or, uh, weather stripping and, uh, Thermo pain windows.

The fire reaches a ventilation limited or an oxygen deprived state very quickly to the point where there might not be anything showing in terms of smoke, pushing out of that building, because why? Because the fire is diminished in intensity. And when it diminished in intensity, it diminished in temperature and what's forcing the smoke out of a building is the pressure differential based upon the, the temperature.

So it is not uncommon today for fire apparatus to pull up on, uh, any type of structure and have nothing showing. But on closer examination, you got a dragon sleeping inside that building, just waiting for a good Gulf of oxygen. That's terrifying. That's really remarkable how the just, uh, more common use of plastics and materials with petrochemicals of them has created such a dramatic difference in, you know, the response time for fires and just everything involved around the fire service for all occupancies.

Really not just residential, but oh yeah. Gus, Gus, look at your business. You take a warehouse. We stored paper plates and paper cups. All right. And then we stop. We start storing styrofoam plates and cups. Will that sprinkler system deliver enough discharge density, gallons per minute, per square foot to cover the different commodity class?

Nope. No it won't brother. And that is a huge problem. You know, any firefighter. That looks at a building and says, ah, don't worry about that building. We'll never, we'll never, we'll never have a serious fire in that Walmart or that home Depot never because of sprinkler has never fought a nasty, dirty rotten soaking, wet, smokey, dangerous, toxic fire in a sprinkler building.

Now sprinklers have an incredible success rate suppression rate. And you know, there's never been a multiple loss of life in a fully sprinkler building, but it does not completely eliminate the problem because the problem is not the fire. Of course, it's the toxic gases. Definitely. That's all really fascinating stuff.

So I just wanted to, uh, give the people a little bit more background on your, uh, work history and some of the roles you've had up till now. Maybe you could speak a little bit about some more of your history in the fire service. And, uh, I know you started out in Chicago and then. Made some transitions, but yeah, I didn't know if you could go over that a little bit more.

I was never on the Chicago fire department, as I said, my dad was, but as a, uh, starting at about 14 years old, uh, they were pretty lax with, uh, you riding as a fire buff and, uh, I could, they would let me go as far as I could go and take the smoke. Uh, I mean, that's basically what it was. The movie back draft is so unrealistic except for one scene.

And that is the very first scene where the little kid is picking out a, a helmet and boots, uh, and a coat to, uh, ride the fire apparatus with his dad. And, uh, that was my experience at a very young age. And man, once you catch. You never lose it. You, you never lose it. I mean, I still have the same passion. I don't go to fires anymore.

Gus I'm 65 years old. Nobody told me I was too old. I told myself I was too old. It is a physically fit person's job. And I felt that, uh, I could not reach my standards anymore. So I don't. But when I first started out, uh, I was a paid on call, which is a volunteer that gets paid to go to drills and fires firefighter in Wheaton, Illinois.

And I, they gave me a part-time job, a, a fire inspector. I mean, I'm just a kid now, you know, I'm going to the community college and I'm making inspections. So at a very early age, I'm drawing up plot plans, plans of buildings studying the code and, and the, the town I grew up in Gus is main street USA. All over this country.

There are pictures of our downtown area, uh, in the 18 hundreds, when there were horses, uh, pulling wagons down the street, same buildings, same buildings. And I fought fires in those buildings in the seventies. Uh, the, the buildings are still there. And, uh, but my knowledge of building construction, it was like a living laboratory for me to, uh, be able to actually see buildings.

One. They were very proactive. They knew that they couldn't change the world. But one thing that they did that was very, very smart is they required every downtown business to install sprinklers in their basement because they knew there's no way, no stop in a basement fire. There's no stop in a basement fire.

And Gus, as we were saying before, Uh, we got online with our audience. Uh, it takes tragedies to, uh, affect change in the field of fire protection. Uh, if you are. In the fire protection business, whether suppression prevention, fire protection engineer, there are just certain landmark fires that you need to know that made a huge change in for the better the coconut Grove, uh, nightclub fire, which was a basement occupancy, uh, right after world war II, the 23rd street collapse, 23rd street in Broadway, where they had actually extended the walls of the boundaries of one of an art studio underneath the wonder drugs on, uh, 23rd street.

And, and what do we learn? How much fire you can have underneath you. And in many cases like wall bombs in New York city, how much fire you can have over your head and not know it. I experienced some things at a very young age that have just stuck with me my whole life. In September of 1973, we went, we were at a vol.

We were at a meeting that paid on calls, you know, call 'em volunteers. And we had a, a call for a fire at a drug store that was adjacent with a party wall to a grocery store. We went in there. It was a little bit of light whiskey, gray smoke. As we advanced an inch and a half line thinking that we had a fire in the storage area, about 200 feet deep into the building, we saw a bluish orange flame blow out of one of the, uh, air registers, HVAC registers.

We did not know that this building had a Bo string trust roof, had a tin stealing. And the fire was roaring roaring in that TRUS loft. And we didn't know it. And thank God we were not successful in pulling that ceiling because had we been successful? It would've been like opening up the damper of a wood burning stove.

So we got out of there and within minutes, the entire roof collapsed. It would've killed about 20 of us at a very early age, very early age, boing trust. Those are some hard lessons to learn. Well, yep. That's some very interesting things. Gus I experience that. I feel that I have a, a moral and professional obligation not to be silent about these things.

I mean, you may go your whole career and never have a fire in the trust loft of a boing trust building. There's very few of 'em left. But I need to pass that on. You can't go to every fire you can't learn while you burn. I remember mentioning to my dad when I was taking these fire science classes, dad, you know, I can't, you know, I like studying this, but man, I can't wait till I get on the Chicago fire department.

And, uh, I, I don't have to study this anymore. I'll be able to learn it firsthand. He said, wait a minute, wait a minute, bill, do you think you can learn everything you can, by going to fires, you won't go to enough fires and believe me, you don't wanna go to every fire because you'll find yourself going to fires.

You wish you never went to fires where people are killed. Kids are killed. God was he right? And then he added anyway, bill, I know firemen that go to two to three, working fires a day. And they're some of the dumbest bastards. I know. So just because you're going to a lot of fires. If you're not astute, you're not paying attention.

You're not gonna learn from 'em. You can go to 10 fires or you can go to one fire 10 times and study every and especially man, do you learn for the ones you made a mistake on? That's where you learn? Definitely. Yeah. I think that's a good comment on any profession, just cuz you do a lot of work. Doesn't mean you're good at it or.

Just cuz you, when you make a mistake in your career is when you have the biggest lessons learned. So yeah, that's good stuff. Yeah. And it's, you know, it it's could come as a price. Uh, I, God bless me. I was very lucky, uh, that, uh, I've experienced. I, uh, we had a fire in a, uh, uh, high school library. Completely windowless in, uh, 1980.

And it now, now that I think back on it, and I look at the, uh, research and fire dynamics done by N and underwriters laboratory, it was that classic ventilation limited fire. And that revised time temperature curve is in a sense deceivingly dangerous because it gives you the impression that when you make an opening, like opening a door to advance a hose line into a oxygen deficient fire, that the fire immediately roars back to life, negative, negative.

It could take from 100 to 200 seconds for enough oxygen to flow in and mix with the, uh, paralyzed products of combustion, the fire gas. Well, you could get pretty deep inside a fire area in 100 to 200 seconds. And that's what happened to me. Gus is we got in there and there was, uh, it was in a smoldering state.

The, uh, vandals had taken books and piled them high and set 'em on fire. We forced the door we went in that was like smoldering. It looked like a smoldering campfire, and within oh, maybe 30 seconds, it started to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And now that I think back on it, it was exactly what we study with these ventilation limited or ventilation controlled fires back then.

We didn't have no me hoods. I ended up bunch of us did terrible burns. Uh, it was your neck, your ears blisters on your ears. Did I panic? Yeah, I panicked. Yeah, when you're on fire, you panic. But I, I do know now, now, of course, that, uh, school has been rebuilt and it's sprinkled. I'm trying to teach our firefighters.

Is there a difference with different occupancy? You're damn right. There is you get a list, dollar stores and discount auto parts. We got one on every corner. They're under 25,000 square feet. Why under the threshold where they would require sprinklers. Now you get a fire and there's very few external openings.

You get a fire in one of those places in the middle of the night, you got a sleeping dragon in there, man, closed up commercial structure like that. Fire's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. Now let's say that you're in a authority having jurisdiction that requires sprinklers. There is absolutely no question about what we're gonna.

We are gonna connect up to a good source of water, run two, three inch lines into the fire department connection and pump that if it's a new building to 150 PSI, we, the fire, the sprinklers are already on the scene, but a lot of again, uh, people think, well, you know, it's a sprinkler building. Lot of people don't realize how limited sprinklers can be because of the, uh, uh, the commodity that they're trying to protect, uh, because of the water pressure also, uh, you know, Gus that there's a, the sprinkler system is predicated on, uh, what four, five heads operating max.

Well, what happens when you get that aerosol can, and it shoots across the store and now you've got two fires or you got a farmable liquid spill and you got 10, 12 heads go off and the building doesn't have a fire pump. Well, you better be the fire pump. You better get there with your 1500 gallon, a minute fire apparatus connect up to the pirate connection.

And you're the building's fire pump and they make sure all the valves are open. That's really interesting to hear you talking about, uh, cooking up to the fire department connection. I always wonder what kind of, what's the approach when you get to a building that's sprinkler and you know, when is it.

Advantageous to hook up to the automatic sprinkler system. Do you always hook up to the automatic sprinkler system or there's sometimes where you wanna manually fight the fire instead, or? Yeah, that's really interesting. Very few cases. I was very privileged to, uh, attend in, uh, 2017 or 18, a industrial firefighting school conducted by a, a factory mutual in Rome, Georgia.

And it it's to educate firefighters, limitations of sprinkler systems and how we can most effectively utilize them. And one thing that was really resonated with me is they got a couple bales of hay burning. Yeah. Gray smoke and, uh, smoke, maybe three feet from the ceiling. And when that sprinkler goes off, man, it's lights out.

It's lights out that smokes all the way to the floor because of the, uh, the draft it creates and also cooling the smoke rapidly, cooling the smoke. But we, we learn that almost always. I can't take of too many exceptions where if the building is sprinkler, let's get some lines into that, uh, uh, fire department connection and, uh, uh, make sure those valves are open.

Uh, it's very common for us to arrive and, uh, somebody's already shut the sprinklers off. In other words, we'll, we'll go up to an enunciator panel and, uh, there's a, uh, we responded on a water flow alarm, but yet when I look at the display on the annunciator panel, it says supervisory, Tam. Sprinklers 14th floor.

What happened? Well, there was a fire if I there's a red light illuminated, but the display says supervisory. Well, if we take a look at this, scroll back in the panel, we find out that there was a fire on the 14th floor and what happened? The maintenance man ran up there and shut the sprinklers off, therefore initiating a supervisory alarm.

Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. I could see that people are quick to, to shut that off. Maybe even. Yeah, but that's, that's very interesting. I like hearing about that. We gotta be very careful when we shut sprinklers off. And at, at, at, at the very least we have to keep a firefighter with a radio at those valves.

I remember overhauling a, uh, a warehouse one time where, uh, we upset a partially, uh, melted container. Um, I can't remember what it was some type of flammable liquid, and I think it was a printing firm. So it had to be something where they cleaned the printing presses. And this thing flared up on us and caught us with our pants down.

And we, we had a huge flare up of fire. It was a flammable liquid spill, uh, that we cause. We have to turn those sprinklers back on. Yeah. That's, that's very interesting stuff. I like hearing about that. I wanted to ask you about, you know, you've talked to me a couple times, a couple, couple questions. You talked to me a couple times about, you know, your mission and kind of bridging the gap, um, between fire prevention professionals and you know, the fire service.

So, you know, I'd like to hear more about that. And also, well, I'll start with that first one. There is a huge disconnect, as I mentioned, between people in your business, fire prevention, people, you being a fire protection engineer, fire prevention, people and fire suppression people. As I said, fire suppression people naturally don't, they're not interested in codes and dry subjects like that.

Suppression detection systems, uh, I've had. Well respected captains. Come up to me and say, Hey bill, that's all interesting and good, but why do I need to know that? Why do you need to, it's your frigging job to know that you better know it, you better know systems, you better know codes and you better know building construction.

And, uh, personally, I don't find that dry. I find it, uh, fascinating, but there is a huge disconnect, a huge disconnect. Now I can think of some terrible fires that have occurred in our history. Maybe even recently that are at least partially attributed to that disconnect and lack of communication between fire prevention, people and fire suppression people.

And, uh, and it goes both ways. If I am a, a, uh, an, a fire officer on an engine company, And I respond to a, uh, an illegal assembly occupancy. Uh, we've had this in the Miami area where, because of Instagram, you'll have a young people, um, go into their father's warehouse or cabinet shop or whatever, with a couple kegs of beer and 400 of their closest friends and be jam packed in there.

And, uh, if we should arrive on a medical call and we see that as a fire officer, we have a duty to act. We have a duty to act. We have gotta put an end to it. We have gotta contact somebody on my department. It is the on duty investigator fire investigator because he's a state certified fire inspector, but we have a duty to act.

So don't think that fire prevention and code enforcement is not your job. It is your job. If you ride that fire apparatus, that's good stuff. I, it it's important. You know that, uh, everybody be more knowledgeable. I always, you know, I'm kind of blown away by not just, you know, I'm speaking about mostly, you know, fire protection designers, fire protection engineers, you know, everybody needs to, you know, we're dealing with life safety here.

So I always try to encourage people to be continuously learning and continuously moving forward. So well, Gus, you know, I, I might make some firefighters angry, but I'm going to, uh, tell the dirty little secret firefighters have snuckered hoodwinked the public into thinking that we can climb 50, 60 stories upstairs and then put a hose line into operation in a timely fashion.

In a good and in shape, the fight of fire it's not happening. And a high rise building, a conservative estimate is one minute per floor fire on the 55th floor. You're only as strongly as your weakest person. If we don't, if we don't, if we have to use, we can't take the elevators. We are in deep, deep trouble on my department.

I'm responsible for writing the, uh, rewriting our high rise Highrise SOP. There are two things. Well, let me, let me name a few, uh, where you immediately transmit a sec or a second alarm or an extra alarm. As soon as you get on the scene. One is you gotta fire on the 23rd floor and there's smoke in the stairway on the first floor.

Well, how the hell did it get there? Well, that's reverse stack effect. You know, you're in Oklahoma city, you know how hot it gets in the summertime. So the air, if there's an opening up high. The air is gonna cool off because of the air conditioner and it's gonna, it's gonna sink. So, you know, you're having a bad day when you got smoke on the first floor for a fire on the 23rd.

So that's one thing immediately transmit a second alarm. Uh, next is if there's any fire showing upon arrival, uh, immediately transmit a second alarm. And the third is, um, you can't use the elevators now, Gus, it's been a long time, but, uh, we're starting to see now and it's not gonna happen retroactively.

We have to realize that elevators are in a necessity in a, in a high rise building, not only for us to reach, uh, to the fire area, we take it like two to three floors below the fire for free evacuation. I've got buildings that hardly anybody in the building is not using a wheelchair or a Walker. Oh, fire alarm goes off and there's a pre-recorded, uh, announcement to evacuate the building.

Is that what we really want them to do? No, that's not what we want them to do. We want them to stay in the refuge of a relatively tenable compartment, compartment, condominium, hotel room, uh, apartment, stay there, and we will protect in place. And these buildings we have to take you. You are, one of your questions was about occupancy in a single family house.

We can take people away from the harm. We can cut the burglar buyers off the windows, take out the windows and we can go in and we can grab these people. We can St the interior right behind a hose line in a large building full of old people. We have to protect life strategically. That's our first strategic priority by taking the harm away from the people.

That means we have to get water on that fire. So tactically, we're gonna put water on the fire strategically. It's to protect life. It's that important. And I tell our recruits that when you are operating off of a stand pipe in an occupied multiple dwelling, that, that you are conducting a, a lifesaving operation, as much as you are dragon granny down a smokey hallway, it's that important that you get it right.

Wow. That's really interesting. You speaking about, uh, high rise, Highrise operations for the fire service? Yeah, I think I was watching a, a hump day hangout with you, uh, talking about how you were riding the, uh, operations and procedures for your department, some of the different departments criteria you were looking at and just how you were going through that process.

And that sounds really interesting. Yeah. And it's, it's Gus in order to control a fire and a high rise building, you have to control its systems, sprinkler stand pipe, fire pumps, HVAC. Which, uh, one of the components may be a smoke management or control system, your stairwells, your elevators, uh, stand pipe and sprinkler systems, fire pumps, and your occupants.

You have to control your occupants. Now, there are some departments in this country that do it right. Uh, Chicago, uh, does an excellent job. I, I had, uh, on the hump day, a few, uh, months ago, I had a, a, a friend of mine that I've been, um, uh, corresponding with on the Chicago fire department. And, uh, they are there as you, as you know, it's required to have a voice control or command system.

It's a PA system, but it's connected to the fire alarm system, uh, to advise people and what we want people to do for the most part in a residential building is stay in place. We want them to stay in place, which is, I know it goes against the grain of everything that people have ever been taught. And it's not natural.

It's natural for you to want to get out of a building when somebody tells you there's a fire, but every time we have a fire in a high rise building, we will find people overcome with smoke in the elevator lobby. They left their completely smoke clear compartment. On their Walker or in wheelchairs. And now they're in the smokey elevator lobby, desperately pressing buttons for an elevator that is not coming.

Why? Because it's been recalled on phase one firefighter service that's yeah, I think it's really interesting point. You talking about the elevators and you know how we need to circle the wagons on that a little bit and figure out how to make them more of a, uh, life safety function and keep them active during fires, because you know, my mindset is somebody who's then fire prevention is, you know, immediately shunt trip.

The. The elevators, you know, in case there's sprinkler activation and you know, there's possibly water could get in the elevator and, you know, ruin the elevator or that's my mindset. Oh gosh, Gus boy, you, you, you, oh man, you just, uh, you just opened up a Hornets nest there. My brother, the controversy of sprinklers in your machine room and hoist way is a, it's huge.

It's huge. I don't like them. The elevator industry doesn't like them. We don't want 'em there. So we get in an elevator and that illuminated helmet icon starts to flash that indicates that a smoke detector in the, uh, machine room where the hoist way has been activated. And then there's also a heat detector, which is near.

Sprinkler, but it'll go off faster than the sprinkler. And just as you mentioned, a shun trip, if that is initiated, you're dead in the water, bro. You're sunk. You are sunk. So there are elevators Gus that are, um, I cannot remember fire service access. I believe they're called you very see very few of them.

It's in our building code now, but it's not retroactive where you will actually have, uh, an enclosed lobby with smoke barrier doors. You will have some type of Dyke or drain. So that water from sprinklers cannot get in the hoist way. And there are no sprinklers in the, the hoist way or the machine room, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, we have to realize that elevators are in necessity and, and if we're in we're in deep trouble, everybody's in deep trouble.

Occupants and firefighters, if we can't take the elevators. Yeah, definitely. You know what, it's something that, you know, an occupant evacuation elevator or, you know, a more stringent fire service elevator is something that a building owner from a cost perspective is gonna wanna avoid at all, you know, stances.

But it's something that sounds like is absolutely critical for the fire service and, you know, keeping these elevators, you know, active and working is a huge factors. Yeah. And here here's another problem GU and uh, I feel so far, sorry for those firefighters in London, they. Followed their procedure at the Grandville towers, fire, where you had aluminum composite panel clatting, which is basically polyethylene plastic sandwich between two thin sheets of aluminum.

What makes it really bad is that for moisture accumulation, there is a gap. There's an airspace between the clatting and the, uh, span beams and columns of the building. So you have a flu, so it can burn on both sides and they, uh, initiated a protect and play strategy because that's what they did well, in that case, when the fire is scaling the outside of the building, there is no compartmentation.

So it turned out and in retrospect, in some, in some people's opinion, that that was the wrong thing to do. And of course they were full civilly and I believe criminally, uh, Uh, but we just had a fire like that. And, uh, I believe it was the United era of Emirates, uh, about a two weeks ago. And, uh, that's a whole different story when you have the fire burning on the outside on that cladding.

So, and that's one case where you may have to evacuate the whole building, but it's gotta, as I said, you have to control your occupants. You're gonna have to have some type of control evacuation. It's been really interesting in all the, the trade magazines that I read, you know, talk about exterior cladding and how that's such a, uh, critical thing in the industry now and research, and co-development on limiting these materials for exterior cladding because of how impactful they can be.

To this fire spread on the exterior of the building in gr fell towers is just, it's been such a huge push for the industry to try to get this figured out. So it's, it's interesting to hear you talk about that and yeah, it's, it's, it's everywhere. People are talking about it and rightfully so. I have a good friend of mine that is a, uh, a captain on the Clark county fire department in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He, uh, spent most of his career on the Las Vegas strip. They have a problem with those buildings out there. Is that the decorative, uh, I like to call it gingerbread. On the outside of the building uh, around windows and, uh, or like a, you know what I'm talking it's it's, it's like a facade. Yeah. That stuff is basically styrofoam covered with a very thin sheet of, um, some type of a plastic, uh, substrate.

And then, uh, plaster, uh, basically what you got is you, the exteriors are, uh, combustible. Uh, you saw it at the, um, I'm thinking it was the Mon Carlo a few years ago. It's where you have a, you have a, a facade fire. It's not a structure fire. It's just the, uh, ornamentation burning on the outside of the building.

But Vincent Dunn, who I'm a huge, uh, student of, he says, uh, well, no, there's actually seven sides to a fire. Okay. He says that, uh, yeah, there's four sides and there's a top and a bottom. But when you have a building within a combustible exterior, There's a seventh side and that is the exterior. That's a side that we have to consider.

Wow. I like that, that, that puts, that puts a nice visual to it. That's that's good stuff. So I wanted to ask you about, yeah. One of the things that I wanted to talk about is, you know, you've, you're an advocate for education and educating people in fire prevention and in the fire service. But one of the things I wanted to ask you is what kind of, um, resources.

Would you suggest for, um, somebody who wants to know more about fire suppression or fire alarm? I know that you've been involved in some training videos. That's kind of where I found you. And I was learning a bunch from watching your training videos and your knowledge of fire suppression systems and stand pipe systems and valving, and just, uh, all that's involved was very impressive.

But yeah, I'd like to get your input. Oh, there's, there's great. Well, you, of course the internet, there's an abundance on the internet. I learn a lot just, I, I am not an employee of sprinkler Matic. Uh, however I teach at their facility, sprinkler medic is a, um, a fire suppression contractor, uh, based out of, uh, the Ford Lauderdale area.

Uh, that is probably the biggest suppression contractor in the, um, in the state sta sprinkler and stamp pipe systems and their. President Robin Collier has built the most amazing wet laboratory of just about every suppression riser imaginable at his sprinkler, Matt university. He calls it in, uh, Davey, Florida.

He also has one in Tampa, the Tampa area. So, uh, they have an abundance of YouTube videos on sprinkler system design, sprinkler system, operation design of what we call a manual. What standpipe system. Where there's water in the system, uh, and it supplies the sprinklers, but not sufficient to supply a hose line.

So in that case, a, uh, a fire department connection pumping that has is, is a, is a necessity, not just a precaution. Uh, there are tremendous amount of books on, uh, alarm systems and, uh, suppression systems available. Uh, and of course there are courses, a lot of 'em are sanctioned by your state. Your state should be, I know in the state of Florida, it is, they have state, uh, recommended and, uh, you can take at their facility or if a, uh, a local jurisdiction meets the criteria for the course, uh, you can take it elsewhere, but, uh, you have to follow their curriculum on alarm.

Suppression systems, uh, on, on building, uh, construction. So there is an abundance. Oh, and I'll tell you this. I tell firefighters all the time. You have no excuse, not to know suppression systems living in south Florida. Why? Because almost all of the components are naked. They're outside the building. We don't have any freezing weather.

So we're looking at a detector check or double check the detector, check backflow, preventer. We're looking at it. It's right there in the front yard, but there's, there's an abundance of resource. Also your community colleges have, that's where I, I took classes on systems. Systems one and systems two building construction one and building construction two in the commu in the community college.

I got another example, Duchess community college in Poughkeepsie, New York. Uh, I have a good friend of mine that was just retired. He was the program chair. The work that those students do with controlled burns and test burns and the classes that you can take there, uh, there is no shortage of books. Media on the internet, uh, for you to learn, uh, the suppression detection and alarm systems and building construction for the fire service.

Those are all great resources. I like hearing about that. I always try to plug for people's benefit. You know, when I'm talking to individuals who I know are knowledgeable and have a good, um, finger on the pulse of the industry, always try to get recommendations on resources and, you know, just kind of get a feel for where you think important information is coming from.

I know you, I got a copy right here, international fire protection, you know, I sent it to you free. No, is it mostly advertisements? Yes. But what are they advertising extended coverage sprinklers. Well, what is that? Well, it explains right in the advertisement, you, you know, just, you know, sometimes firefighters have the attention span of a Nat, just pick up a magazine, you know, and, and.

There's so many things that just take a few minutes to read, uh, you know, a little bit, you know, sometimes when you get in depth with the suppression systems and that it's, uh, it's like the Basco sauce a little bit goes a long way. So you take it in small digestible amounts, but a little bit every day you should be studying something about something other than actually putting the wet stuff on the red stuff with a hose line as part of your, uh, as part of your, your job.

It is your job. Gus. I, I bring up this question, uh, when, uh, to our officers, when I, when I teach our officer development program, which is newly promoted officers, and I say, is it fair for us to judge the nine brave firefighters that were killed at the sofa Superstore in Charleston, South Carolina? Is it fair?

We weren't there. We weren't there we're in an air conditioned classroom. Is it fair? And the answer to that is not only is it our, is it fair? It is our obligation and duty as a father, as a husband, as a fire officer, as a person, that's gonna be leading firefighters into battle. It's not only fair. It is your responsibility to learn from fires.

That thank God you were lucky enough not to go to don't you think? Gus, we're those poor guys in Los Angeles, those poor guys. Do we know what happened? No, not exactly. Are we gonna find out what happened? Yes. And those poor guys that are burnt in the hospital on ventilators right now. Well, if we just didn't pay attention to that and learn from what they learn about it, we'll listen to them then.

They're there in vain. Let's find out what the heck happened. Every fire officer that I know that's dedicated to this job, first of all, is broken hearted to see how terribly injured these firefighters are in that horrific fire. We need to more find out more about it. I, I could tell you right now, Gus, if there's a fire and a head shop, or one of these kind of stores that caters to, uh, hash oil, mm-hmm, you be anywhere in this country today?

You better believe that that department is gonna be handling it a lot more cautiously since that horrible tragedy that happened over the weekend in Los Angeles. Now were any of mistakes made in Los Angeles? I don't. You know, they, they were caught off guard with, it would, the same thing have happened to Miami dad, fire rescue department.

You're damn straight. We would've done the same thing. We would've done the same thing. So it's yes. And, and we're gonna, but we have to learn from these things and it's, it's, it's unfortunate, but you know, it's, it's a, uh, you're a student of the fire service look at the industrial fire safety because of the triangle shirt waste fire, where a bunch of immigrant girls were killed in the early 19 hundreds.

We changed the fire codes in, in factories. It's it's it's tragedies like that. I love when you talk about the historic fires, because, you know, it's so important. It was part of my curriculum in my degree at Oklahoma state university, um, you know, talking about the triangle shirt, waste fire, talking about coconut Grove, talking about the, you know, station night club fire.

Um, you know, I think, uh, this, this, uh, LA fire is even more front of mind for me because of, you know, the state of Oklahoma. And recently we've had legislation pass and all of these type of shops, uh, similar to the fire and LA pop up. And, you know, the, the building code has not caught up yet, you know, the, the wheels and the gears of the building code turn slow.

And so, you know, when you have, uh, dozens of these kind of shops, uh, pop. And, you know, they're putting them in places and in occupancies that were traditionally business and, you know, they're having distillation processes and they have a substrate for the distillation process that can sometimes be hazardous.

I mean, that, it's, it's very concerning. So I think that it, it is even more hits at home for me because, uh, you know, it's, it's down the street for me that these kind of hazards are, you know, being added to my community. So, yeah. And in single family homes, in somebody in somebody's garage can have the same kind of operation, you know, you don't know.

I mean, it's all bets are off when you're going into a single family home. Yeah. Because there's, there's no fire prevention bureau in there, no inspections. Uh, you can do man's home as his castle. He can do whatever he wants. Unfortunately, uh, firefighters get hurt and killed. And you mentioned Oklahoma state university.

Uh, one of my heroes, one of my heroes is John Norman. John Norman is a retired, uh, I believe he retired as a deputy from the, uh, F D N Y. Uh, he writes the, uh, fire officer's handbook of tactics. This man, one of the reasons that he is so good at what he does, why he is such a widely respected, uh, almost worshiped, uh, educator in the fire service is because he had a good solid background in fire protection from Oklahoma state university.

So before he was a firefighter, he was a sprinkler designer and he mentioned several times. In his, uh, in his textbook, but there is a guy that has a, had a well, well rounded background in, um, uh, fire, fire protection systems. And believe me, it's one of the reasons why he is one of the superstars of the fire service.

That's great. I, I haven't heard about John Norman. John Norman is a, uh, there's a couple of people like that. Vincent Dunn, who actually was at the 23rd street collapse. I think he was on an inspection at the time. So he didn't, he wasn't killed. Obviously he's retired now, John Norman, who ended up one of the last things he did in his career before he left, he was in charge of the, uh, uh, recovery operations, uh, at nine 11 at the ground zero.

But the man as a true humble gentleman, But my point is this Gus is he knows systems. He has a firm background in systems. You cannot be an effective fire officer without a solid, solid background in fire detection, suppression systems and building construction and codes. It's part of your job. It's not as exciting as extending a hose line under a, a layer of smoke, but it is absolutely essential in order for you to be a well rounded, effective, and safer fire officer, without a doubt.

So we need to connect this disconnect. Gus, we need to connect this disconnect between your folks and my folks and the fire prevention folks. And we all need to be on the same page and you know who I blame mostly my folks, our folks, lack of interest. So you don't think it's important. When it's critically important.

Well, I think there's blame to go around for everyone. You know, I mean, people in my industry are, can be oftentimes just trying to get the job done as well. And, you know, they might not always be in the mindset of providing a, you know, fire protection and life safety design that is, you know, uh, can be held up by firefighters in the fire service.

You know, I've talked to people in the past, uh, Dave Stacy, uh, he was telling me about the different ways. He's a fire protection engineer and a, um, somebody who works in the fire service. And he was telling me about all the, the ways that he designs his buildings differently, because he knows about the operations of the fire service.

You know, industry and, you know, so I think that it's important for both sides to try to be knowledgeable about how the other one works and, you know, it's, it's not just the fire services fault. It's, you know, I I'd say that it's is just as important for somebody who designs fire protection systems too, have an understanding of, you know, uh, how the fire service works and how to make a design functional for somebody in the fire service.

So I think that there's some buy-in on both sides here, but I like that sentiment a lot. Right. Let me give you an example of the disconnect. The fire suppression industry, the NFPA committees, uh, NFPA 14 for stand pipes and fire suppression people. Traditionally prior to 1993 standpipe systems, as you know, each outlet would have to flow 250 gallons a minute at 65 PSI.

Now the only way you're gonna have a good stream at 65 PSI residual pressure is with two and a half inch diameter hose line with a E inch and an eighth or an inch and a quarter tip. Okay. But what was happening? Fire departments all over the country, including mine. We're using the same diameter hose that they would take into a single family house that would be inch and a half or inch and three quarter.

And connecting it up to a stamp pipe that was designed predicated on two and a half inch hose. Well, the systems were designed for two and a half inch hose, but the fire departments were using inch and a half or inch and three quarter. Well, now that was one of the reasons why firefighters were killed at the one Meridian Plaza fire.

And I like to quote Matt Stuckey from a retired chief from Houston. Nobody had a clue about pressure, reducing standpipe outlet valves. Nobody had a clue. No one it's just that Philadelphia's luck ran out before anybody else's did nobody had a clue? Why? Because we weren't talking, we weren't talking the NFPA committees didn't realize that fire departments were using undersized hose that was not designed for a 65 PSI residual pressure on the standpipe outlet.

Well, What has happened since then? Well, now we, we we've upped the pressure. It's, it's, it's, it's a hundred, but still you, uh, you know, you have buildings. And then if you take a look at the intricacy of a pressure, reducing stamp pipe outlet, or a, a, a zone zone, isolation, valve floor, isolation, valve, or sprinklers, remember these are to keep the pressure from exceeding 175 PSI for stand pipe and 1 65 for sprinklers, the intricacies, the, they have a mind of their own.

There, there there's a, uh, they, the plunger and piston assembly that floats inside of that chamber is not connected to the valve stem. When you open up the hand wheel, That thing is gonna do what it wants to do in response to, uh, uh, fluctuations and pressure downstream. I U like to use the analogy, Gus that every day we, uh, we exercise every valve, every drain on our fire apparatus, our fire apparatus pump.

Okay. Now what about that? Uh, that pressure reducing valve it's a, the internal components are immersed in water. If it hasn't been tested in accordance with N FPA 25, which is the standard for testing and maintaining water based fire suppression systems, then I can, I can tell you, I posed, I post a question to, uh, discern a design engineer at Zern, large manufacturer pressure, reducing valves.

I said, I'm gonna, I don't mean to offend you. I said, but, uh, let me, let me give you a hypothetical, uh, I'm killed in a wind driven high rise fire, and my wife sues. Zearn for, um, a defective pressure, reducing stamp pipe outlet valve. What would be your recourse? He says, oh, very simple. Show me the documents.

Show me when this system was last tested in accordance with N FPA 25. That means for pressure, reducing valves, a cap test, uh, a cap, a valve cap test with a, with a gauge on it once a year and a full flow test at 250 gallons a minute at 100 PSI every five years. Is it being done well, if it's not being done in your jurisdiction, then would you rely on that pressure?

Reducing valve, you are taking a leap of faith and, and, and to all our firefighters out there, if you are not testing. Your standpipe systems in accordance with NFPA 25, do yourself a favor, do not go and stretch dry to the fire floor because the door to the fire compartment is closed. No charge the line on the floor below so that the guy on the valve and the guy looking at the inline gauge and the guy flowing the nozzle in the stairway are in agreement.

If we have a pressure problem because of lack of maintenance on the, uh, pressure, reducing valves or some other problem, let's identify it and fix it before we go to battle you go upstairs. Sure. It takes less firefighters, but then try to communicate back on a radio or with runners, uh, gimme 20 more pounds.

It's not gonna happen, brothers. It's not gonna happen. So I, I can't stress the importance. I mean, you wouldn't, it would be crazy for you not to exercise and check your apparatus on a periodic basis. Well, if you're not checking these systems in these buildings, you know, you're putting your life literally putting your life on the line and depending upon these things.

Yeah. And I, I look at firefighters and FPA 25. What is that? They don't know. They don't have a clue, pressure, reducing valve what's that? I don't know. They don't know. Well, we gotta make it our business to know now, how did I learn? I didn't learn from the ranks of fire prevention or fire fighting people. I learned from reaching out to, uh, people in our fire prevention bureau and folks like sprinkler medic.

I have a. That, uh, is a sprinkler and stamp pipe system, uh, plans, review Desi design reviewer, uh, and our fire prevention bureau that hung sprinkler piping is a superintendent for 33 years. I don't think there's a week that goes by that. I don't pick up the phone and ask him a question I learned from those guys.

Can I tell you a quick story? Go for it? I'm all ears. All right. My first, my first introduction to a pressure reducing valve, we got a building under construction about a 12 story building. So it's not that high. And, uh, come in on a, a Saturday and there's a suppression contractor around putting the finishing touches on the, uh, suppression system.

And I said, Hey, Hey, before you hang the drywall, can we, uh, connect some hose lines to a, an outlet? And we're gonna, uh, we're gonna pump the, uh, uh, the fire department connection. We're gonna flow some water out the window. Yeah, sure. He says, and I don't know what possessed me, but maybe cuz I. I have the gift of gab, which means I talk too much.

I said, yeah, just so you know what we're gonna do, sir, we're gonna take, uh, two, three inch lines and we're gonna, uh, connect to the fire department connection and we're gonna charge it our standard starting pressure for stand pipe systems at 150 PSI. Uh, he says, uh, wait a minute. That's not gonna be enough.

What do you mean? It's not gonna be enough. It's a 12 story building 150 PSI will be fine. He comes back and he says, Nope, you're gonna have to pump it. Hadn't been posted yet buildings under construction. You're gonna have to post. 205 PSI. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Well, we pumped one 50 and guess what?

Egg on my face, it looked like a damn garden hose. Why? Because every valve in that building was set at the factory, these factory set valves for what, there were two stand pipes, two stairwells in this building. So you would have to everything, the fire pump, the PRVs, everything is set for the pressure necessary to get 750 gallons a minute at the roof at a hundred PSI.

And if you're pumping the fire department connection to duplicate the action of the fire pump or fire pumps, if you're not pumping that pressure, you will have inadequate flow on your stamp pipe outlets. It's that important? I like that. That's good. Uh, practicals, you know, at pressure, reducing valves can be tricky and there, you know, those complications that you were.

Talking about, um, extend for everybody in. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna, you wanna learn, you wanna learn something you wanna learn from your mistakes, make an ass outta yourself in public, and then find out that you better believe I delved into this. I picked this guy's brain. I now on my desk, I got cutaways of every major pressure reducing valve available in the country.

That's great stuff. Well, bill, I want to thank you so much for coming on. I didn't get to all my questions for you and maybe, um, I can have you back on here. Uh, and yeah, GU sure. But I really appreciate you and, and yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, GU you know, you're, you're in a different, uh, line of fire protection, but we are brother firefighters because you're a firefighter as well.

You are a fire. You may never wear a breathing apparatus or go into smoke with a hose line, but what you are doing by designing systems and making sure they're installed properly tested properly is every bit as important to firefighting and fire protection and protection of buildings and civilians as what I used to do, uh, when I was an active firefighter.

So I really appreciated Gus and I'm, I'm happy to participate. Well, thank you. That's that's awesome. I appreciate that too. Thanks for listening everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time.

On this episode of Fire Code Tech, we're speaking with Paul Inferrera. Paul is a NICET IV certified technologist in fire alarm systems and the design manager of DrawFire LLC, a fire alarm design consulting company.  Paul is also an ambassador for NICET, and he teaches two online classes on fire alarm systems at Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina. In our interview, we go over the fundamentals of fire alarms, commissioning, ITM and much more.  This show provides a great overview of fire alarm systems and resources for continuing education, including the courses at Cape Fear Community College. If you are interested in learning more about the courses, click the link below.

How did you get your origin and your start in fire alarm and life safety? What are the components of a fire alarm system and the equipment that is involved? Will you speak about integrated systems and the theory behind integrated systems? What are the methods of communication for a fire alarm system in how they report? Describe commissioning and testing and what that looks like in a commercial setting? Would you speak about DrawFire LLC and the work you are involved with? What are the Fire Alarm Training courses at the Cape Fear Community College? How is teaching changing in response to the corona virus? What is a NICET Ambassador and what does that role involve? What is a trend in the industry? What resources do you recommend to individuals who want to learn more about fire alarm?

https://www.drawfirellc.com/services.php

Below is registration announcements and link to the program: https://cfcc.edu/job-training/construction-careers/fire-alarm-systems-training/

Fire Alarm Systems Training classes at Cape Fear Community College will start August 31, 2020 and registration is now open. Our courses are self-paced and offered online to anyone with an Internet connection.

The registration fee for the four-month course is $185 (USD) and awards 14.4 CEU’s. NICET awards 1 CPD point for 0.1 CEU (10 points per CEU). Those who are using the course to obtain NICET Continuing Personal Development (CPD) points will max out the category “Additional Education” and earn 45 points.

Use the following link to sign up for the class and select "Alarms 101" or "Alarms 102": https://cfccregister.fundfive.com/filtered/course/FAST

Alarms 101 This course is designed for those individuals who are in the fire alarm industry and will focus on fundamentals. Students will learn basic electrical theory and understand resistance, voltage and current.

Individuals currently in the fire alarm industry would benefit from the concepts and theories, which will be built upon in the Alarms 102 course. Students will also acquire a basic understanding of the physics involved in the chemical reaction and the by-products of fire. Students will learn basic electrical workmanship and installation methods of fire alarm equipment and devices. The student will gain an understanding of the requirements of codes and standards that govern fire alarm systems and installations. (14.4 CEU/45 CPD awarded)

Students will become familiar with NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, and NFPA 70, the National Electric Code (NEC). These references are consistent with NICET’s allowable references for Level I and II Fire Alarm Systems exam(s).

Alarms 102 This course is designed for individuals who are fire alarm technicians or have intermediate experience in the fire alarm industry and will focus on application and design.

The subject matter will build upon concepts addressing the behavior and generation of smoke, the combustion process and the requirements of codes and standards that govern fire alarm systems and installations. (14.4 CEU/45 CPD awarded) Students will become familiar with NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, NFPA 70, the National Electric Code (NEC), NFPA 101, the Life Safety Code, and the International Building (IBC).

These references are consistent with NICET’s allowable references for Level III and IV Fire Alarm Systems exam(s). Please contact me for more information or visit our web page for complete course information: https://cfcc.edu/job-training/construction-careers/fire-alarm-systems-training/

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the.

You're in the right place. Welcome to episode 10. Fire code tech on this episode of fire code tech, we have Paul Inre. Paul is a nice for certified technologist in fire alarms systems and the design manager of draw fire, LLC fire alarm design consulting company. Paul is also an ambassador of NS, a and a proponent of the fire alarm industry.

Paul teaches two online classes. On fire alarm systems at the Cape community college in North Carolina today in our interview, we talk about inspection testing and maintenance that fundamentals of fire, alarm commissioning, and much more. This show is a great overview of fire alarm systems. And I could be happier to shine a light on the courses at Cape community college.

Go check them out if you need continuing education credits, or if you just wanna learn more about fire alarm systems. Well, hello, Paul, welcome to the show. Uh, good morning, GU. How are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. So please, to have you on the, the podcast. So I just wanted to get started with Paul.

I was wondering if you would tell me a little bit about your background and how you. Found your origins and fire alarm and, uh, fire alarm technology and fire protection and life safety. And, well, I guess most people on fire protection will tell you that they didn't start here. They just kind of ended up here and I'm guess I'm in that category.

Um, my career actually began in the us Navy as an electrician and, uh, most of my experiences with building and factory automation, um, mostly with H V a C. And I was actually, uh, gonna work as a application engineer, uh, and took the summer off and moved to the beach. And, uh, the company that I was gonna start for did a higher end freeze right after nine 11.

So I was kind of in a new town with, with no job, took a job as an electric. Working on a fire alarm system. And after the project was over, I ended up getting a, a job with a company that did the installation, and that's really how I, I got into the fire alarm business. Um, I took drafting in high school, uh, back when drawings were produced by hand and really enjoyed the precision of the work and motivated factor in getting an ISET level three, which is required for fire alarm design is basically, uh, to get off the road and get out the.

Actually, that was a good help. You know, I spent most of my nights on the road studying code books and preparing for nights at exams. So it was a positive out of a perceived negative. Uh, and here I am. Wow. Very nice. Yeah. It's interesting to hear about your background and yeah, it seems like that's a, a very common thread that people, uh, tend to fall into.

Uh, fire protection or fire alarm industry, and then kinda stick. So, yeah. Um, I have a pretty similar story, so I resonate with that for sure. Yeah. So I, I understand that you have, uh, quite extensive background with fire alarms show in the next, uh, couple questions in the interview. I just kind of wanted to get into.

Different, uh, fire alarm topics and kind of pick your brain on 'em. I haven't had the opportunity to speak with somebody who is, uh, I set for certified for, uh, any of the different, I set certifications yet. Something that I've been interested in exploring. Cause I think it's important to not only get the, the engineer's perspective, but also I believe that there's.

A lot of value in somebody who is well versed in putting these systems together and not just, you know, kind of notionally, uh, putting categories and criteria on, uh, paper. Cause we all know that it all, all looks good on paper until you get out in the field. Trying to put together, but so I wanted to start with maybe for, I don't know who all will listen to this episode.

So I just wanted to start with, if you would give an overview of some of the component architecture of a fire alarm system and just kind of go over the basics of, of what these systems are. They're major components, if you would, Paul, uh, well, in, in basic terms, uh, a fire alarm system is designed to protect life and property.

Be that being said, there are three basic types, and that depends on how they report, uh, the effects of a fire. Uh, protective premises would be, uh, a fire alarm system that a, that alarm that, that premise only, and the occupants would have to dial nine one, one, or call the fire depart. um, the second type would be a, a supervising station and this is a fire alarm system at a protective premise that would actually dial out and summon a to the, to the building.

And the third type would be a public reporting system. And these are the old street boxes that you would see on the corner. Predominantly in the Northeast. So you'd pull it just like you would a pull station in some of the fire department, uh, businesses and, and premises adjacent to that street box can also connect to it.

So an alarm in that building would trigger that, that public alarm system that goes, uh, directly to the, to the fire department, as far as the equipment, uh, follow arms systems are basically comprised of inputs, outputs, and a process. Uh, input signals to the control P uh, panel processor would come in the form of a smoke detector or heat detector, P stations or devices that monitor the sprinkler system.

When those signals come in the processor, which is programmed by the installing technician, would process the inputs and send. The appropriate outputs outputs would be, uh, activation of notification appliances in the form of horn strokes, strokes, or speakers. It would also work in concert with other building systems that would capture the elevator shut down the H V a C uh, start fans for smoke control, uh, or send signals to a supervisor station to someone aid.

So that's basically the, the types and, and how they would, would work. Very nice. I appreciate that. That's. Very succinct description. Also, it's hard sometimes, uh, uh, working with, you know, uh, the, the general type of commercial fire alarm system. You don't see some of these, uh, public reporting systems as much.

So it's interesting to hear you talk about that. Yes. I was actually visiting some relatives in New Hampshire and walked out of a drugstore and about ran into one. And when I saw it, I, uh, I was kind of well amazed and actually see one, but yeah, they they're still out there. Hmm. That's very interesting.

Yeah. I haven't seen, I've seen them in like, uh, like pulled off the wall or after they've been taken outta commission. I don't know if I've ever seen one that's that's still. Been in, in the works. So that's, that's, that's neat. So next, just wanted to talk a little bit about cuz I know this piece is missed a lot of times and so I just wanted to speak a little bit about the inspection testing and maintenance requirements for fire alarm systems and you know, uh, how do we know about these requirements?

Where are they found and maybe, you know, uh, something that you might see that's commonly missed in your experience? Uh, yes. The, um, well, the big takeaway is that the owner of the building are responsible for maintaining the system, which most unaware, but the inspection test and the maintenance requirements for fire alarm and cellular systems were found in, uh, NFPA 72 chapter 14.

And that chapter is dedicat. To that, to those testing. Um, it will also list the frequency or how often the inspections and testing is performed. And it will also give you a description of how the methods, uh, to perform those inspections. Um, the inspections are typically performed monthly. Quarterly or annually, the owner usually schedules a fire alarm or specul inspection to be formed at the same time to reduce the impact of operations.

Uh, you don't want the fire alarm guy to come in one day and, and set off the alarm and do their inspection. Then have a specul guy come in a few days later and test their portion of the system, which of course will, uh, alarm the system as well. Uh, so a company that can perform both inspections would be at a lower cost than having one company to inspect a fire.

Uh, and one to the. Maintenance and repairs are usually not planned in the chapter. 14 will also list the requirements for those activities. It'll describe how to communicate with the owner if their is deficient and also testing requirements after repair. Um, I think a big misconception among technicians is, uh, they'll.

They won't do. Program at the keypad, of course, as cumbersome they'll get on their laptop and they'll, uh, do all the changes and they'll dump that program into the panel. Uh, but what that does, that, that constitutes a hundred percent test of the entire system. So of course the owner doesn't want you to go in there and, and test all 14 floors of a high rise when you've just made a, a small change.

But technically, whenever you do replace the operating program, you have to test all functions of that program. Hmm. That's fascinating. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. I didn't, I didn't realize that, you know, when you up up basically update the, uh, logic inside a fire alarm panel that, that constitutes a, a full testing of the system.

Yeah. I could see how. Uh, technician or anybody would wanna be wary of that requirement, um, due to what all that entails. That sounds like a serious thing. Yeah. Well, in the course of a, a regular repair, the code requires that you only test a certain amount of the affected part. Uh, of course they don't want you to test the entire system when you just replace one device.

But of course, if you, if you replace the program, the program controls everything and that why it pulls in the a hundred percent test. That's a good point. And that's good to know. I'm glad that you brought that up. So Paul, you spoke before a little bit about, um, some of these integrated systems and I just wanted to touch on this a little bit more because.

I think that in today's age of the internet of things and how everything has just become, uh, more connected through the advancement of technology, uh, in, in general, I just wanted to, uh, hear you speak a little bit more about, uh, integrated systems in regards to fire alarm systems and, and what that means.

I know you've already kind of touched on it a little bit. Yes. Um, and this would probably. Go along the lines of commissioning as well, but the federal government, they, they, more or less took the lead, uh, with the, the whole building design concept to where all the building functions would work together to perform a, a common function and not really work independently and separately.

And of course, whenever. Connect everything together, uh, that makes it more complex, uh, than just standalone systems, whether it be the sprinkler or the elevator recall smoke control or the access control and that whole building concept, all those systems will work in concert, uh, in effect one another. Um, but the main point of the fire alarm code is that other systems are not gonna affect the operation of the fire alarm system.

So there's a fault with the H V a C system that fault isn't gonna carry over and compromise the fire alarm system. Yeah. Yeah. I just think, uh, it's, it's kind of interesting to me. We are seeing, you know, I forget which, uh, I know three or four is more the integrated system in FBA, but. And I'd know that, uh, and, and what I do as a architected engineer, um, it's a lot of making sure that these integrated systems function the way they're intended.

And yeah, it just, uh, it just seems like a topic that's not going away. And, uh, I wasn't aware of the, the whole building design. Um, charging ahead on that, uh, issue another, uh, topic that's frequently causes trouble or just frequently needs, um, investigation. Um, in regards to doing business with new or existing clients is how these fire alarm systems report.

and there's been a little bit of, of shake up recently in, uh, the reliability of some reporting methods. So yeah, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, um, What re what it means for fire alarm system, uh, to report and, you know, some of the different means and methods to facilitate that reporting. And, uh, what you see is common in the industry.

I know it kind of varies, uh, By the, what the project owner wants. But yeah, I wanted to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that. Well, I guess the big change would be the internet. Of course, the internet changed every aspect of everyone's life. Uh, but when the, the old copper lines start to become extinct, uh, you know, in the past you're required to have two separate forms of communication, uh, with the fire alarm system.

And. Typically with two, two phone lines, two independent phone lines. Uh, like I said, the internet came along and you have the, the voiceover IP to where you'll have your phone and your internet on the same cable going to a building. And when that first came out, you would have, you know, your local cable company hooking up a building, and then they would try to use the fire alarm system to report over that internet.

And. The, uh, the, the power backup requirements for the fire alarm panel. Wasn't consistent with the power of backup of the internet and switching stations. For example, the, uh, fire alarm panel is required to have a 24-hour backup and a lot of the cell and, and switching stations. That the internet used their P backup was only, you know, six hours or 12 hours.

So the communication system, their batteries would go dead. Uh, so the fire alarm would sit there without any communication and, um, I think over the years, they've, they've become more, more streamlined and those requirements are more better to use the, the, uh, internet, uh, but you're still required two independent, uh, forms of communication.

So typically if they use the internet as one form, they'll have a cellular, uh, backup and, uh, whenever they lose internet, they can use the cellular transmit or to transmit, uh, signal that way. Like you would a, a cell using a cell. Um, and as far as reports, the, um, there's company now, where there's systems, where you can, where the building reports and your inspection reports are sent directly to the HJ, um, this allows a technician to perform inspections and the results to compile and, and they generate reports.

Uh, those reports. Dual purposes, they can, uh, report deficiencies to the owner. Uh, the owner's required to have a report that says what's wrong and what they need to fix. And those. Systems will do that. Um, some efficiencies are required to report to the HJ and if you send those results directly to the HJ, then there, they get their communication and their report as well.

Um, it's from a technician's standpoint, you basically just have to, uh, go around with a barcode reader and scan the device after you test it. And all you reports are done for you. So don't have to sit there a couple hours. After the inspection and compile reports they're done as you go. That sounds like a good method.

And Paul, I just wanted to ask, uh, what do you see as the most common, uh, reporting method these days? I'm not sure how, uh, uh, involved you are still with the, um, The, the technician side of things or just, uh, the insulation of these systems. But yeah, I didn't know if you had a pulse on that. I would say the copper phone lines are probably still, I don't wanna say the most common, but they're still there.

They haven't gone away. Um, and of course another is the, uh, the I, the internet with the, the cellular backup and has to basically the easiest way to, to do something. If you have a building that goes up and. You know, they're not gonna call the phone company anymore. They're gonna call the cable company to get their, their telephone and their internet.

Um, and then the, the installing company will also install a, a cellular transmitter to give them that backup. So, um, if the phone lines aren't in place in an existing facility or, or complex, uh, the more commonly they'll go with the, uh, the IP and the cellular. Interesting. Yeah. I just ask cuz uh, on the design side, uh, sometimes it can be difficult to, uh, nail down.

Um, what's being provided as far as the utility and you know, if it's gonna be, uh, fiber optics or copper. And so, uh, and then oftentimes we are leaning more towards now, uh, the IP or, uh, internet protocol. Means or the, uh, cellular with the backup cellular. So yeah, just wanted to, yeah, I appreciate that. But, uh, also, yeah, I wanted to touch on, uh, those, uh, direct reporting means that you were talking about, it sounds like you're a, a fan of that, um, way of, um, generating reports and just, uh, sounds like it's convenient for the, um, inspector.

And, uh, the, the building owner, if you are somebody who wants to, uh, be upright about your, um, taking care of your fire alarm and fire suppression systems. So yeah, I think you'll, you'll find those reporting systems more often in, in large campuses or large buildings where there's hundreds and hundreds of devices.

You just have a little strip mall with a pull station and a smoke detector. You're probably not gonna go, go through all the money and the. To, to use the, you know, the building reporting system for that. You just, uh, do a quick inspection and fill out your report, but they do have their, their applications.

Yeah. I, I didn't think about that. There's probably a break even point for device count and complexity of system for those, uh, inspection report and automatic reporting, uh, methods. Um, so that's interesting. I'm glad you touched on that in the vein of testing. Just fire alarm systems in general. Yeah. I wanted to speak with you about, uh, commissioning in the, in the role of, of testing.

I don't know if you would, uh, touch on that for. What that means for fire alarm and maybe how you would go about that and kind of what that process looks like, Paul. Well, I, I feel that commissioning is the most critical aspect of putting the system in the service, cuz that's really your last chance, uh, to catch any discrepancies or any impairments.

That won't allow assistance to perform as designed, of course, you're gonna have the HJ, that's gonna come in and give acceptance testing, but technicians shouldn't rely on the HJ to find all the problems. And that's really not. Their job. Fire alarm systems are required to be fully functionally tested before you schedule accepting testing with the HJ.

So of course, do you know what's gonna work and they know what's gonna work when they get there. They're not there. Like I said, define problems in large buildings with systems that are integrated. Like we spoke of before, there's a higher level of commissioning requirements, uh, that may be appropriate to do the scale and complexity.

And you touched on the, the two codes that would be NFPA three, which is a standard for commissioning of fire protection and life safety systems. And also NFPA four, which is a standard for integrated fire protection and life system testing. This wouldn't be something that the technician decides to do.

This would be. More in your realm where the, the specification in the engineer is gonna require that the commissioning be. Uh, perform under one of those two codes. Um, of course in that scenario, you'd have an independent third party. That'd be retained by the owner and they'd be listed in the project specification to, to, uh, perform that, that level of commissioning.

Uh, again, you wouldn't do that in a strip mall with. With a pull station of smoke detector, it'd be on a large high rise or a complex where you have large integrated systems with the smoke control on the other way to recall where you really want a higher level of scrutiny and you wanna make sure those systems are gonna work.

Yeah, Paul, uh, that's great. That's a great point. Yeah, my, the company I work for does a lot of work with the aircraft hangers and so. Um, there have been times where, uh, my company has been retained for third party commissioning and just verifying these, how these systems work in just a means and methods of that.

But, uh, yeah, I think it's interesting, uh, doing all the, some of the different tests, you know, activated all the initiation devices, the circuit in circuit integrity testing. Um, you know, just seems like the one that everybody would probably be most aware of is testing the scrubs and making sure they're all synchronized.

But, uh, yeah, it's interesting to, to see that process it's pretty involved. Um, I imagine it's, uh, cost prohibitive for a lot of projects unless they are for very expensive projects. Yeah, I appreciate you touching on that all. Yeah, of course. When you're mul dealing with multimillion dollar aircraft, you wanna make sure that works and you wanna spend the money to, to make sure it works.

And, uh, it's always interesting, you know, the making sure the logic works that it's intended to, you know, for a fire alarm system. Some of these integrated systems, you know, for some of these commercial hangers, they can have, you know, when the, when a foam system activates, it'll open louvers, which are not explicitly a, uh, fire protection and fire alarm feature, but it's controlling the way the building, you know, um, moves it.

He could shut doors, he could open LUS. Um, whether that be in the ceiling or in the, in the side wall of the aircraft hangers. It's neat to see this testing done, cuz it's, uh, you get to see how, what, what an integrated system looks like in action. Although it's not too much fun being opponent, a boom lift and.

Shutting down a duck smoke detector just and listening for the, the air handling unit to shut down. But, uh, no, I'm just, it's, it's still interesting, but it can be difficult sometimes better than being in the office. Yeah. yeah, it can be difficult to perform some of these testing and it, and performing some of these tests makes you think about.

Look how you locate these devices, but yeah, it's nice to have a variety of being out in the field and, and getting to see how it really works and, and also being at the, the computer drafting. So, so yeah, I just wanted to talk a little bit about your, your company. Draw fire LL. And just, I'd like to hear about what kind of projects you're involved with and yeah, just hear a little bit of more about your, your business.

Paul draw fire LLC provides a detailed oriented cost effective option to having I set level four certified engineering technicians on staff. Of course, that could be a little bit of an investment for, for a company. but having that resource will enable those small companies to compete with larger firms to build larger projects.

Uh, but also large corporations will use, draw fire to outsource their design because of our agility to provide a quick turnaround. Uh, of course in the fire loan world, everybody wants to draw us yesterday. Um, and if you're a large firm and engineering department, you really can't turn around things that fast.

And on the other side of the coin, if you're a small company with no design, in-house, uh, it's gonna be hard for you to compete, to get project without a good set of shop drawings. So, um, we hit that niche as well. Um, at draw fire, I basically manage the design department and coordinate the work depending on client priorities.

This can be a challenge sometimes when everybody needs the drawings yesterday. Uh, but actually that's the fun part is managing the, the manpower and the resources to meet a deadline. Um, drawing lines on a piece of paper gets kind of boring, but it's the, the challenge of juggling all the, the clients and all the work.

It's very interesting. Uh, it's neat to hear about seems like there's a lot of different ways. To be involved in construction. And it's not just your, I always like speaking with, uh, entrepreneurs and people who have, have found a different way to, uh, make a living in fire protection and fire alarms. So yeah, I like hearing about that.

I, I hear what you're saying also about people with their either, uh, shop drawings or construction documents yesterday. I think. A byline in the construction industry, or maybe just a, a property of culture and culture in general, right now people want things instantaneously. And a little bit of that may be the, the lack of planning or maybe of the owner.

I mean, the last thing the owner thinks about is the fire alarm. Sit with them more. I'm concerned about the wallpaper and the paint and what it's gonna look like. And then they find out they need a fire alarm system in, and then we get a call. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because. Uh, fire alarm system, you know, a lot of times people don't understand why and, and when the fire alarm system's required.

And yeah, I've run into that situation as well, where, you know, everybody's all concerned and rightly so concerned with the, with the programming and the function of the space. And then, uh, life safety code required. Life safety systems tend to be an afterthought of meeting the do minimus requirements of.

So, yeah, I hear what you're saying. Some of that could come from, uh, ignorance about fire protection or just, uh, getting busy and not remembering, uh, she got some notification and initiation devices in there and meat code and sadly, a lot of times, you know, the money is, is the factor. I went out, uh, back when I was a technician, uh, to a facility, the, the insurance company was gonna require the, the business to have a fire alarm system or else they were gonna raise their insurance premiums.

And this was a, uh, wood working place. And they had saw us that was piled up in the corners. And of course, saws can be just as explosive as, as gas because the particles are so fun. And the company quoted the, the system and the owner decided to pay the pay the insurance premium because it was cheaper than getting the, the fire alarm system installed.

So, um, I couldn't believe it, but they're the owner and that's a little disheartening. I would think that, you know, uh, we, I, I get into situations a lot of times where even when it's not code required, it's. Uh, fire alarm systems put in, just because of the, that it's not an extravagant investment, I guess if you're a small business, uh, it could be, but, um, for any medium to large size, uh, company, uh, the, you know, fire alarm is, uh, a very small percentage of the overall budget of a building.

So I see people adding 'em, even when. They are maybe on the threshold of being required, but yeah, that's a little scary about the combustible dust hanging out in the shop. Just saying that, no, we we'll just take the insurance premium bump. Um, seems like you would want to not only, uh, protect your, uh, building occupants, but uh, ensure the longevity of your building.

Um, put that minor investment. In the grand scheme of things. Yeah. If you consider the cost of replacing the building and all your assets versus the cost of, you know, the premium, uh, of course replacing the building and the assets, and God forbid, someone dies, that's a lot more expensive than a fire alarm system.

Yeah. And I imagine there's a point at which that I imagine you could, uh, evaluate the break, even point in which. The fire alarm system pays for itself and the insurance premium. So got enough. It sounds a little bit, uh, short minded, but, uh, yeah. Anyways, Paul, I wanted to, uh, speak with you a little bit more.

I know that you are involved with a, um, Fire alarm systems training program at the Cape fear community college. And I wanted to hear more about that, um, from you and about the program and about your work there. Uh, yes, the, um, I am an instruct at K V community college and the fire alarm system training program, uh, is designed to produce competent and qualified individuals, uh, is our belief that properly trained and knowledgeable fire alarm system designers and technicians, uh, were reduced to losses due fire or false alarms and improve the quality of life in their community.

And the course was actually. Uh, an in-house training program that I provided for a company. Um, I'm also a nice ambassador. And at the time that I was completing the, the application for the, the ambassador program, one of the questions was how are you gonna promote nice certification in your community?

Which I had no idea how I was gonna do that. Um, and about the same time the owner of our company wanted all the technicians to be at least nice at level two certified. And, uh, by journey to, to level four, I had compiled lots of study materials and, and things of that nature. And, uh, I went to the owner and I offered to teach a little class in house to, to get those technicians ready for the nice set exam.

Uh, And that was a little one hour class that we provided every few weeks, uh, for our people and whoever want to come. And, uh, the college ended up picking up. That little training session and it evolved into the, the classes that we have now. Um, we offer two online classes. We have an alarms, 1 0 1 and alarms 1 0 2, uh, which is perfect people that are working.

Um, the alarms 1 0 1 is designed for those individuals who are new to the Harlem ministry. And we'll focus on fundamentals and that's geared to a ISET level one or two. And we also have the alarms 1 0 2, which is designed for individuals who are fire alarm technicians, or have meter experience in the fire alarm industry.

And we focus on application and design, and that is geared towards a ISET level two or level three. Uh, so if you were a nice at level two, wanting to get into level three, which. The transition between a technician and a designer. Uh, it's gonna be kind of hard for that technician out in the field to acquire that knowledge that they're gonna need for that level three exam, uh, and a great way to get that.

Of course would be an online course. Oh, that's great. I love hearing about, uh, different opportunities for people to learn about, uh, fire safety. And it sounds like you're providing. Unique experience at, uh, that Cape pre community college for people to, um, invest in their knowledge and, uh, life safety and fire safety and firearm systems.

So, uh, I find that really fascinating. Um, yeah. I don't know if you would, uh, uh, go over, uh, I mean, it sounds like you covered the gamut of topics that you could learn because. For these nicest certifications, you have to have a comprehensive knowledge, but yeah, I don't, I don't know if, uh, maybe, uh, you could speak on, uh, maybe some of the segments or some of the different, um, topics that you cover.

I'm sure it's comprehensive in you by no means have to cover them all, but, uh, yeah, that might. Paint a picture for the listeners. Yeah, I guess the, the distinction that we like to make is, is this is a far alarm course. This is, this is in a nice prep course. You can, you can find stuff online where they're gonna teach you the exam and get you ready for the exam, but we develop fire alarm technicians.

So we don't just talk about what's on nit exam. Go through physical science and the fundamentals and things that are gonna help you understand how fire works and how fire is detected. And if you know those fundamentals and have that knowledge. Grasp and the other concepts are much easier because you've got the fundamentals.

Um, a couple advantage of the, of the course is, uh, it's available online 24 7 at your availability. So if you work nights or days or weekends or whatever, the, the course is always there whenever you are available to take it. We also, our test questions are also on a computer online with a time. So, uh, you get a lot of practice when you go in to take that exam, you're on a computer answering questions in a time environment.

And a lot of students will say that the T exam was easy after they, they took our course. And I believe that's because one they've they're in that, that testing environment and two. They know the code inside and out, um, each course has about a thousand test questions and most of those questions come directly from the code book.

Uh, if you know the code, then any exam's gonna be easy, no matter who's giving you the exam. Um, the only drawback, uh, that I can identify is the cost. The course is only $185 and people don't feel that they're gonna get anything for that, that low cost cuz other courses, you know, they're five, six, $700, uh, and only give you a sample of the material that we offer in our classes.

Wow. Paul, that's a, I didn't, wasn't aware of that about the cost. That's an incredible offer for, uh, such a low price. These courses are, they can be just extreme prices. I was looking at prep courses just this week for another certification. And most of them just started a thousand dollars. And that's like, if you're already subscribed to their, you know, $300 membership, so man, and $185, I I'd definitely consider taking, taking the course, even though I am by no means.

A beginner at, at fire alarm design. That sounds like something I would be definitely be interested in. So I'm so glad to hear about that. Well, we got classes starting on the 31st, in a few weeks, so, uh, we can definitely sign you up. Um, when the college asks me what we can do to get more people, um, I tell 'em raise the price.

This is too cheap. Um, and like you said, they, they give you upwards of a thousand dollars. And a, a thing to look for is the EU that are. those programs you're talking about. You may get 0.1 0.2 CUUS for that training. Uh, and our course is gonna give you 14.4 CUUS. So, uh, a lot of technicians will use our class to get points, to get re-certified.

Um, you know, ISET requires that you get 90 points over a three year period. But you can take our class. Uh, and when you pass it, you earn enough, your CU credits will convert over to 45 N set points. So right there, you get a four month class, you, you learn something and you get 45 points for your ni set renewal, uh, which is unheard of all at a very low cost.

Yeah, that's incredible. And I think another, uh, excellent distinction is. For engineers need these, uh, CEUs as well. So I think that if you're an engineer looking for, uh, certification points for your professional engineering license, or, um, I'm not aware if, uh, there are other certifications in which you might apply as well.

I'm sure there are maybe, uh, like a CFPs or a CSP might have continuing education requirements. So sounds like it would. An excellent option for anyone who works in fire and life safety and wants to know more about these things. I think it's, uh, only responsible. Um, if you do work in these areas to have continuing education, even if it's not, uh, your hand is not forced by some, uh, licensing agency.

So yeah, I'm really, really happy to hear about. Paul seems like a good option and I'm glad to be able to put a light on it. So, well, I wanted to talk about, I feel like it might be a little bit tone deaf in today's, uh, uh, pandemic times. If we didn't talk about how you are adapting the, uh, the curricula at Cape for college, and sounds like you already have.

Uh, addressed it in some ways with the op with the online, uh, option. But yeah, I just wanted to ask if there are any ways that you see the way you teach fire alarms changing cause of this, uh, cause of the pandemic. Well, actually I don't for the classes I teach there, there's no change, uh, with the online nature of the chorus, it's already COVID friendly, uh, mask or optional.

Uh, as far as the college goes, The college is working with local county health and emerging management officials to actively monitor the noble coronavirus disease to protect the health and wellness of our campus. Uh, we have established safety protocols to include social distancing, face coverings, cleaning of classrooms throughout the day.

Uh, the college also promotes personal hygiene, such as hand washing. Ask students to avoid physical contact, such as shaking hands and staying home when they're sick. Uh, of course the campus is open, uh, for advising and admissions and financial aid. Uh, which of course that is also offered online virtually.

Um, as far as the fall, some of the traditionally in-person classes, uh, will be offered online or in a hybrid format with a combination of, in person in online instruction. Um, as part of. Federal coronavirus aid relief and economic security or cares act, uh, KFI community college received $2.3 million in federal funds, which will be provided as a direct payments to students as an emergency financial aid grant for expenses occurred or related to the disruption of campus operations due the virus.

Uh, and we did have one student who had to, uh, withdraw for Corona. Uh, Issues they were having. And of course they were able to, to use those relief funds and, and, uh, were not required to pay for the class. Um, in their case, we actually just rolled them into the next, the next class. So, um, just because we're virtually online, uh, I mean, you're not gonna catch it by coming to class, but you may con contract it other ways and it may affect your ability to come to class.

And of course we're gonna accommodate everyone. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. I, uh, just wanted to touch on that, cause I know it's probably on everybody's mind. Uh, maybe too much, maybe this should just be about that. The fire safety and whatnot, but yeah, I just wanted to touch on that a little bit anyways. Uh, I know you spoke about your, um, N a ambassadorship earlier.

I, I would love to hear more about that. And also just in general, I think you've, uh, kind of illustrated it through this interview wide. Uh, NSA certifications are important that just for your, uh, assuring your knowledge base. But yeah, I would like to hear you speak a little bit more about. certifications and the value of these?

Uh, yes, I am a, a, I ambassador in the ambassador program was started to, um, just get the word out to the community about, uh, what N certification is and, and to promote it as well. Um, I also serve on. Uh, I set board of governors as the chair. Uh, the board meets twice a year to set strategic goals and establish operating policies for I set.

Um, but certification in general, uh, in any industry is, is important to the quality of life and communities to provide the public with bridges that won't fall down and buildings that are. Uh, it is important to make the distinction between certificate or certificate and certification. Um, anyone can take a class or seminar and receive a certificate, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're certified.

Nice. It is a third party organization that does not provide training. Uh, some. In some agencies that provide certifications will also provide training to get you certified, which is kind of a self-serving enterprise. Whereas Ned is a, is a third party. They don't provide training. Um, NSAID certified individuals are experienced incompetent.

What makes them unique is that they require experience or time in the job as well as knowledge in the form of an exam. For instance, You're gonna take a, an exam for all four levels, but you're gonna also. Work experience for those levels for level one, you'd need three months for level two is two years for level three is five years.

And for level four is 10 years. So you may have the knowledge to pass that level four exam, but if you don't have 10 years of experience in the industry, then they're not gonna certify you. And I think that's the biggest. Distinction between I a and, and the rest is that they it's a two there's two components for that certification, not just passing an exam.

Yeah. I think that's a great point. It's not just a, uh, something that you can sign up for and everybody passes, but it's, uh, two part process in which not only your knowledge is tested, but, uh, the there's an experience requirement as well. Yeah, I'm glad you illustrated that fact. Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's important for people to, um, get certified and, and, uh, not only, uh, be subject matter experts, but have third party, uh, verification of their knowledge.

So I'm glad that you touched on that, Paul, but, um, so I wanted to, uh, end with talking about a couple, uh, professional development topics. Yeah, I just wanted to ask Paul, um, do you see any, uh, uh, what do you see as trends in the, in the industry right now in fire alarm in life safety? I'm not sure I would call it a trend, but, uh, There are efforts, uh, to change legislation, to eliminate licensure, which is of course PEs and also, uh, certification requirements.

Uh, the argument is that current requirements are a burden to the individual and they increase the cost to the owner. Um, as we talked about. Businesses that don't wanna fire loan system. This is somewhat shortsighted and the cost save initially would be eclipsed by the cost to repair or replace work that is performed incorrectly or by people who aren't certified.

Um, and you know what, what's the cost on a, on loss of life? I mean, it's hard to put a dollar amount on that. Um, so a largely from a bridge collapse or a far alarm system that didn't work properly and result in death are much more costly. That having someone that's competent to, to install a system, most individuals will say, well, I know what I'm doing, so I don't need to be certified.

Uh, but how does the owner and the public know that someone is competent without a certification to, to measure the performance. Um, and that was a really a big thing for me. Um, I still remember the day that the fire marshal came to a commission of fire alarm system. And the first thing he asked me was, uh, where's your United set certification.

And I'm, like I said, I mean, I was competent. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't have a performance measure to indicate that I was. Uh, so when you do get that one, you could demonstrate that you are competent and you are certified and that'll sometimes get you a higher wage. So if you're certified. Do get paid a little bit more and your company can compete on projects that require certification.

Um, companies tend not to wanna get people certified because they're gonna want more money. But, but yet the, the other side of the coin is that that company can. It opens them up for more projects that are, that are worth more money for them to do. So. Um, it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Well, I hope that's not becoming a trend in the industry, although I've heard of different states trying to, uh, lower that barrier to entry, but yeah.

Uh, I'm thankful for organizations, uh, certification organizations and professional organizations out there, like. S F P E and I'm sure N also who are, uh, lobbying for these certifications and the qualifications of professional to be stress test. So yeah, the, uh, national society, professional engineers or NS P they're they're actively involved in, in as well.

Um, so the, the they're basically trying to eliminate the professional engineer. You know, if you're living at professional engineer, then you're not gonna want someone you're not gonna require the certification as well. So it's kind of a, the first domino to fall would be that PE. So even nice to certified technicians still support NSPE because, uh, you know, it's, it's an engineering team.

So certified technicians work closely with professional engineers, uh, to provide the same goal. So one is, is just as important as the. Definitely. Definitely. I agree. Yeah. It's as a fire protection engineers, there's I require on, uh, essentially all my jobs, unless it's, uh, requested, um, otherwise by the owner or by the project stakeholders that, uh, designers be nice at certified and provide those qualifications as a component of the design.

Uh, so yeah, I mean, That's not gonna be a requirement unless usually is not gonna be a requirement unless, uh, engineers involved just say, Hey, we need really need qualified individuals performing this work and ensuring that it's, you know, ensuring that they are certified. And so, yeah, I could see how those go hand and glove, um, Those two certification aspects.

Yeah. It's really good to get to get that certification in the specification, but it's even better. Uh, when that specifications is enforced, uh, a lot of times we read the specs where it calls for this and that, but they don't actually require it. Um, so good on the write up, but not so good on the follow through.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. To struggle, uh, to. Enforce these things. And a lot of times, uh, it comes in the form of shop drawing, shop drawing review in which we're, um, you know, asking where the nice set qualifications, you know, add them to the draw, add your stamp to the drawing, or provide your nice set qualifications and in another form.

And, you know, even though it's on the drawings and in the specifications, um, sometimes contractors who don't have nice set level three or four, uh, certified. Um, professionals, maybe they were the low bid and they'll be like, well, we didn't, you know, we don't have, I said three qualified designers and you know, so, so what do you want us to do?

And, uh, so yeah, so we get into those situations and a lot of the times we'll, you know, say little requirement of the, you know, contract documents or the requirement of the contract documents. We enforce, we do everything in our power to enforce those. Um, yeah, I know what you're saying. It can be a struggle to, uh, ensure that the letter of the contract documents is enforced and our company does get a few calls from a, a company that does get those projects and then they find out they need a nice set certified designer for the shop drawings.

Uh, my advice be read the contract first. Definitely. So Paul, I wanted to end with that. Um, are there any resources that you would recommend to professionals you wanted to learn more about. Fire and hard systems. Well, I hear there's an online class at K three community college , uh, but really the, um, N FPA, they provide free online access to all their codes and standards.

And no one really has an excuse for not following their guidance because. , you know, it's free. You can go on internet, you can sign up and you can read all the codes and standards. Of course, if you wanna buy the book, you know, you have to purchase it, but NFAs not gonna charge you to, to be knowledgeable of the codes and standards, you know, all that's for free.

Um, I mean, other than that, I mean, you got the internet and the whole world is your oyster, so there's no excuse, really not to know something. It's all there. I appreciate. Awesome. Well, Paul, I just wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast and I'll be sure to put links to Cape for community college and drop fire LLC, in the show notes that people wanna find out more about you.

And yeah, I just wanna thank you so much. And I enjoyed our conversation. Yes, sir. Guess it was good to talk to you today. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

On this episode, we speak with Richard Meier about fire and explosions investigations. Episode 9 covers what it looks like to conduct an origin and cause investigation utilizing NFPA 921. Richard speaks about the most common fires and contrasts fire effects to fire patterns. We also break down what it means to conduct an investigation with a basis in peer reviewed science.

Tell me about your background and how you got into fire protection? What kind of work does one start out performing as a fire and explosions investigator? Can you explain a little bit more about what the scientific method is in the context of a fire and explosions investigator? Will you speak about fire patterns and the different kind of fire patterns found in NFPA 921? What is the difference between investigating an explosion as compared to a fire? Do you have any interesting or challenging cases of fire or explosions investigations that you would share? What are some resources that you would recommend for people to learn about forensics and fire/explosion investigation? What does the process of deposition in court look like is it like you see on TV? What kind of tasks do you perform in your labratory that you can't investigate in the field?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Hello, all welcome to episode nine of fire code. on this episode of fire code tech. I speak with Richard Meyer, a fire and explosion investigator. Richard has formal education in mechanical engineering technology. Also, Richard is certified as a fire protection specialist and as a fire and explosion investigator in the interview, we talk about the scientific method and how it applies to fire and explosion investigations.

Richard explains fire effects and fire patterns, and goes in detail on the human aspect of what it means to do a fire investigation. We speak about the differences between investigating a fire in contrast to an explosion when looking for origin and cause Richard answers the question of what does it look like to be a subject matter expert in court for a fire and or explosion investigation?

Spoiler. It's not like forensic files or your favorite cop drama on TV. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Let's dive in. Well, hello, Richard. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So I wanted to get started with. Your background and how you got into fire protection?

Well, I'd like to make a little clarification and I don't really work in fire protection. I kind of work around the periphery of it. I work in fire and explosion investigation, and the way that relates to fire protection is I'm sort of the Monday morning quarterback. I provide feedback as to what happened and what went wrong.

I think it's important. Distinction, fire protection and fire investigation. They kind of go hand in. As we try to model the codes off of what we see as. Mistakes and things that went wrong or could have D been done better in fire. So interesting caveat there. I like that. Okay. And now, now that I've said that, uh, my background is I'm actually a mechanical engineer or degree in mechanical engineering technology.

And I spent about, uh, 24 years working in industry before I went into fire. Invest. And the way I got into it was actually my wife, then my girlfriend, uh, her family been in fire investigation at this point for about 65 years. Her grandfather had actually started the first private fire investigation company in the world.

And was the first investigator outside of fire departments who actually specialized in fire investigation. She told me what they did for a living, which was way more interesting than manufacturing. So that's how I got into it. Well, it sounds like you had very technical background and a lot of experience with understanding how things work.

And so that's important. So I'm sure you had plenty of groundwork for all that, uh, for your intro into fire and investigation, as a fire investigator, you really have to know how things work, how they fail, what they're made out of, how they're made. And my background is great for that. I, from there, I had to learn, you know, how to perform fire investigations.

Since I did a lot of failure analysis and, and problem solving as an engineer that kind of came naturally. Very interesting. Yeah, the longer I, the longer I'm in the fire and life safety industry, the more I realize that material science is a big part of what we do. So that's, I like that point that you said about failure modes and understanding how things work.

I think that's important. Yeah. The more I read about fire protection, the more. I start to understand that material science and chemistry is, uh, part of what fire life safety is about. Yeah. And I, I spent about the first 10 years in my manufacturing, uh, career in, uh, plastics, uh, one form or another plastic terminal S things like that.

And it's unfortunately, a lot of the things that we use nowadays and using our homes and our cars and everywhere else, our petroleum based materials and they will burn. That's a good note, you know, EV it seems like, uh, increasingly we're getting into more and more plastics and everything that, uh, is made.

Furniture pretty much anything you could touch nowadays almost has some sort of plastic component. So it's a big deal. It is. So I understand, you know, from my experience, the kind of work that, uh, you start doing as a fledgling individual in fire protection, or, you know, a designer or somebody in the design design side of things, but I wanted to ask you what kind of work do you, you know, do you start.

Out doing as a forensic investigator. Yeah. What does that look like for somebody who's just getting into the industry? Well, for a fire investigator and that's all I do is fires and explosions. Uh, and, and, you know, things related to that. Well, first off you have to learn how to do a fire investigation, which is learning what fire patterns are.

Uh, ignition occurs. How to conduct an investigation, you know, following the scientific method, things like that. As my work, as an expert, I also get involved in reading and interpreting fire codes and, and understanding what they mean in a lot of cases where there's litigation it's like, was the code being followed?

Did it really have an impact on the case, things of that matter, but as far as, you know, how does one actually learn the ropes of becoming a fire investigator? Yeah, it's basically. Learning about conducting an investigation and the science behind it, the fire patterns, the chemistry, the fire dynamics, even things like building construction, building systems, like the electrical system, the plumbing system, if it, if it has, especially if it has, uh, fire protection, the fuel gas systems, you know, a lot of cases I get involved with or propane or natural gastric, basically you have to know a little bit about everything.

I could see how the role. Of a fire engineer in any capacity has to have knowledge about a wide range of things. Um, so that's interesting that you talk about the plumbing systems and the electrical systems and some of the other components of the building. Now that's important to understand that for the purpose of investigations, I would really like what you talked about when you were speaking about the scientific method and, you know, starting to understand.

Fire patterns and some of the different baseline, uh, fundamentals of fire investigations and explosion investigations. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about, um, your approach as a forensic investigator and maybe, you know, touch a little bit more on what the. Scientific method is for fire and explosions investigations.

And yeah, if you could go a little bit more in depth on that, well, the, the scientific method, you know, really goes back a couple hundred years and it's just a way of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data. In fire investigation, we basically use six or seven steps, a full scientific method. It has a couple more steps because it involve.

Peer review and feedback. And in my line of work, my peer review and feedback is, did the jury like it. And did they agree with me? But the scientific method is, you know, basically it's acknowledged the problem. There was a fire define the problem. Well, we have to figure out what started the fire. So we confront it from happening again, collect data and that's everything from witness interviews to.

The observations we make at the fire scene may collect physical evidence that we believe was related to how the fire was ignited or the first fuels involved. And then we take that evidence in our observations. We start developing hypothesis. Hopefully you can come up with more than one. The next step after we develop the different hypotheses about the ignition scenario or, or the, the fuels in the ignition sources, the right way to do it is actually try to disprove.

You try to disprove each hypothesis and one you're left with only one that you can't disprove. Hopefully that is the most likely cause of the fire. Now, in some cases, it's a fairly simple thing. I've had cases where we've had video surveillance cameras that actually captured the fire igniting. On the other hand, there are cases where there were no, there were no cameras, no witnesses, or the witnesses weren't necessarily completely reliable.

and it's not that they're, you know, bad people or mentally deficient or anything. It's just that your behavior during the fire changes, it's a very traumatic event. Even if you're not directly involved with the fire, it's a traumatic event. And it alters your perception of reality. There are cases where, you know, somebody says there was fire coming out every window.

When in fact the fire was only coming out one window of the structure and what it really means. There was fire coming out every window that I looked at. Uh . So, you know, when, when dealing with witnesses that you have to confirm that information with physical evidence, if at all possible, and not just take any particular piece of information as gospel.

And as I said before, we're trying to disprove our hypotheses, not prove them. And the reason is, is if you're trying to prove it, you get into what's called bias, especially expectation bias, and, uh, confirmation bias. If you go into an investigation and you think that you already know the answer that's expectation bias, and then you start disregarding any evidence that tends to disprove your preconceived answer and only pay attention to the evidence that corroborates it.

Which of course leads to bad results. The general picture, there is no good feedback to help us prevent the incident from happening. Again, smaller scale I've been involved in several criminal cases where fire investigators have gone in and oh, this, this has to be an arson. And. Completely ignored any evidence to the contrary in the cases I've been involved in so far managed to keep innocent people out of jail.

There are many documented cases where people have been put in jail and at least one has been executed based on very bad fire investigations. So it is imperative that we follow the scientific method, even if we don't like the result. That's really interesting to hear you talk about the human aspect of fire and investigation.

Usually when I think of fire science and, uh, fire or an explosion investigation, I think of the science of it or the technical aspect in which you are looking at the physical evidence, you're looking at the fire patterns and that sort of thing. But I didn't think about the. That there's a human component of, it could be video there's other avenues in which you could learn about this investigation or this fire event.

I liked hearing about that. That's really interesting. And that human element also plays into both fire investigations and fire protection. You know, how do people react during a fire, especially if they are intimately involved in the fire. Do they run for the closest exit? Do they run for the exit that they came in from?

And that's often the case, especially. Venues that they're not that familiar with bars, restaurants, theaters, things like that. And that's why we have a history of horrific events. The club in Rhode Island station night club, station night club a couple years ago, the coconut groove nightclub in Boston, in, in the forties, Kentucky sucker supper club in.

The IOI theater in the, you know, 1906 in Chicago where you had 600 dead. And it's not just the people who are involved directly at the fire at the time. It's what about the people running the place? What did they do for training? What did they do for fire prevention protection? What did they do that actually made the situation worse?

Did they lock exit? So people wouldn't sneak in without paying a covered charge, some things like that. So, you know, things that I look at are also things that fire protection. Protection engineers look at. I think that another great point you touched on is investigating with a solid background in science and with good scientific approach.

I was reading a, the Q1 issue of the SFP magazine in 2019 was all about fire and investigation. And I was reading about how. Since there's such a variety of people involved with fire and investigations that there's, uh, you know, a wide set of gradient of quality science that's being done. You know, some people are performing great fire science.

Some people are using more qualitative or less strong, scientific method approach. So I thought that was a great point. You touched on, on how important it is to check your bias and be sure to use solid science and not, uh, just colloquial or, uh, trying to confirm your own bias. Yeah. As we referred to it as a old wive's tales and, uh, you know, on the job training, The guy who fell off the fire truck.

Now, there there's actually two documents that are, if you're gonna be in fire investigation that you, you have to have to get, have to have to learn. And that is, uh, the first is NFPA 10 33, which is the standard for qualification for. Professional fire investment, or excuse me, the standard for professional qualification for fire investment.

And that'll tell you what it is that you need to be able to do and the topics that you need to have knowledge of. And it's the, the minimum, it's not the end all be all, but it's the minimum. And there are some arguments in the industry because the document only specifies. That a fire investigator need to have a high school education, the high school diploma, or G E D and then some knowledge beyond the high school level on the various topics.

When we're in reality, a lot of the cases that I get involved in, uh, you need to have a really strong understanding of. Some engineering principles, thermodynamics chemistry, fluid dynamics, material sciences, things like that. And, uh, but anyway, that being said, uh, the next document that, uh, anybody involved in fire investigation should have is NFPA 9 21.

And that is the guide for fire and explosion investigation. And let me clear up a little something first, you know, people say I don't have to use it. It's only a. Well, the reason it's a guide is then NFPA speak. A standard has mandatory language in it. And a guide has recommended language in it. NFPA 9 21 has 30 chapters that deal with all different kinds of fires and explosions, everything from residential fires to fires and farm equipment.

And you can't say that'll she perform a farm equipment inspection if you're doing a residential fire. So that, that's why it's a guide in that. If you look at NFPA 10 30, 3, It refers you to N FPA 9 21 on how to do things. And both of these documents are really the only peer reviewed consensus built documents on fire investigation.

There's lots of books out there. Some of them good, some of them not so good. These are the only two that have been, you know, basically vetted by the industry. Very interesting in, uh, preparation for interviews and just add a pure curiosity. I've taken a look at, um, 9 21 before, and it has a lot. Great information.

And it's really interesting to read, you know, I, I've never, uh, been involved with a fire investigation or an explosions investigation myself, but document seems very robust and I think it's, uh, definitely good to be based in science and have a background or something to back you up. But there's not too many cases we're leaning on.

Um, peer reviewed sciences, done people, uh, huge disservice. So I think that's important. Point that you made there. Yeah. I wanted to talk about approaches in 9 21 or, you know, some of the factors in 9 21. So I was reading through 9 21 and I saw that there are several different fire patterns or just basically, uh, things to look for in different types of fires, like apartment fires.

And, you know, I was doing some reading on. Different types of fires, like point source fires or area source fires. Didn't know if you had some more detail about those or, or kind of what those are and, you know, factors you're looking at. I liked hearing you talk about windows, you know, and how seeing, how many of those are exploded or the physical patterns involving with those windows.

You just wanted to hear a little bit more about that. Okay. Well, I can't talk about fire patterns without first talking about fire effects and a fire effect is. The effect that the fire has on a particular material, it may be melting. It may be Charing. It may be loss of mass may be change in color. It may be change in chemistry.

An example of change in chemistry is chips and wallboard chips, and will go through a. A process called calcination and what it is is the heat drives the water out of the gypsum. So you have chemically bound water, and then you also have free floating water. That's that's in this mixture, the, the heat drives it out and it turns a solid, you know, hard material that normally you you'd have to punch pretty hard to put a, put a hole in it.

And do the soft, chalky stuff that crumbles when you, when you poke it with a finger. If we look at that, just as an example. So that's a fire effect. Now, if we look at it on a wall and we see that it starts in the lower left hand corner of the room and extends upward into the upper right hand corner of the room.

Well, that's a fire pattern. And the, the patterns can be a large effect or collection of effects. Actually, fire patterns can actually be very small too. It's, I've had cases where we're looking at, uh, say a gas leak out of a Butan lighter. And in that case, you're looking at fire patterns. It might only be, you know, a couple of millimeters, but, but generally speaking, when we're talking about fire patterns and, and say a residential fire, we're talking, you know, fairly large patterns, uh, could be a couple of feet, could be, you know, size of the room.

But we look at those patterns and there have been a lot of things attributed to fire patterns over the years as this shape means this and this shape means that. And some of that is true. Some of that's not so true, but say, if you have a, a, what we call a, the classic V pattern, that's a, you have a pattern that starts small at floor level and goes upward.

Well, we can infer from that, that, Hey, there's a fire that started there that the, the fire plume went up. Once it hit the ceiling, basically it hits resistance. So it starts going sideways. And that's why your plume goes from basically a, a, an inverted V or a straight up and down pattern to going wider at the top.

So we can say, okay, the, a fire started. Here or was burning here. The more important thing I think about fire patterns is they can tell you time and or intensity and also direction. And that's the, the, the goal of fire patterns really is to find the origin of the fire. You know, where did the fire start?

So if we look at each pattern and we say, okay, this, this burned for either burned very hot or burned for a long time. And also it can point us in a direction. Well, we know which way the smoke went, so, or the, the fire plume went. So if we go the other direction, well, the, the fire patterns in that way, and if we take more than one of those, we take two or more fire patterns.

We're starting to do what we call heat and flame vector analysis. Uh, so we, we take all those fire patterns and it will. Going back from once they came, that will point us to the area of origin. And the area of origin is important because if we can't determine the area of origin, we're gonna have a hard time determining how the fire started.

Once we get that origin down to as small and area as possible, we can start looking for the potential sources of ignition and the potential first fuels in additional fuel packages that. Added into the fire term. I've heard over and over again for fire and investigations is, uh, origin. And cause I believe that's, uh, the that's a term I keep hearing it is.

And, and people used to say, cause and origin, let's, let's find out what caused it. And then we'll know where it started. And it's like, no, that that's took fire investigators a long time, but they finally figured out they were doing it backwards. And you're just randomly attributing the, the cause of a fire to something.

And therefore that's where it must have started. And, uh, one of the things to keep in mind that, uh, you know, one of those lessons we learned the hard way was the greatest area of damage is not always where the fire started. It just hap it may be where the, the biggest fuel package was, or it may be the room that had the best ventilation.

So we, that's why we. Do all this analysis to try to figure out where it started, figure out how it started. And another common misconception is cause, and, and according to N F P I 9 21, the, the definition of cause is the person or entities that brought together the fuel and the ignition source to cause the, to bring about the fire.

Now, people will say, In, in a very simplistic way, they'll say, okay, well, we tracked, we tracked the fire to the kitchen. We tracked to, to the kitchen counter. What do we got? We got a coffee maker and a toaster. Uh, the toaster was unplugged. Therefore the, the coffee maker caused the fire. Well, the coffee maker may have been the ignition source of the fire.

The coffee maker may have provided the first fuels for the fire. But why did the coffee maker decide to start a fire? No, no, the coffee, maker's not really the cause the cause is, you know, what made those happen? Was it, the coffee maker was dropped and something was broken inside that allowed the, a hot wire to come in contact with a flammable piece of plastic.

Did the coffee maker have a failed temperature cut out that allowed it to get too hot. In which case the, you know, the first cause would be, you know, an accidental dropping of the coffee maker. The second cause could be a design or manufacturing defect, you know, it's there there's, it's, it's one of those things where you have to keep asking questions, you know, kind of use the Socratic method till you run out of questions to.

Very interesting. I like hearing about that. It's, it's, uh, very fascinating to hear you talk about different failure modes or, you know, you're really a detective, you know, trying to understand the cause of these fires and, you know, as, uh, somebody who works in the design side of things, I'm used to solving problems of a different variety, but yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk about that.

And you know, one of the areas I do work in is, uh, you know, analyzing fire protection systems. Did they, did they work. Or, you know, if, well, generally what I get there, they, they, for some reason, they, they were not effective. It's a question of, were they not, were they completely out of order? Was there, you know, some other factor such as the occupancy had changed, but the fire protection hadn't, was there something that, uh, kept them from working properly once in a while you run into a case where somebody deliberately disables the fire protection system so that the, so that when they start the fire, it burns.

That's scary stuff. Yeah. I always wonder about in these cases about the fire protection systems and you know, their impact on all of it, but, uh, yeah, that's a great point. That's a component of the investigation as well is how, what role did the fire protection systems play in the fire? So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about is, uh, what are the differences in, in investigating an explosion as compared to a fire?

Are there, is it the. Type of approach, uh, origin and cause approach and, you know, looking for the same things or what, what kind of, uh, how do they contrast? Well, generally the approach is the same. Although you may have to look for different things as I do a lot of gas explosions, and some of them are small, you know, it's at the, the gas grill exploded and, well, we pretty much know where that happened, but some of 'em are say a.

Household explosion, where in some cases you, you may have a couple of broken windows and a, a shifted wall or two, but I've had cases where the house house has literally been turned in the toothpicks. Yeah. That's uh, what we call a high order explosion for obvious reasons. But in, in such cases, you know, that the residential type explosions are the large industrial gas explosions.

It could even be a dust explosion for that matter. It's any diffuse fuel, you don't have an origin per se, as you know, basically the, the, or the, the epicenter of the explosion. Well, I use epicenter loosely because it typically refers to a, an explosive as opposed to, uh, you know, uh, a diffused fuel explosion, like leaking gas or, or dust or something like that.

But that being said, it's, you know, it's the. Doesn't matter so much as where it, the fuel was ignited because let's face it. Most of our houses and businesses and whatever else are, are just a long list of ignition sources from one end to the other with, you know, automatic things that turn on and off creating small arcs, pilot lights, and water heaters, things like that.

So the more important question. Where did the fuel come from and why is it in a place where it's not supposed to be? So in cases like that, we're actually the more, the most important question is, you know, where's the gas leak. Definitely. I'd like to hear about a case that you thought was, uh, exceptionally interesting or maybe challenging.

Yeah. I didn't know if you have a specific example of one of those, um, cases that you're involved in. Well, actually I've, I've had two cases and I can talk about 'em cuz they're both closed. Generally. I. Talk discuss cases that are, are open and in litigation. But first case was in Detroit, Michigan. Uh, it was a gas leak and this was a catastrophic explosion.

The homeowner, uh, was entering through the back door, turned the light switch on basically the house. Turning Smith res there was a D debris field extending about a hundred yards or more in every direction. Uh, the house next door literally had shrapnel that went through the, through the exterior walls through interior walls.

And this was a house that was built in the 20. So it had LA and plaster. I mean, this is stuff that'll normally stop bullets some sometimes, but they had, you know, shrapnel that had gone. Multiple walls. Unfortunately, nobody got hurt in that one. Uh, the homeowner at the house had exploded, unfortunately, uh, died from his injuries.

But in this case, uh, we had a home that was initially hooked to natural gas and then was later converted to propane because the, the owner of the property. Owned a propane company, so he could get, uh, propane fairly cheap, but the gas line still ran into the house. So then the question became, you know, where was the leak?

Not so much as, you know, what the ignition source was more or less likely that it was the, you know, turning on the light switch is, is what did it. But the, it came down to doing an evaluation of both systems. And we had found out that the, the natural gas coming from the gas company, uh, they had had a number of leaks in a gas main across the street.

And this is about, uh, 60 70 feet away. The, the, the gas main was an old steel main. That was almost 80 years old. Uh, it had a lot of time to collect, uh, corrosion had a history of being repaired every 10 years or so. And on the couple of days before the explosion, there were some heavy rains. What that does is it actually seals the ground.

Uh, normally the, the gas was basically coming outta the pipes and going through the Sandy soil. Straight up. And then you could, you could tell there was a line of dead grass that followed the gas main, but on the couple of days before the explosion, there was some couple of days of heavy rain. And what that does is it saturates the top of the soil with water, making it, uh, kind of impervious to the gas flow.

So the gas decided personifying the gas, which I should do, but the, uh, the gas, uh, then went laterally under the roadway. Under the front lawn and leaked in through the, you know, the old basement walls that were pretty poorest block by comparison, we found no issues with the piping for the propane. That is only a couple of years old.

It was plastic, it was all solid and no issues found. Uh, so we determined that the, it was a gas leak from the gas main is what, uh, led to the explosion. That's really rivet. I mean, if the guy was selling propane, I would've guessed first of all, that, that was the, that was the reason. But, uh, it's interesting how, you know, the investigation of the utilities and, uh, some of those factors is what led to a result there.

Okay. Now the second case I wanna talk about is a couple of years ago, we had hurricane Irma come through Florida and it came across the Southwest corner of the state towards the Northeast. Portion of the state. And I had a case in Fort Myers that had a, a, a minor propane explosion, but unfortunately, a fatality related with it.

And what happened in this case was, uh, there was a propane leak during the hurricane. There was a hurricane leak within the home. The occupants of the home could smell something, but they weren't sure what it was. And a couple hours later there was an explosion. I, to backtrack a little bit prior to the explosion, one, the, the homeowner was equipped with fire sprinklers, uh, sprinkler head in the, in the laundry room broke.

And it was sometime after that, that they started smelling something. Well, what happened was during the storm. Power line there, there were some, uh, high voltage power lines that were very close to the home. A power line had snapped, uh, fallen onto the ground and come in contact with the riser, for the water, for the fire suppression system, for the, for the fire sprinkler system.

And that had actually knocked out the one sprinkler head. And you're thinking, how, how can that happen? Well, strange things happen. One lightning strikes. And especially when you consider, you know, the piping inside the house was actually PV. Uh, but I did some, I did some, uh, resistance readings on the piping and, and it turns out that even with plastic piping and, and what you normally consider, you know, non-conductive materials, it did conduct some electricity.

It was, uh, between the metal riser on the outside and the, where the. Where the sprinkler head on the was on the inside was about 200 OS, which normally isn't gonna conduct a lot of current, but when you have a, you know, a 12,000 volt line come down and, and, you know, it's, it, it goes where it wants to go.

But at the same time, the, that it, that it knocked out the sprinkler, the power from that power line actually went through the natural gas or excuse me, not the natural gas, the propane piping, which came in. Close to the, uh, the sprinkler riser and they're bonded together and grounded. So it's a. The energy also made us way through the propane piping within the house, towards the dryer in the laundry room and had burned a series of small, almost microscopic holes into the stainless steel flexible connector between the house piping and the dryer.

So that provided the path for the propane to get into the house. So, as I said, the sometime between when the power line or about two hours after the power line came down, the explosion occurred. And what it, what I observed was that, uh, at the back of the house, there was a bedroom and the, the door to the bedroom was not damaged.

However, the screen on the screen porch behind the bedroom was melted and burned, which led me to, to the conclusion that. The back door was open. Well, the occupant of the bedroom down there was also known to be a smoker. In fact, we found, uh, you know, Ashray and cigarette butts and everything else. So unfortunately I think what happened was that he had opened the door, went the light up a cigarette, and then basically the ignited, the gas, and then all the pressure that would've been created by the, by the expanding burning gases, which normally would've broken windows and things.

And basically went out the back door where he was standing. He died from his. Couple of different scenarios and couple of D but unfortunately, same outcome, I guess. Uh, but, uh, wow. Those are really interesting cases and yeah, it's really cool to hear about those different cases and just kind of the different factors that you're looking for.

Another thing that I wanted to talk to you about is, uh, what are the most common fires that you, um, are investigating? It seems like you had some couple stories from residential fires, is that. The more common type of fire or type of investigation for you? Well, it is residential fires are the most common type of fire.

It's not all that I do. I do basically a little bit of everything. I do. Residential fires, industrial fires, you know, commercial buildings. I've done fires on large yacht, personal watercraft vehicles, everything from, you know, passenger cars to large heavy trucks, garbage trucks, always fun doing a garbage truck.

As you can imagine that they smell lovely when you get there. Uh, But yeah, I do a little bit of everything, but as far as, you know, the number of fires, yeah. The most common fires in the us are residential fires. And of those almost half of 'em are cooking fires. From there, you get into, you know, appliances, uh, electrical issues, less common things, you know, candles, kids playing with matches, even get into things like spontaneous combustion where, you know, somebody's been staining something and they took all the rigs and threw it in one in a trash can.

And. Their work room or laundry room, whatever. And, uh, there are certain oils that will self oxidize. And when there's a lot of it in one place has self oxidized real fast get real hot. That's uh, that's wild. Yeah. I, I guess I didn't know that about residential fires being the number one case, but that makes sense.

Seems like even more of a, uh, reason to ask people to put fire sprinklers in their house. But, uh, I don't see that happening any time soon. Well, I, I am an advocate. I, I, I freely admit I don't have 'em in my own house. Uh, but I do have lots of smoke alarms. Uh, I'm a big advocate of making sure that you have the proper number of working smoke alarms in your house.

I've only had the hundreds of, uh, fire and explosions I've investigated. I've only had one case where there was a working smoke alarm in the house and a fatality, but that wasn't the, it had really had nothing to do with the smoke alarm. It, it was a, uh, different, you know, was a daytime fire, uh, fire in a kitchen that got outta hand.

So the, the smoke alarm really didn't play into it. Uh, but other than that, yeah, it's, you know, a lot of fires occur at night. Uh, you only got about three minutes warning from the time the smoke alarm goes off to the time that the fire becomes untenable in the room. If where it occurs, if not the whole house.

So yeah, it's, you know, $10 well spent. If you could only afford one smoke alarm help, you can get a smoke alarm at Walmart with a battery for $4. Could, uh, plug for fire safety systems. People need to probably be testing their fire alarms and whatnot to not just have the smoke alarms, but do the maintenance on 'em it's, uh, you know, do the test every so often, you know, ideally people would test them for, for smoke.

There is AR cans of artificial smoke. You can buy, you know, really that's used more by professionals, but wouldn't hurt to do it at home. And also. Make sure they're not past their, their prime, uh, smoke alarm are supposed to be replaced from 10 years from the data manufacturer. And the reason is, is that as they get older, they become less reliable.

They get coated wood dust, you know, the, you may have some issues with, uh, humidity and, and corrosion and delamination in the sensing chambers. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with them. So if they're more than 10 years old time to put a new one in my, uh, grandpa was. Was a fireman and a fire chief.

So I always remember growing up, he would have a box of smoke detectors around for such occasions. So I wanted to move into some professional development topic, cuz it seems like that you have had a very successful career so far in fire investigation and forensics. And so I wanted to pick your brain a little bit.

Things that you would suggest for others in the industry. What do you recommend as a good place to go to learn about fire and explosions investigations? Well, it, uh, there are a lot of good resources out there. Um, and it kind of depends on, on what career track you're following, if you are in the fire industry, as in, uh, and I say, you know, fire department, fire rescue, things like that, there are a lot of, uh, resources available to the public sector through the state fire colleges.

Things like that. In addition to that, whether you're public or private, there are a couple of associations that deal with fire investigation directly. There is international association of arson investigators that they provide training both in person and online, especially nowadays with the cor coronavirus pandemic.

I've started to doing some online training there. The national association of fire investigators, uh, that also does, uh, training. There is a program called CFI trainer.net, which is online, which is free training for fire investigators. It's, uh, uh, collaboration through the international association of fire investigators receive some financing through the federal go.

There are, you know, basically you can sign on and take a lot of different lessons for free everything from, you know, figuring out, uh, ignition sources to some fire, chemistry, everything else there, you know, there's probably about 70, 80 different, uh, couple hour programs on there that you can take. And those, those you can test for credit, which is sometimes necessary for, uh, depending on the certifications you can get.

Uh, some of them require you to, to have, uh, a tested. Uh, training, uh, especially, uh, uh, II puts out the, uh, or provides the CFI or certified fire investigator, uh, certification NAFI does the, uh, certified fire and explosion investigator certification. And then there's other ones besides that. And then beyond that, there are, there are magazines on fire investigation put out by the different, uh, the different associations.

There are also more kind of more periphery. Type associations that deal with fire protection and also to some extent, fire investigation. There's the international association of fire safety science there's, uh, ASTM, uh, does standards on fire protection and forensic investigations. The, the, the list is endless, uh, N.

Uh, the national Institute of, uh, standards and technology has a lot of information online. They do a lot of fire, uh, testing. One of their most famous ones is the Christmas tree videos that they put out. They start sending out the information on every, every December or November. And it's, you know, how fast a dried out Christmas tree can.

Can. Bring your fire to, uh, basically to flash over in full room involvement, which can be as little as 30 seconds. We no longer have a live Christmas tree in the house, needless to say, uh but there are lots of places to go, uh, that you can look for information on fire bed. That's great. I appreciate all the references and all the good spots.

I. To, uh, you know, promote people to, um, be knowledgeable and, you know, seek these resources and stay up to date on what's going on in the field. But speaking about, you know, what's going on in the field, um, what kind of, do you see any meaningful trends right now in the industry? I mean, you don't have to go, you know, into, uh, what the coronavirus is doing, but, um, you know, just, but you can, but also, uh, yeah, just what do you see as meaningful trends in the industry?

Right. Well, it's I'm, I'm gonna go back a little bit because it's in fire investigation, there really was no science involved until the, the late seventies, early eighties. You know, you had some people that were doing a, basically a scientific using a scientific method in an investigation, but a lot of it was old wives tales and, uh, just passed down bad information.

Um, so from there to the present day, the amount of. Research and information available, the, the material sciences and, and, you know, the, the, the dynamics and everything of fires has really gotten so much better, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. And, you know, once in a while I see a little backsliding it's, uh, it's there are people who.

Want to learn everything they can and do a good job. And, well, there's a few people still out there, unfortunately who just wanna kind of coast along. But overall I see the, the trend is that, you know, more science, more education is being expected of people who are testifying as experts in fire cases. And it's the for, for every step backwards, you know, there's three steps forward.

So, uh, you know, basically it's, uh, if you're gonna be hired, at least in the, on the private side, as a fire expert, you know, you're gonna need, uh, an engineering or a chemistry degree, there's even, uh, a college or two that, uh, does. Degrees in fire investigation now, Eastern Kentucky university. Uh, I know for a fact, does bachelor's program in fire investigation as part of their fire protection program?

I think, uh, Wooster Polytechnical Institute may do a fire investigation degree or at least one, or at least, uh, uh, an emphasis on it in their fire protection program. I haven't looked into that lately, if you're gonna be, you know, if you're gonna be an expert, uh, on the private side, it. Education is really the way to go education training.

And of course, experience and experience is the hardest thing to get. And, uh, to be honest, you know, fire investigation is a fairly hard field to, to break into. There's a, a lot of large companies hiring, you know, investigators on a part-time basis, but to be able to do it. Full time and that's kind of hard to get into.

Yeah, I think it's, uh, interesting. I, I didn't, uh, coming outta college with a degree in fire protection and safety technology. I didn't really see a lot of opportunity in, uh, fire and investigations. I don't even know if that, uh, crossed my mind at the time. But, uh, yeah, it seems like a very interesting field and something that I always find fascinating.

So I appreciate your insight. Yeah. I just wanted to, uh, I wanted to ask about this is kind of a professional development topic, but I, I see from looking at your, uh, your LinkedIn, that you had some experience in being on the. N FPA 9 21 committee. Um, I didn't know if you would, uh, tell me a little bit about that and, you know, talk about, is it meaningful to, you know, get involved with these, uh, processes of codes and standards?

Okay. Actually I'm, I've never been on the 9 21 committee. Uh, I've been going to meetings for, oh, about 10 years now. I'm I've been on member of several task groups on nine 20. And the, the thing is, you know, there's about 10,000 fire investigators in the, in the us and 30 spots on the committee and everybody wants to be on it.

So, but not everybody can be. Uh, but, uh, you know, I've been involved in as been involved as I can in the, the standard making process for that. Uh, I have been a member, an alternate member of the. NFPA 10 33 committee. Uh, and I am currently a member of the NFPA 9 0 1 committee and, uh, 9 0 1 is the standard for, uh, reporting.

Uh, well it was reporting fire incidents. Now it's just reporting incidents for first responders. It's not the official name, but it's, it's basically becoming a little broader as we go. But basically anything that the. The fire department will show up to it's. Uh, it's. It's how to record that data and get useful data and statistics get that can be put into the code making process.

You know, the, the feedback on whether things are working or not. So, I guess we're kind of getting back to where we started with this interview. Uh, on the 9 0 1 committee and, and, you know, it's a, so we try to try to make sure that it's good and useful information that can actually be put to use and not just recording, not just checking boxes to, to make sure the boxes are checked.

That's awesome. Well, I just wanted to end with, uh, one more question. I think I'd be kicking myself in the pants. I know this is kind of jump around in the interview selection here, but, uh, Yeah, I just wanted to ask you about expert witness testimony and kind of to hear from you what that looks like.

Because, you know, I think I like most people have this, uh, you know, uh, law TV show image in my mind when I hear, you know, a subject matter expert testifying on a, a criminal case or on a different case. But yeah, I didn't know if you would speak about what that looks like a little bit. For my interests.

Well, most of my testimony is actually done in depositions. Uh, very little of it is actually done in the courtroom and, you know, working on the, the, the private side, I get involved in a lot of litigation cases. Um, and typically judges like the parties to settle that on their own, either through mediation or through agreement, some other form of agreement without making the judge.

Go through a two week trial, you know, judges have big calendars and lots of things. And, you know, if they, if everything went to trial, the basically our legal system would grind to a halt. So most of my testimony is done in depositions, which can, you know, last a couple hours. It can last all day. I've seen not me personally, but I've seen other depositions that have gone for several days and think of it as preparing.

An oral exam with a professor who doesn't like any answer that you give him, because the deposition is typically taken, taken by opposing counsel. So , you're gonna have to be ready to defend your answer, justify your qualifications, everything else. Uh, and, and yeah, it sounds bad. It's really not that bad.

It's uh, but it's, it's it's I consider it the most stressful and difficult part of the job. Now, compared to that trial testimony, I, I would much rather. To testify in open court because the, the, the reality is is that the opposing counsel can only flog you for so long in public before the jury starts to feel sorry for you.

And we'll, you know, go, uh, go with you just because they don't like the other guy . So, and, and, you know, it's, uh, you know, an eight hour deposition may end up being a 15 minute, uh, 15 minutes in the courtroom. So it's, uh, it. Less stress, less, uh, less headaches. Oh yeah. It's uh, yeah. So as far as testifying goes, yeah.

It's generally depositions. And once in a while you get to go to court. That's interesting. I, I didn't know about that, but, uh, that's very fascinating to, uh, who you talk about that. Hmm. So, uh, just, uh, I know said that was. The last question, but, uh, just had one more thought come about that we didn't get to earlier.

You know, I've speaking of, uh, laboratories and, you know, analysis and good science, you know, I've seen some images on your. Your, uh, website of, you know, you doing, um, laboratory work, but I didn't know what kind of things that you would be able to investigate in your laboratory that you, you know, wouldn't be able to do, um, in the field or just through, you know, investigation.

Okay. Well, I have a fairly small laboratory it's oh, how many square feet? Probably, uh, about 15 by about 20 feet. Roughly, uh, so you can do the math, but it it's, uh, pretty well packed with all kinds of different stuff. And, and in my case, I am primarily concerned with, uh, ignition sources and first fuels, how, how did the fire start, you know, is, is this whatever capable of igniting is ignition sources?

Capable of igniting for fuel B. Um, so my experiments or tests are generally on a pretty small scale. Now you may get, uh, some people or entities that have huge labs. If you go, if you ever get a chance to go to the N lab or the UL lab, these things are basically the size of a large industrial building and they'll have, uh, devices, uh, called kero motors.

Can measure the heat and smoke coming off of a, basically a burning house. In some cases, you know, the N lab is huge. Uh, they can build a, a small house within their laboratory and set the whole thing on fire and determine how much, what the, the heat release rates are and the how much smoke is coming off and how much oxygen is being used and things like that.

And it's, and it's from my, from my point of view, you know, I'm, I'm trying to determine how the fire started. So. I focus on the, the small end of it. And it's so, you know, I have some furnaces, I have some, uh, flashpoint testers. Uh, I have, uh, you know, some different electrical devices for, for, um, both putting out, uh, varying electrical, voltages, and currents and measuring them.

Because like I said is my, my focus is on the beginning of the fire, not the end. I see. Well, awesome. Well, Richard, I can't, uh, thank you enough. I appreciate you coming on the show and you know, uh, you've been a pleasure to talk to. Yeah, thanks again. Thank you, sir. It's been a pleasure for me as well.

Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional.

If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next.

Chris Campbell is a fire protection engineer who works in the construction industry. Chris has undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Maryland in fire protection engineering. In this episode of Fire Code Tech, we talk through the process of conducting a life safety analysis of a building.  Chris also talked about resources like the Building Code Blog and a database he created for fellow professionals.

Abutting Buildings: Building Code Blog

https://www.codecalls.org/

Tell me about your background in fire protection? Can we get into a little bit more about your education and how your got to where you are today? Can you tell me a little bit more about your co-teaching role at the university of maryland? When is the decision made to use performance based design? What does your role look like? Do you only perform life safety analysis or do you design other fire protection systems as well? What is your process for analyzing the life safety systems of a building? Tell me a little bit more about your experience starting the building code blog and why you did it? What is your plan for the building code blog and where do you see it going? Where do you go to learn about fire protection / what are some of the resources you use? What kind of trends do you see in the fire protection industry right now or just construction in general? What piece of advice do you have for professionals in fire protection?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Hello, all welcome to episode eight of fire code tech today on our episode of fire code tech is Chris Campbell. Chris is a fire protection engineer with formal education from the university of Maryland. Chris has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in fire protection engineering Chris's specialty in fire protection is life safety.

Chris is the author and the creator of the building code blog. In our interview, we discuss Chris's co-teaching role at the university of Maryland and how he approaches conducting a life safety review for a building. We take a look at what part of the design process you might choose to use performance based.

I enjoyed talking with Chris. He had a lot of great takeaways on building code, review, life safety and professional development. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Let's get into the show. Well, hello, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks, GU appreciate you having me on.

Well, I just wanted to get things kicked off with your background and how you got started in fire protection. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah, I think from a fairly early age, I had an interest in engineering and, um, You know, when I was very young that, uh, kind of came out in always wanting to take things apart and figure out how they go together and experimenting with different toys and, and games, you know?

So from an early age stuff like Legos, and as I got older to, to more complex things and just was, was fascinated by how things worked. When I, I started at, uh, the university of Maryland as a freshman. I actually went in as a mechanical engineering major, had heard about the, the fire protection engineering program there, and was always somewhat interested in it just because it was so unique.

And it was really the only program of that type that I'd ever heard of. In my college search and took a one credit just introductory class to, to fire protection, uh, my freshman year and was really interested by that and decided to make the switch at that time. I think in terms of the profession itself, uh, I think fire's just a fascinating thing to.

To study and to, to know more about certainly the, uh, positive job market, uh, at the time with, uh, I think, I think both then and now, uh, Maryland fire protection engineering majors had a pretty close to 100% job placement. So, uh, that sort of job security was also, uh, Not aernt by any means. yeah, the job security and fire protection is pretty remarkable.

I think that even during all this, uh, pandemic madness, uh, still seeing plenty of job searches and people, uh, looking for fire protection and life safety professionals. So it's nice to be in a market that's a little bit more insulated. Uh, not that we're not affected. Yeah, for sure. Sounds like you had a, I've heard this story a few times before engineers, you know, this, this interest in how things work and, you know, building things and, you know, you get into college and you're lucky to be at a college like Maryland with, uh, such a.

Great program for fire protection. And I just wanted to get into a little bit more about your education and, you know, kind of what you enjoyed about your experience at Maryland and you know, maybe how that led you to where you are today. Sure. Yeah. Uh, at Maryland, I did both, uh, my bachelor's and master's in, uh, fire protection there.

And, you know, when I, when I got into grad school and, and working towards my master's, uh, I had the, uh, opportunity to do some research with, uh, Dr. Jim Milky. And, uh, also Dr. Erica Kowski, uh, who is at N and, uh, the project that we were working on together was, uh, studying human behavior and fire, and specifically, uh, evacuation from high rise buildings.

That was a, a great project to work on and certainly getting to, uh, to work with both. Of them was, was really a great opportunity. Um, so I'm, I'm still in touch with them and actually am, co-teaching a class with Dr. Milky and Marilyn right now that really got me interested in, in life safety and, uh, specifically, you know, life safety as it relates to evacuations and human behavior.

Uh, as I was leaving school, I was hoping to maybe not directly specialize in life safety, but definitely wanted to, to be in a field that allowed me to do life safety evaluations and, and consulting. So when I got out, I, I was working for a firm that, um, Did that, and, and also did sprinkler and fire alarm design as well.

So I, I think for the first four years of my career at that firm, and then also even now at Arab, um, I I've really gotten to have a good balance of doing life safety consulting as well as, as sprinkler and fire alarm design. I think Maryland does a good job of preparing students for that. Uh, and that there's a good variety.

Coursework and not only the systems and, and sprinkler fire alarm, but also the life safety to, to kind of give you a well rounded foundation to start your. Hmm. Very interesting. Cool. Well, that sounds like a unique experience doing that. Co-teaching with, uh, Dr. Milky. I wasn't aware of him until I started talking to a couple Maryland grads and it seems like, uh, the Maryland grads and the WPI grads have, uh, high esteem for him.

So that's interesting that you, uh, get to work directly with him. I don't know if you could tell me a little bit more about, um, your experience in co-teaching and kind of what that looks like. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Dr. Milky is, uh, is very highly esteemed. Uh, no doubt about it. And he's been a great initially professor and, and now colleague and, and mentor of mine and, and very much enjoy getting to work with him closely.

Yeah, teaching at Maryland. This is I think now my fourth, uh, go around of doing this class. Uh it's um, it's a class for, uh, undergraduate seniors and also grad students called, uh, advanced life safety and human behavior and fire. The, the section of the class that I'm teaching is. One looking at, uh, people movement and studying how people move throughout a building doing just a review of the research that we have on that.

And then another big aspect is looking at evacuation modeling. And that's starting at the real basic level of just doing some simple hand calculations. Like you might see in the hydraulic egress model from the SFP handbook and then advancing on to, uh, computer evacuation modeling using some of the more advanced software like Pathfinder and mass motion.

That's really interesting that you. Get to talk to students about not just code compliance and you know, what life safety looks like for the built environment, but also you get to walk them through, uh, hand counts and some modeling and simulation. I feel, um, at least in my experience in the fire protection industry, I don't have a lot of work with, uh, Pathfinder or any of those, uh, egress simulation softwares, but, uh, I have a big interest in it cuz.

You know, uh, obviously the biggest and the most interesting buildings, you know, require unique solutions. So it's, uh, cool to hear about that. I, I'm kind of with you, I think in the us, um, the, the majority of, uh, building projects do not use any sort of evacuation modeling. Approach, um, almost all of them just prescriptively comply with the requirements of either the building code or the life safety code.

I, I definitely enjoy any of the, the projects where I do get to do the egress modeling and, and that's almost always as part of a, a performance based design approach, uh, where the design team is decided that they, uh, do not wanna. Uh, complying with the prescriptive egress requirements, whether that's exit capacity or things like the arrangement of, of means of egress for travel distance or common.

Uh, but want to, you know, show that the, the space can be evacuated safely using typically a combination of both, uh, egress modeling and fire modeling. I've recently just started to understand a little bit better performance based design through, uh, talking with people. But yeah, I've never been involved with a project that's had to use it.

So it's interesting to hear you talk about that and the choice I just wanted to. When is the choice generally made for a project to when do you decide performance based design? Is the approach. I mean, obviously that probably has to be made pretty early. Is that in like the programmatic stage? Like obviously, is that in like SDS or schematic design?

Like how early in the project are you looking at that question? Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna do it for something like the capacity of the means of egress where, you know, it's gonna change. The number of exits or the size of your, your exit components. Um, that is a decision that typically has to be made pretty early on.

One important distinction, I think is that, uh, performance based design can be used for all of the building design. Uh, but it can also just be used for a certain portion. You know, so one example of that might be, uh, let's say that you're, you're well into a building design and, uh, you realize that there is a dead end corridor issue.

For example, you, you might just consider doing some sort of performance based design to just mitigate that specific issue, but the rest of the building could comply with the prescriptive egress requirements. So certainly if it's gonna be, you know, your entire egress system is performance based. I think that's gotta be a pretty early determination.

Uh, there is an opportunity later on for perhaps smaller portions of the design to be performance based, regardless of, of at what stage that decision is made. It is really crucial to get the aha on board. I've had the opportunity to work with some really knowledgeable authorities having jurisdiction. Uh, a few that come to mind are the, the Smithsonian institution.

Wow. Uh, they have their own fire protection, in-house fire protection group there. That acts as the aha. And, uh, they're generally very open to using performance based design techniques. But at any rate, uh, you obviously have to get the, the aha to buy off on the approach that you're using. And, and if you're doing something like egress or fire modeling, they have to agree to the assumptions that you're using in those modeling, uh, approaches.

Ideally very early on. I like your note about, you know, yes, there is an opportunity where holistically, you're looking at the whole building for performance based design, but. You know, I'm aware of the option for, you know, like just a dry pipe system to use, uh, you know, calculations or, uh, simulations to show the discharge time meets, you know, the code requirement, but I've never thought of a, uh, life safety system or a, uh, you know, building egress component, being singled out for performance based design.

I like that point you made there that, uh, you don't have. Through the whole building with performance based design, you can, if you have an understanding with the authority, having jurisdiction, you can, uh, use performance based design for essentially one offs. Yeah. I, I think another good example of, of an opportunity to use performance based design is, uh, when you're doing.

Work in existing buildings. Uh, so I'll give an example. A few years ago, I was working on a project at the Kennedy center in Washington, DC, which is, uh, a very notable performing arts center in the district. And, you know, they have some, some very notable and, and large scale, uh, performances there. I think every present for.

You know, recent memory has, has visited there for one show or another, but at, at one point in time, the, the garage that sits beneath the Kenny center, performing arts center, the garage had, uh, some exits that were discharging onto a sidewalk that was, uh, directly next to a freeway that goes through DC.

There. And they decided that they no longer wanted to use those exits just because of the danger that is associated with a sidewalk right next to a freeway. So we had an existing building that, you know, had a building permit was occupied and, uh, they wanted to, you know, stop using two exits, adding additional exits elsewhere in the building.

Would've been very disruptive and costly. So that's an example where we had an existing condition that they wanted to modify and we used. Fire and egress modeling to show that even with the no longer using two of these exits, that the, uh, the building could still be evacuated safely. That's really interesting.

Not only did you, you know, get to be a part of a. Existing construction project that you know, was for a building that had high esteem and big impact. But you, uh, you know, I feel like an engineer's whole job is to get creative and provide solutions. And it sounds like performance based design is just one more tool in the belt in order to provide, uh, solutions and problem solve for customers.

So I like hearing about. Yeah, absolutely. I was planning on asking, uh, about your specialty, but I think just from hearing you talk for just several minutes, it's clear to me that your specialty is in life safety and just kind of all that entails. How much, how much of your time do you spend, uh, designing the other types of fire protection systems or, yeah.

Tell me a little bit about your role now and like what that kinda looks like. Is it all life safety design or do you kind of get a diverse bag of doing fire protection system design as well? You know, guests? I do, uh, I would say I do probably spend more time doing life safety consulting work. Uh, so it's, it's maybe a 60, 40 split right now with, with 60% of my time doing life safety stuff.

And then 40% on systems design, typically sprinkler and fire alarm design. Although we do do some special hazards as well. You know, when I first started off in my career, uh, it was doing the systems design. I was, I was very much, uh, in the trenches, so to speak with doing all the survey. And then doing a lot of the drafting work myself, whether that was in AutoCAD or Revit.

And I still do open Revit from time to time. Um, although I don't do it as, as frequently as I used to. Um, so a lot of my design work now is, is overseeing the work and, and setting the general direction in terms of these are the, the types of systems that we want to use in a building. And here's the, the overall approach.

And then I have people that are, uh, on my team with me at Arab. We'll we'll play a role in that design, whether it's, uh, doing calculations or doing the layout in, in Revit. And then, um, I'm usually working closely to, to help guide that process, to, to check over the work and, and just, um, you know, overall lead the direction for the, the sprinkler and the fire alarm design.

So it sounds like you're kind of in more of. Senior engineering position where you're kind of monitoring the work of either draftsman or fire protection designers and kind of, uh, overseeing the design from a higher level. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And, and yeah, I mean, from, from time to time, um, like I mentioned, I, I do still do the, the rev work myself, but yeah, typically it's, it's, I'm.

I'm leading the design. And then I have a team of people that are working with me to do a lot of the layout of the fire alarm STRs, for example, or the, the sprinkler head layout, things like that. Yeah. I just wanted to plug your mind a little bit about life safety because, uh, in my work that I do, uh, mostly I don't get involved as much with life safety.

The company that I work for, the architects generally are the ones who are doing the life safety analysis. And then sometimes we will, um, back them up on that, but it's not part of my everyday job to analyze the life safety of a building. So I just wanted to ask you when you are approaching. An analysis of a building's life, safety systems, you know, how is there a process for that?

Do you start, you know, I just, it's hard for me cuz I don't do it often enough to think, okay, what systems do I start with? You know, do I start with, you know, building areas and like occupancy, adjacencies or. Yeah. I don't know if you had like a process or just a kind of measured way that you approach that.

Yeah, we do. And, and that's a good question, Gus. Um, it, it does vary from project to project. I think in my mind, the ideal case is that when we're working with, uh, an architect that we are brought in at the beginning of the design, ideally in just the, the concepts phase where it's, uh, just the general. Uh, concept of the building and we don't even have, you know, full scale plant yet.

It's maybe just renderings or some, you know, blocking and stacking diagrams or something like that. And, uh, when we're able to get in early on, uh, we can offer a lot of guidance about what is the, you know, for example, the type of construction. That you could choose based on the size of the building that's being considered and the occupancies that might be in the building.

And that really then feeds into the allowable heightened area and, uh, requirements for fire protection of structural elements. So you get a lot of the basics, uh, early on covered. Um, if, if you're able to, you know, get in early on the design, We we prefer when, when that's the case. I, I will say there's a lot of times where architects don't bring us in that early.

And we're, we're almost brought in after the fact. And if the architect has done a really thorough code analysis, sometimes that can work out just fine. And, and we're just, you know, making some minor tweaks. Uh, we've also had instances though, where we're brought in kind of later and there's some pretty major, um, concerns that we have about the design.

So, uh, we do typically start with the. What is the, the construction type of the building. And then that goes hand in hand with how big is the building in terms of height, number of stories and area. Another big item is just identifying any of the, the IVC chapter four, uh, requirements, which are the, you know, detailed requirements based on use and occupancy.

So a few major ones in that would be if the building's a Highrise, there's a series of life safety and fire protection requirements that are triggered for that. Uh, we do also do a good bit of residential work. So there's, uh, a number of, of group R specific requirements, both in chapter four, then also in chapter 10.

So that's usually the, the starting point. Once we get further on into the design, so into, to schematic design or design development phases. Uh, then we're typically doing a more detailed egress analysis where, uh, we're taking a look at the architect's life safety plans and their occupant load calculations, verifying them, making sure that the, uh, egress system is of sufficient capacity to handle the occupant load.

And also that it's set up correctly in terms of, um, where the exits are located, exit remoteness, travel, distance, common path of travel, things like that. And then finally, a, a big portion of our role in life. Safety is. Uh, assisting the design team in obtaining a building permit. So, uh, once a permit submission is made for almost every project, there's usually, uh, several rounds of permit, review comments that the local building and fire departments make.

And, uh, we, we play a big role in, in looking at those comments, uh, evaluating whether we agree with them or not. And. Then assisting the architect to make any necessary design changes to, uh, address those comments or perhaps negotiating with the code officials to try to, uh, argue for our point of view and why we think, uh, the design that we have is correct.

Yeah. I think that that is a big one that you mentioned there at the end. Uh, not just providing a. Solid design, but being able to translate that to the authority, having jurisdiction, why you made the decisions you made and, you know, being clear and concise with them. And, you know, like you said, it applies even for not performance based design, even for prescriptive design, that if you're on the same page with the HJ at the beginning of the design everyth.

Seems to go smoother. So, uh, that's a pretty big role in the job of fire protection engineer in my, uh, estimation. But yeah, I like hearing about that also. I thought another good point you made was, uh, you know, kind of going from the building bones and, you know, just going through, uh, I liked hearing about that sequence of, you know, how you address the life safety components.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's, uh, easy to be overwhelmed with the IBC and there's no roadmap for, you know, this is how you have to do it. So that's kind of why I have some confusion and you know, like to hear you, uh, explain that a little bit because you know, there's no, uh, how to manual for the international building code or the fire code.

So it's, uh, can definitely be a daunting task when you're first getting into the industry. That more of that kind of work. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, I would certainly agree that I think it's daunting when you're first getting into the industry and even for people that, uh, are, uh, have been in the industry for quite some time, um, they, you know, continue to learn new things about the building code or the fire code, you know?

So at Arab I work for, uh, my, my boss, his name is Ray grill, who is, uh, been in the fire protection industry. Uh, probably over 40 years at this point and has written many code changes in both the building code and, and a number of the FDA standards. And, uh, you know, he always jokes with me that he, he still learns stuff every day a about the code.

So I, I think there's, you know, regardless of how long you've been working with the building code, there's still more to learn. That's inspiring. Yeah. I think that the best people to work for are, you know, it sounds like you have a good mentor. And, uh, I think that the best people to work for are the ones that understand that there's always something new to learn and, uh, that passion for being knowledgeable and just being a better professional is always something that will make it easier to work for somebody.

For sure. So I wanted to get into. I see that you have recently started a blog online about, uh, life safety and some different fire protection issues. I just wanted you, if you could tell me a little bit about the building code blog and the impetus for starting that. Sure. Yeah. Um, so I started, uh, the building code blog, which is just building code.blog online.

And, uh, I, I think my. I, I had two chief motivators for starting that, uh, one would be, uh, so far in my career in, in doing the code consulting now for many, many different clients, uh, architects, developers, building owners, the, the more of that that you do. I, I think I've found that, uh, a lot of people. Have the same questions, uh, or in other words, you, you frequently hear similar questions over and over from different people.

And a lot of times when, when architects ask me a code question, it's something where I need to open up the code myself and review what the code says and, and try to get a better handle on what's the intent of the code requirement. Maybe what's the background of the code requirement and just try to determine does it apply to the given situation.

And if so, As I was getting these questions, these very similar questions over and over. I, I realized that, um, just for my own self-serving purposes, it would be good to take some notes on the, the research and the, the code review that I was doing. Uh, before I got back to my clients. So I had a series of, of just personal notes to my computer that I developed on various different code questions that I was receiving.

Um, so one example would be when you have two, a buildings, a budding, one another, what sort of wall is required between the buildings? Um, so that was a question I was getting, you know, several times and I went through and did some code research and figured out, you know, what the different options are that the code allows and had all this written down.

And it just kind of dawned on me if, if multiple people are asking this question that are, um, within my sphere that are, you know, My clients, I'm sure that there's people, uh, all over the country all over the world that have similar questions. So that kinda led me to just, uh, taking those, those thoughts and notes that I had already done the work on and just putting them in a, a public format.

And certainly I, uh, I don't public publish any specific projects or anything like that on the blog. Um, it's all just about general code issues and compliance with the building code. But the idea is that, uh, if that research and work has already been. Ideally more people can just read through what I've posted there and, uh, apply, learn, and apply it to whatever project they're working on.

Then then the, the, the other real motivation for me was just, uh, impact. So as I mentioned, you know, I have a. Uh, a series of clients that I work for, and most of them are in the, the Washington DC metropolitan area. And, and that's great. And, uh, they're, they're generally great clients, you know, I, I think as I, I think about my career and where I wanna be someday when I retire, uh, I wanna say that I had a, a meaningful impact one and that two, that I had an impact on a, a broad range of.

So, uh, I see the building code blog as just a way to further expand, uh, the reach of the impact that I'm having, uh, and taking that from just, uh, the clients that I'm directly working for, expanding it to now, really anyone who is searching for an answer on any of the code topics that I write about.

That's great. Yeah. I always joke, uh, that I need to keep a fire protection, uh, frequently asked questions because yeah. Seems like once a week I get. Question about fire extinguishers or duct detectors or, uh, fire dampers. But yeah, that's a good one. I liked hearing you talk about, uh, the two different structures, a budding, and you know, how far do they need to be a part or what kind of wall do we need between 'em in order for them to be separate buildings?

That's probably a pretty frequent one, as far as life safety goes for sure. But it's a really dense subject for. It's a really dense subject, fire barriers, fire partitions, you know, smoke barriers, smoke, partitions firewalls. There's a lot of, uh, terms used incorrectly in that, uh, field. So yeah, I bet that's a great topic that, uh, I would have loved to, you know, read a blog post about.

So that's awesome. I'm glad that you're doing that. I think that fire protection needs more people, uh, sharing information and. Getting involved and trying to help people out. There's some great paid resources online, but, you know, uh, I don't think there's enough people doing what you're doing. So I'm happy that you are, are doing that and are sharing information.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, yeah. So you talked about your, uh, Issue where you talked about, or I don't know if you wrote a post about that yet. I was just reading some of your articles earlier, but, uh, so have you written an issue about the fire barriers of the separations between two buildings?

I do. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's something it's titled something along the lines of, um, three approaches for walls between a budding building, something like that. Yeah. We'll put a link in the show notes for, uh, the blog, but, uh, in case you missed it before, but, uh, yeah, that's really cool. I'm glad you're doing that.

So what are you, uh, what are your plans for the future for the blog? What do you want to, what's your, uh, I don't wanna say end goal, but what's your, your next steps with the blog? I know that you are producing some good content, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. Uh, if you're already producing posts at the rate that you want to produce them, or, yeah.

How about, how often do you produce one of these blog posts? So right now, I'm, I'm trying to do one post a week and, uh, some weeks it's it's I struggle to do that just due to other commitments with work and, and, um, there's other times where, um, I've got a little more time to write and I can, I can write at a faster rate than that, but, um, I I'd say I'm Amman right now for, for once a week.

I think, um, my hope for the building code blog is to just continue to grow it at this point in, in terms of the audience and the, uh, extent of its its reach. I've really been trying to recently write the post in such a way that encourages, uh, conversation and, and feedback on the posts. You know, it's one thing to just write a blog post about you.

Your take on code requirements. But, uh, I think what really is, is interesting and valuable to people is, is writing your take, but then also, uh, setting up a, a discussion and realizing that, uh, for many issues in the building code, um, They, it, it, they're not black and white there's there's room for interpretation, right?

If, uh, if everything in the building code was black and white, then, uh, I probably wouldn't have a job as a code consultant because no one would need me. Um, but fortunately there's a lot of gray area and a lot of room for code to be interpreted and. Uh, I think that, um, you know, that's where I'm able to add value to a design team is, is taking my experience and doing that and applying it to a given project.

So I, I, I hope to grow it and continue to, um, expand the, the level of discussion and interaction within the, um, the design community. And, uh, eventually I would love to, to get to a point where, um, perhaps we can have, uh, other people besides just me, uh, writing on there and, you know, I'm just one person and I have, I have the experience I have, but there's, there's tons of other fire protection engineers or people that deal with the building code every day.

That, um, have different experiences than me. And I'd love to, uh, be able to just broaden that scope at some point in the future. That's a great point. I love what you said about, you know, having interaction from the community. And, you know, providing a, essentially a forum for people to discuss fire protection issues, you know, uh, a good story, I think, uh, brings to light.

The importance of that is, you know, I was researching something for, um, architect wanted to do a. Ceiling, there was a kind of an interesting layout. It was, uh, these baffles, these kind of wood slats, um, spaced intermittently across a, uh, building and, you know, to provide an aesthetic if you will. And they were asking me, you know, uh, are we gonna have to modify this sprinkler system?

If we add this, you know, roof structure and. You know, so I started, you know, digging into FPA 13. I, I couldn't find anything didn't really fit any of the obstruction rules that I could tell. And so I was given it the old, uh, Google search and I found a post from like 2007. On some, uh, forum that was talking about louvered ceilings and you know, what the code requirement is in N FPA 13 for louvered ceilings and turned out to be exactly what I needed.

So yeah, I think that these sort of forums and places for people to congregate can provide a lot of insight and, you know, be a continual resource for people in the industry. So I think that's a great, I think that's a great. Yeah. And, and I would say, I, I think just about everyone has been in that situation where, uh, they have a, a question come in and they, they look in the code or in the standard can't, can't really find anything.

So they, they go to Google as their next step and, and search for it. I, I think the more, you know, helpful and useful articles and content that we have, uh, online in, in the fire protection community, um, you know, the better it is for everyone. And, and ultimately, you know, the, the more that we have. Compliant and good life safety and fire protection systems designed and installed.

And, you know, I think that's a situation where basically everyone benefits with a higher level of knowledge available to everyone. Yeah, for sure. I mean, uh, we talked about this a little bit offline, but you know, fire protection is just lacking in resources and, you know, uh, one example that comes to mind for me is I have.

A mechanical department at my company and they were sending out, um, somebody had gone through the Ashray journal and linked, uh, had cherry picked over a hundred articles that they had thought would be important for our young staff to read. And it's like, man, that kind of just blows me away because you know sure.

I'm sure I could find a bunch of good articles in SFPs publications or NFAs publications, but it would be really. Hard for me to find a hundred that I thought were meaningful, you know, for, uh, young fire protection professionals or young professionals in life safety. So, uh, yeah, I think it's important for, for people to get out there and create content because, uh, we're just a young discipline.

So I think it's, that's all good stuff. Well, cool. So I know you have a new project going on, um, that I just saw, you know, it's, I thought it was kind of funny. The day I reached out to you. I think it was in the morning. And then by the time lunch came around, you had this, uh, new joint venture going on. That was, uh, seemed like a really great idea.

Yeah. I didn't know if you could tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. So, uh, just, uh, I guess about a week ago, a little over a week ago now, um, started this new, uh, project called code calls. Uh, that's just code calls.org. And, uh, that's something that I'm working on with, uh, Joe Meyer. Who is a, a fellow fire protection engineer and, uh, Marilyn grad.

And, you know, previously I talked about just this idea of, um, having a meaningful impact one and then two expanding the, the reach and the scope of that impact. And I, I think code calls is, is another way that I'm hoping to do that. Uh, so, um, essentially code calls is a, uh, database of local fire protection, uh, requirements that, uh, we are hoping to, um, get some really good, uh, buy in from local building officials, local fire marshals, uh, who are on board with this idea and willing to contribute.

Um, some of their local requirements to this national database. So right now we're starting off on a fairly small scope and we have just, uh, four data points that we're trying to collect. Um, and those are some of the most common ones that we come across when we have to do a project in a new jurisdiction.

Right. And so the idea is that, uh, if, if you're working on a project in, let's say a county that you've never worked in before, uh, as a fire protection engineer, you're almost certainly going to have to reach out to either the building official or the fire marshal or someone in that type of role to get, um, Get some information on their local requirements and, uh, for Joe and I, some of the most common things that we have had to reach out are asking about the type of fire department connection.

So is it a CES connection? Is it a stores connection? They have a 30 degree angle on the stores. Uh, what is the size of the stores connection, et cetera? Um, another one would be, uh, do they require their stamp pipe, uh, fire hose valves to be on the floor level landing or the intermediate landing. Uh, that's something that, uh, the standard, um, Seems to change every addition of N FPA 14.

Uh, but then there's always been very clear guidance that the local fire official can decide, which of those options that, uh, he or she wants. Uh, another one would be. Uh, whether they deem their local power supply to be reliable as defined by, uh, the national electrical code, which then if the building has a fire pump, um, it would determine whether or not you need to have the power, the fire pump on a backup power supply.

Uh, if that local power source is reliable or not. So we just picked some of the most common questions that, that we have found and, and when we have to reach out to, to local authorities and we're trying to, uh, build that into a database and, uh, make that publicly available. So. You know, we just launched last week.

We're starting in the state of Indiana. Uh, the goal is to get, give responses from either designers that work in those jurisdictions or the code officials themselves. And we hope in, in one month. So about three weeks from today to have, uh, covered 70% of the population of Indiana. So meaning we've gotten responses from enough jurisdictions that equates to 70% of the popul.

That's really interesting. Uh, man, I can't tell you how much my time that I've had to spend, trying to find out if a utility has reliable power or trying to get the fire department to email me back, um, about whether they want the intermediate landing. Or the, uh, floor level landing for their stamp pipe system.

So I can imagine that people would be extremely interested in this resource. And I, I know you guys are gonna get it up and going. Uh, I, I could see an overflow of people, you know, being like this is a great idea wanting to get behind this. So I think that's a, that's an awesome idea. And these are just huge ticket items for.

Coordination for design. You know, these are some of the most important questions that the preliminary phase of design, you know, reliable power. You can't even start to design a fire pump unless, you know, if your power is reliable or not. So, and that's usually a pretty big component of your design for a building as a fire protection engineer.

If you have a fire pump is, you know, what, the type of it is in the layout of that room and how that impacts, uh, the other disciplines. That's awesome. I'm really glad to hear you doing that. Yeah. Thank you. I wanted to move on to some, uh, professional development topics and just talk to you, you know, it seems like you are, you know, doing your best to create new resources and to.

Make it easier for people in the fire protection industry to become more knowledgeable. But yeah. So I just wanted to pick your brain about, um, where you like to go to get information about fire protection and you know yeah. What are some of the resources that you use to be more knowledgeable? Well, I think the first place is just the fire protection community.

Um, the, uh, fire protection engineering, uh, profession is a fairly small profession, at least compared to other engineering disciplines. And, um, you know, there, as you know, GU there's only a handful of schools in the us, uh, where someone can get an education that's specifically focused on fire protection.

Um, so I, I think that that we're a pretty close knit community, regardless of whether you went to, to Maryland or like I did, or to one of the other schools. So just staying in touch with people in the industry is, is a big one for me. Um, you know, that's, uh, you know, Joe Meyer and I who are now working on this code calls project.

We, you know, I I'd read some of his stuff online, but we actually met at an NFPA conference at, uh, a dinner there one year. And that's where we connected and, and now we're working on something together. Uh, just, I think taking advantage of the fact that fire protection is a, it's a smaller community and, and there's a lot of people that are willing to just, uh, tell you about what's going on in their world and stay in touch with you.

I think is a big resource for people. I think another one would be just being involved in some way. Um, There's, you know, probably two main professional societies, uh, N FPA and S F P E uh, and certainly others as well. But, um, those are two that I'm involved with. And I think just by being involved with those, you, you know, get their magazines and their newsletters and, um, Stay up to date on things that are going on.

Uh, I would also definitely recommend the, the conferences. Um, I know that some employers are, are big fans of sending their staff to conferences and others, maybe not so much. Um, you know, I think in terms of professional development, uh, it's a great opportunity to, to learn by going to conferences and attending the seminars and.

You could also usually take a, a class at, um, an SFP or an FPA conference, but maybe even more so just, um, making, making the, the connections and the relationships, um, and. Those are usually things that are happening, you know, early on in the morning or between sessions or late at night and not necessarily, you know, within the conference, uh, talks or seminars themselves.

But, um, you know, I, I, both of the, uh, both of the jobs that I've had in, in my career so far, um, Have been through connections of people that I met at a conference. You know, I, I think just being willing to meet people, go up and introduce yourselves and, and say hello, and then stay in touch. Um, has really served me well so far in my career.

It is something I, I plan to keep on doing. And I would definitely recommend that to, uh, anyone who's just getting started themselves. Definitely. I agree with what you're saying, uh, connections in the industry and just go into conferences. I haven't had that fortune yet to go to, uh, an FPA or SFP conference, but man, I really would like to, it seems like just, uh, pretty much the biggest hotspot for, um, knowledge and just, um, networking.

And so it seems like, uh, just a really fascinat. Thing to go do. It's definitely a big deal to get involved with S F P E and some of these organizations, um, they have great webinars. They will, you know, um, have people come in and speak at the local chapters and at the national level. So it's definitely really good idea to get involved in those.

So I like that. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about. What do you see as a trend in the industry right now? I know things are a little wild with the pandemic going on, but yeah. I mean, um, what do you see as a trend in the construction industry? Or what does you see? What do you see as a trend in just fire protection in general?

I don't know if you had any thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, I, I think one that I'm really seeing, uh, one trend that I'm really seeing is a push towards, um, automat. And an increased use of digital technology to aid what we do. I, I think you see that in a, a number of areas right now, I think, um, on the design side, you know, pieces of software like auto sprint, uh, RVT, um, or, you know, similar type, uh, integrations with Revit and CAD that allow you to.

Uh, do very detailed fire protection and fire alarm designs, uh, and then take advantage of the software to do things like calculations or parts, take offs, things like that. Uh, those are, you know, those have, I think always been popular since they've been released, but, uh, the more robust those tools get, I think the, uh, the bigger value that they offer, um, you know, if you know, talking about, um, you.

Let's just say auto sprinkle in particular, if you can, uh, if you're gonna take the time to lay out all the sprinkler heads in, in your design, or at least in part of your design, it makes a lot of sense to, um, just use the technology and software that we have available to let's say automatically do hydraulic calculations for you.

So that'd be one example on the design side, I think on the code consulting side, there's, there's also a push for that. Um, I'm sure you're familiar with, um, sites like up codes who are not only, um, you know, trying to improve access to the codes and local code requirements, but also, uh, I'm taking a stab at, uh, automating code compliance in terms of things like allowable, heightened area and construction type.

And, you know, on one hand that's stuff like that's hard to do. And that's part of the reason that, uh, there is a need for code consultants, but I think, um, It it's really important for us in the profession to utilize technology, uh, the best we can to really, um, do our jobs well. And, you know, technology, um, is really good at doing road calculations and, and checking spreadsheets and tables.

And, uh, a computer can do that faster and, and more accurately than a human can. So I think taking advantage of technology to automate. Routine tasks is really important. And it also frees up an engineer's time to, to actually do critical thinking and, uh, you know, put their, their experience and their education to use, uh, where it should be, which I think is actually thinking through a problem as opposed to just, um, reciting code requirements.

So the, uh, the automation and the integration of digital I think is, um, is a, is a big and important trend, right? Yeah, I think, uh, the, uh, automation is a interesting topic. Um, you know, and for my firm, uh, we have, uh, an architect who essentially kind of leading the way on that for my firm. And he is, uh, has been using plugins for Revit.

Called like a pie Revit, or essentially it's like a code interface for Revit and working on automate, automating some of these tasks, like setting up sheets and just, you know, generating views and some of these things that are, uh, Just, uh, really tedious or just gonna be taken out of the equation by, uh, computers in the near future.

I think. So I think that's a good point that you said about, you know, trying to automate as much of the tasks as possible. Yeah. I'm not real aware of, uh, up codes. I think I've seen it before, but I, uh, I'm not real aware of what that is. I think I've what is it? Yeah. So, um, up codes is, is doing a few things.

I mean, I think the, the, the biggest platform right now is they are a, they are publishing the, the I B C or the ICC code with the local amendments integrated into them. So if you can, you can go to up codes and click on their code, library and search, whatever state that you're in and, uh, click on the building code for that state.

And you'll see the base IBC text with that state's local amendments written. So, um, that's, uh, I, I think it's, it really does improve ease of access because many states, uh, don't have that sort of integration, meaning they just have, um, a separate PDF document that says, you know, amend I B C section.

dot.dot and replace it with this. So you kind of have to have two documents open side by side, whereas up codes is putting those L into one in a public format. Uh, they also have, um, I think a, an early Revit plugin right now, that's still in its developmental phase of doing some level of prescriptive, um, code checks for things like, um, Uh, minimum door width, for example, uh, 32 inches in a means of egress or the distance between doors that are in series.

Um, some, some of the very, uh, cut and dry, uh, prescriptive code requirements. It can check your rev model for. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that that's gonna be in our careers for sure. We're gonna see the, uh, I think things going more towards, uh, that, that base layout being, uh, computer generated and then everything kind of getting tweaked from there, but.

Yeah. That's wow. That's interesting to hear about up codes. I didn't know about that, but I will definitely be, uh, looking at that in the future, but it's always a struggle trying to find out, um, what your local ordinances and requirements are. So that sounds like a good thing. Well, cool. So, um, I just wanted to end with, um, if you were getting in fire protection again for the first time, what's, uh, one piece of advice that you would give yourself.

Just kind of as a young professional or maybe, you know, it could be fire protection related, but, uh, you choose. Yeah, I guess that's a, that's a good question, man. And, uh, that's um, you know, that's one, I've thought about a, a few times over the years, I think, um, I think there's a couple pieces of advice. I would say one would be, um, be really focused on, um, On growing in your skill in fire protection and life safety, uh, first and knowing that, uh, your advancement will come after that.

So, you know, my personality type, I would say I'm a, uh, someone that's motivated by achievement and, and trying to succeed in whatever, you know, goal I've put before me. And. I, I think for a lot of, uh, young professionals, you know, that can turn into, uh, I want to get promoted faster and I wanna make a lot of money or, or things along those lines and getting promoted is, is a good thing.

And, and making money is, is a good thing as well. Um, But, you know, in my opinion, those things, aren't gonna give you the, the level of professional success that you're looking for, especially early on. Um, and, and for most people, you're not gonna be able to get promoted and make a lot of money unless you do really have a good technical skill in what you're doing.

Um, so one would just be, you know, it's, it's okay to spend your early years just really learning and getting proficient at, uh, whatever aspect of fire protection or life safety you're doing. So whether that's. Designing sprinkler fire alarm systems in Revit, or doing hydraulic CALS or doing life safety, drawing reviews, whatever it is.

I think just, um, getting to be really good at those is something I, that I would focus, um, early on. And then I think another piece to go with that is, um, being, being really good technically, uh, will certainly help you to advance in your career. And, uh, I think. In our society, we will always have a need for good engineers.

Um, so I think you'll always have opportunities to work and, and practice your skill. Um, I do think though that if you're able to compliment that technical skill with getting, uh, good in one other field or one other area that compliments the technical stuff, um, that can really set you apart. Um, you know, I'm in the consulting industry.

So, you know, one thing that really interests me is, is business development and, and expanding client relationships. And I really try to, to pair that together with the technical skill and trying to be really good at the technical, uh, product or advice that I I'm offering to our client. But pairing that with building a strong relationship where.

I'm taking an interest in, in my clients, uh, who they are as people and what's going on in their life. And just kind of having that go side by side with the, the actual stuff we're doing for work. And, you know, I think. Uh, for many people, the, the, the business development stuff is interesting, but it doesn't have to be that it could also be, uh, you could be really good at technology and you can develop, uh, you know, some of these new tools that we're talking about, or you could be really good at leading teams and, and maybe you're just, uh, excelling at being a manager while also still doing engineer.

Um, there, there's almost a endless number of, of pairings that you can come up with there. But I think that if you're able to pair the good technical skill with being good in, in one of these other areas as well, it can make you really impactful and effective as an engineer. Yeah. Those, those are great things, you know, uh, being focused on the fundamentals and.

You know, setting yourself up for success, you know? Yeah. You're not gonna, you're not gonna get the promotion that you want or think you need. And even if you do, and you don't have concrete fundamentals, then, uh, it's not gonna do you much good because, uh, in consulting, uh, there's not much room for individuals who, um, don't know what they're talking about.

So yeah, that's a good one. And then, uh, I like what you said about just being diverse in your skillset and not just thinking that fire protection is the. Is the only thing in the world. Um, I think that, you know, uh, having, uh, varied focus and just, uh, skill set will, um, not only help you grow as a professional, but you'd be surprised on how much more.

You'll learn about fire protection. If you take time to learn about another discipline or you'll learn about, you know, the industry, if you take an interest in, you know, technology or, you know, being varied in your pursuits is, is always a good thing. So those are great tips. And guess one other that just kind of comes to mind as well, uh, would be, I, I think that people that, um, you know, experience some success early on in, in their career as an engineer, uh, they quickly find that there's this, uh, , we'll call it a phenomena that, uh, when you do good work, that people come back to you cuz they, they wanna work with you again.

Whether that's internal to your own company and just working with, uh, your coworkers or colleagues, uh, or if you're working with an external client. And so that's a great thing. Uh, you know, you do good work and that's, that's the best form of business development is repeat clients because they're a lot easier and, and cheaper to get.

And, uh, you already know who you're working with. But I, I think that it's very easy for engineers to get overwhelmed by the, the workload that, that comes across their desk. Once they, you know, get some early success with, with clients and, and they have to balance this, this huge demand of, of getting all of the engineering work done, but also writing proposals and, um, You know, filling out invoices and expense reports and all of the administrative stuff that goes along with, uh, doing engineering and that can very easily get overwhelming.

Um, I, I would definitely advise someone who's early on in their career to just, uh, develop a, some sort of time management or productivity system that that can try and just help you get through, uh, the immense amount of, uh, requests for information or the demands on your time that, that you have as an engineer.

And, you know, for me, one of the, the best books I've read on that subject is, uh, getting things done by David Allen. Um, he, he has a great productivity system there, um, that just involves keeping a simple to-do list and keeping that with you basically at all times. So I, I have that on my phone and almost always, um, when, when I have a, a thought coming to my mind of something that I need to do, I just pull out my phone really quick and, and type it in really quick.

And it it's amazing the, the mental load that, that takes off when you can, um, Take that thing outta your brain and put it down into a system that you trust it's gonna be there. So you know that the next morning when you start work or whenever it is that you've review that you've written it down and, and you're gonna get it done.

Um, so that's just one example. Uh, it's getting things done by David Allen. It's not the only one, but, uh, it's definitely one I would recommend. But even if you choose something else, I would say. Figure out a system that works for you that allows you to deal with all this, the, the stuff, the emails, the calls, and the, the things that grab your attention.

Um, because, uh, in, in my experience, as you, as your career goes on, uh, those demands only increase. They don't decrease. So figuring out early how to, uh, to, to work through them is really, I. Yeah, that's great advice. I love that advice because I've been needing to hear that recently from, uh, just, um, work and, you know, having to keep a, a word document or, uh, you know, notepad with all the things that I have to do in the list of projects I have.

And, you know, but then also just for your normal life, I am starting to have to keep a document for things that I need to get done, you know, projects for the house projects for, you know, Um, just whatever. So I end up having three lists, one for work, one for home, and then now one for the podcast. So yeah, you definitely need to be organized and, uh, just, uh, pick some way because if you just do, um, whatever somebody's asking you do at the time, then you're never gonna get anything done.

Um, and you're not gonna be prioritizing in the way that you need to. That's great advice. That's exactly right, is that, uh, you're not gonna be getting plenty of people get a lot of things done, but I think the important distinction that you just made is are you getting the things done that you need to, which is it's a different question, right?

You know, so part of that is prioritizing. Are you working on. The things that matter, right? So it's no longer just, are you working it's are you working on the right thing, which is, uh, really important to figure out it is, it is to tie that back into fire protection. You know, if you're working on laying out fire alarm devices, when you haven't sized your fire pump yet, then, uh, you're working out a sink there and, uh, somebody's gonna come along pretty quick and be like, so why are you making these architectural changes?

Like, you know, late in the design phase, you know, this affects everybody and. So it's important to, uh, prioritize and, uh, keep in mind, uh, what the big goals are, but that's awesome. Chris, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I just wanna be conscious of your time and yeah, thank you for the coming on.

And you had some great, uh, takeaways. Yeah, guys, thank you so much for having me. Uh, this was a great discussion and, um, certainly look forward to, uh, keeping in touch and, uh, yeah, maybe we can do it again sometime in the future. Definitely. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next.

Cathleen Childers is a fire protection engineer with formal training from the University of Maryland. Cat specializes in life safety and fire protection design and works for a large engineering firm in New York City. In this episode of Fire Code Tech, Cat provides insight into what it means to be a fire protection engineer, and we discuss some powerful professional development topics. If you are especially interested in the design-side of construction, don't miss this episode of Fire Code Tech.

Tell me about your background about in fire protection? Tell me about your education at the university of Maryland? I wonder if you would tell me a little bit more about obtaining your PE? What is your specialty in fire protection or what is your favorite area of the field? What does a typical day as a fire protection engineer look like? Will you describe what it looks like at a high level to design a fire protection system for a new building? What is a meaningful trend in the industry right now? What sort of resources would you recommend for fire protection professionals? Tell me more about your involvement with the NYC building code council? If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice what would it be?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Hello, all welcome to episode seven of fire code tech on this episode of fire code tech, we're talking with Kathleen Childers. Kat is a fire protection engineer with formal education from the university of Maryland in fire protection engineer. Her specialty is in fire protection, design code consulting and life safety cat has worked for several different fire protection and MEP consulting firms.

Now she works in New York city providing fire protection, design and consulting for healthcare and other types of occupancies. This interview focuses heavily on design and communication and coordination with other architects and engineering disciplines. Kat gives a high level overview of a week in the life of a fire protection engineer.

And how one would go about designing a fire protection system. This interview with Kat has some great takeaways for professional development. So I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow fire code tech on social media. Let's dive in. Hi, KA. How's it going today?

Welcome to the show. Hi guys. Thanks for having me. Cool. Well, I just wanted to get started with your background and how you got into fire protect. Sure. So I decided when I was in probably seventh grade that I wanted to be an engineer, but I had no idea what that meant, but I stuck with it. So when I was in high school, one of my guidance counselors recommended a program at the university of Maryland called exploring engineering for women.

So it's basically you go down and stay in the dorms as a high school student with about 20 other girls. and each day you spend in a different discipline. So that was actually the first time I met Dr. Milky. Um, I was a junior in high school and I loved it. I decided to go to the university of Maryland for engineering and I came in undecided and.

Shortly thereafter. I remembered the great day spent in the fire protection department and I switched to that department. Very cool. Yeah. That's so neat that you got to be a part of a program that exposed you to engineering at a young age fire protection, even better. I always talk about how I had never really heard of fire protection until I got to the college that I was attending and, uh, how I always wish there was more for getting people involved at the high school level.

I just, there's not a whole lot of that. So that's really cool that you got to be exposed to different types of engineering from a young age. Yes. And I have certainly tried to give that back since then. So we'll probably get into it later, but I'm very involved, uh, with the society of fire protection engineers, both on the local level and on the international level, I'm actually the co-chair of the emerging professionals.

Wow. Subgroup. Which is, you know, we're just trying to get younger engineers involved. So it, it, people kind of within the first 10 or 15 years of their career, 10 to 15 sounds long, but it's generally 35 and under, but we don't have a hard cutoff. And so through that, we work with the different group who reach out directly to the high schools, but then through the local chapter, we attend a, um, high school job fair in Westchester county every year.

And we've done a couple. Stem presentations at local high schools in New York city. So it, it's not easy to get young kids excited about engineering, but I think since, since I've been in high school, there's been a lot more push of, Hey, if you're even a little bit interested, like let's come and talk to you.

I think we're trying to get better at. Keeping kids interested, but, uh, it's not easy for sure. I understand. Yeah. We, uh, that's really neat that you get involved in and like to give back and try to, you know, get more students into fire protection. I think that. There fire. Protection's such a good field and SU has such a good job opportunity and just career development.

I think that if more people knew about it, it could only lead to, you know, the development of, of the field company I work with now does, uh, at a local high school that specializes in engineering will do a talk for them, like one a year, once a year. But other than that, you know, it's, we are trying to reach out, but it's hard to get in front of these.

High school students and whatnot and get 'em interested. I, I feel like I was like you where I knew I wanted to be an engineer, but I just didn't really know what that looked like. Or, you know, what, what even that really meant. And so that's kind of even. Part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast is cuz you know, I didn't really know what fire protection engineers did even when I was in school.

So yeah. I just kind of like to talk about that and explore that. And that's some of the impetus behind me, you know, getting into this podcast. Yeah. I think it's great. And I. I'm surprised that there wasn't already one. I know that there's a couple that are like sprinkler based, but I think this was, uh, a great idea.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I feel like there's room at the table for all different kinds of perspectives and. For all different kinds of fire protection professionals, you know, the industry is so varied and so wide. No, I know there's some podcasts from people who are in inspections or people who are in sprinklers.

So I just wanted to talk about the engineers. Talk about the, the code officials, talk about, you know, just, uh, different area of the spectrum, but it's, I am only encouraging of all the other people getting after it. Cuz I think that fire protection needs as much of. That can be put on it as possible. Yeah.

And you brought up a great point with the, you know, different industries and my role with emerging professionals. First site of fire protection engineers, you know, not kids, but young adults who are just leaving school. We kind of try and give them resources. So at the north American conference for two years now, we've done an hour and a half speaker track.

And so the first year we did a panel of. Four different engineers and what they do. So I was consulting, we had somebody on in insurance and somebody on in research. And so that was kind of our goal with that. And then last year we did kind of a. 30 minutes for, from three different people of what their typical day is like.

And so we had somebody who had just started his own consulting company, somebody at NCA research foundation, and again, somebody insurance and even me, who's been in the industry for 10 years and I feel pretty confident with the choices I've made. It's always so interesting to hear what other people are doing with the same background and the same interest as me.

Yeah. I mean, they might have. The same background and the same educational experiences you, and then, you know, I've been talking with people now and just, I'm always surprised. There's always something that I didn't know about what they do, or you know, what their job looks like or the kind of problems they get to solve.

So it's always interesting to talk to different people in the field. Absolutely. I wanted to circle back on your experience at the university of Maryland and I just wanted to get a little bit more. Your coursework and what you liked there? Well, it was a long time ago for me. No. Um, I loved it and I, uh, you know, when you see people around the, the university of Maryland fire protection alumni remembers it very fondly.

It sticks close together. And I still, every year, Maybe even twice a year, go down for career fairs and networking events. And then, you know, we're always, I've had a summer intern from the university of Maryland. So I think they're doing just, um, amazing things. Some of their intro classes, they have one where they have to essentially like design a fire protection system for a shoebox house.

And I was like, okay. I, I mean, even, I wouldn't know what to do. But they came up with this thing where, you know, they have this material holding back baking soda, and then when it burned through the baking soda fell into the shoebox, like it's very like, yeah. And it's like, you know, a silly, simple concept.

And, but it, it's so interesting and it's such a real life application. Right. And so then when I'm explaining, you know, queen agent system, she was like, oh, oh yeah, like we did that project. So I think, and they university of Maryland just a few years ago, Created a position for a professor of practice. Well, whose, you know, main directive is, okay, this is what you're learning, but this is how engineers who are working every day actually apply these things.

Another really cool thing that university of Maryland did, at least when I was there was the capstone program. And so what they did is had the best professors in each department teach the entry level coursework. And so you, you got to. You know, meet these really captivating professors who are really passionate about the industry and want wanted nothing more than for every engineer to stay in engineering.

And so I thought that was a really great idea because if you know, if you have a, a bad first intro class, you might reconsider engineering. Um, So they did a great job with encouraging kids to keep at it. That's so important. All it takes is one teacher who, you know, sparks that passion in you and you see that, that they really care and believe in what they're doing to change your whole life.

And so, yeah, I that's awesome stuff and yeah, I think the education in general has a hard time. Tying things back into the real world. So I like that you're saying that university of Maryland, you know, does its best to tie education and the resources it has back into what this means in the context of real world engineering and you know, fire protection.

So that's pretty. I like that. I wonder if you would speak a little bit more about obtaining your PE designation and tell me a little bit about what that was like. That was an interesting time. Um, my advice for everyone I guess, is to take the Fe as soon as possible and the PE as soon as possible, um, It is, you have to study, you know, no matter what job you have, I don't think there's any person that I've talked to.

Who said, you know, I opened the guidebook and I knew about everything in there. So you definitely have to go back to the basics and kind of make sure you have all the building blocks. It's a little daunting to get started. I think the application process alone makes you, um, wonder if you should be doing this uh, right.

Cause you have. You have to record all of your work history and get your transcripts. And when you're, you know, five years outta school, it, you don't really remember how to study like that. So I did, um, I did the online S P prep class, and I was lucky enough to have, uh, somebody in my office at the time was also studying.

So for me, it was important that we had to do it together. Right. I couldn't just, you know, get that lesson. Like we sat together and we talked about it and. That was really helpful. You know, the practice questions are limited. So yeah, that was a, it was a long couple months and it in, you know, they do it in October.

So you're kind of giving up your summer to study every night, after a long day at work. It's tough, but once it's behind you, you never have to think about it again. that's true. It is a daunting process to start blogging all. Experience and filling out pages and pages of paperwork and every state is different.

So you have to, you know, be looking at your states, uh, sometimes your local amendments for your, uh, board of engineering. And it can be quite a lot. So I know what you're saying there. And yeah, the studying part , it's hard stuff. I coming home from work when your brain's already just been going at a hundred percent all day and studying again is, is not an easy thing to do.

It is not. Yeah. And, and since, since I've gotten it, your local chapter of S F P might or might not have a question writing session. Since I've gotten my P I've been involved in that through SFP every year. And that process has made me really appreciate how much effort goes into creating that test. And who's creating that test.

Right? So SFP is coming out as asking their engineers and their volunteers to have these minimum four hour sessions where. Lock yourself in a room with all your books and think about, okay, what do I think an engineer should know? And it is you just blank piece of paper, write this question and you try and put references.

And then that question goes to a different group that validates it. And then that goes to. You know, the testing company and then they do a practice test and a cut score where they bring in experts from every field and see if they can answer it. So it, it really is so important to our industry that the PE does mean something and has an impact.

And there's a lot of people working to make sure that we continue to have that test. You know, our industry is so small that N CES sometimes is like, are you guys sure you still need this? So it's hard for the people taking it. It's hard for the people creating it, but it's so important in the industry to have something that's recognizable through all disciplines.

So thank you to everybody involved. That's so interesting to hear you talk about the process. I never knew about how, you know, people. We'll go into a room and write questions and that sort of thing. So I find that infinitely, interesting to hear about, you know, how these questions are vetted and, you know, produced because yeah, I just took my, uh, I just passed my PE exam last, last October.

And it was the last paper. So I've had a lot of thoughts recently on how that's gonna change and you know, what the new standard is or what the new normal is for the PE exam. So I know there's been a big resurgence in, you know, uh, PE questions again, because we're trying to gear up for the online test.

So it's pretty interesting stuff. Absolutely. I wanted to get into your professional work and, uh, yeah, I just wanted you to go over your, uh, career at, uh, uh, overview level. And yeah. Just tell me about your career up till now. Sure. Um, so I, I graduated Maryland in 2010, um, and I. Like a lot of people I'm not from Maryland.

Um, so I grew up in Connecticut about an hour north of New York city. So my, I guess the summer between sophomore and junior year, I, you know, didn't wanna work my normal high school job. Everybody said it's so easy to get internships, but all the connections they had were at, you know, around Maryland and DC and I was going home.

So I Googled fire protection engineering in New York, and I. Came across this website and I called them and I said, hi, I'm a student at university of Maryland. Do you guys need an intern? And the guy was like, how how'd you get this number? And I was like, I don't know. I Googled it. And he's like, great. Like, you know, come in.

And so we talked for about 10 minutes and he was like, okay, when are you back from school? And I was like, what? So yeah. I mean, that was my first attempt at getting a job in fire protection and it's. Pretty much that smoothly ever since then. Uh, so I , I interned at that company, Hughes associates now Jensen Hughes in, you know, 2008 and I had a couple other jobs between then I worked so Hughes, which is straight consulting.

And then I had a, um, another job at an MEP design firm. I thought, you know, the code consulting was cool and I liked the variety of it when you're just starting. You don't really appreciate that. um, so I really liked design and I thought I would give it, you know, a shot at just design work. And I found that I didn't like that.

I liked sobriety. So I went back to consulting and then I was with Jensen Hughes for about four years. And then I moved over to cosent associates, which is a large MEP design firm in New York, Boston and Chicago. But we have now about 15 to 17. Fire protection engineers. Um, so we have, wow. Yeah. So it's, I, you know, I think we have maybe 350 engineers and 15 fire protection engineers.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but as you know, in the industry, 15 fire protection engineers in one spot, that's a lot is not nothing. Yeah. So most of them are up in Boston and they're all, um, I think mostly WPI grads. Has a similar thing as Maryland does where people stay in Massachusetts around there. So that's great.

So yeah, it's, it's interesting. And I, you know, I definitely still do some design work. We help the bigger design studios with some of the more intricate problems they have. We also have our own projects, so it's been really nice to be kind of. A bigger company that does, you know, the big, heavy lifting engineering, and then have this expertise kind of off to the side.

So, you know, my company in New York is one of the biggest and best MEP design firms. So we're on the coolest projects. And even if I'm not necessarily working on them, I can still talk to somebody about. Hey, like, you know, what are you guys doing on that? And they're like, well, you know, the architect said this.

I'm like, I don't think that's right. uh, so it's definitely like a very exciting place to be with the design studios and the collaboration and you know, that we're the new technology. So yeah, it's in, uh, An interesting ride and I've seen some very cool things and everybody who does not do fire protection when they go places with me are, are always surprised at the things that, uh, I.

Have to look at . Yeah, for sure. That's really cool. Yeah, no, I was blown away. I was not expecting you to say 15 fire protection engineers. That's a lot. Yes. And that's just code consulting. We, I mean, we have sprinkler designers who, you know, are plumbing and fire, but 15 license. I think most of us are licensed by now.

Um, FPE, Maryland, WPI. Yeah, my company is the company I work for. FSB is one of the biggest architecture and engineering firms in the state. And there's only. For fire protection, people who do fire protection for my company. And that's not small either. I can only imagine the huge projects that you guys get into cuz you know, the company I work for gets in on some pretty cool jobs and really big jobs for the state.

I mean, for Oklahoma, you know, uh, we've done a lot of neat jobs so I can only, so yeah, that's why I'm a little bit awestruck when you're like 15. And then I'm just thinking of, I know what that means for my instance, but yeah, I'm just thinking of, you know, what kind of neat stuff you guys get to do. And as an engineer, it's always fun to get the biggest and the baddest problems.

So yeah. That's pretty neat. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And another good point you had is. Is the diversity of thought through being involved with other professionals in your field, you know, 15 other engineers doesn't mean just, uh, more people. It means more people solving problems, more people being innovative and more people having just good takes on the industry or lessons learned or all of that.

So that's neat that you get to be in that, uh, group of people who are all solving big problems. Yeah, it's, it's really great. You know, we have a couple of engineers who do the fire modeling, be it smoke control, or can fire analysis and egress modeling. Um, and I, you know, I know what that is, but I would never attempt to do that.

So it's, it's nice to, you know, we get to see their reports and see the output and understand their process, but they've got it covered. and then for sure, you know, we. The design, the people who specialize in design, people who do, you know, just healthcare. And it, we have one guy who is our accessibility expert, which I have no interest in, um, becoming an accessibility expert.

So it's, it's really nice to have a, a team that covers all the bases in fire protection. So, yeah, it sounds like you guys have different sectors and different specialties. That's pretty neat. So I think that's a good time to, to say so what is the area in fire protection that you specialize in or that you enjoy the most?

I mean, I have always really liked design, so, you know, right now I've got. A couple of design projects. Uh, I, for some reason have always loved working in AutoCAD and now Revit, it just, you know, they used to joke like, oh, like give this to cat. She'd love to do that on a Friday, just like clean up notes pages so I've got, you know, some Revit projects.

I've got one right now that I'm doing, you know, the life safety drawing. Some fire alarm, design drawings, and some sprinkler drawings at like a very high level, you know, kind of like 60% CD type detail. And that is very fun. Right? Cause you get to look at the whole building and get to really understand it from the egress to this depression, to the alarm and how it all works together.

So I do really enjoy design, but I also. A pretty good amount of experience in healthcare, which is kind of booming right now. Um, and so we've got a couple of healthcare clients in New York who are, you know, in preparation mode. So we're trying to, you know, meet their needs as best as possible. And the great thing about working in, in healthcare is because, you know, everybody in that industry kind of understands how essential.

Being safe is that, you know, those are the proactive owners and those are the owners who come back and say, you know, you saw this and I really wanna fix it. And what do you think we should do? And, you know, there's always something going on in, in the, in the healthcare sector, right. They, they figured out that this door is not, you know, functioning properly and they need somebody to come in and look at all the doors and they wanna solve the problem and make sure everything is safe all the time.

And, uh, that's a, you know, A good industry to work in where people care a lot. The service, the safety that you're providing, whereas you know, it, when you're working in New York city with some developers, you know, they're concerned about the cost. Well, okay. It's safer, but how much is that gonna cost? You know, we really don't find in healthcare that we get questioned on things that are providing safety, which is great.

That's neat. I've never worked in healthcare. That seems pretty intuitive that they're like to be proactive and they care about life safety. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. The, my only experience that would probably be in the same vein as that is, uh, like working for the government or for working for department of defense.

That's another situation where. You know, they understand life safety and they are not as likely to push back on, you know, preventative measures or, uh, good maintenance. Uh, but yeah, I'd also have plenty of experience. Like you're talking about where you're providing the code minimum standard and the level of life safety that is, you know, code compliant, but nothing above and beyond.

Yeah. And I like drafting and designing too. Yeah. I wanted to get back into, uh, you know, you talked a little about like consulting and, and designing, and I could tell that there was, uh, some difference in your mind about those two things, but yeah, I just wanted to. I can't tell if you meant like code consulting and life safety stuff is different than designing and drafting, or do you have any thoughts on that?

It feels that way. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes if, if I'm on the project just to design the sprinklers, I kind of have to ignore some of the other stuff , uh, right. You know, it's really great to be. On for both, right. To understand how the building works and then design from there. But that's just not how we get brought onto projects a lot of the time.

Mm. Um, so yeah, I mean, for us, it's like totally different. Service. Right. So if you, if we get hired as the code consultant, you know, we'll put together a code compliance approach report, and we'll be there to help the architect with wall ratings and egress and all that stuff. And we'll get brought on in the beginning of the project.

If we're on for sprinkler design or fire alarm design, they send us the building that's already done and say, you know, put the sprinklers in. So it is very different services. And. in New York. It seems people don't always think that they need a code consultant. Mm-hmm um, so. Yes. I mean, some clients, you know, and, and some architects are very knowledgeable on that stuff and that, you know, they say, well, we don't need that.

Um, so yeah, it's, it's, I obviously the project where I have all three right now is the best, the best in that, you know, I can take the time from the beginning to understand what's required, why everything is there and then designed from that. But, you know, the co consulting projects are nice. You really are kind of involved in the decision making and well, if you, you know, if you add that much retail, then you're gonna have to upgrade a fire alarm system.

And, um, you know, that, that kind of stuff is interesting versus, Hey, here's 20,000 square feet of this. You know, put the smoke detectors in. Yeah. That's an interesting point. You have maybe for, I don't know who all will listen to this, but maybe for somebody who's not as familiar with the, the construction in industry, uh, a lot of times the architect will produce the life safety plans.

And, uh, it's, it's kind of goes back and forth in the industry, whether or not the fire protection engineer will, um, have impact in the life safety plans. Definitely. If there is a fire protection engineer on the set of drawings, a lot of times they will provide, uh, the fire alarm and fire suppression drawing.

For the construction documents, but yeah, it's kind of interesting that I feel like that we're trending right now towards more and more having the fire protection engineer involved with the life safety drawings. But yeah, I, you know, I go back and forth between. Whether I get to be involved with that or, you know, not, it seems like when there's problems I'm always involved with it.

Exactly. Yeah. . Yeah. And I, I think that, you know, the architects who are sure that they always want a co consultant on every project have learned that lesson the hard way, and you know it with anything, anything design related, it's always nice to have somebody. Just look at your drawing, right? Did I get too far into this?

Can I not see, you know, the trees through the woods? Like, am I crazy for thinking this is fine and you know, a lot of the time somebody else doesn't have to be somebody with more experience than you, just a different set of eyes, big picture. It's always helpful to have somebody who does. Day after day, look at it and just say, no, that looks great.

Everything looks great. Good to go. Yeah. A different perspective is always valuable and these projects can be very long and, you know, just providing construction documents can, you know, take. Months and, you know, sometimes, uh, more than a a year or, you know, so depending on how big the project is and what the, what the, you know, contract for review and whatnot looks like.

So it's, uh, definitely a process that. Could use a set of eyes for reviews because yeah, I've definitely been in this situation where you've been staring at a set of drawings for, you know, a week or two, and then somebody takes a look at it for three seconds and it's like, Hey, this isn't right. You know?

And you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, you know, I've been looking at this one stare for a week. I didn't even realize there's a whole nother one over there. . Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, definitely. It, uh, helps to have second, second set of eyes. So we talked a little bit about one of the projects you're working on now, but yeah, I just wanted you to go into a little bit more about what a day in the life of a fire protection engineer might look like.

Or so, I mean, as we kind of were chatting about earlier, We're all working from home now. So it's definitely not what it used to look like. um, but I have always enjoyed, um, maybe we'll talk about my typical week, uh, getting out of the office a little bit. Um, so I, with the healthcare and some other stuff I've worked on.

There's a lot of inspections that I have to do, which, you know, if you're going a hundred percent inspections, it's driving you crazy. But if you're in the office every single day for months, you're also going crazy. So I, you know, in my four years at Costantini have gotten a, a good mix of versus design.

Um, So we just wrapped up, well, we're kind of wrapping up, uh, a project where we were looking at fireproofing and fire stopping above the ceiling in a million square foot building. So that was a lot of months of being out in the field, you know, on a ladder with a flashlight. And that stuff is really interesting to me.

And I think you need to have the full picture for that. Right. So you're gone up and you're looking at these things and you're noticing, you know, one tiny square inch of an issue, but then, you know, you have to remember the person that you're gonna ultimately submit this report to. Does he care or does he just need to know what needs to be fixed?

Right. So I think. The biggest thing is understanding the construction process as a whole of like I'm looking at this so that I can create a document that tells somebody else how to fix it. So yeah, the inspections, the report writing, you know, I just, I like when it's the full process and it makes sense to me, right.

So, you know, that was fire proving, but it could be sprinkler design. If it's an existing building, you know, You gotta come in, you gotta somehow be able to express to somebody what's there, what they can reuse, what they have to remove and what needs to change going into it. And I, you know, a lot of times with the design, you know, people are worried about the H J approval and this and that, which is all you have to look at everything, right?

Mm-hmm , you don't just wanna put things on a drawing. So it gets approved. You wanna put things on a drawing so that everybody who picks up that drawing understands what you saw and. You need it to look like at the end. Um, so inspection report, writing drawings, lot of meetings when things don't go great or when they're going good.

I, you know, the collaboration on, on these projects is so important, right? Like when you're. Designing the system and you're, you know, all just staring at your computer screen, trying to figure out this valve room, you gotta talk to the architect, right? Like, Hey, can you make this room a little bigger? Is this absolutely it right?

So you, you know, you can spend hours trying to solve a problem that might not be a problem. If you had just picked up the phone and asked the a. Um, if there was anything that they could change. Um, so that, that part is fun. When you, when you have a good team, who's all on board. Nice. When you see the process work well.

Yeah, I think I said this, uh, before on the podcast, but you know, you get into fire protection and you think that fire protection's gonna be the hardest thing you do, but turns out. Coordination and teamwork and communication end up being the things that are the hardest and, you know, uh, vary the most from project to project is the people on the team and the stakeholders.

And I like what you said about, you know, knowing your audience with these projects, you know, every project's different and. You know, uh, who you're reporting to or what the end goal of the project is, is always different. So you have to know your audience when you're writing these reports and, you know, um, making these engineering judgements, um, as well as knowing the technical for, you know, why they shouldn't have the conduit or the sprinkler pipe in the rated wall without, you know, uh, protection.

Interesting. Yeah. And I, you know, in healthcare and, and some of the government projects that I've had. I found that having a fire protection engineer on the owner or client side, you think it's gonna make your life harder, but it often makes it so much easier to have somebody on the client side. Just say, yeah, that's absolutely correct.

We absolutely need to make this change. Um, You know, sometimes when you're the only person in the room saying, you know, you can't do that. And everyone's like, well, why? Yeah. You know, it's nice. It's nice to have another person who understands where you're coming from, especially when they're on the client side.

Definitely. And. Having somebody who knows what they're doing on the client side is gonna help you get the information for you to get your design going and get everything moving along the way it needs to be in the first place. And you know, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So if you need information about existing systems or, you know, what they really want for deliverables, then you have somebody who, you know, understands.

What's required, you know, talking to you about what they want instead of part of the consulting and just engineering and, and, uh, architecture stuff is in general is narrowing down these nebulous thoughts that the owner might have about what they want or what they need, um, and kind of synthesizing that and giving them something.

That, uh, is gonna make them happy at the end of the day and, uh, achieves what they're trying to get at. So, absolutely. Yeah, it's hard to do, and it definitely helps if you're talking to some people who know what's going on. Yep. I like, uh, getting into all this design stuff and, uh, life safety, obviously. Um, it's great.

I big fan of design, big fan of, uh, fire suppression and fire alarm layout, kind of like you are and just, uh, I don't do as much of the life safety stuff, but I like getting into all that mm-hmm it's good stuff, but, um, So, if you were gonna give like a breakdown of the methodology or like a, you know, high level overview of what it takes to, you know, or what it looks like to design a sprinkler system or a fire alarm system for a new building, you know, How would you describe that?

You know? Hmm. Well, uh, so you definitely need to talk to the architect about what they're doing in the building. Um, right. So that, that helps you understand what. You need, um, in terms of hazard classification, if you need any specialized reaction, special hazard. So understanding that would be number one.

And then obviously the incoming water supply. How big the building is. Do you need a fire pump? Where can I put all of, uh, you know, the backflow prevention and the riser control valves, um, and then, you know, something that people always forget the, the drainage, um, you know, and making sure everybody understands what you're gonna ultimately need from the square footage, uh, at the end.

Uh, so we're, I've got this project now where, you know, there's a big overhang and. Don't know where to put the, um, dry pipe valve and they're requiring the nitrogen generator. So, you know, it's a significant amount of square footage and important to know that up front for the architects, especially. And then, yeah.

So figuring out where you're gonna put kind of the brains of the operations between the incoming and the floor control valve, and then, you know, the sprinklers figured out . It's it's a lot of one inch pipe. You should be able to fit it in, you know? Um, so definitely, definitely you gotta nail down the incoming to the riser control valve and then loosens up after that.

that makes sense. Yeah. Those nitrogen generators are big and it seems like it's a common thing that fire protection engineers are always trying to arm wrestle architects for space and. You know, usually we're in a mechanical room or, you know, some sort of our fire alarm panels in an electrical room. And, you know, unless you're in a really big building, you're probably not gonna get your own space.

And yeah, a lot of times these, these dry pipe systems, they they're serving. You know, they're ugly. People don't wanna see 'em. Yeah. And so you're like, oh yeah, we need a, a 10 by 10 space or a six by six by four space or whatever in the corner near the front of your building, where this overhang is gonna be, you know, figure it out.

The less pipe we gotta use is the better. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, you know, and some of the. You know, some of the, you gotta welcome all the solutions, but some of the things that they say are like, no, we can't, we can't do , you know, I wanna work with you, but we cannot do that. yeah. Can we put your pipe in the column and then can we, you know, oh, can we go underground with that pipe and then pop up somewhere else in the building?

I'm like, no, nobody wants that stop. you're not, you're not preserving the architectural arch by having me run. My pipe and the column, you know, we'll, we'll paint it black and, and it'll look fine. It'll be fine. Yeah. so yeah, I definitely have had those same struggles. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, so the, the design assistant, if, if it was a empty box that nobody cared about the piping, it would be.

Very easy to design a system, but you know, keeping the other stakeholders in mind becomes the challenging part. Again, uh, the coordination and communication, and you know, you sure you could just provide fire protection design and just plop it in a building, but everybody's gonna be mad at you cuz you didn't coordinate with the electrical to get it powered.

You didn't coordinate with the mechanical engineer to make sure you had all your duct detectors. You didn't coordinate with the. Architecture be. And they had a nice ceiling that you didn't put, uh, cover plates in. You just put straight up sprinklers in. So there's all these stakeholders that need to be communicated with and, you know, have input from, and yeah, the fire protection can be the easy part a lot of times.

Yeah. I, I worked with a woman in the design studio. She just retired after I think 45 years. I was kind of taking over a project for her as she was going on vacation. And we were sitting down with the electrical engineer to go over what valve needed to be monitored. And she, she could have done this with her eyes closed.

She just pointed at every spot where she had a valve and I was like, how can you do that? She's like, what do you mean? How's I do that? This is my design. I know where every valve is. And I was like, wow. like, I, she has a million projects going at once and she somehow. Always knows where every valve and she was like, listen, if I didn't know, this coordination meeting would take two hours, but I can tell you, I can tell you in five minutes where every single valve in this building is, and then we can all go back to our desk.

I was like, okay, that's awesome. Yeah. It's always neat to have, uh, Good, uh, mentors or good people in your, you know, professional career that have, uh, they're just strong in fire protection. Yeah. It's always, you're always like, man, I need to, I need to get on my game, you start highlighting my plans and you know, but, uh, yeah, I know how you feel.

It can be a daunting time to, you know, and that's not your only project, you know, you probably got a bunch of other projects. Exactly. And it's like, how am I supposed to remember all this for all these projects? And yeah. and then by the time, by the time they go into construction, you haven't looked at it in oh yeah.

A year. And it's like, yeah, I think I put that. I have no idea. So yeah, I'm always so impressed. You know, some people, when they design these systems, it goes right into their head and they never forget it. And it's. Very cool. I'm not quite there yet, but we'll see. I wanted to transition a little bit into some professional development talk topics.

It sounds like from what we've already talked about, you have had some great experience in, you know, um, promoting the field and being involved with S F P E. But yeah, always like to get into some professional development stuff so that, uh, we can spread the word about what's good to get involved with in the field, but.

Yeah, I, I know you talked a little bit about healthcare right now and trends in healthcare. This podcast probably won't come out for a while, but I imagine that, uh, all this coronavirus stuff will still have echoing effects for, uh, years to come. But yeah, I just wanted to get, uh, a little bit of what you thought might be a meaningful trend in the industry right now.

I think right now it's. Technology. We're all, since we're all working from home. I, I think people are leaning on the technology more than ever. So like, you know, between Skype and Microsoft teams and zoom, I have always used, I care a lot about sustainability and you know, the paper recycling and all that.

So I, for a long time have, uh, used my iPad to survey, which is a. Because you don't have to carry around a roll of drawings and you kind of fumble around with them. Um, but B now it's nice, you know, people we're running into issues where people are like, oh, I love that drawing in the office. You know, I, I don't know what my notes said.

And, you know, having something where all of your field notes are a legible to anybody who reads 'em, but be available all the time, as long as you have your laptop, that's been great. So I think we're kind of. A lot of times people get ramped up in, well, I have to get this done and I'm gonna do it the easiest way.

And now that we're all at home trying to, you know, be just as efficient as we are in the office, we have to really rely on the technology and figuring out what the best way to record all this stuff is so that you can recall it easily down the road. Uh, so I've always. Thought it was important, but I think now everybody else is realizing how important it's for sure.

Yeah. I can see that a lot of people, um, just in my life or there are some people that I work with that are, you know, getting more involved with technology than they ever have before. You know, whether that be through new software or new. You know, uh, forms of communication. It's just, uh, you're forced to, because everybody's so, uh, uh, isolated right now.

It's but, uh, it's kind of neat, you know, you see some people adopting new technology or, you know, moving forward with some of this stuff. And I think that it's all for the better, even though it's painful now, you know, I'm not trying to, none, none of the situation is for the better, but I'm just trying to say that the progression in, uh, technology use.

Technology literacy seems like a good thing for sure. So, yeah, definitely. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And, and I've been doing quite a bit of like coordination type work remotely, which, you know, at first I was like, oh my gosh, that's gonna be a disaster, but no. So, you know, I share my screen in CAD and we go through and he says, you know, pan up, move that over.

it's been going, it's been going great. And so, you know, people are saying, I hope some of, some of the use of technology sticks, right. If I had to go down to that person's office, it might take, you know, an extra hour and a half, but you know, if we can just jump on this. Screen share for 20 minutes and solve that problem.

You know, we might cut down on a lot of coordination time in the future, for sure. Yeah. That's, that's what I was saying, uh, to somebody the other day too, is like some parts about this situation. Working remotely are not as efficient, but some parts about, you know, working remotely. Being in a meeting while you're also on your computer and able to access other resources, you know, while you're in the meeting, while if you were to be in a meeting in person, there would be no, like searching your computer for a document or a resource that you needed for the meeting.

Like while you were in there. Yeah. So in some instances it's more productive, you know? Yeah. For coordination or communication than just being physically in a meeting with somebody. And then all you can do is just be there in the meeting. Yeah. I, I hope I hope some of that sticks cuz I, I think it has been going really well.

And I think people normally would've fought against it are forced to do it. So here we are. yeah, I. I think some of it will stick. Uh, it'll be interesting to see how it all, uh, pans out. But yeah, I think there is gonna be a, a new normal in a lot of ways. Yep. But yeah, so I wanted to also touch on, um, what kind of fire protection resources that you would.

Recommend to professionals. I know you've talked a lot about, um, S F P E and you know, your great experience at the university of Maryland, but yeah, I didn't know if you had any other tips or, uh, things that you would think would be good for professionals in our industry or in other industries in fire protection.

Yeah, I mean, I am a huge proponent of S F P. Was the student chapter president at Maryland. And then when I graduated, moved up to New York, I joined right away, got on the executive board. So I was now president of the local chapter two years ago. And you know, it's, a lot of people are like, you know, what's the benefit and it's tough because you don't.

See the benefit until you need it. So it's, you know, I'm at somebody five years ago at a meeting. That's great. And now, you know, something comes across my desk where they make that, or they sell that product and I need to get this question answered. And so that's the benefit, you know, knowing the people in your community.

Who, um, who are answering these questions and, you know, knowing them well enough that you can call them and get your question answered in five minutes is really important. And another thing that I've been involved with New York city is New York city loosely follows IBC, but generally modifies it so much that, you know, it is our own, our own building.

So I'm actually on the technical committee for fire protection in reviewing and writing that new code. And those are connections that I made through S FFE where they're, you know, Hey, does anyone have time to join this committee? And it's been a very cool. Process to be part of, kind of like we were talking about the PE like the man behind the curtain and seeing, you know, the discussions that go into every single word that goes into that document has been so interesting.

And to have, you know, a, a voice on that committee, but also to just understand. How they arrived at those decisions and all of that stuff, you know, came about because I was involved so involved in the local fire protection scene. Yeah. That's neat that you get to be involved with the New York, uh, building code.

Yeah. For people who don't know, uh, Uh, like places like New York and California effectively have their own version of the international building code. And, uh, you better know what's different about the international building code and the New York building code, or you're gonna have a bad time because, uh, a lot of times they're big differences, but yeah, I did a job in LaGuardia.

Uh, last year is still in progress, but yeah, working with the, with the New York building code and you. Since that, uh, the building we're working on was a hundred year old building it's, uh, close to a hundred year old building. It's, it's a interesting situation working in New York for sure. But that's really neat about you being on the code council for, for that.

Yeah. I'd like to hear more about that and, uh, what that, uh, looks like. Yeah. So it it's been. More than a year now that we meet once a month for maybe three hours. But so I'm on the fire protection technical committee and there's technical committees for everything. So there's plumbing and, uh, mechanical and there's, um, you know, life safety egress.

So fire protection, we cover, uh, chapter nine, which is all the system stuff. Um, and then, you know, some stuff in chapters four and five and seven. So there is a fire suppression subcommittee, fire alarm subcommittee, and then. Smoke control and interior finishes and, you know, kind of the architects mostly handle the fire systems rated construction, but we weigh in on a lot of that as well.

So I'm on that third kind of smoke control and other one. And so we, the department of buildings has gone through and. We started with 2015 IBC and they've kind of made their suggestions and then we review, uh, so every single word has to be unanimously agreed upon. By the entire committee. Yeah. So we, they read it, you know, somebody who is suggesting the edit goes up and they read it and then you discuss it.

It's yeah. It, it, again, similar to the PE exam to see what goes behind it is crazy. And so we have people from department buildings, people from the fire department, architects, engineers, and all these people kind of getting together and it, you know, When I first started, it was kind of like, oh, okay. Yeah, this all seems fine.

Somebody said, Hey, I noticed 37 instances where high rise is high space rise and it's supposed to be high dash rise. And I was like, what? Oh my gosh. Yeah. so it's, that's intense. Exactly. Yeah. Like you don't realize how much detail goes into it until you're watching it happen in real time. Crazy and said, and you know, somebody says, you know, okay, we want this.

And then the fire department says, well, none of the, our guys know how to use that. So that's pointless. It's like, oh yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Right. We're not gonna require building owners, uh, to put something new and costly in their building. If the fire department is saying we don't need. on the opposite side.

We have some people on, you know, the owner side who are saying, you can't make us do this in the fire department saying we absolutely need that. So if you don't provide that, you can't open this building. So it's very interesting. , that's cool. That sounds like a really neat process to be in. Yeah. You named all my favorite chapters, so I'm, I'm down for all that.

Yeah. And I, I guess that's a, a good point that, um, You know, NSTA and SFP and all ICC, um, there's always volunteer opportunities. I know, especially SFP and like, If there's volunteer opportunities, go on their websites and, you know, say what's interesting to you. And if those committees are seeking, volunteers get involved, that's a great tip.

Get involved, make connections, uh, join, uh, local organizations you would be surprised about. Um, The kind of people you're gonna meet and, uh, the kind of great, uh, knowledge and, um, just, uh, networking that you can have at some of these events, people are interested in helping you out and, you know, fire protection's very close knit, so that's all great stuff.

Yeah. So. Um, got one last question for you and I wanted to see, um, so if you were to go back and, uh, talk to yourself when you were just getting back in the, in the fire protection field, what is the one piece of advice that you would, would give yourself? I don't know. I definitely stick with it. It'll be worth it.

I mean, there was definitely times, uh, where I wasn't sure. That this is the right thing, or, you know, that I was gonna ultimately be happy with this long term, but yeah, stick with it. It's worth it. And if, you know, there are things you don't like, you can still change those things, but there's so much that you can do in the fire protection industry and community that.

You know, find the things that you enjoy and, and stick with them. That's great. Well, awesome. KA, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I wanna be conscious of your time, but, uh, I really appreciate you coming on. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next.

Sponsored By SprinkGUARD https://www.sprinkguard.com/

Chase Browning is a fire marshal with a lifelong history in the fire protection industry. This episode of Fire Code Tech shares the perspective of an authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) as it applies to topics like plan review, the codes and standards process, and fire investigations. Chase gives insight into what it's like to be a principal member of NFPA 13, one of the most impactful committees in existence.

How did you get into fire protection? Would you tell me about some of your certifications? What does it mean to be an Authority Having Jurisdiction / a code enforcer? What does your typical day look like as a AHJ / Fire Marshal? Would you speak about the methodology of fire investigations? Can you speak about your history with the development of codes and standards? What does the process of developing codes and standards look like? Are there any resources that you would recommend to professionals?

Transcription

This episode of fire code tech is brought to you by sprint guard, but more on our sponsor later on in the show. Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the.

My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection. Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry.

So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place. Hello. All welcome to episode six of fire code tech. On this episode of fire code tech, we have chase Browning. Chase is a deputy fire marshal. Chase has a unique perspective as a fire marshal because he was born and raised in the fire protection industry.

He has had a variety of jobs ranging from sprinkler fitter to somebody who manages a fire suppression contracting. In this episode of fire code tech, we get into what it means to be a fire marshal with chase. Also, we talk about the perspective of a fire marshal and how that differs from an engineer or a contractor.

Chase speaks a little bit about the methodology for investigating a fire. Chase talks about his role in being a principal member of the NFPA 13 committee for automatic sprinkler systems. If you're a big fan of NFPA 13, like I am, you're gonna love this. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow fire code tech on social media.

Let's start the show. Hello, chase. How's it going today? Welcome to the podcast. Welcome. Well, thank you. Appreciate being here. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to get started and I just wanted to start out with a little bit about your background and how you got into fire protection. Cool. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to.

Be a part of your show and, and, uh, I, well, the first thing I tell people always about fire protection is, you know, I grew up in a, in a fire protection family and to kind of frame it all. I had a, you know, back back in the day, I remember I had a fire sprinkler save lives, bumper sticker on my skateboard when I was in junior junior high school.

Uh, you know, Yeah, my, my dad was a fire sprinkler fitter in the late sixties, early seventies. And so my brother and I, my older brother, we grew up in a, in a family that was, you know, doing fire sprinklers. And that was kind of how we, how we grew up. And so we had a family business for a lot of years and we just grew, you know, grew up in that environment.

And as I worked through the ranks of the. Sprinkler world, you know, starting off just, you know, doing stuff on the, on the weekends. And you know, this is before I, maybe before child labor laws, I don't know, but we was, you know, do stuff on the weekends and just kind of entered this career and fire sprinklers and did that for, for a lot of years.

And, uh, as I, you know, was involved in fire sprinklers for several decades, it, you know, I got more and more intertwined with the running to the business and. You know, all the way from, you know, layout to estimating and, and, you know, design interface and, and installation management and all, and just all kinds of stuff and, and just fell in love with became a code nerd and kind of move, move myself through, uh, into a job as a fire service doing, doing code enforcement.

So kind of went to the other side of. So, you know, the code officials say I I've left the dark side and my contractor buddy says I went to the dark side. So it depends D which stakeholder you are. Yeah. Depends on, uh, where you're coming from, I guess there, yeah. I've always had a theory that coding have a, just a different seat at the table.

And my experience, you know, I've been with the fire department now for the last six years and it's that that's, that's true. You know, it's, uh, The built environment has a lot of stakeholders and so much focus on the code official and, and the contractor, but there's other, as you know, there's other drivers, you know, the insurance, the owner wishes the.

Uh, loss prevention policies. I mean, just all kinds of different voices that make the, the, the building happen when a building is built and, and, uh, so just, you know, seeing all of that kind of happen as they grew up, kind of pulled me into the, into the, into the code world, you know, eventually. And, and that's how it kind of jumped into code enforcement.

I, I really value the, the time that I spent in the sprinkler industry, you know, I'm real comfortable on the construction site and real, comfortable in a environment that, you know, we're saying, Hey, let's take this set of, of laws and rules and codes, and let's make turn 'em into a building and let's make owner happy.

And there's a lot there. Yeah, for sure. Well, it sounds like you have a very. Good background on the side of just knowledge about the codes and your background and your upbringing was basically in fire protection. So you're, you're basically born into the field. It seems like that's not an uncommon story.

The more people I talk to, they either stumble into the field or they're they have some tangential relation to it from a family member or from somebody in their life. Yeah. I like hearing about. Your upbringing and fire protection. And that's really funny about your skateboard. Having to fire sprinklers save lives on it.

I remember my old man pointing to my brother and I on a pile of pipe and fittings and, you know, in a bystand and a ranch and said, all right, you know, we're a junior high school. He was like, okay. Pull all those fittings apart or, you know, and so it was pretty daunting, like, oh, what does all mean? I wanna mention one thing about code.

I don't know if this happens to every person in the sprinkler world that, that lives in the installation side of things for any, any time in their career. But it's happened to my old man. It certainly happened to me where you're in the middle of this project early in your career. And someone says, Hey, what's this building gonna be?

And you know, you're cranking widgets. Your job is to, you know, lay out pipe, you know, and I, I was in my early twenties and I'm running around installing this system and someone says, Hey, what's this building gonna be like, you know, I have no idea. And I, and I, and I've never forgotten that, that I, I had no clue because I was focused, you know, right on making the installation happen.

But later on in my career circumstances pulled me into, you know, needing to know more about what, when do sprinklers or stand pipes or fire alarms, when do these systems get installed into buildings and for what purpose? And so it broadened my horizons a little bit and that's kind of how I end up being more of a code nerd.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I wanted to touch on that from what you said earlier, you know, I, I started out as a, uh, fire suppression designer for a contracting company. So understand what you're saying about the perspective shift from somebody who's more ingrained in the codes and somebody who's, you know, concerned about getting the sprinkler system designed and ready to go.

You know, there's a definitely. A perspective shift. And I feel like, you know, on one side of the spectrum, you have the person who's installing, you know, who's just worried about putting the system together, according to what the plans say and getting the job done. And then. Like, as you go to designer, it gets a little bit more broad.

You're thinking about the system and why you need the system. And then engineer and, uh, fire marshal is like even more of a wide spectrum of what systems plural and you know, why do we need these systems? And you know, what is the intent. I have the use of this building. So that's good stuff. When I was, uh, looking at you to be a candidate on the show, I saw that you had a lot of unique certifications and licenses.

I just wondered if you could speak a little bit to some of your licenses. I've uh, hadn't. Seen very many of the ICC certifications before, but, uh, yeah. Didn't know if you could gimme a little bit more on that. Okay. Yeah. The ICC, the international international code council now publishes. As you know, the international building code, international fire code.

And, you know, since 2000, when they first came out, there's been quite a sea change in solid what codes states use. And so a super majority of states across the United States and, and other parts of the world use the I codes. As a basis for how they build buildings and, and more so knowing that majority of the majority of the states use ICC codes kind of compels a lot of, of building departments and fire departments to seek out candidates that have some of these, uh, some credentials.

Uh, that are published by these, these model code groups. So I have a handful of certifications that are, you know, based on testing that anybody can get, you know, they're, I, I don't enjoy testing, but I don't know anybody that does like to test, but, you know, but to get, you know, to get a job at a fire department or a building department, you gotta, you know, you gotta bring a lot to bear cause it can be pretty competitive.

And so I've just started over the years, collecting some credential. The ICC publishes a, a variety of 'em. Currently I have a, you know, fire inspector, one fire inspector, two fire plans, examiner credential, uh, certifications, a newer one called a commercial fire sprinkler plans, examiner certification, and to do plan, review and inspections in, in Oregon.

Uh, we're required to have the same stuff that the building officials have, which is a building plans, examiner certification, and a commercial building inspector certification. So these are all things that you. That you don't have to have in, in a lot of areas of the country, but to professionally develop, I think is, is good for everyone.

And for, and for me, certainly it was always desirable to always, you know, raise a bar for myself and try to get more stuff. And there's so much expected of code officials that, you know, they're they're, the public has this, this, this expectation that code officials know. All their stuff. And, and what I always tell people is, listen, we have a, we have a requirement to, to have access to this information and have a general level of knowledge of it, but to have a, a sharp expertise on the entire building code and the entire fire code and all the standards that they reference is that's a tall order.

I've always been encouraged. My C code officials striving. Get certifications, professional certifications, many times you need them to just get the job and there's communities where you actually don't have a statutory or administrative requirement to even hold these certifications. But it's always a good idea to, to have to have professional designations.

I know NFPA has a variety of them. Most of mine are related to the ICC codes, but just to just a good idea to. Be able to, you know, have the, a minimum level of requisite knowledge and test the training to be able to do the work that you carry out day to. Those are all good points. Yeah. It's a very intimidating to have to be knowledgeable about.

I mean, just the building code is such a dense document and, you know, and then you get into the reference standards and being an and a subject matter expert in all these different fields, you know, even somebody who has had. A lot of experience you have, you're probably the, uh, exceptional case where you have had a lot of great experience in the construction side of things.

And you know, a lot of times the fire marshals don't have that sort of background. So I'm sure that helps you out a lot, but yeah, I definitely understand what you're saying about, it's a tall order to be knowledgeable about all these. Um, standards and codes. Well, one, one of the upsides to the codes and standards getting, you know, thicker and bigger, every three or four years, whenever they come out is a lot of the interpretive stuff gets addressed through the standards and codes development process.

So I remember years ago there was, you know, when like NFTA 13, the installation standard for fire sprinklers. Half the size it is now, or even less. And you know, people in its opinions vary about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, you know, that, that the codes and standards now address tons of stuff that they don't have to some will say, and others will say, Hey, these standards, you know, now finally address these gaps that lived in these codes for years, where.

It would, you know, cover basic stuff and there would be invariably there would be pieces that the codes wouldn't address. And then of course it comes out during the design or, you know, during, even during the bidding, uh, and into design and into the installation phase of these fire protection systems that these codes don't address X, Y, and Z.

So let's, let's fix it in the codes and then you get a new chapter or you get a new section that has, you know, that addressed whatever gap that was there. So, um, I'm always encouraged by the people being involved in the code development process because it's, uh, You know, it, it hopefully is a vehicle to, to deal with the concerns that show up when there's just something missing from the, from the codes and standards.

I like that. I think it's a good thing that they keep getting denser and keep explaining more about. You know, the process, there's so many different situations that you could run into with the building, just an infinite amount of ways that you could, you know, construct the same wet pipe sprinkler system.

And so I think that more information is usually a good thing, you know, that does raise the barrier to entry for those not as well versed in the code books, but I think it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I, yeah, I'm not sure who all will listen to this podcast. So I just wanted to ask, you know, from your perspective, what is a fire marshal in?

What does it mean to be a code enforcer? Well, well, it's an honor, you know, it's a, a fire and police. Are trusted members of the public and looked upon as very trusted by the public. And, you know, to be a uniform, fire personnel is, is a, is an honor and a responsibility. It, it's interesting. There's a correlation between fire sprinklers, you know, and even other fire protection systems being this, this weird, you know, um, uncommon thing that lives in a building and during construction.

Where other trades will say, Hey, uh, you know, there's, oh, there's fire sprinklers in this building. I didn't know. There's fire sprinklers in this building. And of course there's more coordination issues, et cetera. So sprinklers have this like weird like, oh, sprinklers, sometimes live in the building.

Sometimes they don't. And so they there's a silo effect. Well, fire marshals have a very similar, there's a very similar stigma that lived in the. In the fire service world where fire prevention and fire codes are this weird, like silo that lives in the fire department, where the big thrust of all of the, you know, the training and the focus of course are on the manual suppression, the operations of the fire department.

But a good, you know, progressive fire department is gonna also value preventing fire and also value making sure that that the fire codes are enforced and that, and that systems are installed with a, you know, a level of care and, and integrity. And so there, there definitely is a, you know, coming from a fire protection background.

Where sprinklers were this, you know, this extra in the job site. And, uh, then moving into the fire service where fire prevention is this extra. Uh, it was, it was, it was like, uh, not a, not a huge shift. Wow. Yeah, it was not a big shift for me. I was like, oh, okay. I get it. I know what it's like to be at a meeting.

And. It's like a fill in at the bottom. You like it sprinklers. You're dealing with the schedule and everybody gets together to talk about the schedule of the project and there's mechanical electrical plumbing. And then there's a right in at the bottom. You know what extra in this going. Oh, does somebody hand write sprinklers in there?

Same thing with prevent like, oh, We're gonna prevent fires too. Interesting correlation there. I, I will tell you though that, uh, I've always astonished at the care that our line personnel in the fire department take with the public. You know, these guys are, and gals are always goofing off in the firehouse.

Can't take very much seriously. Like when the bell rings that, you know, when the bell rings, they are there. And it's just why it's such an honor to be involved in, in public safety. Like my old fire chief would always say, when somebody, you know, has a broken sync, they can pick the plumber out of the, outta the phone book or Google.

When they have a, a broken lamp, they can call an electrician. But when they have their worst day, they don't get to pick who shows up. They don't get to pick the person that helps them with the, with the vehicle accident, some other tragedy. And so, you know, fire service, they need to be their best, man.

That's powerful. That's. That's a really interesting take. Yeah. I never thought of it that way. And most fire. Service personnel are volunteer and it really, it makes zero difference. Whe whether your fire department that shows up to help you is getting paid to do it or volunteer, they have to meet certain levels of skill and training to be able to protect the public at the level they do.

And so that environment is, you know, fire codes and prevention, all sit inside of that environment, you know, uh, Paramilitary command structure and, uh, you know, uh, an environment of, of lean into helping rather than pulling away from helping. And so I try to carry, carry that with me day to day. You know, we, we need to help the, the applicant move the project forward.

Not, not slow 'em down and nitpick people to death. Yeah. I can fall into that trap as well, reviewing, uh, submittals. So yeah, it's about being a part of a team and moving forward and, you know, having constructive comments, you know, if something's really not up to code and really is a problem. Sure. You gotta say something.

If you just don't like the way they did something and it's really in lines of what the standards allow, then you need to just move on. Yeah. I wanted to get into more of, you know, um, on the same line of the, uh, what is a fire marshal. I wanted to talk about, you know, it's your job now as. Deputy fire marshal, what is your typical day look like?

I spend most of my time split between plan reviews for fire protection system, and then the associated inspections that come along with those for construction and investigating fires for origin and cause can touch on that a little later. But, uh, in Oregon, And there's a lot of states that do this. The, the entire scope of the, of the construction is under the purview of the building department.

So, and there's some states, municipalities, et cetera, that have a, you know, a parallel path where the fire department looks at certain pieces and the building department looks at it. And there's other places where qualified person looks at it, whether it's building or fire. And in Oregon, the, you know, like in our community, in Southern our building official.

Defers the review of the fire protection system over, over to the fire department. And then we have the required certifications to do that work, but they're not looking over my shoulder when I do the plan review and second guessing, or, you know, adding up my math and all that stuff. They're looking at it going, okay, it's got reviewed, we're gonna move it forward.

Here's the comment. And they support that, but they are the permit agency. So my day to day is having stuff routed to. Us at the fire department, from the building department and we look at it and we route it back. So I, I, I spend quite a bit of time with that and, and like, you'll hear from a lot of code officials.

I, you know, we spend a good chunk of our time dealing with the same contractors that just don't seem to get better. You know, a lot of folks do that. Half the contractors just don't seem to improve on what they do. And then a. Really are shining examples of, you know, doing it better than we did it the last time.

And you, you can't let it sour you though. If you're dealing with, you know, you'll, you'll give a, a list of, of, of corrections to a contractor on a submittal. And next project, couple months later, they submitted, it's got the same issues. And so I, my day to day is full of opportunities to be patient . And remember that I've been on that side of the table.

And wow. Yeah, I definitely know what you're talking about and not letting it, you know, the experience of writing the same comments. You jaded you to, you know, the interface with the contractor. That can be a frustrating scenario when go over. This is why we can't do this. And here's the reason in the code.

And, you know, you have a list of comments and then a month months go by years, go by, and then you're working with. Same contractor again. And it's just another, just a subpar submittal. And you're like, man, this can be just rough. So yeah, I know. I resonate with that for sure. I have one submittal, like a, I dunno, a couple years ago where we just made some routine comments and I, I get teased by my colleagues cuz I, I still kind of think like a contractor.

I'll try to take a quick peek at the submittal and see if there's anything, any big ticket items. And, you know, I I'll shoot an email over to 'em and say, Hey, this is here's some, here's some stuff I, we haven't done the full review yet, but we've done enough of the review to where you can move forward with your fabrication, you know, et cetera.

Cause there's nothing that's gonna change the pipe sizing or whatever, and make sure I give them that in writing. They, they get protected. Um, we've had, 'em just say I one time where they just said, no, we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna make that. We're not gonna make that change. You know, man. Yeah.

Well, my philosophy is if they're, if they've gotta resubmit, uh, a set of plans over any, you know, big ticket. Items, you know, whatever it is, anything that drives them to have to re you know, revise the drawing, then I'm more apt to, you know, include a bunch of smaller items because it's kind of a courtesy, you know, dorky stuff like a north arrow or, you know, something like that.

Uh, which I, I may not comment on if there wasn't anything else to revise, you know, I, I try to be pretty talent to that. but a lot of experienced designers will appreciate getting everything, even dorky, small items in one list, you know, here's everything. Yeah. We had one where they said, no, That's not something we're familiar with, so we're to not do it.

wow. That's pretty wild. Have you had that happen where they just say no, I've had to more the situation where it just comes back and they've ignored it, you know, or it's, if you get the high quality institution, they will write a reason why, you know, I actually have some. Code verification or contract document, you know, supplement to show why they didn't do it.

But yeah, the more frustrating one is just an omission and just a resubmission with where they didn't, uh, address that specific comment. That's pretty crazy. I'm a control freak. So I, I try to like, you know, I'll take the, I'll do a preliminary report or whatever, and I'll put it all like a word doc and I'll have it all numbered with references.

and the, the savvy designers will reply back, you know, and, and re respond to each item within, you know, maybe in a different color and say, Hey, all our comments are in blue or something dorky like that and, and, and respond to each one. Um, and when I was a contractor, I found that to be smart because I don't want to, I don't wanna go back and forth.

Plan reviewer off my back. And so I'm going to reply to everything and comment on, on everything and say, you know, revised is noted da da and, and provide an answer. But it's incredible how often I'll get, I'll get back a, a, a, a response that addresses a third of the items and they do it in one paragraph and a narrative.

So I'll take all those. Have a control freak, and I'll go into the word doc and I'll place their responses in the appropriate spot. And then I'll put my own responses. You know, this needs to be addressed. This needs to be addressed to try to inspire them, to use the inline response approach, because it just makes it less crazy for everybody.

Yeah, it gets, it gets pretty interesting when. Go back and forth, you're into your third revision and someone's just like, eh, I'm not gonna do it. That's pretty crazy. I can't imagine saying that to a code official. Yeah. I mean, uh, when I was in the designer's seat. Yeah. I would just wanna, it's more work every time that you have to go back and address these comments.

So why not do right the first time and limit the man hours that you have to spend on this whole endeavor? So, yeah, I like what you're saying about being organized. Responding to the comments efficiently and another good, uh, way I've seen it addressed is just like a list up front of, of, they took all the planned comments and da, da, da went one through eight or whatever of here's, all your stuff addressed.

And or when you get a resubmission, they're like, you know, here's, uh, what we addressed and changed from last time, you know? But obviously that's the, the really quality solution. And you're like, wow, these guys have it together. It's strategic too. If you, if you address everything, a plan reviewer asks and you resubmit the list plan reviewer is gonna spend the preponderance of their time reviewing the list and their eyes are not gonna be on the revised drawing.

They're gonna be like, oh, did they address all my comments? If you don't do that? They're gonna be looking at the drawing the whole time and they might find more stuff. So it's just, you know, it's just one of those things it's like, Hey, it's just good game to spoon, feed the plan reviewer and make it easy.

Add extra notes. Show your math lane. What you're doing, this is a lesson I learned. The hard way is no. Get outta jail free card to say, well, you didn't find this error the first time. Why did you find it the second time? And why am I looking at it now? Now I reviewed it. I found this the second time I was looking at it and the comment stands.

So that can be a really, uh, hard pill to swallow. So yeah, you definitely wanna close these issues out, uh, as efficiently and concisely as possible. Yeah. Only reason I'm looking at it again is because there was revisions. And so. Yeah, it's always interesting. Yeah. You touched on it earlier a little bit, but I wanted to get into more of the fire investigation side of things.

Yeah. I'm not real familiar with how that all works. You know, I've taken a look at the NFPA standard for fire investigations, but yeah, I wanted you to go through a little bit of your experience with fire investigations and maybe some of the methodology of investigating a fire in your experience. Well, it's a fascinating subject for sure.

I, I have a certified fire investigator credential, which is, uh, a professional designation from the international association of arson investigators that the whole basic concept of the fire investigation, of course, you're going in after a fire has occurred. And you're looking at, you're looking at two things, you're looking for where the fire started, which is the origin of the fire.

And you're looking at how it started, which is the. And generally you're gonna go in that order. Uh, you're gonna try to figure out where, where the fire occurred or where the ignition source came into contact with some type of fuel. And once that's determined, it's a lot easier to figure out the circumstances associated with how it started.

So origin and cause is kind of a, a phrase that you hear in the investigation world, because that's the, the thrust of what we do in the investigative fire. I've been doing fire investigation for about, about six years at my fire department. And we're, we do a lot of training for investigation. There are parts pockets of the country where the, the primary fire investigator for the public is law enforcement and there's others where it's fire service personnel.

And I I'm at a state and a department where fire service personnel investigates the, the fires for origin. And cause it can be as simple. You know, uh, you know, cause most fires all start small, uh, can be as simple as, you know, a, a, a stain or a, you know, a black garbage, you know, on the top of a stove to a completely burned down structure that burns all the way to the ground from the exact same circumstances as a small little.

Kitchen fire just, they all start small and different different factors contribute to the severity of the fire. So what we do is we generally are trained to look at, at the, uh, the effects that the fire had on the structure. And we use those, those, and those observations to try and listen to the story it tells.

You know, it, you see different, different types of patterns that are left by the fire itself, fire and smoke movement throughout the structure, et cetera. And you use the, you use those observations to hone in on. On where the fire occurred. Sometimes it's the area of the greatest damage. And sometimes it's, it can actually be the area with the, with some of the lease damage where the fire started and the fire just founded easier fuel package it moved into and just starts burning more severe on the other side of the living room.

So there's a lot, there's a lot there. And fire fires are generally classified as either, you know, accidental or, or natural, like lighten. Or intentional, which we call incendiary. Or UN or unknown and, and we basically drop fire investigations to any of those four buckets. You know, it's either accidentally caused or naturally or intentionally caused and, and the results can ver look very similar.

You walk into a burnt down structure. There's a lot, there's a lot there. You know, fire investigation is a real big piece. It's one, one thing that's really inspiring to me as a code nerd is there is a connection between fire investigation and code development that I certainly was inspired by when it was presented to me that way.

A number of years ago that we, we there's so much in the code world, focused on keeping the ignition source away from the fuel, keeping the fire from occurring, et C. And that gets baked into the codes. Um, but it's the results of the fires that tell that, tell us how to do that. You know, we, we go into the fire and we see where we got it wrong with preventing the fire.

In a lot of cases, we see where, well, if this circumstance would've been different, you know, uh, it could have prevented the fire. If this extension cord wasn't run under the mat in the walkway where we're walking over it over and over and over again for weeks, months and years. And that electrical cord gets broken down by all the foot traffic going on top of it.

You know, you can wind it a code official now and look over at a grocery store and say, oh man, that's probably where a fire is gonna start someday. If you're a trained investigator, you go, man. That's uh, oh, there's a connection between codes and, and investigation. That is crucial. That's good stuff. I, you know, I've always, uh, from schooling with fire protection, I've always, you know, seen the correlation between.

Codes and disasters or fires and you know, but I've never looked at it in the light of, uh, the positive light of, you know, we are learning from fires. We are learning from, you know, these investigations and it's actually driving the code. Further into safety. I guess that's just a fresh perspective for me on that whole process.

But yeah, I find that interesting. Well, like the station nightclub in 2003, you know, where, where, where it was a game changer and we learned so much about human behavior in a tragedy and you know, this, this nightclub fire that happens and, and everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong and people go, you know, the fire occurs.

Smoke fills up the space. It's overcrowded and people are inebriated and people start trying to move towards the exits that they came through and they gets jammed up and, and just, you know, it almost becomes predictive. If certain circumstances exist that you have a problem. And so, you know, I, I heard it said before that the codes are a, a history book that they, you know, we, we do our best to anticipate the tragedies that can happen.

And invariably, they do, and we go, well, we gotta let's fix it. And it takes years to fix the code. Look at the international fire code just now in. 2018 edition, which very few states are using has a requirement for retrofitting sprinklers, into nightclubs that have 300 occupant loads or more, and that's brand brand new.

And that's a direct connection from the station nightclub fire in 2003. And here it took 15 years. Wow. To get that baked into the codes as a minimum level of risk that we will accept as a community. If you adopt that you saying, okay, We don't accept a 302 person nightclub without sprinklers in it. It's not an acceptable level of risk.

And for 15 years, it was, that's really interesting. That's one of the fires we studied in school is the station nightclub fire. And yeah, it's incredible. There were so many things going wrong for that scenario. You know, the being over occupied, the way the excess were designed, you know, that, uh, the pirate techniques is just, was all just bad form.

You know, all, I just added up to. This terrible event, but it's, it's really interesting to hear you talk about, you know, that code process and you know, how it looks like to see these things be implemented. You know, I, I wasn't aware of that. Little tidbit about, you know, the 2018 IFFC and you know, that change for assembly occupancies.

So that's pretty cool. That tragedy is what brought about the current building code requirement for sprinklers in a, in a nightclub over a hundred occupants. It was, it was a 300, I believe, before. And the, and since the 2006, I think, I don't remember which cycle it was, but it was a code cycle after that tragedy.

Where the, the minimum, the threshold for sprinklers in a nightclub went from 300 down to 100. And that was a result of that. And now you have a retrofit requirement for 300 for existing nightclub. So, you know, this is a, a space that we're looking at. All the time for issues with safety, because you have low light levels.

You have, you know, delays, you have these group thinking where folks aren't gonna be aware of a condition until they see other folks being aware of the condition and, and all those delays that occur. Add up to injuries and, and fatalities. So it's a fascinating piece and we learn all of that from the, the post mortem or the Monday morning quarterbacking that we do after an event.

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Let's get back to the show. Well, I think that's a perfect time to transition into, um, I wanted to get. A little bit of history or your experience with, uh, the development of codes and standards. I know that you sit on a couple of. Committees for NFPA. And yeah, I was interested in hearing a little bit more about that.

I think, uh, now's a good transition time. I'm a huge fan of, of the NFPA standards development process. I think it's so public focused and public available, public accessible. It's in, it's always been inspiring to me. I haven't been involved in the committees for, for a long time. It's about, about five years I've been on, on.

Some of the committees, but I've been all affected by this process for many, many years. And, and a lot of years ago I was, you know, I tripped up on a project and, you know, skinned my knee on something and, and, uh, and got mad that the codes were written poorly. And someone said, Hey, If you don't like it, change it, you know, show up and change it.

So talking about a, a, a consensus document, you know, looking at NFPA, you know, 13 for sprinklers or 72 for alarms or the national electrical code, NFPA 70, um, and some of these, these bigger standards are all of the standards are generally consensus documents. And so, you know, the committees are comprised of.

Stakeholders from the, you know, the entire spectrum of the built environment. So you have installers, you have code enforcers, you have insurance folks, you have users of the document. So you ha you know, manufacturers there, everyone, everyone shows up to these committees. And sure everyone has their own area of focus and their own agenda and stuff that they want to, that helps their, their particular piece of the puzzle.

Nominally, at least the end result is a consensus document where everyone got their comments in including the public. So I, I'm a huge fan of the process and, and I always tell folks, get, get involved. Get involved, even if you're, you know, on the committees, the, you know, put public inputs in, you know, send in it's free.

You don't have to have an FPA membership. You can just send in a proposal and say, Hey, this stinks. Here's what needs to change. And here's my, here's my reasoning behind it. And then follow, follow your input through the process. It's, you know, it's, it's public driven. N FPA does not, does not publish or does not, does not write these documents.

The, the technical committees that are, that oversee these documents are responsible for the content in them. There's rules about formatting and style and all of this, but generally the, the, the stuff that's in there, the rules in these documents are they're born of public input and committee. So it's a important piece, a little soapbox I get on about that because there's this, this myth in the construction world that the there's some NFPA dudes or, you know, women and men sitting on a cloud somewhere.

You know, uh, you know, writing these documents and saying, yes, no, yes, no. And it's, it's not, it's us. It's, it's the public and volunteers that show up and, you know, are willing to argue over a, a semi for 30 minutes. You know, that's some unique insight to the process. Yeah. I think before I, you know, started interviewing people.

Fire code tech. I didn't understand. First of all, one of the things you touched on was that, you know, there are seats reserved for people in different user groups. Like there are seats reserved for people who like yourself are, uh, fire marshals work. Code enforces. There are seats reserved for insurance professionals.

There are seats reserved for, you know, the installers or, you know, people who own buildings. And so that's has a varied perspective. You know, we talked a little bit about perspective and how that's important and how you see the code and how you see the fire protection process. But yeah, I thought that was a good point.

You touched on. It takes a while too. You know, it takes a while for stuff to happen in the codes. It's a, it's a cool process, you know, it's, it's definitely not this, uh, preordained anything, you know, something will show up in our world and it'll take, it'll take years for it to finally get baked into the codes.

Yeah. And I think another. Good point is that, you know yeah. If you don't like it or you think something's not said, well, or not described effectively, write an FPA a note about if something's not right. Or if, if something's not the way it should be, you know, if you don't get involved and let 'em know, you know, it could go under the radar, you know, I'm lucky enough to work with the fire protection engineer.

That's. Diligent about, you know, being involved, trying to be involved with that process, looking at when an FPAs are open for public comment and putting it out to the rest of the team, you know, if you have an issue or you see something that's not right, you know, let, let a, let an FPA know, you know, right now all of the, the, you know, the, for sprinklers and alarms, all those standards are open for public comment.

You know, the N P 72 for alarms and, and all three of the sprinkler standards. 1313 D and 13 R they're all open for public comment right now. And that's a critical, critical piece. Even if you weren't, you know, if, if, if someone in the public or another stakeholder were not involved in the, in, in the inputs for the next edition, please get involved for the, for the comment phase.

Cause right now it's, you know, the, all the public inputs came. And we're, we're put together, packaged up and considered and, uh, argued over, et cetera. And what's come out of the oven is the first draft. And so there's all these first draft revisions that need comment and the committees we'll listen to. To the comment and, and it it's crucial like a big ticket item right now.

Is there a first draft revision to treat cardboard as encapsulated in storage? And that's a, that's a, that's big in the industry. If thats. Because of changes in the way. Cardboard questions about changes in the way cardboard is manufactured now. And, and it's a tendency to shed water rather than absorb it in some scenarios, uh, could be a big ticket change in fire protection.

And right now it's just a, maybe it's just a, Hey, it's a. This is the first draft revision. And depending on the, the inputs from the public and further discussion by the committee, this, this could prevail and, and move forward into the second draft, which will likely, you know, end up the 2022 edition of NFA 13.

That's really interesting. Yeah, that would be, would be huge impact on, uh, building owners for warehouses and, you know, densities and the classification of the commodities for. Uh, those type of scenarios with cardboard. I, I imagine that would, uh, throw wrench into some plans for sure. So that's really interesting to hear you talk about the things developing right now.

And I would not that that particular revision is, is based on, uh, since I, you into the weeds on this it's based on ceiling only protection for. Control mode and, and, uh, CMSA protection. So it, it kind of leaves SFR protection kind of out of the loop and, uh, in rack protection also wouldn't be affected by this, but the ceiling only, uh, for cardboard might, might change.

So it's a interesting, but the, the point being that the, the NFA 13 document is not, it's an installation guide, it's an installation standard. So it's, you know, it's generally focused towards installers, but it's not it's, they're not the primary or the, the only user of the document, the document is written for the user and the user could be.

Uh, all, you know, the insurance rep, it could be the, the designer, the building owner. It could be the AJ, the, the, the coding enforcer, any AHJ out there, it, you know, it could be a variety of folks that use the document. And so that's a, I think it's very cool. It's a very cool process. And like any other group, the committee is, you know, kind of like any church group or bowling group or anything else, you're gonna have some folks that are more vocal and more involved than others on the committee.

End of the day, you know, we want everyone involved in the discussion, but not everyone gets as involved. So, you know, you have group dynamics on the committee like you would anywhere else, but it, you know, generally it's a, it's comprised of a, as we've talked about a variety of different folks that want the best document.

I really like hearing about that. Yeah. The more I learn about the process, the more, uh, fascinated and just, uh, encouraged I am about, you know, the development of these standards and yeah, just, uh, I really like hearing about it because just like you, I'm a code nerd. And I spend, you know, most of my days, uh, looking through codes and standards and that's a huge part of my job.

So I like hearing about it, see something broken. You know, I always tell folks, write it down and let's fix it. Cuz I spent man, I spent years when I saw something in the code, even if it was broken, I thought, okay, it's supposed to be that way. You know, it's supposed to be broken because the, you know, the, the folks on the cloud writing the document, you know, wanted it that way.

But there's a human aspect to this volunteer, consensus based document development where mistakes are made, you know, there's. There's some, there's some stuff there's some issues like, you know, if you, for example, if you look at the 2019 edition at P 13, with this major reorg that happened. If you go to that spot, it'll tell you to protect, you know, exterior projections, um, over two feet and in another part of the document, it's four feet.

And so there's, there's conflicts and mistakes that can live in these documents. It, it requires all of the users and the code nerds that are seeing it to, Hey, write it down and throw in an input and they'll get sick. Yep. It takes these people who are very, uh, detail oriented to go through these documents with fine tooth comb.

And it's a lot for anybody. Take in. So I really like this, uh, code and standards development, uh, that we're getting into. So I just wanted to, you know, we've covered it, uh, pretty well, but I just wanted to get your input as somebody who is involved with, you know, one of the most major NFPA documents and, you know, it was one of the principal.

Members of one of these standards, you know, what does this process kind of, can you gimme like a breakdown of like start to finish what this, uh, process kind of looks like, you know, or maybe a high level overview of that? Sure. Well, high level overview, you know, someone sees something missing someone's in the public or something that needs to get fixed in the document or something missing or wrong or whatever.

And they submit a public input. You know, you can go to N P's website. And, um, click on the next, the next edition tab of, of any of the documents. And, and if it's open for input, submit your input. Uh, so someone can submit, submit a, a suggestion through a public input. And then, and then generally, uh, at some point the committee will get together.

Physically or virtually and review all of the public inputs and publish all of those, the results of the discussions on those inputs, you know, into a first draft, uh, revision of that document. And that first draft revision is a, basically a comp a composite of all of the changes that the public wants as processed by the committees.

Um, some of the changes get rejected. Some of 'em get accepted. The committee's supposed to substantiate all of its actions. So we reject your idea based on this merit, or we accept it based on this and that all gets pulled together into one big monster draft of the document. And then it, it, it gets sent back out to the public for comment.

And then the, the public can take all of that and say, okay, well, I don't like that. You rejected this. And I don't like your substantiation or your substantiation of why you rejected it, and this is the point cetera. And then the committee gets together again and takes all that public input or that public comment rather.

And does another examination of the documents. Okay. Did we get it right? Um, let's let's rethink this action we took last year. On our first swing at this, uh, based on this, this scolding from the public or whatever it was, you know, this comment that we said, you know, Hey, you guys, you guys didn't didn't, uh, address the real concern or you, you fixed the wrong problem based on our input.

And then the committee packages that up and moves it forward to another step in the process. And that's, uh, you know, assuming that assuming the document receives comments, which are big document, like 13 is gonna receive. Then it goes to another, another phase, which is, it basically gets adopted by the standards council, unless there's more concern over the committee's actions or the, or the way that the final draft looks and the public or any, any interest party can do a final step, which I think is important, uh, where they, where they basically make a final, a final swing at, at making a, a, an additional modific.

This is, uh, gets very technical, but it's. These are, start with a thing called a, a notice of an intent to make a motion and it's, and they say, okay, I, you know, I sent you my public input, and then I commented on your first draft of that input. And I still don't like what the committee did, uh, for the second draft on this particular topic.

So now I'm gonna make a motion to talk about this a final time on the floor of the NFPA conference in expo. Then the document basically comes up to be. Um, accepted by the membership at the conference. And, um, yeah, and it's, and I think it's important, you know, it's an important, final hearing of this concern and it happens at the whatever NFPA conference that this document's gonna be finalized at in, in a three year cycle.

You know, like I. Next year in 2021, the NP 13 will be on the floor for this part of this aspect of the process. And, and then it goes through that final kicking of the can on the floor of these different topics. and, uh, and then if the interested party still is not interested in what happened with their motion, uh, they can appeal to the standards council and the standards council will have the final say on what happens with the concern.

That's kind of the, the way the process works all the way through. And then at the end of the, of all of this, the standards council basically moves it forward for publication after all of these different layers of, of, um, what I think are, uh, consensus process. And it's, it's very, very cool. It's very hard for anyone to say, Hey man, this sure about, you know, I got bullied or I never got a chance to speak my piece.

I never heard it, uh, compiled like that, but, uh, I really. That was really great stuff. I'm glad that you got to speak about that. Yeah. So I think that I wanted to kinda end with some, a professional development question, or just always like to try to get input from the people I talk to about different resources or things that they might suggest for professionals.

So, yeah. I just wanted to ask, do you have anything that. Would be, you think would be a good resource for somebody in the industry or a place you would go for information or just. Yeah. Do you have any tips? Yeah, I always encourage, um, I always encourage folks to get involved. You know, for me, I was always try to just stay involved with stuff, whatever your role is, there's associations where folks get together and they need involvement.

They need help, you know, the enforcement side of things. You know, there's regional code groups, uh, consortiums of code officials that get together every month or two to, to make sure they're all enforcing things in a similar way or, or understanding the codes or being involved in the code process. For contractors, there's, you know, there's the different trade associations.

I know it's sprinklers. There's the national fire sprinkler association and the American fire sprinkler association. And these groups have regional date and other, you know, chapters that people can get involved in. And it can be huge for learning about the trade that we all love, you know, whether it's sprinklers or alarms or whatever, or enforcing those fire protection systems, if you're a code official.

So, um, I know NFSA and a F S a both are very involved in, in being connected to. Stakeholders in sprinklers, you know, the installers, the contractors, and the authorities having jurisdictions. So get involved locally, get involved with the code process. You know, if you've been doing contracting for a little while of plan interview for a little while, You've been frustrated by something in one of these documents.

You've, you've been wondering why it is written the way it is probably could offer something to fix it or make it better, get out there and, and, and do it. I know, I, I remember sending a public input in a number of years ago. And I was nervous, you know, and I was like, and I think the committee rejected it.

And I was like, you guys suck, you know, like, I can't believe this happened but I saw an issue and I put it out there. And so being involved is important. That's advice I would give to folks and, and reach out to your associations. Um, look online for opportunities to, you know, I, I know that some of the social media environments out there have groups now where you can ask questions, you know, there's design group, you know, inspection testing and maintenance groups, contractor, installer groups, and you can troll 'em.

You can go in there and you can be a member of 'em seriously. And just, and just read what people are, you know, read the conversations about how people are addressing. Code issues. And, uh, if when back in the day in the, in the eighties and nineties, I would've loved to have those kind of resources available where you can watch conversations about code that's.

That's pretty sweet. That's all good information. Yeah. I think, uh, some good points you touched on was, you know, NFS a and a AA is the one for fire alarms, but these communities have. They have good resources for fire protection professionals. A lot of instances, if you sign up for membership, you get, uh, access to videos or, you know, uh, certain types of training.

So these are all good places to look for information about fire protection and just, uh, a, a place to go learn. If you do have that passion for fire protection. So I think that's a great. And networking, you know, you can network with other folks that are using the codes and standards. Well, chase, I wanna be mindful of your time.

I didn't get to all the questions I wanted to ask you, but, uh, I sure appreciate you coming on the podcast. And I just wanna say, thanks. Yeah, you were welcome. And thanks for, thanks for doing this. Always, always inspired to see folks out there, you know, bringing people together and talking about talking about dorky code stuff.

it's. I'm all about it. I'm a code nerd, just like you. Thanks for listening, everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes in standards.

Interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

James Andy Lynch is a fire protection engineer who specializes in commercial research and testing for his company,  The Fire Solutions Group. Andy has a bachelor's and a master's degree in fire protection from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In episode 5 of Fire Code Tech, we discuss what it takes to get UL listed and/or FM approved. We also dive into the intersection of new and unique technology like augmented reality and the fire protection industry.

http://www.firesolutionsgroup.com/

How did you get into fire protection? Expand on your education and your experience at WPI? A high level overview of Andy's Professional Career? What does the testing / research process look like on a day to day basis? How do you get a UL Listing or FM Approval? What does kind of project work is Andy involved in for the Fire Solutions Group? Andy's experience with modeling software? How does the emergency response capability of the Fire Solutions Group work? What professional development resources would you recommend to professionals? What is one piece of advice you would give to yourself starting out?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the field, you're in the right place.

Hello, all welcome to episode five of fire code tech today on our episode of fire code tech, it's James Andy Lynch. Andy is a fire protection engineer with formal education from WPI and fire protection engineering. Andy's specialty is in fire testing and product development. Early on in his career. Andy worked for several different laboratories.

He was part of a group who helped get a video detection system into NFPA 72 and get it listed with UL and FM today in the interview with Andy, we get into the research and development process and it explains what it looks like to commercially develop a product and get it listed through agencies like FM and UL.

We talk about some of the unique projects that Andy gets involved with through his company, the fire solutions group. I really enjoyed talking to Andy, not only because he was a very knowledgeable fire protection engineer, but he also is an entrepreneur and had a lot of good insights for professionals.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Let's dive in. Well, hello, Andy. How's it going today? Thanks for coming on the podcast. Uh, it's going great. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Yeah. I just wanted to get a little bit more about your background and how you got into fire protection.

Okay. Well, um, I grew up in a town called Andover mass, which is about 20 or 30 minutes outside Boston. So you might hear a little bit of a, a Boston accent. I, I currently lived in, uh, Southern Pennsylvania right on the Maryland line. Um, how I got into fire protection was I actually growing up, my father was a, a, a paid firefighter in the town.

So I was kind of around fire my whole young adult life. Um, I remember he'd get calls and. You know, if they needed extra men at a fire I'd tag along and sit in the truck and watch, and they'd have the firefighter, um, the open houses. So you'd hang around all the trucks and people, and back then they had the, the poles you could slide down.

I think the, most of the firehouses I've gotten rid of those. So there was always kind of this knowledge and interest in, in fire and fire protection. As I progressed, I, I was at high school. I was a, I was a pretty decent football player. So I started to get recruited by some smaller colleges. I knew I wanted to do engineering.

I, I was pretty good at math. Uh, I did well on my SATs and, and mathematics. My uncle was a, an engineer actually worked on GPS systems. And now we're talking, this is, you know, 20, 30 years ago. So I knew I wanted to kind of build something, have, have something and, and. Have that mechanical engineering background being recruited as recruited by RPI, Rensselaer, Polytech and, and WPI, um, taking tours and looking at their curriculum.

I realized that WPI had a fire protection engineering degree. And I think at the time it was WPI university of Maryland and, and Oklahoma, um, had fire protection. So I decided they had a five year program. I was gonna go into that five year program. I, I chose WPI, uh, got an undergraduate mechanical and, and a master's in fire protection.

So I think, you know, if I'm. Pined on one thing, it would probably be my father's influence to go into fire protection engineering. That's a great story. I love hearing about that sort of stuff. Yeah. My grandfather was a fire chief and in the fire service as well. So, uh, that resonates with me and my experience with fire protection.

So that's really cool. That's awesome that you were able. Go to school and get a degree from one of the very few education programs that are out there for fire protection. I mean, even now there's, there's not that many graduate programs or master's programs for fire protection. So I'm always, uh, really interested to talk to individuals.

Who have degrees from those programs, because there's not very many out there and I'm sure they're all different, but have some similarities. But, uh, yeah, I just wanted to get some more information about your education. Like what classes did you enjoy in school? I know you said that you were good in math and sciences.

Could you just go over a little bit of, you know, like what classes you enjoyed in school or maybe some of the, how the fire protection courses worked when you went through WPI and what their degree program looked like? Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and I think, you know, going back on the col I think the only other accredited program currently in the us is, is Cal poly.

So it's, you know, Cal poly, Oklahoma, Maryland, and, and university. I mean Maryland and, and WPI, as far as WPI. I, I really enjoyed my time there. One it's it's a smaller school. Uh, I think there's about, well, when I went, I think it was about 2000 students total. I mean, you have high schools that size now. Um, and there it's all engineering, everybody there is kind of in the same boat, we're all stressed out.

We're all, you know, working hard in that, that engineering, that chemical and computer science and mechanical and civil. And so everybody kind of is, is, well, like I said, in, in that same boat undergraduate, I enjoyed as, as. Playing football. I was in our fraternity. I, you know, had a good time, got decent grades.

I really enjoyed. One aspect of WPI is they have a lot of hands on opportunities. So your junior year you have what's called an I Q P and your senior year an MQP and they take a, a. Semester and you just work on one big project in a group. So you usually have about a group of three or four kids working on some problem.

And I actually got the opportunity to travel to Australia on both my IQP and MQP. So I lived in Melbourne, Australia, and I worked for a company called C S I R O, which is Commonwealth scientific industrial research organization. It's kind of like the, the nest of, of Australia. And my first project, my I QP was actually on fire modeling.

So I traveled around Australia, interviewing people who were using fire models, what they were using it for, what features they liked. Um, and it was kind of just. More of like a data gathering for C S I R O to see what the industry was using and how they were using their, the fire models. My senior year, I went back and I worked for the same company, but I actually did, uh, temperature and heat flux mapping of an apparatus.

They used down there, which looks at wall coverings and carpets, and it, it moves it towards a heater in timed increments until you get things like ignition and flame spread. And they were trying to make it a ISO standard at the time. So they wanted to do the heat, flu and temperature mapping. And, and that's what we did for that project.

The other thing about WPI is you need to take a, a minor and I minored in history and you do a big project with that. So I actually wrote a, a paper on the great Chicago fire and the economic impacts of having a. That size on, on a city. So right from the start, because I knew I was doing fire protection engineering, even though I was getting a mechanical engineering degree, I, I focused on a lot of aspects of, of just fire protection and the history of fire.

Then when I got into my graduate years, I really enjoyed the classes in and the professors there. And, you know, I actually ended up being, uh, uh, Sal Amanda, which is high honors in the program. I got to work in the fire lab at WPI. So there was a lot of opportunity to, to do some real hands on fire testing, whether it was, you know, abroad in Australia or, or in the fire lab there.

And in addition, I actually got a job in the summers working for the mass state police doing fire investigations. So coming outta college, I had a pretty well-rounded background. In fire, just from the testing, the investigation standpoint design. So it, I think it really prepared me to, to move into, you know, quote unquote, the real world definitely had a well-rounded background by the time you got outta college, that's a diverse set of experiences.

And none of that is even in your, you know, your formal listings for, you know, before you got outta college, you had all this experience in, and I think it's really interesting that from a, you know, an early part in your career, you had an interest in testing and fire science and really getting into the modeling and that sort of thing, which I feel like in my opinion, fire protection, Just such a young industry and, you know, just like budding and around the two thousands.

It definitely, it seems like it was picking up speed and like people starting to really take it seriously and becoming its own thing. So I think it's just super interesting that you were getting involved with fire testing and doing cool projects, like traveling to Australia, but yeah, that's, that's awesome.

I wanted to touch on yeah. A couple things that you talked about. I really liked, uh, you talking about the historic fires, uh, something that I would imagine that a lot of fire protection programs do since. A lot of, uh, code or standard is written by disaster, unfortunately. So I thought that was great. And, uh, yeah, I think that from a early age, it's I can kind of see why your career went in the direction it did since like in college, you were already getting into the research and, you know, fire science, the heavy fire science and modeling.

So, yeah, I just think that's interesting from, uh, knowing you from afar next. I just wanted to get in more of your professional career and talk about a high level overview of your professional career and yeah, just a little bit of history about your working career, if you don't mind. No, not at all. So when I was finishing up, uh, WPI, although I had gone in, in a five year program, which was supposed to accelerate it and, and.

The only issue I had with that is like you said, I, I knew I wanted to do fire testing. I, I, I figured that's, you know, going back to the reason I got into engineering is I wanted to contribute. I wanted to build something, you know, have something that I could say, this is what I'm contributing as far as something physical.

Um, so I kind of knew I wanted to do more testing rather than design work and, and more just, um, creating paper reports and, and design drawings. So. If you're in that five year program, you're not allowed to do a thesis because that obviously takes about a year's time or do an internship. So at the end of my WPI career, I actually decided I was gonna do a master's thesis and I wanted to do an internship, um, just to get some work experience.

So I actually got hired by a company called combustion science and engineering, uh, down in Columbia, Maryland. So I moved down and they actually funded my thesis work, where I did. Um, I actually used laser scattering to size, so particles over time. So we would. Burn small samples of different materials.

And then we would actually shoot a laser through it and, and gather the scattering and the scattering based on the particle size changes. So you can actually monitor, you know, growth of glomeration. And the whole point of it was we know that. Smaller particles make ion detectors activate quicker, larger particles make, make photo electric detectors.

So it was trying to look at the aging process and changes in particle size to then relate it back to smoke detector activation for, for litigation cases. Um, so that was kind of my first job was at CSE and finishing that thesis. I also took one class at university of Maryland to actually finish my degree, which was a toxicology class that, um, Maer Milky and purser.

So purser wrote the section on toxicology and the SF P handbook. And then, uh, you know, Most people listening to this will know Mauer and Milky Mauer. Now heads the program at Cal poly and, and Milky the head of the university of Maryland program. So it was a great class to take because I, I got to meet those three individuals, but going back.

So combustion science and engineering was my first job. Did they have a fire lab in their facility? They did a lot of litigation work at the time. So we were doing a lot of fire testing. Um, like I said, that sizing of so particles, we also looked at deposition of so on, um, smoke detector horns. So you can actually tell if a smoke detector activated or not based on the sot deposition, which was a really interesting project from there.

When I finished my master's degree, I actually looked around for other opportunities and went to, uh, Hughes associates, which is now Jensen Hughes. And at the time they were about 150 engineers, but. You know, they were, they were a great company to work for. They were in the Baltimore area as well. Uh, they had a fire lab in the back.

So I, I got to work in that fire lab. I worked on some litigation cases, did some smoke control. I was a young engineer, so I, I tried to grab as many projects as I could. And then the big projects I worked on there were actually for, um, the Navy, uh, the Naval research labs, I think to this day, Hughes still has the contract with them and they have a ship down in Alabama that we did a lot of fire testing on, which was a great opportunity.

I was there and I was working on now, this is, you're talking about 15 years ago, we were working on the detection suppression systems for the next generation of destroyer and carrier. And we were looking at wow, um, video image detection. We were looking at, uh, UV IR. We actually looking at acoustic detection.

So we had microphones in the compartments and we could hear if there was a pipe rupture or, or some event going on and then. What happened was one of the startup companies that was doing video detection at the time, actually hired me away from Hughes. And I worked for a company called Exxon X. I was actually the third person.

Um, I was a partner in that company and we developed video image detection from what it would do was take normal CCTV cameras and feed 'em through, uh, server and process the pixels to look for fire and smoke. We ended up building a fire lab, doing a lot of comparative testing with other detection, um, you know, air aspiration, spot type P type, and looked at how video detection would perform.

We migrated the analytics from the server actually onboard the camera. So you had a self-contained detection device that had, uh, dry contacts that could feed into a fire alarm panel. And then we actually got that technology FM and UL listed, and there was no listings at the time. So we had to actually work through the process with FM and UL to, to create a new standard for video image detection.

And then test to it so we could get the UL and FM mark. And then we also got it into NFPA code N F P 72 adopted video image detection, uh, as well as you know, we were finding customers and doing beta test sites and, and rolling out the product. Um, we built it up to a point where, um, Fike, which, uh, is a fire protection manufacturer, bought the company.

I stayed on board with Fike for about three years, and that's when I left and started the fire solutions group, which is where I am now. And I do mostly fire testing. That's an amazing career you've had so far and continue of having man. That's really impressive. I really enjoyed hearing. Specialization in, uh, detection and, uh, research and testing seems like is the through line in your career.

That's really interesting stuff. Just, uh, wanted to hear a little bit more about, uh, what does it look like? You're speaking about some of these research processes and, uh, you know, I have this image of, you know, what that looks like in my mind, but, you know, I've never, or had the opportunity to speak with somebody who, you know, does this for a living.

You know, when you're talking about testing, you know, certain detectors for litigation purposes, you know, what does this look like? What are you doing on daily basis to perform this kind of. Yeah. So it's, it's probably less fire testing than you'd imagine. Um, although 90% of my business is fire testing.

You know, being the owner of, of your own company, you, you wear a lot of hats. And so there's a lot of emails and marketing. I mean, my typical day, you know, I, I, I do have a wife and kids. I wake up at 6:00 AM, have a big cup of coffee and get them off to school. I, I have an office in York, but sometimes I work out of my house, but a lot of it is writing proposals, you know, talking with clients, uh, you can kind of split my clients into, into two categories.

One is the. The small startup company or, or a smaller company. And they're typically trying to get a technology into the fire protection market. And, you know, some of them have been in the fire industry, some of them haven't, and it's explaining that process and understanding the dynamics of, you know, it's, it's not like.

You put this on a shelf and sell it at Walmart. I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces between the AJ, the building owner, the insurance company, you know, NFPA codes, FM and UL consultants, and, and how you actually go to a market with, with a new technology. So I try to help with them with that by speak to 'em about the process of how to get things FM and UL listed.

I. Do a lot of code review and tell 'em, you know, where they would fit in the code, if anything addresses their technology. In some cases, it doesn't. So I'm writing text for NFPA codes to, you know, get the committee to adopt it, um, so that they can then point to the code. I'll help them through FM and UL.

So whether it's developing a new standard to test two or, or finding the right standard, and then, you know, there is a certain portion of my work that is I, I get a, I write a proposal. I, and I run a test series and, you know, I have a number of places that I test at. I've tested at university of Maryland.

Uh, I have inner tech right up the road from me, probably about five miles from my house. So I've tested in their fire lab. I have access to the, the fire academy here, uh, Aberdeen proving grounds, WPI, FM L. So depending on what the test is, I find the appropriate, you know, facility to test in, uh, I'll. Write up the report.

Um, and that will be the deliverable as well as I always like to, you know, either write a paper or present on the material that I've tested. So recently I was down Atlanta for their SFP Atlanta, um, chapter expo on conference and actually gave two talks. Uh, one was on some testing I did over the summer, uh, with wedding agents and another is on, um, an augmented reality tool I'm working on.

So it's, it's really important, not just to do the testing, but actually roll it out and, and get it out so that people understand what you did. And, and no one else is kind of repeating your work unless it's for verification purposes, but that it's, it's not redundantly done. And it's important for people to know that inform.

I think like most things, the perception of what something is and what it actually is, is a lot different. And so I think that's interesting for you to talk about the nitty gritty of it is documentation and writing proposals and finding the appropriate tests and writing a test plan and, and then presenting it and publishing your work and moving through all those motions.

So, yeah, I always like to get the real story because usually pretty different than how you would imagine you think of people in these, in these lab coats, you know, doing these dramatic experiments, but it's the reality of it is a lot more of writing papers and documentation and crossing your Ts and, and dotting your eyes as far as, uh, getting into the codes and standards.

Exactly. Yeah. I think that was a really interesting point. You touched on. How fire protection is not just a field where you could put something on the shelf and just have it go to market. I've talked with, uh, a couple different companies recently and one for a wedding agent, one for an alternative to a F um, And, uh, just a couple different companies then just, it seems like there's such a barrier to entry to the fire protection industry.

If you're not listed or you're not in the codes and standards, most fire protection professionals just don't wanna give you the time of day. So, yeah. And that's, that's, you know, it's, it's too bad cuz there is a lot of good products out there and I, I try to help the smaller company. I mean, that's was the mission statement of the fire solutions group was to bring, you know, technologies into the fire protection market.

And so I, I see a lot of companies and they're burning through a lot of money in, on the sales side and they don't have. You know, testing to back, back up their product, they don't have FM or UL. And I mean, if you don't have FM and UL, you at least need to have some testing verification so that you can at least write a variance and say, you know, this is why we're equivalent.

And it's kind of trying to explain that to 'em and say, look, I think you have something good here, but you need the documentation. You need some third party to test it and say, this does what it says it's gonna do. Yeah. That's an important note as well. If you don't have the testing and you don't have some sort of documentation to go to an AHJ and say, this is why it's equivalent, you're gonna have a really hard time getting that product into a lot of the larger marketplaces.

You sure you might be able to get it passed in some smaller jurisdictions or some less heavily regulated jurisdictions. But if you wanna get into the big marketplaces, you're gonna have a really hard time. Um, if you can't. Explain to an AJ with some data to say why this is equivalent. Right. So that's awesome.

You talked a couple times about UL and listings and FM approval. Just wanted to hear a little bit more about what it looks like to get a product UL listed or FM approved. What is, how do you start that process? Do you, you know, I, here is something that can be very expensive and very time consuming to do so.

Yeah, it, it can be so, um, You know, the big three in, in north America and the, the us is you've got factory mutual, you've got underwriter lab, and then you have Intertech. So you've got the FM, mark UL, uh, listing, and, and you've got the ETL, which is inter Tech's, um, mark there. So it really depends on if you have a product that already has a standard, or if you, a lot of the companies I work with have a very new and unique technology.

So you kind of have to either find the standard that closest fits or, or you have to talk to FM about creating a, a new standard test standard. The reason we have these companies to, to start is that. When we look at, you know, the life safety industry, we want to make sure things work. We want to make sure that we're getting the same piece of equipment.

Every time we purchase it, that changes aren't being made that could, you know, um, change the functionality of it. And, and it's it's for consistency. So the, the testing portion of it, the fire performance test is, is just one piece of it. Most of, uh, these processes to get a listing is actually a lot of component testing.

So they want to see what failure rates of certain rubbers and plastic gaskets are. They want to, you know, make sure. The functionality of some valve or some circuit board, you know, I mean, there's one test where it's just turning a, a device on and off 500 times, you know, there's a, there's a lot of just wear and tear corrosion, electric tests, um, that just to make sure that the device that's going out in the field is gonna be resilient.

So the, you know, and then you've got temperature tests where they bring stuff down to negative 40 or, or zero and, and up to a hundred, hundred 20, whatever the, the high temperature is. So a lot of it is, is component testing. You have the fire testing and, and the next part is looking at the manuals, looking at your spec sheets, anything you're gonna put FM on.

They want to have control of that to make sure you're not saying something that's outside the listing. You're not making a claim that isn't true. And so it's protecting the market. It's protecting to life safety device. So they want to make sure that that's gonna function. And then with. FM there's follow ups on the manufacturing facilities.

They actually come out and do quarterly audits in some cases where, uh, every quarter an individual from FM comes into the facility and makes sure that your manufacturing process, your quality control in the, in the manufacturing process is there. So when you get a product to submit it, you go to FM their website.

Does they kind of break it down by different departments? And you'll send in drawings, you'll send in your manual. You'll send in, uh, you know, there's paperwork attached. I do an authorized agent form for my clients so that I can speak directly to FM on their behalf. And then they'll give back a quote. Um, if it's a, if it's a, if there's a standard that already exists, the quote's pretty cookie cutter.

They say, this is how much it's gonna cost, depending on what device. I mean, yeah, it takes, it can take up to a year. I know that with any kind of pressurized cylinder, they have a year long leakage test. So that's, you're gonna start that right away. And then you'll start doing all the other component test in the meantime.

So a year is a typical timeframe. It could be shorter if it's, you know, if it's a simple spray head open, you know, day loose, spray head, it could. You know, three months prices range from, you know, $3,000 to I've heard tests, you know, for ESFR sprinklers, they're actually gonna do full rack tests. So you're gonna be, it's gonna be very expensive to run those.

I've heard tests as high as, or close to a million dollars to get a listing. Wow. On some devices, if there isn't a standard, then it's, it's a lot more difficult. Now you're talking about a two, maybe even three year timeframe where you're presenting the technology, you're presenting the case on it. Someone has to kind of be your champion at one of those organizations and say, yeah, we can see why this would be, you know, benefit the industry or in an FM's case.

I mean, the reason FM's approving is for their insurance clients. So they wanna make sure that there's a reason that their clients would be putting, putting that device in. Um, it, so if you do find that champion, then what they're gonna do is say, okay, we'll form a committee and we'll write a test standard.

And they'll usually give you a, a cost associated with that when that cost, if you pay that cost and they, they move forward and they, they build that standard, then you pay to actually test to that standard. So you, you kind of hit double hard O on that aspect. If there isn't a standard already, that sounds like, uh, quite a uphill battle.

Uh, yeah. You touched on something really good here though, is I think you answered a question that was, I kind of intuitively understand, but you went into some different parts of it is why do we have these listings? And it's for good reason that we have these listings for life safety products. And, but, uh, yeah, you also dove into some of the more.

Uncommon pieces like component testing and resiliency and temperature testing. And so those are some things that I didn't know about. And some of the interesting parts of. This process, but yeah, I find that that's really great to hear about and something that was not that aware of, but that's pretty, pretty neat.

Pretty incredible that, uh, it could be anywhere from three months to three years. So that's the range, cuz it sounds like in, yeah. Getting a committee formed just for the release. Project sounds like something that is not easy to do, especially if this isn't something that you're in the business of is, you know, these kind of, uh, endeavors.

Yeah. And for, for a small startup company, it's difficult. I mean, it's, it's something where you almost have to have early adopters and people who are using the technology, um, just to fund and, and get it through. I mean, there has to be a pretty strong demand, uh, for the product to be able to, to last that timeframe, um, and, and get a, a product out to market with an FM L or ETL mark on it.

It's cool that you get to work with small businesses and help these people who I've seen some really neat products. And even if you have a product that works extremely well for certain industry or people using it, and it's, there's clear that it's, uh, has a great benefit. It's still a very hard process to get these things listed.

So. I think that's incredible. Next. I just was thinking, you spoke a little bit about your project work and your different design work. I just wanted to dive a little bit more into your project work now at fire solutions group. And just get a little bit more about what you're doing now. I know you've told us that predominantly you are doing testing and some of, uh, that kind of work, but yeah, I didn't know if you could expand upon that a little bit.

So, um, you know, when you look at, um, my, well, my two customers, I. Kind of hit upon the, the smaller company side. The other half of that is I, I work for larger companies as well. You know, a lot of utility power companies, manufacturing, pharmaceutical stuff, usually with, with higher hazard oil and gas would be another, another big one, but they come to me and, and they usually want me to test a product that they've been approached to, to see if it actually functions the way they are claiming, or if they're using it in a unique application, is it gonna function?

Uh, the way they intended? So some of my projects cause that one I, I recently worked on was actually a, a thermally activated gas shutoff. And so they wanted to look at when it would actually engage when it would shut the gas supply off under different heat flues, as well as different flow rates of gas.

And so, uh, we actually found out that yeah, the flow of gas does affect the activation time of the device, cuz it's actually cooling it. As the gas passes through. So that was kind of an interesting project and the smaller ones, you know, I've, I've worked very closely with, uh, international fog and we helped them develop a, a new nozzle.

It's an open head nozzle. That's actually has a rotor on it. So a lot of firefighters. Refer to it as a cell nozzle or, or a Bresson distributor nozzle, but it has fine holes. And what's great about that. Nozzle is we, we tested it in a piece of equipment called the fours, and we found that at the same flow and pressure as a typical deflector plate, uh, sprinkler, we actually get better distribution of water and we get further throw and it's because you're not losing the momentum of the droplet by hitting it against a plate.

The spinning rotor actually shoots the water out at a further distance. So you could actually get better spacing with that nozzle and, and cover more. So that was a, a, a pretty interesting project. Of course, the, the VI from the last company was a very long and interesting project. Um, as far as bringing that through FM L I work with a lot of agents.

Both, you know, foam and, and wedding agents, uh, testing those for different applications. Lithium ion, uh, is big right now. So I've been doing a number of those tests in addition to your typical, you know, pan fires and, and, and wood crib fires, um, working with a company that's doing some, uh, nano mists. So it's actually, you know, if you look at your water missed range, it's up to a thousand nanometers, the nano mist is actually single digits.

So it's a very fine droplet. It's, it's more of a fog also working on some battery safety systems to try to reduce, um, the amount of flammable and HF gas coming off, off lithium ion on battery. So those are some of the technologies and, and projects I'm working on currently. Very interesting. Yeah. I like, uh, I'm I have a huge personal interest in suppression.

And so I like hearing about people making, basically being able to distribute. Less water farther or get better coverage with your nozzle that you were talking about. That's something I find really interesting to have a huge, uh, personal interest in just recently was looking at a job and was looking at the sprinkler heads and how far there's space.

And I was like, ah, you know, I don't think that I know of a sprinkler head that has a 32 foot spacing. And so this sprinkler head is either, you know, under spaced or, you know, I need to take a look at the identification number and get it figured out. Yeah. It's always interesting, uh, working with existing construction, but I like, I like hearing about those new technologies.

That's cool stuff. You've talked a lot about some different testings and some different, uh, products you've been working. Yeah, I, I saw some examples of some modeling and some simulation software on your website. Uh, what kind of simulation programs or do you guys use FDS or some of those type of programs or?

Yeah, so I, I get asked or in, in a test series sometimes I'll, I'll do a little bit of modeling for my own, you know, kind of self-interest to see where the, the fire's gonna go before I, I run a test. Um, if it's for a client, I, you know, I've, I've learned enough about fire modeling. And it's something I don't do on a consistent basis that I I've learned to outsource

Uh, and, and what I mean is you gotta be really careful with fire models and, and who's running. 'em what their qualifications are. Um, if they're not doing it full time and haven't been doing it for a number of years, uh, you really gotta, you know, worry about what inputs and outputs are, are coming in, you know, garbage in, garbage out.

And if they don't have a good process, you, you, chances are, you're not gonna get the results that you're looking for, you know, what, what is actually gonna happen. So there's a handful of people that I know have been doing. I mean, one of them's know a rider, um, from the fire risk Alliance, which is a, a, a sister company of mine, a, a good friend runs it.

Terry Fay is, is another one that, that I would trust running fire modeling for me. So a lot of times I'll contact them and, and they'll do it for me. And, and. Obviously it's it's for my clients. So they, they kind of gimme the results and, and I'll write up the report. It'll be part of a, a larger project, but yeah, there's, you know, you've gotta find a really good fire modeler.

And, and usually it's someone who does it on a day to day basis and, and has that experience and understands the model and all the assumptions. And, and so that's what I do. That's my perception of fire modeling as well, that it sounds like it could has a very steep learning curve and you gotta know what you're doing.

And you know what? I talked with somebody recently who specializes in performance based design and like, uh, FDS simulations and. All that. And they had some different ideas about it, but, uh, I think they do it for a living, but it seems very not intuitive and complicated to get into. So that's why I wanted to ask the question, but yeah, that makes sense.

If you don't know, I learned that garbage in garbage out when I was first starting to do hydraulic calculations early on. Sure. You can get your water supply to work if you're not putting in anything that's real or has any basis in reality. So I could see how you could very easily get into that same scenario with simulations and, uh, modeling.

So, so I've seen from taking a look at your website and your LinkedIn, that fire solutions group also has like, uh, emergency response or like an active firefighting portion of the business. Yeah, I. What is that, uh, what kind of clients do you guys interact with on that basis? Or I don't really understand like the services or their, so you guys are like, uh, uh, emergency responders to high industrial facilities born out of necessity.

I, I, we work with a lot of power companies and, um, there was an instance and, and. Trained as an industrial firefighter, I, I go down toques, um, on a regular basis and, and go through their industrial fire school. But this was actually a case where actually our first one was a large coal bunker and they had a fire and the local departments had been fighting the fire for about a month.

Um, and, and all the fires we do that we respond to are, are wow, bulk material fires. So not flammable liquids, but you're talking about large silos that could have coal in it or corn feed, or we've done pecan shells. You know, there's just sawdust, it's, it's those type of fires. And what's unique about those is, um, they're very slow.

They're deep seated fires. So something happens either hot material, or it can even be, you know, self combustion or there's like a, a. Growth of mold that's producing heat, um, and the heat's trapped in this bulk material. So it heats up high enough that an actually smoldering fire begins and the fire will kind of spread in, in veins and form crusts, um, in the material as it burns and kind of follows the oxygen.

But these can be burning for weeks, months at a time. Like if you're in a silo, um, there's been cases where the, the fire's been going for a month and it's just a real slow burning, progressing fire. What's dangerous about these fires is you have. A risk for a dust explosion. And you also have, you can have co build up and the co can build up in the head space of the silo.

And then if I, you know, if a spark happens, you'll get the explosion, the top of the silo will blow off. Um, and the only way to put these fires out is you have to empty all the material from the bunker or from the silo. And then once you get all the material out, you know, that hu spots out and, and the fire's done.

So you have to, there's kind of a process where you wet down the material. Um, and then you start slowly unloading, and that's why the fire department. Couldn't get the fire and the bunker out is cuz they never started to unload the material. So when we got there, you know, you usually spend a day or two just soaking down the material and letting the, the water.

We use wedding agents, um, F 500 and, and we use a new one crossfire RX because it breaks the surface tension of the water and can actually migrate through the material. And I, I just did a presentation on that at S F P E in Atlanta. But, uh, once all the materials wet, then you can start the unloading process and, and empty it out.

So, you know, again, you hear emergency response and you think about a firetruck get into a, a house fire in five minutes. This isn't that, you know, we get a call and we're usually there within 24 hours, but we could be on site for a week putting, you know, putting this fire out. If, if not longer, when I heard wedding agents earlier, I was immediately thinking of, uh, like firefighters or I had seen a presentation recently comparing wedding agents to.

Foam and showing how effective they are. I think that's interesting that your company actually gets into the functional use of those wedding agents. For those, for those who don't know about wedding agents, what are wedding agents? From my understanding, it just makes water, it's like an amplifier effect for water just makes the water adhere better.

But yeah. What are wedding agents? It's really interesting because if you go to the N F P code, so NFPA 18 and 18 a is, is it kind of covers the category of wedding agents. And if you read and I would suggest everybody do this, when they, when they go to a fire code, read the history of it, cuz some of them are very interesting, you know, on that first cover page.

I think it's. Maybe right after they list all the committee members, they tell you a, a history that, that runs through what the code is about. So when you read N F P 18, what's interesting is, and a lot of people don't know this is foams was originally a wedding agent, uh, the whole foam N F P 11. Category came out from NFP 18.

So 18 is actually the original code that foam was in just foam became so widespread and used that they split it out and, and created their own code. But a wedding agent is pretty much any additive to water in, uh, You know, probably one of the issues I have with the wedding agent code right now is that it's all encompassing.

So I know products and I, I work with products that actually thicken the water and make it into a gel and they would fall in that category. And those are good for like thermal protection. You know, I've started to play with the idea of actually spraying it on, uh, adjacent. Tanks that if you have like a full surface tank fire, will you actually be able to use less cooling water by using a gel or like a LPG sphere?

Could you use a gel to, to keep it cool versus, you know, the water method, but I, I know it's been used in forest fires and applications like that. And actually for class C manhole fires and, and pole fires, they, they use gelling agents on the opposite side is you get a lot of agents that break the surface tension, which is good for bulk storage fires.

And I, I just showed cotton, which is really hydrophobic to water. It can penetrate into the cotton and, and put out a fire, which is a, a, a pretty difficult fire to, to suppress. So you have that. Surface tension. And then you have, uh, a category encapsulating agents. And what those do is when they mix with the flame liquid, they actually make the flame liquid inert.

So it's good. If you just have a pool that's not on fire yet, you could spray it in AER the, the flame liquid, but as well as putting it on class B fires, I, I wouldn't say necessarily a, a pool fire, but like a, a three dimensional fire. Um, those encapsulating agents are, are really good at, so if you have a diesel engine or a transformer or, or something like that, it, it would be good for protection.

And I've seen those encapsulated agents used in fixed systems for those transformers and, and, and diesel engines as well as for manual operations. So that's kind of the, the wedding, when I say wedding agents, it's it pretty much covers every water additive that's used for firefighting outside of foam, which split off from the wedding agent category, um, and made their own fire code.

I was, uh, aware of. Uh, you know, an encapsulating agent, but I don't think that I knew that it was more nuanced than that, you know, and I think that's interesting what you're saying about, you know, it's any additive, so there's, you know, different subcategories of the effects and the, um, firefighting properties of these different types of wedding agents.

So that's really interesting. I like hearing about that. Um, yeah, I feel like, uh, you know, maybe once these encapsulating agents get more tested and, and maybe we have some time that they might be, do, you know, from the one that I heard a presentation on, it had a really minimal environmental impact. And, you know, as far as effectiveness, it was.

Pretty comparable to foam. And so, yeah, there's been quite a shake up recently with foam and hanger firefighting or, uh, hanger, fire suppression, I should say. And so I think it's, uh, be interesting to see where the industry goes with that sort of thing, sort of on the same path of emerging technologies or, you know, where the industry is heading.

I saw that fire solutions group has a product called, uh, fire vision, or it looks like it's a application or something that you guys are working on. It works with. Augmented reality. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. So it's something I've been working on for since actually last April is, is when I started the process.

And it's the first in-house new technology development that we're doing. You know, usually I work with clients that have, have come up with an idea being kind of involved with new technologies. I always look at anything that's coming out. That's not in the fire industry and go, okay, could I apply this to the fire industry in some way?

And so I started looking at virtual reality and augmented reality, uh, virtual reality being, you know, you put on a set of goggles and you're completely immersed in, uh, a digital world. And I think that's good for training exercises. You know, almost like a, at the command post type exercise or, or size up when you look at augmented reality and you start digging into it, it it's, it's pretty fascinating because it's not just, you know, the definition is it's a digital image.

That's. That you is visually overlaid onto a, a real live image. Um, so you think of like the NFL does the first down line in yellow, that's augmented reality. It's not actually there, they're taking a digital image and showing you information that you would otherwise have to think about and say, okay, it's second and five.

They have to get five yards. And, and here's the first down line. It's so much more than that though, because when you look at the implementation of it, it's really a new way of organizing the world's information. So when you think of what Google did for the internet, where you can just type in and search and, and you get that information, that information is now gonna be distributed globally to where it makes sense.

So if you are, you know, visiting a historic site like Gettysburg, you could hold up your phone and get information. You could see, you know, Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address or a pickets charge up, you know, up the hill, um, at Gettysburg, but in the fire industry. And what I would like to do is.

I walk on a lot of sites, like an oil and gas terminal, and it's like, okay, well where's the fire pump. Well, wouldn't it be great if I could just hold up my phone and I have the icon for a fire pump and it shows me right where it is. And then when I walk up to that, I push that icon and it gives me the manual or gives me the inspection testing and maintenance forms, or it gives me, you know, it's the pump curve, all this information that we gather during our fire hazard analysis in that, you know, the building owner's interested in the fire department wants to know where the FDC connections are and, um, you know, how much foam do I need for full surface tank fire?

How much cooling water am I supposed to be getting on the adjacent? Thanks. Everything that's in their emergency response, I mean would be there at a glance and you'd be able to see it. And so we're in the process now with implementing that, um, we've, I've been having a team of developers. Work on it. And part of it is you 3d map an area.

Um, there's a large push by a lot of large companies. I mean, you're talking apple, Samsung, Facebook, all these people are getting into the augmented reality cuz they realize this is kind of the next, the next big thing. And there's actually whole cities that have been 3d mapped. All of London is New York city will be this there's a hundred major cities.

There's also the technology out there to do it. So I just bought a camera. It's called Matterport. Um, and. You know, sits on a tripod and just rotates in a circle and takes a 3d map of, uh, indoor and outdoor locations. You take that 3d map and change it into what's called a, uh, point source cloud. And what that enables you to do is put these digital images in a spot, cuz GPS isn't good enough.

There's too much drift, but when you 3d map, it's gonna stick that, that icon, that image where it's supposed to be. Um, so we're using all hazmat standardized hazmat icons, as well as NFPA one 70 is the standard for images and icons that are used on floor plans or, you know, your, your design drawings. So we're using a combination of those icons along with some other ones.

And then. Attached to those, depending on what the icon is, will be the information. So if it's a hazardous material, you could have, you know, as well as inspection data, but you could have the MSDS sheet there. And so that information will be stored on the cloud. So now when I walk into that same fictional oil and gas terminal and hold up my phone, I know where all of my fire protection hazards and resources are.

And I have information on those about what condition they're in, when they were last inspected. And I think that's gonna be a really powerful tool for the fire industry as a whole to organize the information, but communicate the information to each other, between HJS insurance, building owners, firefighters, consultants, and, and the contractors that are responsible for constructing and, and doing the inspection, testing and maintenance of the, of the equipment and hazards.

That's really powerful. I, you know, I, I guess I could tell the, you know, appeal from a. Emergency response side of things. But yeah, what really peaks my interest is when you're talking about, you know, integrating this technology with, um, building information systems and, you know, that's what I do as a job every day is, you know, 3d modeling and integrating data into the way.

You know, we construct and, you know, develop contract documents. You know, I could see, you know, this program, I love what you're saying about walking up to a fire pump and being able to, you know, get the capacity and the rating and the pump curve. And then, you know, the ITM data inspection, testing, maintenance data, that would be so beneficial because all that stuff, uh, is usually pretty hard to find, you know, in an existing pump room.

It's almost impossible unless the rating plate is on there. Uh, just saying, and that information is usually scattered. I mean, you have to go around to multiple parties. If I wanna see the emergency response plan, I have to talk to the fire department. If I wanna see, you know, the design drawings, I'm talking to the consultant.

If I wanna see the Asbuilt, sometimes it's the contractor and, you know, I'm, I'm lucky if the building owner has, you know, a, a lot of this information readily available so that, that's why I really help up and, and speed up the process for everybody. Yeah, definitely. I, I can see just a lot of benefits to that idea.

You know, it's like take a look for, at a building from the outside, you know, and could just be able to say, oh, this building is sprinkler. This building does not have a fire pump. You know, like the FDC is located here, you know, there's these other fire protection systems in the building. And as far as streamlining and test, uh, testing and, and uh, inspection stuff, uh, I think that'd be wonderful, but yeah, I think that has a lot of promise and yeah, that's neat to hear about, I get excited when I hear stuff like that because, you know, I think that, uh, fire protection is.

On the crest of about to seeing a lot of these technological advances, uh, impact the field. And yeah, it's exciting to see where things are going. Yeah. I wanted to move on to maybe one or two questions about professional development, since it's, it's clear to me that you've had, uh, amazing career in fire protection so far, and you get to work in some really neat fields.

So, and I love what you said about, uh, looking at the history and the NFPA standards. You know, I definitely have looked at those before, but I just kind of glance over 'em and. You know, think, oh, this is this just some rhetoric by NFPA, but yours, you know, I love your tip about, go take a look at those because they actually have some really interesting information.

I haven't heard that before, but I really like that. Um, wanted to ask, yeah. What fire protection resources would you recommend to professionals? Yeah, I mean, if, if you're not, I mean, already a member, you, you should definitely become members of N F P and, and S F P you know, attend, try to attend your local SF P meetings.

I try to go and speak at as many as I can every year, you know, I'll, I'll. Try to give, like I said, part of testing is distributing that information and, and making sure people are aware of the tests that you have done and, and what you've found out, so it can, can help them design and install better, better fire protection systems.

So, yeah, I, I would say go to those S F P E meetings, uh, become an NFPA member. My most productive week business wise is NFPA expo. You know, this year it's down to Orlando next year. It's back in Vegas. I mean, hopefully if this coronavirus pandemic ends, they won't delay. Um, but I mean, even if you, you know, your company isn't gonna pay for it, or, I mean, I've, I've gone every year to NFPA and some years I've had been in a booth some years, I've done talks.

Even if I don't do those two things, if it's just walk the expo floor, it's worth going, cuz of the people you meet, you can get insights into what's going on in the fire industry. What some of their issues are. I personally like those, those outer aisles, because those are usually the startup and potential clients for myself, people who are just getting into the, the fire industry and they have a new technology and they're trying to, trying to get it into the industry.

So I like talking to those, those outer booths as well as, you know, the big guys, the Honeywells, the Siemens, the, the JCI Tyco, uh, booths, and, and going in, seeing, seeing those guys and making connections and, and going to the events, you know, a lot of the, the big companies have open events after, um, the conference closes where you can, can kind of mingle and, and, you know, find people find a mentor.

If you're, if you're young in the industry, find someone who. You know, you want to do what they do or, or learn about what they do and, and, and get a mentor. And then LinkedIn is a great resource. Uh, I mean, this community is a small community. I mean, there's four colleges in the us. And when you're talking about people with FP degrees, it's not seven degrees of separation.

It's two. So we're a small community. You can really learn everybody. Who's, who's kind of in the industry and, and connect with them and in some form or fashion, and it's, those are probably the big three is just the networking and, and, and mentorship aspect of, of the industry. I think that's all good advice.

Yeah. I haven't been, had gotten a chance to go to N FPA yet, but I really want to get there, but it sounds like just a great place to meet people and all of the resources and, you know, talks. And as far as the who's, who of fire protection and what's going on in the industry, it sounds like that's probably the biggest.

Event for, uh, definitely in the us. Just had one more question and, uh, we can wrap this up. What do you wish you would've known before you started in the FP field? I know you just gave a lot of great advice for, uh, young professionals and that might have encapsulated all of your thoughts on that sort of thing, but.

Yeah. I didn't know if you had anything, you know, any culture shock or anything that you weren't aware of before getting into fire protection. Sounds like you had a lot of experience with it from a young age. So maybe not. Yeah. One thing I, you know, if, if you're still in college or, or, you know, maybe you're listening to listen, you're, you're gonna go into, um, an FPE program.

It would be take full advantage of being in college. I mean, there's a lot of resources that when I look back I'm like, man, I wish I, you know, spent more time in the lab. I had great professors, um, at WPI, I wish I, you know, kind of pick their brain more, talk to them more. I mean, and it's all free, right? I mean, you've got free access to a fire lab.

You have free access to this knowledge base. Um, and, and probably taken more advantage of, of that aspect. And then the other thing I'd say is. Try to decide where you want your career to go early on. And, and, you know, whether I knew I wanted to do testing, I mean, right from college, when I started running test, I enjoyed it.

I knew I wanted to do fire testing and I, I took a career path. That was that way. But whether you wanna, you know, if you want to do smoke control or detector, or, I mean, try a bunch of different things, learn about a diff bunch of different things, but, you know, do you want to be a design engineer, your whole career, or do you want to be a project manager?

Do you want to own your own company? Do you know, do you want to transition into a business role rather than, you know, doing engine, whatever. Goal is at the end of your career, you know, or NFPA committee member or whatever it is, try to plot a path to that and, and pick companies that are gonna help you get there, pick mentors that are gonna help you get there.

And, and that would be my advice is kind of plot out and you may not get that company that, you know, the job at the company that you wanted, but even if not, I mean, you can pick our mentor. Outside of your company and, and start talking to them and, and get insight from them. People in the industry are, are, I've found relatively easy to talk to and, and will share information.

Um, if it's gonna help, you know, another fire protection professional. And I think that, like you stated previously fire protection is so tight knit that people are really, uh, they want to, they want to help you. They want to see you do well. They, they want the industry to do well. So yeah, I think that's all great advice.

Well, Andy, thank you so much for getting on and talking with me. I know I learned a lot, you so much. Yeah, no problem. We'll have to do it again. We should. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation. Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time.

Aaron Johnson is a fire marshal who specializes in aviation and aircraft rescue firefighting (ARFF). On today's episode, we talk about aircraft-rescue firefighting and the significant hazard hangars pose for fire prevention. Aaron shares his insight from roles as an inspector, fire marshal and member of the NFPA 409 committee. We also discuss his extensive writing career as The Code Coach and his content generation for the fire safety industry. Aaron gives his top picks of trends in the industry, which include some innovative new technology. This episode has some great takeaways on a variety of topics!

If you want to find out more about Aaron you can find it at: https://sites.google.com/view/aaronjwriter

Questions Answered: 

How did you get into the fire protection field? How does aircraft rescue fire fighting differ from the standard fire service? Are there tactical differences from the approach for approaching a hangar to a normal commercial structure? Could you tell me about a nuisance discharge of a foam system or a fire investigation? Can you tell me about your roll on the NFPA 409 committiees? What does a day in the life as an inspector look like? Are there any trends that you see in the industry right now? What is third party reporting? Do you have a piece of advice for a young professional getting into the field? Can you tell me about a project that was challenging?

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the.

You're in the right place. Welcome to episode four of fire code tech. Today we have Aaron Johnson. Aaron is a fire marshal who works in aviation and specializes in aircraft rescue firefighting. Aaron goes into detail about what aircraft rescue firefighting is and how it compares to conventional firefighting.

We get to talk. Fire investigations and high expansion foam, nuisance discharges. We get to go over. Why aviation fire protection has some of the biggest and baddest fire protection systems. Aaron talks about his content creation as the code coach on episode four of fire code tech. We talk about Aaron's involvement with the 4 0 9 committee and why it's important to be active in your career.

Also, we talk about how one would go about getting published in a. For fire protection. We also get to talk about one of Aaron's favorite fire protection projects. Don't forget to follow fire code tech on social media and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Let's dive in. Welcome to the show. Aaron, how you doing today?

I'm good. Good. Thanks for having me. Cool. Well, um, so just to start out, I wanted to give people a little bit of background on who you are and how you got into fire protection. My name's Aaron, like you said, I, I currently, um, I provide, um, I'm the fire marshal for an aircraft manufacturing company. And I also do some consulting on a freelance basis on the side.

Um, but I kind of got into the business about 13. Almost 14 years ago. Now I started out as an EMT and, uh, the goal of becoming a firefighter and I went to fire school and in fire academy, there were two, two fields that really interested me, even more than the structural firefighting side. I was interested in the RF industry, which is aircraft rescue firefighting.

So, um, I knew that that was a field I was gonna work in. And then I was also really interested in the fire prevention side inspections. Um, public education and investigations and those kind of things. So, um, I took those interests. I got, I got certified as a firefighter and then I started pursuing my actually first job out of the academy actually was at, um, an aircraft rescue department, which is where I am today.

And so, um, I took that job. And then for the next two years, I worked on everything I needed to become certified as a fire inspector in the state of Florida, which is, which is where I'm. . And so I, I took the classes, got became certified by the state. And then I went and worked for a local municipality for about five years.

And then, um, about six years ago now, the, the chief at the first department I worked for, he had called and, um, asked me to come back and run their fire prevention program out there. So, um, that's kind of how I got started and where I am. That's really interesting. Something that I wanted to touch on is it seems like from your activity, in your writing, in your activity and some of your educational materials that you have a lot of passion for that AR FF, um, which is aircraft, what is that again?

It's aircraft rescue firefighting. So we call it RF. Um, it used to be called crash rescue, but people weren't so comfortable with that. So now we call it a . I. Yeah. So how does, uh, aircraft, uh, firefighting, how does that differ from your standard firefighting or your structure? Fire firefighting. All right.

So, uh, for our departments or aircraft rescue fire departments, you know, they're primarily on the site at whether it's an airport or in private industry, they're there for the aircraft, or if there's a, an aircraft crash or an incident, that's what they're primarily there for that they. They do have, um, a lot of 'em respond to medical calls as well to the tur from the terminal and that kind of thing, and respond to the buildings.

Um, but they're primary there for the aircraft. And, um, usually the FAA drives as requirements. So if you want to be a, an indexed airport with passenger service, you have to have some sort of. Aircraft rescue fire, fire protection. So that's what drives that, but the actual responding to an incident or fire, you know, one big difference is that you have a lot of fuel, a different, different you're diff dealing with different type of fuel load, you know, in a home you might have, you know, plastics, paper, products, that kind of thing with an aircraft you're dealing with, um, large amounts of really jet fuel and, and that kind of thing.

So you have a lot of running fuel, 3d fire from the actual fire occurs then also in the structural side of things, which is more where I'm. Focused at and work on, you know, you're dealing with, with hangers and types of, uh, fire suppression systems and fire alarm systems. They don't actually see a lot of times in the normal, the normal community type of fire protection or fire inspection work, you know, in the aircraft hangers, you're dealing with lower high foam suppression systems, high expansion foam, or low expansion foam systems system.

We don't see a lot of, and then you have some complex alarm systems and things like that as well. So that's a lot more for me, that's more fun and more interesting for my daily work, but. Some basic differences. That sounds like you're getting to deal with some high challenge fires there. I mean, you know, compared to class four commodities or, you know, your run of the mill plastics, I think, uh, jet fuel has to rival anything that, uh, normal structure could have to offer as far as fire load.

So that's pretty interesting. Yep. Definitely. Is there differences in how you would approach a structure fire from a hanger to a, you know, your run of the mill office building. Are there, you know, tactical differences in tactical consideration for the structure? It's probably pretty much gonna be the same.

Mm-hmm we pre plan all of our structure so we know what they have and what's going on. And we try to, you know, plan for possible incidents that, that could happen there. We conduct, you know, a pretty thorough risk assessment of. Facility that we're responsible for, which is pretty typical in the, uh, municipal firefighting world as well.

And then, you know, our initial response is always gonna be the same, you know, we wanna make sure we, we protect life first, protect property second, and then, and then prevent the incident from spreading third. So those, those priorities all remain the same. I like to hear about that. My background is all, uh, behind the computer.

You know, I've never been to a structure fire, or, you know, I, obviously my whole job is, um, as a fire protection designer is to prevent structure fires and it's just like other fire protection designers. It's likely that I may never see a structure fire, even though I spend my whole life designing around these kind of scenarios.

So yeah. I always like to hear about the physical rear world application of it. Yeah, no, I like out. 13 years being in this business, I've probably, I've only spent about two or three years in the operations side of it. And I spent the rest of my career in the prevention side. So I haven't seen a ton of actual fires either.

I've been to several investigations. So kind of after the fire's done kind of picking through it, I've done a lot of, uh, several, uh, system malfunction type of investigations, you know, like, uh, we've had a, you know, a foam dump or something, you know, why did that happen? There's no fire. What was the cause of that?

So those are always interesting too, but yeah, I spent most of my career in the prevention side. Well, that's a great time to transition. I wanted to ask you if you had ever been. Involved in any investigations for fires or, uh, other types of explosions or events like that. Can you tell me about one of those times or maybe a fire, or like you said before a, you know, a nuisance discharge of a foam system?

Yeah. Those can be costly. I know from personal experience that, you know, you have aircraft. Likely on the magnitude of millions to, you know, can be hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Aircrafts in these hangers and boom dumping on these planes can be extremely costly to everything in the hangers.

So just, uh, maybe you could tell me a little bit more about your experience in investigation on a back half of things of fire investigations. I, like I said, I've done a, I've done several of those. I I'm always more intrigued almost by the, um, the system activation because they're, they're not supposed to activate unless there's a fire.

Right. So it's like you have the system that's meant to do something that doesn't do. So I guess that's why I'm intrigued by, you know, why did it do this thing that, um, it's not supposed to do that everybody kind of worries about it doing, you know, they're interesting to, first of all, find out, you know, go to scene, Hey, find out what happened.

Here's what happened. And then it's interesting to kind of play it backwards there. Right? You know, for the system to have to have dumped its contents, what would've had to happen for that to take place. And then you realize, oh, okay, you trace it back. It could have been a, maybe it was a sill Andoid maybe there, you know, for you, you have to rule out all the things that it wasn't, you know?

Well, there's no one in the hangar at the time. So nobody pulled the bull station accidentally. Isn't com. It isn't, isn't not saying that they did, so no one pulled the pool station. There was actually, there was no fire for sure. Right. You look around for evidence of that. So you can rule those two things out.

Maybe, maybe it was the weather. You know, I know we've had a couple where, um, a lightning strike actually set off some, maybe some alarm systems or things like that. One hanger I investigated, uh, the system had dumped, it turned out that it was in the middle of a bad. Tropical storm force, wind type storm.

What had actually happened is the foam release pool station had gotten water down inside the back of it, and it had shortened it out and called the OID to open, which caused the system to dump. That was an interesting one. Just stuff like that, looking for that, you know, what is that thing? Cause you see things that every investigation is different and every time you do one, you realize.

Something else that could have happened. You know, you might have done 10 investigations and that 11th was something completely different than all the other 10. I'm really involved in the, uh, the codes and standards side of the thing. I like, I sit on several committees and I like doing that work. That's I always tell people that's the most important part of the job is even more than the enforcement is.

Being on that being in that process, whether you write and develop these. So getting to these investigations find, Hey, here's what's happening. That really can inform a lot of that code development process and FPA 49, the standard for aircraft hangers, you know, they're revision cycle right now, the big conversation was about, you know, the insurance companies are saying, Hey, we're, we're not seeing any hangar fight.

We're seeing a lot of these foam dumps that are costing us, lots of money. So what can we do to, to change that or address this issue? And so a lot of changes are coming out to actually address that, to say, Hey, maybe we don't. Foam in every single. And as many hangers as we think we do as the code currently requires.

So what can we do to not without creating that greater risk, what can we do to still mitigate the risk, but maybe also cut down those costs and those activations and that foam damage. That's a lot of good points there touched on a couple things that I'd like to expand upon first off. Yeah. I mean, as far as fire investigations, I think it's so interesting.

You'd think that in a time like today 2020, where we have systems that are digital. Will log record of all the events during a fire or a fire alarm activation. You'd think it'd be clear. Cut what caused these system activations or these nuisance foam dumps. But the reality of the situation is, is a lot of times the line is a lot more blurry than that.

in determining how these systems activated when they weren't supposed to. So yeah, I resonate with what you said about ruling out all the factors, going back through a video of who was there and what was happening in the hanger. So there's a lot of different ways that you can ferret out what happened or what didn't happen.

So I like what you said about that. Yeah. And then sometimes, you know, these invest, you find out that they actually did what they were supposed to do. I mean, um, it was just maybe. Someone, I didn't know what they were doing, actually set it off. Like, I know for example, we had, we had one system that dumped.

It was, um, they were like a calfs type of system, compressed air foam system, kind of like a mobile mobile type of unit. And they, they had a flame detector that would make them operate. And, um, one of those discharge who were trying to go into the investigative process and we turned out that, you know, was somebody across the airfield, welding on something without weld.

That welding spark caught a reflection inside the hanger and it called that to go off. So the system actually didn't malfunction. It worked as it was supposed to, it just wasn't under the. Context, I guess you'd say, so those are interesting too, you know, cause it's not like, oh, a bad system. I can't believe this thing did this it's no, the system actually did what it was supposed to do.

You know, it thought it saw a fire, which it did. It just wasn't right there. That's interesting. And you know, I have some experience with flame detectors and, you know, depending on the brand or, you know, the complexity of the flame detector, a lot of flame detectors are notorious for nuisance alarms. And you know, if you talk to anybody.

Any of the manufacturers for flame detectors. That's the number one thing that they are trying to say that their detector does not have, but, uh, it's kind of interesting. They're not all made all flame detectors are not made equal. And so there's a large gradient of, you know, on your Cadillac version of your flame detector versus, you know, the cheapest that you could get a flame detector, you know?

So that plays a part in it. That I didn't have, I didn't have any knowledge of that before I got into aviation fire protection and you know, there's quite a range there. So I always thought that was interesting. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is you mentioned committees, uh, that you sit on or that you're a part of, I've heard from different.

People who I've talked to that it's of great value to be a part of these committees for different codes and standards and 4 0 9 is a huge one. Um, yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the committees you're involved with or yeah. What that looks like? Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, I kind of, I preach it to my people at my department and pretty much anytime someone will listen.

You know, it's really the most important thing that you can do for, for the industry. And it's also, you know, not just not in a selfish way, but also for the career, your career as a whole. I mean, um, it's good for the industry cuz you're contributing to it. You're actually, um, if you're on the ground, you're seeing what goes on from whatever perspective, whether you're an engineer, a designer, a firefighter, or an inspector, you're seeing a different perspective of how this code's applied and being on those committees and being able to, or not even, even if you're not on the committee, you can still provide input.

So providing those inputs and taking. Part in that process. Um, it, it goes a long way and it makes a big difference. It's very important. And, and it's great for your professional development, I guess I should say rather than for your career, but for your professional development as well. You're you go to these meetings and you're with, you know, some of the people that have, they've been doing this for a long time and there's a wealth of knowledge on these committees.

It's like a. You know, they pull all the knowledge and the subject is all sitting in this one room. And, um, so you get to kind of, it's a great learning experience as well, to learn from and talk to these people. Yeah. I mean, so with the, you know, the, the NFPA and the ICC, they have kind of different process and, um, I'm, I'm a little bit more involved with the NFPA side.

They have more, more committees and more codes and standards and things like that. That require committee work. So I I'm PRI I'm on several committees, but I'm primary. Involved with the, the aircraft facilities committee, which is 4 0 9, 4 15 and 4 23, and also the RF operations committees as well, which that includes things like an FP 4 0 2 and all the operational sides of the aircraft rescue.

Industry, all the codes that apply to that. Uh, yeah. I was looking at some of your work, some of your writing work and you know, I'm from I'm well familiar with 4 0 9, but I am a lot less familiar with the other, um, aircraft firefighting and other 400 series. Aircraft NFPAs, it's wild that there are so many NFPAs and, you know, there's so much good content, but it's hard for any one person to be, you know, knowledgeable in all of 'em.

There's just too many to wrap your arms around, but I'm not even really aware of four 15 or 4 23 or some of the other ones you listed. So, yeah, that's really interesting. I think that's incredible. And it's neat too, as. Kind of a point of education to be able to explain to, to the public or to your customer, you know why that code was.

Put into place. Why is it, you know, cause say, well, I don't understand why I have to do that. Or why does, why does that matter? Um, and you could kind of from being in those committee meetings, listening to the conversations and being able to kind of trace the history of that code. And that code change is neat to be able to educate and say, well, you know, here's what we ha here's, here's how we got to this point.

And that's why I tell people too, like, you know, you for the FPA, you have to, you know, there's an application process to be a committee member, but you don't have to be a member. You can go as a guest and just still take part in the process. So I always tell people. If you don't share about committee membership or being part of a committee, but you're interested in the topic, you can RSVP as a guest and show up at a meeting and doesn't cost you anything.

You go there and sit and learn. And, um, even as a guest, you know, you're, you're, you're able to ask questions and those kind of things. So I never knew about that. That's. That's good information for everybody. Who's a fire protection professional. Wasn't aware that that was even a possibility. Yeah, I haven't ever applied for any committees, but, um, after I've spoken with some of the people, um, through fire code tech, I.

I'm like, man, I need to get on that. I need to get involved in, you know, I have been involved with some professional societies and whatnot, but it, it seems like, um, joining a committee, whether it be for ICC or N F P S F P E, or even, you know, there's some good committees around other fire protection certifications, it seems like.

That there is a lot of benefit to be gained and to contribute to these committees. So, yeah, that's really interesting in the ICC, they have what they call a code action committee. So they have fire code action committees, which is, uh, again, they're our member of that committee. You can goes a guest to those as well.

Uh, there's a fire code action committee and a building code action committee. And they kind of are, you know, groups professional that are kind of, they're going to, um, Create code proposals and code changes to bring to the code hearing. So, um, it's a little, the process looks a little bit different, but it's still, you know, you still have the same.

Opportunity to get involved and to provide input and to gain professional development and knowledge from the people that are in those rooms as well through the ICC process. It seems like that the ICC code committees are the most coveted or the most hard to get into. Seems like from the people who I've talked to those chairs are the most sought after, because.

At the end of the day, if it's not code, it's not enforceable by law, or, you know, if it's not even tangentially, uh, related to law or code, you know, if it's not a reference standard, then it's really hard to make it stick for sure. I mean, well, I mean, you know, so the NFPA has over 300 codes and standards and some of those codes and.

Have multiple committees that make up just that one standard, like for example, an FPA 1 0 1 has several different committees. So there's a lot more opportunities and they need a lot, there's a greater need for more bodies to kind of contribute to that process. And, you know, I think the other thing too, is that the ICC, they have the international building code, which is used in probably all 50 states, you know, um, whereas, you know, NFPA, they have an FP 5,000, which is their version of the building code, but it's.

I don't think it's used in any state. So, you know, you have a lot more reach and less seats with the ICC and, um, you know, a lot more seats with the N FPA, but for sure. Yeah. Another thing that you spoke about before is, you know, the need of foam and it's not uncommon that. I get into conversation with customers and even with engineers, uh, where they ask, why do we need foam?

Why can't we just use water? How common is a hanger fire? And like you said, just a lot more nuisance, uh, foam dumps than hanger fires. Yeah. I think it was an interesting point, especially with the department of defense and they just released their budget. Basically saying that they don't want anymore a F and their D O D is moving towards flooring, free foam and that whole mess.

So, yeah. I didn't know if you had any more thoughts on foam and just where the industry's going with that. I mean, kind of to on the tail of what you were just say saying, I mean, that's the biggest, the biggest thing right now, the biggest. Change or the trending topic is just PFOS and PFO free foams and making sure they're not carcinogenic and they're safe for people in the environment.

So that's the big, the big thing kind of in the industry. And, you know, if you think about the reason that we require foam and hangers anyways, is for the large, the risk or, or hazard of large fuel fuel spills and large fuel fires. And then, you know, the, the industry at large, isn't really seeing a huge number of those and, and sometimes your, your hanger size can.

How's a certain size of an aircraft anyway, no matter what, and you know, you're not gonna have the same, you're not gonna have that, that risk of a large fuel spill and fuel spill ignition, isn't gonna be as great. So I think those are the changes we're seeing and, and happening. So I think it's a combination of both of those, you know, a lack of seeing the large fuel spill fires and the, and also wanting to go to that.

You know, the, the carcinogenic free and environmentally friendly type of foam type of product as well. Definitely. I see that. Yeah. It's causing a big, a lot of strain now for, you know, firms like my firm where, you know, there's a lot of people don't know trying to get flooring, foams listed with different discharge devices, you know?

Oh. So we have a flooring free foam. , but it's not listed with all of the high expansion foam generators, and it's not, you know, listed for these discharge devices. So I feel like it's a huge race to get, not only the foam UL listed, but get the foam's interaction with the discharge vice, um, listed and ready to go.

Cuz I mean, essentially. almost nobody is gonna touch a, you know, a foam product or a, uh, foam generator combination. This not listed you all listed or FM approved. So, yeah, it's an interesting time. In the fire protection industry right now. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I wanted to hear a little bit more about your, um, time as an inspector.

Can you take me through what a day as an inspector would look like or what that job is kind of like? Yeah, so I mean, it, I mean, it, obviously it varies based on what jurisdiction you, you work within or, um, what industry you're in, but it, you know, as a municipal inspector, uh, I had the opportunity to work at a smaller department and a smaller jurisdiction.

So. Um, that gave me an opportunity to be involved in all, in all facets of the fire prevention field. So I was, you know, I was responsible for fire plans, review I'd go and inspect the same things I reviewed. Uh, I would do investigations when they came up and happened as they happened. Um, and then also public education was a big was on my plate as well.

So, um, it was a. Opportunity, especially when I was, uh, new in my career to be able to put my hands on all of those things and be able to kind of work in work in all different industries, all different occupancy types and all the way from in water, supply underground, all those kind of things, all different systems, all the way from the.

The plan review part all the way to the final inspection, acceptance test, and then doing some, you know, then you go back a few years later, you do the existing building inspections. Um, see, see what might have changed, what might be different. Um, so that was a great opportunity and I know some larger jurisdictions don't inspection might not have that opportunity.

If you're assigned to plan review, then that's all you do is plan review, and you might not ever be able to go out and see the actual completed pro product. Or you might just be in public education. That's all you do too, which those are all. All those are great fields. There's not, not a problem with any of 'em, but it was really good to be able to have the opportunity for me to be able to put my hands on all of those things and that kind of, you know, set me up for success and career field, where I moved to right now.

Um, and now it's kind of the fire marsh kind of leading the programs. Um, I, I, again, get to keep my hand in all that, but I'm in the, in private industry, you know, it's a little bit different spend a lot of my time. More developing standards and policies and procedures. Um, making sure we're in compliance with all the different, maybe it's a government contract or FM global.

Insurance provider requirements, company policies. Um, and then, you know, also get that time to kind of see, look at the industry at large and say, Hey, what's coming up and, and being involved in that code and standards process, that takes some time as well. So yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a great field to be in.

There's lots of opportunities for what you like to do. I know you kind of mentioned a little bit, but you know, I. I got involved kind of in the blogging and writing and content development about 10, probably about, yeah, about 11 years ago now. And you know, you wouldn't think maybe that the fire protection field is something where you get to use that, that creative part of your, of your brain, but you definitely do.

And so that's, what's, that's, what's great about the, the field, you know, there's so many opportunities to, to kind of, um, implement the things you enjoy. I can totally, I really resonate with that Senti. There's so much room in fire protection for people who are passionate and so much opportunity. Uh, I wish I could encourage more people getting into, you know, just coming outta high school or, you know, getting into their professional career that, you know, how much.

The fire protection field has to offer, because it's like you said for you and it has been for me too, it's been very rewarding and a lot of opportunity and just so, uh, good as far as development and opportunity, but. Yeah. I'd like to get into your writing. It seems like you're quite a prolific writer and you have so much good content online for fire protection and, uh, aircraft firefighting and different training and education materials.

So that's pretty incredible. That's you don't see that too often for fire protection professionals. So, yeah, that'd be great. If you could talk about that a little bit more. You know, share about your fire protection content creation. Yeah. Yeah, no, it sounds good. I, um, so I got started. . I started with a little, a little blog, the code coach.com.

It's still online. And I started about 10 years ago and it kind of came about because as I was doing those plan reviews and inspection, I'd see something I have a question about. So I'd sit at my desk and find the answer. Then I started thinking, oh, you know what? Somebody else might have the same question.

So I'd write a little thing up about it. Um, so that's kind of how it, how it evolved. And then through time through that, I was able, I realized that it was a great tool to be able to contact people from all over the, all over the world about. Fire protection issues or problems or concerns or things you're seeing.

So I started, started being enabled, enabled to, um, that kind of put me out there and maybe able to enable me to contact. Other people in the industry. So that was a great tool and experience. So I continued doing that and, and then probably about three years into it, I wanted to get more serious with it.

And, um, so I started blogging almost every day. Then I went down to about every week and then I was pretty consistent for the next few years, putting a post out every one to two weeks. And so. From being out there that kind of led to something else which I'd wanted to do, which was consulting type of work.

And so that attracted the view of a couple initial clients that got me involved in the, in doing code and standards consulting for them. And then, um, I, I enjoy writing. So I started writing. Other content as well. I did some long form content moved into, I wanted to try some books and publishing. Um, so I did that.

I guess I'm a, my, uh, my therapist would say I'm a, maybe a little bit of an egomaniac, right. So I like to see myself in print. So I said, oh, I could probably get into a couple magazines or something for the fun of it. So I did that and that's kind of where it is. And from that people, people see your name and ask you to help 'em with stuff.

And that's what I like to do. I like to help people with their problems, especially it's related to fire protection. So I started getting. getting more clients that wanted me to write content for them and, and. Some clients as well, that wanted me to do some code codes and standards, research and development as well.

So I kind of took off from there. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of people have a lot of knowledge and a lot of knowledge to share. And some people look at maybe getting published in a magazine or something as like a. A big challenge. Um, but the truth is, especially with the, the trade publications in your industry, no matter what it is, mine's fire protection, but maybe if it's plumbing or whatever it might be, you know, those, the truth is that those publications are looking for people that can provide content and can and can write.

And, and sometimes you don't have to be a great writer cuz you're gonna be edited and work with somebody. So that's always a, a good thing too. So I always like to encourage people to, you know, reach out to those editors or those publications and tell 'em your idea. The chances are better, that I'll work with you and want to take your project on than, than not.

That's infinitely interesting to me. Yeah. It's almost like you read my mind, cuz I was gonna ask how you go about, you know, contacting one of these magazines or scholarly publications for how to get published and how to get involved with that. It seems like a daunting task. Yeah. I. I love the idea of writing and, you know, blogging, but, uh, I'm not the strongest writer.

So it's, uh, that's really interesting to hear you say that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, and you know, it takes work so you, your first thing you write, isn't gonna be very good, but the more you do it, the, the better you get at it, I think it was Ernest, Ernest Hemingway, who said, um, the first draft of anything is shit.

So that was coming from a. Well known writer. So you can always, you always have that sous. I like that. that's good. So say that you're you approach, um, one of the places that you've been published in, and so you just, you said that through the editor or through, they may have a call to writers for different publications or yeah.

What does that look like when you are gonna start that process of being published in a. Yeah. So there's a few ways there are, if you, the first thing I would do is find the publication that I would want to be published in, or that pertains to my industry and go to that website. And on that website, you wanna look for a couple things you wanna see if they have a.

A special spot where you can like a call for submissions or, uh, you know, submit your proposal, your article here. And then you kind of go to that page, usually explains what they want you to do. And, and the important thing about do that is following those instructions. If they realize that you follow instructions and they're gonna think, oh, this is something we can work with.

But if you submit something that doesn't meet their format or isn't what they're looking for, then they're gonna, you know, obviously you're not gonna. Get published, cuz they're gonna see that, you know, you're not gonna be able to, you can't follow directions and they're not gonna be able to work with you.

So the second, if they don't have that on the website, then the second thing to do is to find the editor of the publication and um, find the out who that editor is. I love, I love LinkedIn. That's primary social media I'm on. But look, 'em up on LinkedIn. Find out a little bit about 'em and, and what they're doing and who they are a little bit, then reach out to them, get via email, send 'em an email and then send 'em a proposal of your.

Of your, of your idea, you know, tell 'em a little bit, your proposal. Should you kind of wanted to grab him from the first couple sentences of the email? So kind of hit him with the main, the big point and then maybe break it down a little bit, tell 'em, Hey, how you're gonna, how you gonna get to that main point and then always tell 'em about who you are and why you're the guide to write the article.

Um, but that's pretty, pretty much it that's good. You broke it down in clear and concise steps. That's great. That's good information. Uh, for anybody who's interested in being published. I think, uh, you talked a little bit about your, uh, consulting work and it sounds like you're consulting and your career as a writer for technical publications kind of go hand in hand, but yeah, I'd like to hear a little bit more about.

Consulting work or your code consulting work, if you wouldn't have mind going into that a little bit deeper. Yeah. So, um, I, I kind of like to, um, I'm not the type of personality that can go and just sit at a job for 30 years and just do that. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not my personality.

I get kind of, kind of antsy a little bit. So I always like to, again, my fire marshal job is the, is my day job and I love it and enjoy it, but it's always nice. I would like to have two or three clients also that that require other work and other challenges out out of me and also my own projects going on.

So I started taking them on and, um, usually they find me. Um, based on whatever their needs are. So I've worked in different industries, um, done a lot in the, um, fire stopping and compartmentation type of industry. Some fire rated glazing work, um, the sprinkler industry as well. Um, so a lot of the, the consulting type of work is based on codes and standards development.

Right. We want people to, um, they're looking for consultant who can monitor. Code changes, right? Because the, the guy that makes, uh, let's just say fire rated glass, he knows how everything about making glass, but he might not know everything about the code processes of an FPA or ICC or ASTM or UL. So he needs an expert.

That's gonna. Follow those codes for him. See, Hey, what's going on? And kind of protect his interest and look out for his interest in the industry. Or then maybe the, that glass guy has a new product. He wants to bring to market. What are the codes and standard are gonna prevent that from happening or what kind of formula might he have to use to make sure that that gets prove.

So they're gonna look for an expert that understands the codes and standards and. Can monitor them first of all, but it can also write proposals and kind of advocate for them on the different committees and then the different codes that have been affect their business. So that's kind of the consulting part.

And then the other thing I do is the, the content development. Again, people want content nowadays, especially with online, and that's how you get noticed. And, and, and business is being online and getting your, the more content you have, the, the more likely the algorithms are gonna find you and put. Here's sighting your information to the top.

So, um, content's kind of king. And so I, I write content and focused on. On the fire protection side of things. Very interesting. So it sounds like you not only have to be aware of codes and standards, but also testing and different mechanisms to where people acquire listing and a whole myriad of other different parts of fire protection, because of, if somebody wants to want your help with their glazing product or, uh, whatever product it may be, you have to.

Knowledgeable about not just the codes and standards, but how they might need to meet the code and what tests they might need to conduct to be compliant. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So we've touched a little bit about some of these professional develop development talk topics, but yeah, I just wanted to ask, do you have, in your mind, are there any emerging trends in your field, uh, as a fire marshal or.

Just as a fire protection, uh, code consultant or professional. Yeah. I mean, uh, there's a few things, I guess, that have caught my attention in the last, probably over the last year or so that I've kind of been paying attention to. One is the, uh, and fire extinguisher. So there's a company out there called Russo, R U S O H.

And they Haven a product called the eliminator. And what that is, it's a self-service fire extinguisher. So basically the, you know, the extinguisher industry now works as you have your metal extinguisher on the wall. And it has to be serviced every year. So someone, a technician comes out and services it every few years, it has to be hydro statically tested based on what type it is and that metal can have different things go wrong with it, right.

It can get corrosion damaged, dented, whatever, but the Russo, this company called Russo they've, I've actually had opportunity to talk to the creator of the product and S and he's a really neat, neat idea. It's a neat, companies' a neat guy. They, um, they created a, an extinguisher that it doesn't require.

Any annual service and, uh, a business owner can, can basically do a monthly inspection on it himself. And you don't have to know anything about extinguishers or how they work. The, the Russo company actually has a little training thing on their site to show you how to do it, but anybody can service this extinguisher in every 10 years you replace it.

It's made of some kind of, um, poly like a plastic. So it doesn't, it's not subject to like corrosion or anything like that. Um, but that's a really neat product. I think that's something that's gonna change that the extinguisher industry is probably hasn't had, uh, any earth shattering changes in quite a long time.

Um, but I definitely would encourage you to check that out. So Russo eliminated our S O H. Um, so that's pretty. And then the, uh, yeah, and you can save a lot, save a lot for big companies that have, you know, 300, 400, a thousand or more extinguishers. You're gonna save a lot of money on service work on and even on replacement.

So we did like a quick kind of back of the napkin type of analysis for one of our sites. And it was, it was gonna save about $40,000 over three years, just. Paying the service technician that we would come out to serve with that every year. So that's a, quite a bit of savings and that's on only about 200 extinguishers.

So, but, um, definitely worth checking out. The other thing, I don't know a lot about this product yet, but I've been hearing some about it is the electronically activated sprinkler. I don't know if you've seen those or not, but that seems like it's gonna a game changers, despite I know Tyco has one. I don't, I don't know who else manufactured it, but that seems like it's, uh, something definitely to watch in the.

and then I think the last thing, the last thing I would say is, um, I know within the kind of brings all the industries together, brings it together, your, your, um, your, your HJS, you municipals, your fire inspectors, and it brings together your building owners and your, your sprinkler fire alarm. Technicians is third party reporting probably started coming out about five years ago or so.

And so what third party reporting does it's software that kind of connects those three industries together and what it really, what it really does for the fire department is it, it helps in their risk reduction efforts, right? They don't have to go out and they don't have to go out to every occupancy.

Now, those occupants are submitting the reports. A cloud system or a web-based system that an inspector can just log on and see, okay, this company's compliant. I don't need to go out there and hound them about their fire, their fire, sprinkler inspection, or they can get notified of only the. The, um, the major deficiencies now I say, okay, so I don't need to go out to these ones.

They're fine. But this one has a major de to go check out. So I think that's definitely an important thing in the industry as well. It's third party reporting. There's several different companies that are doing that, but, um, that's, I think it's a big thing that's gonna help communities be. More safe on the, uh, I not, I feel like I've seen something about the eliminator on social media, but I could be wrong, but, uh, that sounds like an interesting product.

It's just like the way that it's constructed makes it easier for people to be able to inspect or I, yeah, I don't fully understand what part of it. So it's like, um, the, the powder inside the extinguisher has to be fluffed occasional, so it won't work. It won't activate properly. So there's like a little wheel on the bottom of the extinguisher.

It can turn that fluffs it. So that part of the monthly inspection. Owner can do is just go through and turn that wheel half a turn and it fluffs the powder. Um, it's also cartridge operated. So the cartridge, so the, the cancer itself, isn't always under pressure. Like a normal extinguisher might be. So it's only under pressure if you, when you need to use it.

So that also, so it doesn't have to be hypothetically tested every so often anymore. Um, and then the, the components themselves, for example, if you discharge the extinguisher, you have a fiery discharge extinguisher, you pay 40 or 50 bucks and they send you a refill kit. That includes the. A new new seals and a new CO2 cartridge.

So, whereas before you'd have to call a company to come out service that, or buy a whole new unit. This company's made it to where you just buy the parts you need. That seems like a good innovation fire extinguishers. You know, you get into situations and military applications where they don't even want the fire extinguishers because of how much of a hassle it is to keep 'em around.

And. You know, I was having a conversation the other day, how many people really know how to use a fire extinguisher? So if there was a fire situation, you know, would you really want a lay person, you know, engaging in trying to fight a fire that could be bigger than a trashcan or sizable that's? Is that the situation that you really want people to be, uh, who don't have experience in fire protection?

You know, Fighting this fire. So I think that's interesting. Yeah, the fire department, they just want you to get outta the building, you know? So that's the main thing we want you to get out. We don't, you really sit there trying to be a firefighter. I think most that comes with education, right? You educating your public or your customer.

Hey, listen, we want you to get out. That's the main thing, but if it's something you think you can handle in here in the right. Position you're in a safe spot for that. And your, you have a, your exit's clear, it's a small, garbage can fire then. Yeah. It might be better to use extinguisher if you can. That way we don't have a, a water mess to clean up, but if not important things that you get out and for sure.

Yeah. Another thing I. The two things that you mentioned had a lot to do with ITM being, uh, reduced or, you know, made easier? Well, that one was through the physical operation of the device, but the other one. Was about reporting it, something that I've seen recently is, you know, fire alarm notification devices that have the ability to test themselves, um, due to the operation.

I forget which company specifically has 'em, but I think that in the future, Ease of maintenance and testing through technology. And through just electronic convenience is gonna be a big deal for our industry and does do these pressure gauges and these valves, you know, really get checked at the, uh, frequencies that are code required, you know, in the commercial world.

Oftentimes, sadly, that's not the case, but yeah, I definitely think. We're gonna see a lot of change in the next 10 years in, uh, remote testing and that sort of thing. So I thought that was interesting. Yeah, definitely. No, I think it's a good time to be in this industry. So other thing is I didn't really understand.

So what is third party reporting? I'm not really aware of what that is. So a third party reporting is like a, um, so I actually represent a company. Um, cause I thought it was such a great idea. They're called inspection reports online. So I represent them in the state of Florida, but they provide, um, so what third party reporting is, it's just, it's a, so our role inspection report online is its own company, right?

So that's like the third party. So if you have a jurisdiction, like a fire department, they will, um, say, all right, we want all of our. Contractors that are doing system inspections. When they do it, they got to business, they do an inspection on the sprinkler system where they submit their report to the third party, which may maybe inspection reports online that way.

And then what inspection reports online can do, they can communicate with the, between the building owner, the contractor, and the fire department on the status of that system, that inspection when it's due. And so what the third party a lot of times does, is it takes. The time that would be spent by an inspector that would have to kind of maybe try to coordinate or, or get that building owner to take action.

So the third party can look at that inspection and say, okay, this building owner needs to, they need a new flow switch or a new, they need to change some sprinkler heads out. So the third party can actually coordinate that and kind of work between the, the contract and the building owner, make sure that gets done.

And then they can actually clear that inspection so that when the, the fire department logs on, they say. They had an issue with their sprinkler system. The building owner took care of it. So I don't have to worry about that building. Cause then now they have a clear inspection report. So it kind of frees what it does.

Is it frees up your fire department to let them do other things that are important because one of the biggest things in the fire service, especially fire prevention bureaus is, is staffing. So you have limited people, limited, limited manpower and resources. So that third party reporting kind of in a lot of way, act a lot of ways.

It acts as. Almost another employee because you're you have that company taking care of that, that part for you and a lot of these companies, like I know for I, and, um, I'm sure some of the other providers as well, you know, that the cost for that service doesn't go to the fire department, but it, it just gets passed on and it's minimal.

It gets passed onto the contractor and they just add it to their. Service charge or whatever, seems like a clean way to go about it. And if you're really above board and are keeping up with all of your maintenance needs, like every owner should be then sounds like a good solution. Yeah. Then the fire department says, well, I don't need to go to that business every year.

I can maybe only go every two or three years. I can see that. Doing what they're supposed to be doing. Their reports are here. They're always on time with their inspections. And so that third party kind of helps to, um, again, it's, it's decreasing the risk in your community, the fire risk or loss of life to your community, um, by, by maintaining that and tracking that and making sure this can get done.

And also it helps by. Whenever a, a major deficiency occurs well in the past, you might have to wait for that contractor to send the report to the fire department or to notify them somehow. Or did they get notified? You don't know, but if there's a major deficiency, then as soon as they submit it to the.

to that third party, like there's supposed to be in a lot of states or counties or cities will make it will do that through legislation. That'll make part of their local ordinance that you have to use as software. You have to submit within such an amount of time, 24 hours or whatever it might be. So now what that will do through technology in the internet and email, as soon as you get a one of those major deficiencies, that it automatically will alert whoever the fire department needs for it to alert.

And then an inspector can immediately go out and follow up on that and make sure. That the proper action's taken. So there's a lot of opportunities with it and a lot of benefits, um, to the community as a whole, but also for, for fire departments, even, you know, giving them more time to, to focus on knowing the things they need to focus on.

And it's a big thing for our industry, for sure. That sounds very interesting. It sounds like it has a lot of promise. I think we're at, you know, the uptick of, you know, I feel like fire protection is a little bit. Uh, in regards to technology or just, uh, in general, but I feel like in the next, uh, five, 10 years, we're gonna see a lot of these things become commonplace.

So, yeah. And about the electronic sprinklers? Uh, yeah, I guess I'm really interested by 'em, but, uh, I don't know. Yeah. I guess maybe I'm being a little bit curmudgeony about, you know, like not knowing about 'em and, you know, questioning as I'm sure a lot of people are. Impacted them, or, you know, my view as a, as an engineer is, you know, as much as I love designing the, you know, the high expansion foam or the a F or systems, you know, uh, most of the time, my job is specify the most cost efficient, safest, most reliable system that I can.

You know, whenever I can, which is generally a we pipe fire suppression system. So yeah, I just don't know how that plays in, uh, electronic sprinklers play into that scenario yet. I guess I'm just not real informed. Yeah. No, I don't know a lot about 'em either. I just, so you know, I've read a little bit and heard a couple.

This is a couple podcasts about 'em, but I don't know. I've never really had any hands on experience, I guess, from the, um, from the AJ fire marshal side, I guess my initial thought is it seems like an extra piece of the system that could fail when needed, but I'm sure that's all vetted. They're all UL listed in that anyway, but that's just my initial thing.

Why would be my initial thought and likes how the cost, I mean, now you have each, it looks like each head is each head or series of heads has to have an, a heat detector attached to it. So, yeah, that's significant, you know, considering each one of those heat, each one of those heat detectors is, you know, 300 to $400 a pop, you know, so you're saying, oh, you know, in addition to your, you know, three to, you know, three.

$20 to sprinkler head. You also gotta have these detectors. I don't care. I don't care about it, but I work with a lot of architects and interior designers that would be like, why do we have even more of these ugly looking fire protection devices all over the place. So, yeah, you know, I, I don't care if it works and, you know, like to install it and, you know, be a part of a system like that.

But I could see an owner, an architect or a. You know, uh, interior designer being like, what are you trying to do here? with all these extra ceiling devices. So, yeah, that's kind of an interesting thought. Yeah. And maybe, like I said, I haven't done a lot of research and I don't really have any hands on experience, but.

It probably would be cost effective in some type of high value properties. It might be even more cost effective than a pre-action system. I don't know, but probably depends on the application, but no, I think it's definitely a neat, neat innovation and something kind of, kind of cool in the industry.

Definitely on the topic of professional development, you've given a lot of great pieces of advice so far in this podcast about committees and about content creation and about just for young profess. Or just professionals in general, but yeah, I just wanted to ask what a piece of advice would you have for young professionals or for people getting into the fire protection industry?

Well, I mean, I always recommend to read reading is good, no matter what you're reading. Um, most people don't, don't like to read, but, um, it's definitely a great way to enhance your knowledge, especially. And, um, if you're reading something specifically related to fire protection, I always tell people, you know, if you, even, if you hate reading and, um, you can at least read maybe.

You know, take that big book or that magazine and, you know, read one chapter per day, if that's all it takes to get you through it and say, I read my chapter day and move on, but you're definitely gonna gain something from that. Um, so definitely read and I do tell people to, um, you know, to get, get involved in, in, in an organization, whether that be a local organization, like, uh, maybe a fire marshals association or a fire chiefs association, or a local chapter of, um, like an ICC or an SF P, but get involved.

Um, you know, talk to people cause that's how you're gonna learn and, and you'll need someone to, to, to go to, uh, when you have a question and, um, and so that, those are always good. And I like, again, I go back to LinkedIn. I like being on LinkedIn and building relationships with people in the field because those are also are part of my network, no matter where they're at locally or far away, if I've met 'em or not, and get part of groups on LinkedIn, you can just put a question out there within minutes, or sometimes second, you.

A bunch of different responses and places to look and go to for information. So read, meet people and then in the industry and. Go on LinkedIn and join some of those groups. That's great advice. Yeah. I think that, um, learning and building connections is always sound advice. Each time I talk to professionals, it seems like the number one piece of advice I get is, you know, read your codes, read your standards, you know, be involved.

It's something that's so hard to do. And a lot of people, uh, resist it or don't wanna do it, but it's the number one way you're gonna become an expert is by. Just being extremely knowledgeable about the layout, you know, how the codes and standards are developed or implemented. And so. That's a, that's a great piece of advice.

Yeah. I think reading is never a bad idea. And seeing, I always go back and try to tell people young professionals, you know, it may be tempting to, you know, pick the job with the biggest dollar amount attached to it, but what's equally as important. As, you know, how much money you're making is what kind of professional development you're getting and what kind of mentor you're working with.

So I think that plays into your building connections and, you know, being involved with the community because that is a very rich way to build knowledge and to, you know, you don't have to know everything if you are able to have people in your life that are experts as well. So that's good. Yeah. I mean, I remember some of those days just kind of starting out, like, that's what I would do.

I would take a section of the code, you know, the codes book kind of thick, but, um, if you take a section at a time and each day you're say, Hey, you learn a little bit about something else, you know? Um, you know, you might not know everything about flammable liquids, but today you might read a little section on flammable liquids cabinets.

And so you read a few paragraphs, you learned something, something even doing that. And you know, like I said, I, I love to read, I read almost everything. Um, but even reading fiction, you know, It helps cause it activates a creative part of your brain. Um, so if you can have that activated, then when you get, when you are faced with fire protection problems or that creative part of your brain has been activated kind of an exercise.

So even that helps. Yeah. I love that. I love to read and I think that's good for people. It's becoming something that's kind of lost. It seems like content today is becoming shorter and shorter and more bite-sized and you know, just kind of crunched down. But yeah, I think. The future of, uh, working in general is gonna be people who have the attention span and the, uh, capacity to, uh, work in the long form and produce content in the long form.

So, yeah, I agree with that. One question I had for you is can you tell me about a. That you had, or a project that you had was particularly, um, challenging or maybe one that you just found personally. Interesting. Um, yeah, so, uh, when I was, um, there's, there's several, but I know like the, um, there was one when I was a municipal inspector for my local county, um, we, they built a, they revamped the, the museum and so.

The museum actually has a, a hu a, a huge model T collection. And so it was the first time that I got to see these. It's like a, a display in parking. Parking carriage. So BA carousel. So basically there's a, a movable arm that would come and pull these cars outta their location and bring it up to like a window where you can see it.

So you can see all the cars in there. But if the, the museum visitor presses a button and wants to see a certain car with this carousel will come and we'll bring that car around to the window and we'll, you can spin that car around, look at it. So that was kind of a neat, uh, a neat new thing that I had seen back then.

And also that, that building was also the first time that I got to really get into. Dealing with pre-action sprinkler systems. Cause we don't really have a lot of those down here in, in my area, but, um, it was my first time to get, to be involved with those and, um, reviewing the plans for that and conducting the acceptance tests and all that kind of stuff.

So that was a, that was, it's always something that I remember. That's really neat. It's always fun. When you get to fire protection is such a neat field cuz fire protection touches pretty much every structure in some capacity. So. it's fun to be involved in, get to experience the breadth of, uh, all the different systems and devices and facilities that FP touches.

So that's cool. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Aaron, I wanna thank you for your time and thank you for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. I think I've learned a lot of stuff just through talking, talking to you. So yeah, I just wanna thank you. Yeah, for sure. No problem. Thank you for having me and I, I always, I'm always up for opportunities to talk with somebody that, um, enjoys talking about fire protection stuff.

This is not too many people enjoy that. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely talked my fiance's ear off about fire protection and she doesn't even want to hear that business. So anytime I can get a chance to talk to somebody about it, I'm all about it. I've bored. My fair share of dinner guests. so, Alrighty.

Well, thanks again. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

Be sure to contact a licensed professional. If you are getting involved with fire protection and or life. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.