Fire Code Tech

This episode is a discussion about Fire Hydrants! Solocast 43 details codes, standards, and other criteria surrounding fire hydrants. Also we discuss hydrant components and the different types of fire hydrants that are common. 

Transcription: Speaker Gus

[00:00:00] Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal I.

Hello. All welcome to episode 43 of fire code tech. In this episode, we're talking about fire hydrants. Yes. I believe fire hydrants is a great topic for a solo cast because like many things that reside in the intersection in between two engineering disciplines, oftentimes they are forgotten or poorly designed.

So I'm talking about the fact that fire hydrants, although they are usually designed. [00:01:00] Located on the civil drawings have impact to fire protection features for the fire and life safety systems. So in these little nooks and crannies between disciplines, oftentimes we can find that projects either forget or, or neglect to give proper attention to these pieces of.

So, if you're still wondering, if you wanna listen to this episode, we're going to talk about codes, standards, and other criteria pertaining to fire hydrants. We're going to discuss the system architecture and component pieces of fire hydrants and the piping networks that they are attached to. And also we're gonna get into some key definitions for what a fire hydrant is and the different types of fire hydrant.

I wanted to take a moment and talk about the codes and standards up at the front of this episode. The goal of this episode is not to discuss the codes [00:02:00] and standards. I really wanted to just discuss some entry level topics. To establish what a fire hydrant is and some other parts and, and pieces of this piece of fire and life safety equipment.

But as a forward for the people who may have been listening to hear about more criteria or codes and standards around this subject, I'll start off with the codes of standards surrounding fire hydrants. If you're working in the us and you're using the international family of codes, you can look in the international fire code for additional code excerpts for the requirements for fire hydrants.

The section specifically in the international fire code 2021 edition is 5 0 7 0.5 0.5. This section is titled fire hydrant systems, and it is not very long. If you want to go brush up on these codes before you design a project, it'd probably be a pretty good idea. As the codes are always [00:03:00] a magnificent place to start to make sure that you are at the very minimum, getting the code required features that are in place in your project.

Second, let's talk about in the standards portion of the codes and standards discussion, where would you go to find out more criteria about fire hydrants? One place you could look would be N FPA 24, which is titled as standard for the installation of private fire mains and app. The chapter in specific where you can find information about fire hydrants is chapter seven.

Moving forward to the inspection, testing and maintenance criteria for fire hydrants. If you want to find this sort of information, go ahead and go look in N FPA 25, strangely enough. It, this is also in chapter seven, but the name of the chapter is not fire hydrants. Like it is in, in FPA 24. It is private fire service mains.

[00:04:00] okay. Just for a quick recap, we talked about the code section in the international fire code. We talked about the installation standard, which is N FPA 24. And then we talked about where you could find the ins the inspection testing and maintenance criteria, which is an FPA 25 as an additional point about criteria.

There is an appendix and fire code, which is appendix C. And this appendix is named fire hydrant, locations and distribution. Just a note on appendix material. You may know, but just worth saying in this discussion that appendix material is not always adopted. So you have to check your specific jurisdictional criteria to see if this appendix material is adopted and pertinent to the project that you're working on.

But it's good to know about the criteria into this appendix for best engineering practices. [00:05:00] Okay, moving on. I wanna talk about the definitions portion of this solo cast. So what is a fire hydrant? Maybe I should have put that first, but I'm gonna leave it here. Anyways. What is a fire hydrant? Let's talk about the definitions, which can be found in N F P a 24.

Hydrant can be found in the NFPA 24 chapter three. And it is defined as an exterior valved connection to a water supply system that provides host connections. So my 2 cents about this is that hydrants come in different colors, and sometimes they can be indication of different factors for the hydrant or for the facility, whether it be private or public.

Some of these factors may include how much water supply is available from the hydrant the water supply source in which the hydrant is fed from. And also it can just be a coloring or designation system for the facilities or base criteria. So there are two big, main types of hydrants. [00:06:00] One is a wet barrel, and one is a dry barrel.

I'm gonna talk about the definitions for both of these. Let's start off with dry barrel. Dry barrel hydrant is described in 3.4 0.1 0.1. And it states a type of hydrant with the main control valve below the frost line between the foot piece and the barrel dry barrel is the more common of the two hydrant types.

This is gonna be found anywhere in which you would normally have freezing conditions throughout the year. So in the majority of the us, this is what you're gonna find is dry barrel hydrants. Well, I bet you can guess what the next definition I'm gonna cover is that's right. It's wet barrel. And so this definition is 3.4 0.1 0.6, and it is stated as a type of hydrant that is intended for use where there is no danger of freezing weather and where [00:07:00] each outlet is protected with a valve and an outlet.

My piece of information on this we barrel definition would be that these. Hydrants are only common in very select pieces of the us think California and Florida in. ranges where the weather and or climate is exceedingly temperate or tropical almost. And so outside of the us, think of the Caribbean or other geographies that are near the equator, moving on, let's talk about the different component pieces of a typical fire hyd.

So we're gonna start off talking about the actual hydrant and then we will also discuss the piping and involving that leads up to the hydrant. So for a brief overview, before we dive into those different pieces, the summary of the pieces are the hydrant body. The stem nut or the operating portion of the [00:08:00] hydrant, the bonnet, the side outlet, the pumper outlet and the base flange.

Let's go from the top of the hydrant down to the base flange into the first piece we're gonna talk about is the operating stem and. This piece is on the top of the hydrant and it is how you open and close the fire hydrant. You can use a hydrant wrench to do this operat. Next piece we're gonna talk about is the bonnet of the fire hydrant.

Think of this as the round domed piece at the top of the fire hydrant, of course, there are some types of fire hydrants that will have different configuration that are not domed, but the top component of the fire hydrant, sometimes the hyd. Cap or bonnet can be a different color than the body of the fire hydrant.

So it's good to note these details. If you are doing a survey of fire [00:09:00] hydrant, or you are doing a flow test and you want to provide documentation of the hydrant in which you are activating, first outlet we are gonna talk about is the side. So there is the pumper outlet and the side outlet. The side outlet is one of the two outlets that are usually two and a half inches, two and a half inches is the standard hose size connection.

Another standard hose size connection is an inch and a half. The other connection is the pumper outlet. This outlet is usually four inches and you can hook the larger lines up to this outlet. I guess that makes sense. Since it's four over two and a half and one and a half, but you can get a much larger volume of water out of the pumper outlet, the flan or the base flan for the hydrant connects the hydrant to [00:10:00] the piping.

That extends all the way down to the elbow at the bottom of the hydrant stem only other component we didn't talk about for the hydrant in the actual, within the hydrant is the stem and the stem is what raises and lowers the plunger light device to allow the water into a dry hydrant. That is what operates when you are turning the stem and nut at the top of the top of the hyd.

Let's talk about the components that lead up to the hydrant and some of the piping and valving for a brief recap, we talked about the stem and nut, the bonnet, the side outlet, the pumper outlet and the base flan, as well as the stem within the hydrant. And now moving forward, we're going to talk about [00:11:00] the.

Gravel and drain basin, the thrust block, the control valve, and what the terms, lateral or branch line and service main or main or fire main mean in the context of a fire hydrant. First up is gravel and drain basin. This is the area in which the dry barrel hydrogen drains into the ground. Interesting note, you can put your hand up to the side of the side outlet.

If you have all the other outlets with their cap on them and feel the suction from the hydrant drain. If you've done a flow test and you are waiting for the hydrant to drain or verifying that the hydrant will drain. That's a good trick to know thrust block is a restraint or a restriction of the hydrant, and there is a calculation for how to [00:12:00] determine the size of the thrust block.

So that is something to consider. There are specific construction details for how these have to be built as well, the compaction and the aggregate and the concrete around the thrust block so that the pipe is restrained and supported correctly. Control valve. The control valve is required for the fire hydrant for you to be able to isolate the fire hydrant maintenance on the fire hydrant, or if somebody hits a fire hydrant with their vehicle.

So you can turn off the fire H lateral or branch line for a fire hydrant. This is the military refers to it as. Lateral line or a lateral service. So service lateral, think of this as the specific piping that serves the hydrant, not the main [00:13:00] that serves multiple hydrants. next is service main, main, or fire main, which this is the component that like the think of a sprinkler main, how it serves the multiple branch lines.

This is the same type of interaction in the piping system. I think that's gonna do it for this episode of fire code tech. Hope you enjoyed the solo cast. As an overview of the episode, we talked about hi, a highlight of codes, standards, and other criteria. We talked about some key definitions for fire hydrants last but not least.

We spoke of the parts and pieces of a fire Hy. Hope you enjoyed the episode and we'll see you next time. 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 [00:14:00] are by no means a professional consultation or a codes end 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.

Sean Fuin is a formally trained mechanical engineer who specializes in automation with python and dynamo. On episode 59 of Fire Code Tech we discuss Sean's career and roles in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Sean gives great tips and resources for professionals interested in getting into coding and automation. 

Sean's Consultancy: 

https://www.sigma-aec.com/

Testfit: 

https://testfit.io/

Hypar: 

https://hypar.io/

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming:

https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Systems-Principles-Programming-Fourth/dp/0534384471

[00:00:00] 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.

Construction industry. In this episode, we're talking again about automation. This episode specifically talks about automation that can benefit engineers, contractors, but the topic of automation and how machine learning AI and other big technology concepts can apply to professional life in general is really ubiquitous in the discussion of how to become more efficient as a professional.

Sean is a trained mechanical engineer and he gives great tips for people who are interested in the cutting edge of technology. And if you have a proclivity for coding automation, BIM Revit, or any of the above, you're gonna really enjoy this episode. don't forget to subscribe and follow us on social media.

Also, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a five star review on apple podcasts. Let's get into the show. Really enjoy this episode. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on social media. Also, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a five star review on apple podcasts. Let's get into the. Well, Sean, welcome to fire code tech.

Thanks for speaking with me. Hey, thanks for me. It was good to talk about automation. yeah. Automation. I'm gonna talk about automation. Who's not talking about automation. I don't know. It seems like AI. And I keep thinking about AI and machine learning and automation and how that's going to apply to our industry.

But. Yeah, I don't know. We could just get right into it. If you have thoughts on that. I like have been trying to pick up a little bit of Python in my spare time and thinking about machine learning and it's not so like clear to me, you know, automation part's clear to me how that would apply to our industry.

But do you have any thoughts on like AI and machine learning? What we'll see in the future for those kind of buzzwords for what you and I do on a daily basis. Yeah. I don't know. I've never, I haven't jumped on the machine learning bandwagon. I think it's more of a buzzword. No one really understands the amount of data that you need to make it work.

So we have to get a lot better at other things before we can start machine learning our way to success. We have to right. Yeah. I was thinking like, if you had thousands of projects and thousands of device layouts, you know, like really you need like, you know, like 10,000 plus would even, I bet would be a small data set for some of these machine learning projects.

Right. So you would need so many projects in order for it to be meaningful. So yeah, it seems like just the baseline automation stuff. Yeah. Makes a lot more sense. I got in debate with a friend of mine, who's working at a firm that's really aggressive, progressive, and they are working on starting to implement some machine learning stuff.

And they're just like trying to identify like plumbing fixtures. So we have a fun conversation about that, but I'm like, it's only giving you like this five more percent. And like, so all this work has to go in just to get that extra, like 5% success, but it's like, wouldn't it just be easier if the architect called to sync a.

Standardized way. I think that's the approach that we should take. Yeah, but obviously that's had struggles too, so yeah. That's yeah, to my point, I don't think we can get to machine learning if we can't even call a sync, a sync in a consistent manner. That's true. Yeah. I think that it, as with most things in automation, the true value of it is to be found in like the.

Repetitive tasks that you do every day. And then eventually you can get to these kind of like highminded ideas about really complicated stuff. But I will say, I think there is a lot of potential there. So should maybe like auto routing and stuff like that. Right. You can almost turn that into a simpler, like 2d problem. [00:05:00] So yeah, there's so many algorithms out there. Like maybe that I just heard something about. They're trying to map the what is it called? The galaxy like web and they're using some type of algorithm that's based off of some type of mold, I think.

Huh. And so I saw that like YouTube video on that and I was like, oh, maybe that could work for like auto routing. Do you know? Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, so yeah, that like that auto routing is a really interesting topic. Yeah. It's a really hard one, especially fire protection, right? Oh yeah. Fire protection and fire sprinkler.

You guys usually like the last ones to go. Yeah. It's, it's a dynamic. We talk about a lot in inside the firm that I work for is. Fire protection is such a, an odd burden in the sense that, you know, there's so much delegated design that's baseline in our industry. So the engineers by and large will just like shove off the task of actually routing to the contractor so frequently.

So it just causes more consternation in the field and between disciplines and H V a C guys mad. Sprinkler guy got in first and routed wherever he wanted it to. And then just said tough. You know, even though we do our best to try to make sure that people coordinate contractors coordinate and we require coordination drawings and our specs, but it's always a pain.

Yeah. I personally think we kind of design buildings completely wrong. Right. Like we try to lay out. the architecture first, which of course there needs to be like a form, but we sh like we, you know, as mechanical engineer, I'm used to getting a detailed architecture model before I even start running duct work with ceiling Heights already in the model.

And then right. It's always the battle of, I need more room for my ceiling and then not when I do it where right. If you. Kind of have the form of the building, obviously kind of, you know, generically what spaces are, but then you could start to route maybe like the mains, at least using algorithm and even doing plumbing, fire protection, all that together, and then build the architecture's job should be around billion around the infrastructure.

Right? Yeah. And making it look. you know, have them, alternatively, how do we hide this infrastructure? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It seems like a chicken or the egg problem. Exactly what needs to come, what needs to come first and speaking with the biology, you know, metaphor. I mean, again, I don't think if you watch a baby grow, right.

It starts with like the spinal cord, like the brain, the spinal cord, and like the limbs and everything grow out from there. You know, so you almost have to like, think of the building as having like the spinal cord for the infrastructure and then build around that. That's an interesting thought. I've never, I mean, that makes sense from a that I, I would think that an engineer would think that though.

Yeah, it did the battle between the architects and engineers over, you know, it, I worked at a startup called I. and it was kind of a disaster and this was one of the reasons why. And so I came in late in the game, but also I was in charge of like all the mechanical stuff and they had me design the mechanical stuff around their structural stuff and around just, it was a modular.

So just around all these co. I was assigned to figure out the mechanical and I kept on saying, right, like, no, the mechanical is you should be designing structural architecture around the mechanical, not the opposite way around. And yeah, the owner of the company never really got that. I could see that I've never been able to.

I mean, at least you could have that conversation. I feel like fire protect. Unless it's just like some really specific instance, you know, like with storage sprinklers, sometimes we get into situations where we're pushing around the structural engineers columns and, and Joyce layout. Because if you can't fit these storage sprinklers into this space, you can't build the space.

Like you can't sprinkler it. You can't get a code compliant, build it layout, but arm that. One of the things that modular was like, alright, how are we gonna bring fresh air in? Like, [00:10:00] that was the number one question, at least in my mind was like, how are we gonna bring fresh air into this space? And so my idea was to go to the outside wall and now we, again, we're trying to modular and keep it all tight.

So then it was like, okay, we, so we're like, we're trying to design these things, the modules, right. So like how can we have repeatable pieces that come together? Right. So like a kitchen module might. A closet in it. And my idea was to put, like, try to get really small HVC equipment, but to maybe go in that closet, that would act as like the also act as the washer and dryer closet.

And then we'd have to go out in the wall. Well, my idea was like first put ideally where the H HP equipment should be and then build all the structure around. They were doing the opposite where here's the structure. Tell me where I need to put the H V C. So yeah, those working with those seems like there's always constraints, but the more heavy the building in, or site constraints, just the more difficult the entire process is.

So I think modular is like the extreme of. Constraint. I mean, you're like the whole idea is to get it as confined as possible or, you know, just kind of these succinct little pieces. So that's, it's interesting. It's almost like putting right. If you always have the analogy of like, if you put, if you're trying to like pull of Legos back in a box in ways, if you put all the small Legos first, then the big Legos aren't gonna fit.

Yeah. Okay. So it's almost like that with the structural, the architecture first before the H V C. Hmm. Yeah, I think that's a interesting way to think about it. I guess we'll just have to get faster in the automation and the prototyping to where that is. Like we can have a conceptually generated layout that's quick so that we can raise that red flag fast, but there's so many options for.

Mechanical engineers. I mean like fire protection sprinklers are straightforward. Like you got like what maybe, maybe two most common system types, you know, wet are dry sprinkler systems. There's no like manufacturers really that are driving these big configuration changes. But how much variation do you guys get with building.

I mean a lot, a lot of barriers. That's another huge right thing to tackle. Yeah, for sure. The, the jurisdictional stuff is the biggest variability. Just as far as like military versus commercial versus, you know, you could work for department of defense or you. VA or what, you know, all these different government, high rise Highrise, you know, so all that like has a big impact.

Yeah. Not auditoriums and stuff, but, but yeah. So I know that we we've had for the listeners just tuning in we've, you know, we had some technical difficulties on the, on the first go around. My, my recording program just was given us fits, but I wanted to. Yeah. That's classic problem for technology. I can't open up laptop walls today with rabbit, so oh yeah.

Clap. Wait, what is it? What kind of walls with rabbit? I'm having trouble opening up Autodesk docs models right now. Oh man. Yeah. It's like that one day when everything Autodesk's cloud client went down, it's like, I was like, well, Autodesk never goes down. Surely it's not that. And then you get the email and it.

There whole cloud servers down for a day or whatever. I forget when that was, but seems like there's always something it's harder. It makes things harder. Yeah. But I wanted to let people know a little bit about your background and you could keep it abridged, but, you know, tell, tell the listeners about kind of your working history and kinda how you found your role map.

So I am a mechanical engineer degree. Got my EIT T still wanna get my PE so work on that. Just one more test to take. Yeah. So going through school, I had my first internship at a H V C firm in St. Louis. And I hated it. They were still, they were just starting to play around with Revit. I actually remember, I somehow I got access to Revit and to get the internship, I like pretty much printed out a model of somebody else's work and threw some ducks in there and was like, look, I know Revit guys.

But yeah, I was left doing a whole bunch of CAD stuff there and like, dude, they had me getting photocopy [00:15:00] stuff. So I saw a lot of manual. You know, I was the lowest man on the ton pole. So was a lot of manual tedious stuff and I hated it. Then I got like a year and a half long co-op at a place called tech manufacturing, which they like are a C C shop for aerospace parts.

And so that was really, really cool. So at tuck manufacturing I guess I should back up the. In college. I started learning Excel. That's I think where the story should begin. So in college I started learning Excel and we got really good at it. Me and my buddies that we had to do labs with. So we had labs.

You have to make these Excel spreadsheets and, you know, before, even the lab, we were doing it. So I was starting to get good at Excel. The firm that I had, my internship was used in a lot of Excel and there's this old, old timer. Awesome. Dude taught me even more. He was always showing me little tricks in the.

Excel. So that's been really good, which led me to, I think, in the co-op job, cuz they had an Excel spreadsheet. That was just the most insane thing I've ever seen. So they would bring in so like Boeing or Lockheed would like give these packets of all these parts. And my job was to like find the boing box of the part, right.

For the raw things, get out what material it is. So it might be aluminum might be titanium. The grain, which way the grain runs. You just had to like pull all this information out and then put it into this Excel document. And then at that point it would just kind of do its thing. And you did some other stuff to try to get an estimate on the CNC time, but like do this thing and sew many formulas and so many sheets at the end of it.

It even calculated like shipping cost and all this. And it made what was called, like the red sheet, I think, is what they called it. And it would be like this big review of all the parts and they'd say, yay or nay. So all the higher ups would come in and we'd review all the parts. After all this information's populated in Excel.

And like I said, it's given you cost. It's like it's gave you everything you need to know to say the part is if they're gonna bid on the part, what they're gonna bid and if they'll move forward or not. So I was just like, this is really. So I learned even more Excel there that internship or co-op was up and I needed a job and guess where I landed H VC designer, the thing that I thought I would hate.

So yeah, luckily the time dynamo was starting to become a thing and began my Excel. I was like, oh, DMO can get stuff from Excel into Revit. So that started. And then I realized you could do stuff with geometry and then snowballed from there. Now I've been consulting for three years, four years building custom workflows for clients.

That's very cool. That's neat that you had that saw the power of this

kind of streamlining of, of very difficult and unique process. And so you kind of had that seed planted early in your career for the, the possibilities. Yeah, for sure. Before all that, by the way I worked at restaurants for like my early twenties and I worked under this guy, Vita Elli, who's now the executive chef's chef for Anheuser Bush, but he's like a Gordon Ramsey type.

And he, he was all about, I started with him when I was 16. And so he is all about efficiency. So I. I think that's maybe when it was really embedded in my mind, but then just got reinforced in all these, you know, other little adventures I had. Huh. Interesting. When you're talking about, you know, you make custom kind of like dynamo and Python, like solutions, is there anything like you don't have to get specific?

Specific projects or tools, but like, can you give examples or maybe talk a little bit about your project work and give the people listening some ideas of these applications? Yeah, I mean, I guess there's anytime the big, the first big success I had with dynamo, I think was studying up projects. So I missed a softball game one night and I was really disappointed, but the night was literally spent we behind it was a huge hospital.

I forgot the sheet count, but my, I, I had to work overtime, literally dragging sheets and legends on art dragging views in legends on the sheets. Like it was so silly. So yeah, dynamo again was starting to mature. Yeah, just automating that whole process down to a couple clicks was like, whoa, this is crazy.

So that's first. So any like little [00:20:00] things like that, especially in things that have like a very defined recipe is good for that. So now I've done that with like setting up electrical panel schedules, sheets, and doing a whole bunch of stuff. Like the annotations, like there's like this annotation.

I guess another advanced thing that I did was that was really cool, was working for electrical contractor. So we made a thing called room in a tote. So it'd go into the Revit model and you'd pretty much section the building off by essentially rooms. And the whole idea was we'd get those elements.

We'd make cut sheets for all those elements, fill the materials for all those elements. And then in the warehouse. All the elements, the instructions and the tools, like all the materials, I should say, not elements. So actually the materials, the instructions, how to install the materials, the tools need to install those materials would all go in a tote and be shipped to the construction site.

And that tote would make its way into the room. And then the room would, the tote would open up and the electrical guys would do their installations. Wow. So you were doing like material. Material stock listing basically from yeah. Revit model. Right. So right from directly from the rev model and these guys the company hired a lot of people from the field to do the detailing work inside Revit.

So like they were doing detail work downs, like the bolt. Wow. Which we were pushing our computers so hard to do this. Yeah, it's really cool. That was very advanced. So, yeah, so we'd go through and like make cut sheets, essentially, like get the front view, the side view, the 3d view, the back view, you know, of every electrical panel and then boom, bill of materials.

And then, yeah, there's multiple layers of it. So stuff would build up from like, you know, bolt level to component level. And I forgot that little details of how we did it, but yeah. In other words, you went from Revit model to. All the parts that you needed in a tote that got shipped to the construction site.

That's really cool. That's for people who maybe aren't as aware of like Revit and the common detail level, I mean, like that's like detail level 500 for, I mean, there's kind of like different gradients of how much detail is you can go from like a 2d annotation with no. Information tied to it all the way down to where Shawn is saying where the bolts and the RTS on a piece of equipment are detailed.

And so there's kind of a sliding spectrum and, and that is on the extreme end of like, I'd say most commonly in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. You're at like the middle of that spectrum, probably like 200 or 300. Level of design, you know, you have either 3d models with a limited amount of information or 2d models or at least that's in my experience, what I've seen in the industry.

Well, I like they do have analytical models, right? So I've seen more of that happening where I haven't physically modeling stuff, but you're starting to use Revit more as a design tool rather than a documentation tool. Interesting. Yeah. That's if I add on another thing I've done. So my favorite script I've ever wrote in for mechanical engineering is like zoning a building, and it's just speaking of machine learning so that like uses some clustering algorithms, like canines clustering, and it was a silly problem to solve of just how do you like group these things?

And that was the solution was clustering. Interesting. Yeah. I think that can snowball. To whole bunch of other stuff, but also just allows you to start doing, using Revit as a design tool. Huh? That's really interesting. So you would establish H V a C zones based on your automation. Yeah. So it's all about data, right?

So you have a whole bunch of spaces in a building to zone a building like common spaces usually get grouped together. So spaces like the same thermostat set points, right. Could be grouped together. Exhaust might be grouped together, excuse me. On exhaust fan exterior spaces, right? So north exteriors would be grouped together.

South exteriors could be grouped together. Different windows sizes. Right? If you have a, you know, two rooms next to each other one has a lot more windows, then they wouldn't be grouped together, but right. So you can use all this data to kind of start grouping these things together. And then you're left with like these clusters of spaces that now you have to divide evenly.

And so you can't just like draw a line in the middle. You have to like try to find the right [00:25:00] clusters of spaces. So that's where the clustering comes. And then yeah. So then you can actually do like a decent zoning and yeah, it got to a point where we took this to production and we actually put like sliders on stuff.

So you could limit how much area is on one zone, you know, set a max into that. You could set a maximum to like. The load difference into the spaces you're comparing. There's a whole bunch of sliders on it, so you can start to generate different zone layouts with the same script. Yeah. What I'm trying to get to, what I think is really cool and kind of my north star right now is then taking those zones and going to energy modeling.

So now you could run in theory, right? A whole bunch of different. Run energy models on whole bunch of different systems and, you know, even get you know, upfront cost and life cycle cost and all that sounds really familiar to what I was doing at the manufacturing plant. So, Hmm. That's awesome. It that's such a time consuming process.

I'm sure. Oh, crazy. All those. When I was a designer again, when I was low on the totem pole, just watching all this stuff, I'm like this, cuz they're doing all the calculations to like, you know, decide which system to pick. And then you have to like write, you know, we, we went through system a, B and C and we're picking system a because of X, Y.

and yeah, it was really time consuming. Yeah. So Revit has access now to energy plus, which, which is what I've been working a lot on. That's awesome. Yeah. That's and I can't see, you know, application to this for really so many engineering systems, like, I mean easily for electrical, definitely for fire protection and you know, other disciplines where, you know, Zoning equipment zoning based on whatever parameters you wanna build in, you know, whether it's a voltage drop or, you know, friction loss you know, all that I could see just so much potential for that.

Right. It's kind of cool is too. Yeah. I've thought about it with electrical a lot and I haven't done it yet, but like, you know, taking receptacles and grouping those for panels, right. So, yeah, that's why I seen doing the stuff that I was doing with the electrical contractor. Like when I was doing that, I was really interested in like automating the process before the processes that we were automating there.

Cause we were just automating the documentation and already I was looking at like, how do you guys know what? Like, cause they were having to put in a lot of information, right. To make room in a tote work. So it's like you just keep on knocking. Let's keep on knocking chunks out of the thing. And that's why the zoning algorithm was so exciting to me, cuz it, it was a huge whole bunch of people told me it couldn't be done.

I was like, and I didn't believe that. So, you know, it was just like, it was this huge gap in the workflow and to solve that gap was just really. Isn't that the start of any good story that they told you that it couldn't be done. I 'em there yet. I haven't won the, the automation princess yet, but oh, does that, did they have awards?

Is that a thing? I'm just saying the, you know, you're always, oh yeah. A struggle. Virtual, the virtual automation princess. You haven't gathered her out of the castle. Hopeful it'll happen in my career. Right. I mean, you're off to a good start. That's fun. I like thinking about these big ideas and yeah.

Holistically looking at how can you take the whole process and kind of make it into discreet chunks for everything to run smoothly is a really fun idea. Yeah. I think that's what I'm really good at. I'm made a dyslexic. And so if you read stuff about like dyslexic and what they're good at. Exactly. What we just said is exactly what like typically dyslexics are good at.

And so, yeah, that's kinda like my superpower now is being able to zoom in and out of like these big problems and just make the connections. Yeah, it's fun. I love it. It's solving, it's solving puzzles and problems. All the. Yeah. So I'd like to, you know, hearing your big thoughts on like the future and what you'd like to, to do with your consultancy, but yeah, like what what, what else is getting you excited?

And do you want to do with, with automation or like what kind of gets you charged up on a like a project level or just like an, an automation conceptually I'd like to keep chasing that thread. Yeah, I think I, I mean the whole reason I started the consultancy was not to get rich or anything. The whole reason was I wanted to do what I wanted to do and [00:30:00] work on the stuff that I wanted to work on and I couldn't find that avenue.

So yeah, I, cause I didn't mention this earlier, but yeah, I quit my job as a mechanical designer cause I knew I wanted to like pursue automation and I, I tried to find a job around Dallas. to do that. And I couldn't find one. So that's when I started the consultancy. As far as motivation, I think my Northern light has always been this vision.

I've kind of already described

of getting an architect model and then being able to quickly generate a whole bunch of different options for the H VC. I guess branching that off into plumbing and electrical would be awesome. And then I guess the biggest, the like end game would be, if you could do that and start to optimize with all the systems and architecture and structure all in one algorithm.

Which man there's a right. I'll know we get there, I think in theory, but of course it's just like, like computational time is a struggle. Maybe with quantum computing, right? Throw another buzz. There's computers are getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster, so right. That is how we're doing buildings.

The super computers and just algorithm. Yeah, I guess it gets into like kind your thing of like where the industry's going. And I don't know. That's where I'm, that's where I see it going. That's my Northern light. It's also kind of scary. Right. Once if someone beats me to writing that algorithm, am I a job?

But so far it's been kinda proven not to be the case. Right? So. Automation's gonna take her job south park in reference there . Right, but it hasn't, and we are still talking about, you know, we started off talking about the struggles of data and data entry. And so there's like these two forces, there's these

entrepreneurial spirits that are pushing really hard for automat. But then there's just like this force holding it back due to like, I almost wanna say like people problem with just understanding, right. Just understanding, you know, how databases work, understanding computer science. Building code, I think is holding us back.

Right. I think we need to digitize building code if we're ever gonna. Right. An algorithm like that. Cause right. If you, like, we were talking earlier, if you change one thing that changes the other. Yeah. That's an interesting thought. You know, in something that I've thought about a decent amount, because you know, like if you take a look at this company up codes who is a definitely super somebody.

Yeah. So they want to like make the, kind of take a tech angle on the building code. And there's been a lot of litigation over that. Yeah. That is about saying that was huge. The fact that they won, that was huge. Yeah, definitely. So, and I was watching that closely because that kind of, you know, if you don't have free license to work with that data set, then like, what are you gonna do?

How can you, how can you innovate on top of that? It's like even upgrades though. Isn't really there to what we need. Like I played around with up codes a lot. And it's great. Yeah. I know they're doing, trying to do some compliancy checks, audience, compliancy checks, but not the, so I've been thinking a lot about, and I was, I went to bill recently and I was asking everybody it's, it's hard to even formulate the question, but like, You start having all these databases connecting, and we all know the pictures that you see, but it's like, how do these things really connect?

And then it's like, how do you take that stuff to scale? And so the example is, let's say I have an algorithm that is diffuser is already, I'm gonna make it real simple. That's not how it's written, but like diffusers are placed 10 feet apart, right? That's algorithm supply diffusers based tend to feet apart code.

So then you're reading you go, now you're doing a project somewhere else. And this one says a supply diffuser will be placed in the center of the room and the exhaust diffuser will be placed by the door. Right. Human language. How can you build a system at scale where you can just keep on adding those rules in?[00:35:00] 

Right. So next, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Next rule is. Code or whatever, for whatever reason, rule number three is slot diffuser goes on window. You know what I mean? Yeah. The flow control for the such a big process is really difficult. Snowballs on you so quick. And I ran up diffusers cause I was thinking of'em a lot about this with just diffusers recently and yeah, so I've so yeah, bringing back to bill, I asked a whole bunch of people, this question of like, how can we start to do this stuff at scale?

And. Make a system that you can just add more layers on top of really simple, right? The only person to give me an answer or a path to even start to go down was Ian from high park. Who's actually the creator of dynamo. I forgot his last name. Sorry, Ian. . Yeah. And so they're working on this thing called Hy par, which is really cool, but they essentially build things that are functions and the functions wrapped inside the functions is kind of like that design logic is the elements that, you know, use that design logic that get placed.

And so then their kind of workflows to layer function on top of function, which again is kind of getting back to the idea of. Function a will make floors function. B will divide the floors into offices and corridors and whatever right function maybe Q would be right now put in diffusers function. Z might be right now, route ducks.

Yeah, so they have a point and his thing was talking about is he recommended that I look at at the book, I forgot what it's called expert systems. So I've done a little bit look at expert systems. I think that's kind of a route and that's a lot older, the machine learning by the way, expert systems, the book.

Yes. There's a cool book. You wanna know the principles of programming principles are programming. I mean, it's not, or it's not even just program. It's more of like a way to structure data in a way. Who's the author expert systems, principles and programming. Josh C G I a R R a T a N O author link up in the show notes.

But it's also another thing that I've been thinking a lot about is right. We have a lot, like the turnovers happening in the industry so bad and like, so a lot of senior engineers that have all this knowledge in their head. And, and again, that's another just like building code. Like there's also this database of knowledge.

It just like we have building code that's in written word. Right. And that has to be translated into some type of algorithm. There's also the knowledge in all of these engineers heads that has to be translated. Oh, no, sorry. I keep interrupting. I was gonna say, I read a terrible article today. They were posting, they said 25% of the professionals in fire life safety think that their knowledge transfer is being completed from people aging outta the in industry.

So like, there's just this terrible. Loss of industry specific knowledge. And like you were saying, this turnover, this, this, this exiting of this longstanding knowledge base from the industry is a huge problem. So yeah, I guess back to the question of like, where do we go or what's gonna look like in a few years, I think it's an open ended question.

When I was at built last time, I actually left pretty pessimistic cause. I'm fairly new to the industry on like five, six years experience now and right. COVID happens. So we all didn't see each other for a good two years. It's a tight knit community at that conference and we all come back and we're all talking about the same problem about data and standardization.

And how do we implement this in our firm? And I'm just sitting there.

Thinking if I retire and I'm still having these conversations, I'm gonna be very disappointed in my life. like, you know what I mean? And I see other people there that have been there for have way more experience than me. I mean, there has been some success of going from like AutoCAD to Revit, but yeah, I Don.

I hope we're on like the, you know, exponential path right now. It seems pretty flat, but soon we're gonna take off. So I guess that's to wrap up that question two options, right? We either stay [00:40:00] linear pretty much linear flat as we have been with our efficiency in the AC industry, are all this technology that we've been talking about finally gets us to, you know, go off exponentially.

. Yeah, that's interesting. Everything. We need that exponential to happen, right. With everything going on in the world. Yeah. I believe that it's gonna happen. And to, to me, what makes me excited is just like how I can finally see companies or individuals like you even existing, like the fact that they, you and March do exist and you are making good content and automation and like, and then you have companies that are becoming.

You know huge, critical successes, like D roots and stuff. So I mean, look back 20 years ago and we didn't even have companies doing custom software. I mean, like in our, in the AEC industry for as a business, right. I consider myself so lucky. It's like, it's incredible. It's just crazy. I came in at the right time for like, there to be this opportunity.

Yeah, that's awesome. And so that part about it just makes me think that we're just at the launching point of this automation trend and, you know, 20 years, you know, test it, test it. Mm-hmm wow. You need to look at test it. You should, they should be on your podcast too, by the way. Shout out to them, but they just got 20 million in funding or something.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, that's just one example of last start. You brought up up codes co tools kinda working on energy model stuff I'm working on. Actually. Yeah. Another question to ask. Will Autodesk always be the top dog in the game, man? I stop test fit, audit desk, stop test fit from having a booth at this.

Esque university. Oh, wow. That's incredible. I I was talking with mod about who's gonna be the Autodesk killer or if there was going to be one in our lifetime and he, you know, kept boiling it down to like, whoever can really captured the holistic picture of the building and all the engineering disciplines would be the, the one to roll them.

All right. I think H park there again, Hy Park's another one. They have it. What's really cool to me about test fit. What I've always seen is they're pretty much doing like, like they're doing test fits. That's the name where it comes from mm-hmm . So they're like, you know, you give a site, you draw out a polygon and it just starts like creating multi-families and they keep the ratios between like you know, units and parking stalls and stuff like that.

But what I see is this really simple geometry. And back to my original thing about like how routing MEP stuff, how we're doing it wrong with trying to do it. When it's really complex, we have a really complex maze. Well, what test fit's output is, is just like, pretty much like massing. So then I've always wanted to layer MEP on top of that.

Cause I, I know what their output's gonna be. Like, I know what I'm getting. Yeah, and it's simple. So those two things right there, those two things makes energy modeling a lot simpler makes you know, like auto writing algorithms, a lot simpler. So I see someone like that's why I see with test fit is because they started the very beginning stage, but now they can just keep adding.

One of the things is engineer to build custom softwares and engineers. You don't know what you're getting from the. Right. So that's like the biggest struggle that I see with writing tools for, or writing tools for engineers is right. We all know what the, a architects come through and I'm like writing the input is so variable from what the architect can provide.

Right. It's, it's a very frustrating thing. Again, one of those times where I always get told I'm wrong, but I'm always like, or like they don't have control, but I'm like, write it into your bid execution plan. Hey, architect. We expect this brand to carry our fodder wall rating. Is that how you guys do it?

If not. Okay. Let's change it. Or can you please do it that way? Here's why, cause I'll save you so much time on the back and forth. You know what I mean? So there's, there's countless

countless examples of that. When you go from architect to engineering, you know that the data drop the model transfer. Oh, yeah. It's it can be done just like a hundred different, like a thousand different ways. Why is machine learning when you can just write a simple execution plan, find an architect that understands automation and what's needed.

Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess the business models have to change. And I'm not an expert on the business models, so yeah, but it's fun to think about, I think that's funny that you're like, let's start with mechanical, cause maybe it's good to be naive and not think about, not understand the [00:45:00] business models.

Cause then you can come at it clean perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's awesome. It makes me really excited to see things like test fit. And for those who are interested in taking a look it's looks like it's mostly kind of residential and building development projects for. Developers and kind of this blocking and programming sort of early design phase, like even before schematic design, kind of programmatic design phase, and you know, anybody who is aware of the money involved in the development for these type of facilities would quickly realize how much market capture and money there is for this type.

Service. I mean, it's, it's immediately seems like a no brainer from, you know, whatever three minutes looking at it. I keep on bringing up. Ian Ian told me when, well, like one of the first times was met when he was starting high par was, and I use it all the time in so many presentations. It's like, why are we starting off projects with a blank screen?

Right. And test fit's a perfect example. What we could be starting projects off with what is high bar? What do you keep saying? I don't know what that is. A company. It's hard to explain what high is. I think they're struggle explaining what it is. Another person podcast would love to I'll leave. I'm gonna leave it there.

I tried to explain it earlier. The business model kinda. I've always looked at the business model as like, huh. Cause they're trying to bring like a community kinda like DMO sense to it, but it's like, huh, it's weird. that's interesting. Well, maybe I'll do a solo cast or something about it, but interesting stuff.

Well, I like, you got a lot of different perspectives and people so far that I've never even heard of. So I appreciate all that perspective, but so for people who want to get started. Dynamo or for automation, like where would you suggest that they start or resources that they should investigate? I would start with having a problem and trying to solve it in a simple problem.

Not a hard problem. I say this story real quick, or just thing I learned through consulting. I'll like when I first decide to work with a client or not, one of the big red flags that I get is when someone. I want you to auto route MEP for me, like, to me, that's a huge red flag, because if that's just that simple of a statement, they have not taken the time to think about the complexity of that problem, the amount of data that's needed to even start thinking about that problem.

Right. Cause what are you, where, where are your sources and where are your targets? Is that data in the model? What do you wanna avoid? How is that data in the model? Are we gonna do it in 3d 2d? Why not 3d? Because it's really com you know what I mean? Like, just, if you ask for something like that, that complex, then you don't have a grasp on what it takes to build tools and you don't have understanding of the data are the geometry behind.

So again, if you're gonna, if you're trying to get into automation, start with a task, don't have it be auto routing, have it be like getting data from Excel to rev. That's where I started setting up projects putting legends on sheets, something that's relatively linear, you know? And there's a lot of tools out there.

There. There's VBM Excel. There's dynamo. There's Python. Dynamo. If you're working in Revits probably your easiest best shot get hooked. And then yeah, just keep on learning until you can never stop learning. So I guess that's what adds say. Well, I think that's a beautiful point to end on keep learning to never stop learning.

Cause that says something that I'm throttling myself. That's gonna be the guarantee, right? The Northern star is to.

Northern star. I wanna have the, you know, in star wars when they have like the death star plan, that's what I would, that's what I picture. It's what you want for your flow chart for your process and your dependency. I want, I want a hologram in the middle of a desk where I can flip some knobs and just the MEP infrastructure, right?

Just like you say, the generative design stuff just switches and you get. Again, just like the red sheet at manufacturing facility that tells you the critical information. And then you, we all sit around that desk and we debate and we have conversations about, [00:50:00] you know, the right choice and to get there.

Yes. Never stop learning. Hmm. Cause it takes so many hats to pull that off. Probably hats that we haven't thought exist. Yeah, I like that. Well, that's a good note, Sean. Well, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you about custom rev solutions or if they wanna learn more about your company?

So within email website, YouTube, Twitter usually my name, our Sigma AAC. Cool. Well, I'll throw some links to your consultancy down in the show notes. If people want to come find you, but yeah. Thank you for coming on the show, Sean. Thank you. Good conversation. 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.

This solocast is all about considerations for high-piled storage fire protection. We take a deep look at section 3201.3 in the International Fire Code. Don't miss this episode if you want to know what questions to ask for your next project.                                     

Transverse and longitudinal flue example

https://www.agcs.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/agcs/agcs/pdfs-risk-advisory/tech-talks/ARC-Tech-Talk-Vol-5-Why-Rack-Flue-Spaces-Are-Important-EN.pdf         \

Transcript:  

[00:00:00] Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal interview.

Hello. Welcome to episode 41 of the solo cast series of fire code tech. On this episode, we're talking about high piled storage. Yes. This is the second solo cast episode. That's talking about high piled storage in episode number five, we spoke about some of the preliminary fact. For analyzing a project for high piled storage requirements in this follow up solo cast, we're going to discuss what the code defines is required.

Provisions for implementing a high piled storage permit and construction documents. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Owen. If you wanna support the podcast, please go give us a five star review. On apple podcasts, let's get into this show. So what are some important factors for analyzing your facilities?

High powered storage needs. In this episode, I'm going to speak to some of the required pieces of information in the international fire code. In regards to storage, configurations and high piled storage. We're gonna be talking. The international fire code chapter 32, but more specifically section 32 0 1 0.3, construction documents.

This section reads at the time of the building at. This section reads at the time of the building permit application for new structures designed to accommodate high cloud storage or for requesting a change of occupancy slash use. And at the time of application for storage permit. Plans and specifications shall be submitted for review and approval.

In addition, the information required by the international building code, the storage permit submittal such shall include the information specified in this section. The construction documents shall include all of the following. So this section tells you exactly when you need to think about a high piled storage permit requesting a change of occupancy slash use at the time of application for storage permit.

during the design process, new structures that are anticipating storage requirements. There are a variety of different situations in which you might be performing management of change and working on a facility with existing storage, configurations, or installing or permitting new facility. High piled storage implications.

This section one more time. That's 32 0 1 0.3. Construction documents details. A good list of starting questions for a building owner. If you are a fire and life safety professional, that's trying to help them navigate the requirements in the fire code and building code in the United States. This list has 14 different items and they might not all be applicable to your project, but it is a good sanity check for you to run through these items.

If you have a project that is incorporating high piled storage, or if you think. They might be near the thresholds for high piled storage. If you're not sure about what the definitions or some of the beginning terms are for high piled storage, go back and take a listen to solo cast. Number five, number one on the list in 32 0 1 0.3 is floor plan of the building showing locations and dimensions of high powered storage areas.

This information is really critical because a facility can have a variety of different high pile storage areas and a mixture of commodities throughout the facilities. These areas need to be clearly marked and delineated within the facility. And it plays a huge part in understanding the severity in the specific areas of the facility by designating these different storage configurations.

So you have a area in a shop where you want to store tires, but you don't want to have a fire sprinkler system with that great of density for your entire facility. Well, if you can ACC. The storage [00:05:00] configuration and provide a way to delineate in the facility like draft curtains and higher hazard sprinklers over the tire section, but lower the commodity hazard severity in the rest of the facility.

Then you can manage storage in a more. Potentially cost effective way. The second factor that is listed in 32 0 3 0.1 is height of the storage usable height for each storage area is how the section defines. This point of information. There's a good reason for this information being required. The height of the storage configuration is one of the primary determinants for how severe the hazard will be and how the nature of the fire protection system demand.

Number three on the list is number of tier in each rack. If applicable number four is. Commodity clearance between top of storage in the sprinkler deflect. Of each storage arrangement. This is important because there is a minimum distance from the sprinkler deflector to the top of storage. And this distance can be as low as 18 inches.

And as large as I believe, three feet for storage, sprinklers, like CMSA and ES F. Storing commodities in a configuration that does not give adequate clearances something that you'll see frequently, especially in office buildings, you know, not in specific to high powered storage, but any type of storage, which obstructs clearance to the deflector of the sprinkler is an.

Number five is Ile dimension of each storage array. If you're familiar with the tables in N FPA 13, that speak about the different demand requirements for storage sprinklers, you'll be aware that. The closer the aisle width, the more severe the hazard. So a four foot aisle has a larger demand than an eight foot aisle.

So this is a good thing to keep in mind when analyzing your storage array. It might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you start asking questions about storage, but you should keep it in your tool. Number six is maximum pile volume for each storage or array. So there is a neat table. We talked about it a bit in episode five of the solo cast originally on high storage.

So if you wanna hear a little bit more about the table in the international fire code that has different fire protection and life safety features, depending on the volume of the storage in your facility. Go check that. Number seven location and commodity classification in accordance with section 32 0 3.

Commodity classification is a very intricate subject and a lot of fire protection engineers in the industry. Especially some of the professional societies will counsel engineers to not even try to classify commodities, to rely on the owner and, uh, scientists or engineers who specialize in this process to classify commodities because of the liability involved.

I'm sure I will do a whole podcast about this in the future. Number eight. If commodities are encapsulated or banded. So this is a commonly missed feature for high cloud storage. Maybe you have fairly non combustible commodities, but they are stored in boxes that are encapsulated in plastic. So this can be something that will greatly increase the hazard of your commodity that you're storing.

Not only is it wrapped in a petroleum product, but it is not allowing the sprinklers to discharge onto the C commodities. So it increases the hazard number nine, location of fire department access. Doors. So when you reach the high piled storage threshold, you have to have additional, uh, egress and fire department access.

So this is something that they want noted on the permitting plans is do you have the fire department access required for high piled storage? Number 10 in this section is type of fire protection systems. This one's fairly explan, self explanatory, you know, do you have a storage sprinklers? Do you have advanced detection means of detection?

You know, is it a what system or a dry system? Um, you need to know these factors when, uh, [00:10:00] permitting or evaluating a response to a fire. So it's a. Fire and life safety determinant to have all the information about the system available. Number 11, location of control valves, controlling main sprinkler riser valves, and in rack sprinkler riser valves.

This is something they want designated on the plans. And this is important for emergency response. And with Iraq, sprinkler systems, you get a lot of extra evolving and components added. So they want this to be displayed in these construction documents, number 12 type location and specifications of smoke removal, and curtain board systems.

So. The smoke removal systems are a firefighter. Feature in the facility and there are a couple of different ways you can accomplish this, um, feature you can have vis in the roof that are on fue links, or you can have a, uh, uh, Automatic or manually operated system that utilizes air handling units that are rated for the discharge of heat.

He smoke. Obviously the fue links are going to be a more cost effective means to provide this smoke and heat removal. But some owners prefer to go the route of the dedicated air handling unit for the evacuation of smoke and heat. This is not for. The response to a fire. This is really for, um, post incident evacuating, fire, and smoking heat from the building.

So it's a little bit of a strange requirement, but, um, good to know about, because it can be expensive if you miss this requirement and then find out that you have to incorporate roof penetrations and expensive equipment like fusible. Heat and smoke removal, vents, number 13, dimension and location of transverse and longitudinal flu spaces.

So rack sprinklers are really confusing and I still don't claim to be anything close to an expert on in rack sprinklers. The, if you go take a look at NFPA 13, there are diagrams for where to locate the sprinklers. Well, in regards to the positioning of the racks and the different annual spaces in between the racks for N rack sprinklers and so transverse and longitudinal flus are.

Industry terms for the different spaces length and widthwise between the racking systems. So, um, I'll try to find a snippet from NFP 13 for you to get some idea of what these spaces look like. If you don't know, but go check the show notes. Number 14 is additional information regarding the required design features, commodities storage, drain measurements, and fire protection features with the high powered storage area.

Shall be provided at the time of permit, we required by the fire code official. So this is just an all encompassing note for the official being able to require and need the approval of any fire and life safety feature. They would like, um, I've worked in occupa or not occupancies, but jurisdictions like Houston, where there is a definit.

Uh, emphasis on this high piled storage permit. So you want to, um, really be aware of the different jurisdictions you're working in and what kind of different permitting authorities you're going to have because they will carry much more scrutiny than some other jurisdictions. That's gonna be it for now.

Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll see you next time on fire code tech. 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.

This episode explores Wojciech's recent progress with the Fire Science show as well as his new chapter on Fire and Smoke Modeling in the "Handbook of Fire and the Environment". Tune in to hear about modeling fire and smoke in environments as big as city blocks. 

Fire Science Show: 

https://www.firescienceshow.com/

Handbook of Fire and the Environment

https://bit.ly/3bCId0I

Transcription

Gus Gagliardi: [00:00:00] 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 58 of fire code tech. On this episode, we're speaking once again with Wojciech Węgrzyński WOIC is a friend of the podcast and the host of the fire science show. In this episode, we get some updates on what has been happening with the fire science show and wojak details his chapter in the new published handbook titled the handbook of fire and the environment by S F P.

Wojciech chapter in specific talks about fire and smoke modeling. He evaluates how we can use fire and smoke modeling to better understand how fires impact the environment and what methods we can use to predict and protect individuals from the hazard of fire and the pollutants that are. If you enjoyed this episode, please go check out the fire science show.

He has a wide variety of topics, and he really gets at some fascinating scientific points of view that we don't as often cover on fire code tech. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button for fire code tech and the fire science show. And give us a follow on social media. Also, if you enjoy the content and you wanted to give us a big favor, give us a five star review on apple iTunes podcasts.

Let's get into the show. welcome back to fire code tech. Thanks for coming on the show, sir. Thank you so much, GU thank you so much, GU very happy to be here with you again. Nice. Well, yeah, the fire code tech. Goes round two, I guess. Yeah. Or what is it? The fire science code tech show. That was, that was a good one.

I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed that. That mashup was nice. One. It was fun. It was fun. Yeah. Well, I wanted to just, you know, start off by getting a update of like what you've been thinking about the podcast. We were chatting a little bit off air, but I'm sure everybody is interested about, you know, How you been feeling about it and what's been going on and just like a little bit of background on the, behind the scenes for Roja.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: Yeah. Cool. I'm not, not very often sharing behind the scenes on fire sand in the fire science show. So I guess it makes more sense to share it in, in here. It's been fun. It's been a great year. Definitely a chance to meet and talk with people that I would not usually talk to. And that was, that was really good discovering a lot of new, super smart, super intelligent people who do groundbreaking research in fire for me as an academic broadening my, my field of view.

So that has been excellent. And. I really like it, a lot people seem to like and enjoy it. So makes me very happy to, to get feedback from outside of my closet. and yeah, I, nowhere close to stopping doing that quite opposite. I'm I'm very. Happy to, to do this project, continue this project. And my head is buzzing with ideas, how to make it better, how to grow it.

Gus Gagliardi: So many, so many new roots open up and I, I hope that. It's the early days of the fire science show. And you're gonna hear a lot more from it. Hopefully , we'll see. I would bet on it. I would bet on it with you behind the wheel, but no, that's awesome to hear about. Yeah. I, I definitely know what you mean about the podcast opening up new doors, but yeah, I was wondering with your newest riding endeavor that you were sharing with me.

But like what kind of, how has the, like the symbiotic relationship of the podcast? Like how has that influenced other areas of your career? Because I know for me, it's, I've seen it have subtle and not so subtle influence on knowledge and just opportunities. Yeah. That's kind of an intriguing question, I guess.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: I mean first, first things first I'm a scientist and an engineer I'm I'm podcaster is, is a third hat if I may. And definitely my, my prime career is as is the VO, the [00:05:00] scientist. I I'm the guy who does fire experiments and measures stuff and tries to publish that and shares the knowledge through academic papers mainly.

So. It's difficult to say to what extended this world's overlapped that much. I would say that podcast is I found podcast as an excellent way to communicate the research. Like this is something absolutely. Great. And it it's working like magic and it, it was one of the reasons why I've started podcast.

You know, sometimes you go to a conference and there's a person they're talking about their research. They're giving a 10 minute presentation and it's like, you can go asleep. Sometimes it's really difficult to. To capture all the knowledge that person is trying to share, giving their best. And I'm not saying people are lazy or something or, or unskilled, but it's just the way how it is in conferences.

And then after the conference, you go for a beer with that person and you can spend like three hours in the pop talking about that research. And it is fascinating. And I couldn't get that out of my head. Why, you know, the same person, the same topic, the same thing in one place. It's very difficult to. On the other hand, it's so approachable.

So nice. So juicy, like you can learn so much from talking to people and I figured out the context makes the difference and this human to human interaction makes the difference. And I've bet on that while starting the podcast and it worked out, it really seems to be the thing, like when you talk to people, they open up.

When you ask them questions, they, they light up inside and they want to talk, you know, I, you may know the feeling of talking to a 200 people in the room and you don't really have a good idea if any of them is listening. like, you know, People on their phones. People were watching around someone talking with somebody else on the side, someone leaving the room, middle of the talk.

You didn't know if they left because it's horrible talker. They just received a very important phone. You know, you don't know that it's stressful and here Once you forget, this is being recorded. Once you forget, this is going to be shared with hundreds of thousand or thousands of people you open up and, and you can just, you know, give the science to the world.

And, and this is the interaction between podcasting and academia that. I enjoy the most, I must say I'm not taking that big advantage of, of my podcast with my research because there's a lot happening at ITB and, and at my research group, which I guess I could have a whole podcast about research. We are just doing, but I, I, I wanted my show to be a venue for everyone else and whole community of people, scientists.

So yeah. That's number one. Influence. Yeah. Well maybe in one day you'll have. Media network, where you can have a whole litany of fire scientists talking on different podcasts on a channel one day. We don't know. I won't, I won't sell you short yet. I think you got it in you. Yeah. Media empire. That that'll be great.

There you go. I, I thought at understand, I thought the fire science is too small, even for a podcast. So, but I was very wrong. I was very wrong. It's so niche. It's so niche. And like, I wonder that same thing sometimes I'm like, is it so. is it such a, like a small subset of an audience? Like, is there enough people?

Gus Gagliardi: I really didn't even know. Like I was excited when I was having 10 or 12 people listen to the podcast. I was excited on a weekly basis. I was like, this is awesome. I can't believe that people are even listening to me right now. Like what, what the heck even is happening. So I, I love all what you're. I when thinking when, considering that I thought it is a small audience, but it's an audience that deserves a great, great shows, great content.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: And let's do this and see what happens and, and it turned out cool. Yeah. From the opposite side, like how does podcasting influence my work as a scientist? I get the chance to listen every single episode of fire science here, because I record them. I edited them. I listen to them. So I'm a very solid consumer of my own content.

And I, I honestly think listening to podcasts like. Yours and, and mine and there's others is probably the easiest way for passive career development. Like there, there is no other as easy investment of your time. Even in time it can be considered even entertainment in a way. And yet you learn so much.

So from every interview, I, I learn something that eventually gets implemented in my science. But I would get that by listening to podcast. I wouldn't have to make the podcast to, to have that if I was just listening to, to the podcast, which I am, I, I would still benefit in a very, very similar way. So yeah, I think it's a great medium [00:10:00] and one that's very easy, but very rewarding.

Gus Gagliardi: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, I wanted to ask, I feel like I'm just getting selfish here and I'm asking you all the podcast questions up front, but I wanted to ask just like, and I think you've like spoke a little bit about, you know, how it's been and. How things are going, but yeah, I mean, like, I love hearing about your, you saying you're, you're scheming, you're thinking about ways to grow it, but like what dreams do you have, if you could share any for what you would like to do with the fire science show?

Like yeah. Where would, where do you see it going? Yeah, first and foremost, I would like it to continue. Very long time. Like I would love to one day wake up and think about, I dunno, 10 years of interviews I've done with the fire scientists, you know, see in the podcast reflection of how the field grown, how it evolved, how one thought fueled another.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: I, I mean, doing it for a year, I can already I, I can already see Repository of hours of, of interesting interviews, but I really wonder how will it look after like five or 10 years of doing that? How big it'll be? What, what great thoughts will be in it? I would love to know interview today. Some.

Undergraduate student learned that 10 years forward their famous professor and, and it was first communicated. These are the dreams, you know, really they're very down to earth. I, I don't dream about building a tycoon of, of podcasts or, or having I don't know, the number one show on the planet or so that I don't care that much.

I'm reaching my goals with what I'm doing. I would honestly like really love to continue and just like reflect on how it influences lives of others. That's. That's very rewarding on, on its own. Obviously I would love to get the show sponsored one day or, or, you know, get something rolling that. And I think it's important for, for podcast long longevity, you know, it's, it's it's, it's, it's a thing that definitely helps, but it's not a goal on its own.

Gus Gagliardi: It's something that would be nice as an, as an added part of this routine. Yeah, I think it's, I, I mean, I'm sure you're already at a place where if you just started going and chasing sponsors, you could get 'em it's just the time to do all that on top of yeah. Your, your three other jobs. You got your you're an engineer, you're a scientist you're podcast.

You're a father like, yeah, you got, maybe you spare a couple seconds left in the day that you probably need for your sanity. So if you, if you're really one of those sponsors, I'm sure you could go get 'em, but I love. I feel like you have like a philosopher's soul when you speak about these things that, oh, thank you.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: I always enjoy listening to. But I find myself just like going into, I'm listening to a wojak podcast mode, even though I'm supposed to be interview interviewing you. So I need to be careful about listening to you. okay. That's cool. I'll I'll I'll just pop a three minute timer to not exceed you just make sure you start snapping.

Gus Gagliardi: If I look like I'm glazed over and I'm just like listening to you too. Intently kill man. No I wanted to talk to you. You shared with me like a new project that she had just finished. And I saw that Brian Meachum was sharing it on link two, LinkedIn too, after we were talking about it and super exciting, but I really wanted to dive in in this conversation and talk about your new chapter in the handbook of fire and the environ.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: It was, is such an exciting project. And I was delighted to be invited by Brian to participate in, in that project. It's a handbook it's called a handbook of fire and environment. It's within the, let's say environment of, of SF P handbooks. So it's, it's a completely new development that hopefully will be sustained and growing as, as it as its own thing.

It's. Large. Well, handbook is a large book. It it's large book many chapters with, with great, great people, all focused around the environmental impact of fires on the environment, but also in a cultural way, in a social economic way. So all the, all the different ways, how fires impact society.

Editors of the book are Brian Mitchum, who you've mentioned, and professor Margaret Magna me from Sweden. So they're, they're, they're both co-editors of the, of the book. They were leading the whole thing. And I even had, I had Margaret on my podcast some time ago, we were talking about sustainability in build environment.

And this is also something that, that fits into the puzzle of, of fires and the environment. So the book itself, [00:15:00] it started, I know three, maybe four years ago. It takes a long time to publish a handbook, man. It's like you and me are on a tight schedule with the podcast and almost a weekly. It takes years to publish a book of this magnitude.

And it it's, it's amazing. It's even if you do your best job and at the moment when it's published, the, the references in it are already two years old because it takes so much time to process the book, but ah, it's, it's cool. The book is, the book is out there and the knowledge there is is worth sharing.

Absolutely. If you want sorry. The, the story of the handbook like goes, goes far back and it's it has been triggered by the how fires do damage environment. We we've been more and more. You know, aware of the effects fires due to environment in terms of smoke, polluting the air in terms of the soil and water damage that is done from fire and extinguishing actions.

We had some huge, like petrochemical fires, huge chemical plant fires that. Their ethics on the environment around was very profound, but we also had fires like the tragic gr tower or the Notre Dame, par cathedral fires, which were just buildings inside of a city. And yet they had environmental consequences.

If you look through that layer on them. So it it's something we are becoming more and more aware. And this handbook was a way to answer this need for the society to be able to quantify, measure, model that, to better understand this impacts. So yeah, that's the handbook. Yeah. Wow. That's that's incredible to hear you talk about like the scope of a document like this.

Gus Gagliardi: I mean, I guess it makes complete sense when you have this many authors this much like peer review and, and this much just process to compile it all, you have thousands of pages probably. Or I don't know how roughly how long it is, but it's it's like 500, but it's, it's, it's a massive work. Yeah. 500 man.

That's still like a dense, dense, but man, so much to be gleaned about it too. And so I, you know, was But, yeah, it's exciting and cool to see a little bit of your, your wind talk. You know, I didn't get through the entire chapter over that you wrote, but, oh man. It's it's it's way through and probably take with me.

Take me months to get through it, but I was like trying to read it and UN not just read it, but understand it, you know, I could read it and just like go through it and my eyes go over and be like, yep. That went inside my brain for a moment. Or just like go through it, try to pick it apart. I was taking notes, but it was really interesting to.

Get like a little bit more on your, on your wind talk. And I feel like that's your baby, you know, like this, this idea and this thing that you really love to. So it was cool for me to get a little bit of a peek behind the, the curtain for. For that lecture and that discussion that we had talked about.

And honestly, when we were doing our first talk, you were given hints about the win talk when you came back. Yeah. So it was like perfect timing. Perfect timing. yeah. So, but yeah, but I'll, so let's get into that. Let's talk about like, you know, I guess let's get into. So like who would benefit from reading this book?

Like, who's kind of like the, the audience or the target. I mean, I can definitely see. People who like yourself and, and like the firm I work for at times, like performance based design professionals are people who deal with fire and the, you know, just the sociology of it, the science of it, all the parameters, like they can benefit by reading your chapter.

But yeah, maybe you have a greater sense of who's a good audience for this document. It's it's a tough question, you know, because I would love to say everybody and that's a horrible answer to such post questions, which I now know being a content creator, if your content is for everybody, it's for no one.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: So, so I'll try to Wrap up who would be a perfect recipient of this chapter, like who I would like to give this book in a president and tell them you would really, really benefit from reading this. And I, I think it would be an engineer, not necessarily dealing with the building design, but one that wants to understand a bigger picture or because of the work they're doing.

They have to. Understand the bigger picture, the context of what they're being designing, be the building, a tunnel, a road, a system you know a bigger community even. If, if you are involved in, in [00:20:00] design and you would like to understand another layer of perception of your. If you're in the building, we usually care.

Okay. Is your ISA time higher than your required time? And if that is you're good, if not, then you're bad. What are your concentrations inside? But as soon as you know, the smoke is exhausted outside of that compartment, you don't think about words going to fly. How far can it fly? Who's going to be vulnerable to that smoke.

And actually even how much will there be? Eed out of your fire. It's not something we consider today that much while designing buildings or other systems. I'm not saying we should always do that, but I am also sure that in certain cases we would benefit from understanding what our what our buildings, what, what threats our building pose to the surroundings.

As I mentioned the cases of Grandful or, or Nord Dame, it was a single building burned down. And yet it had some environmental consequences in its nearest surroundings outside of all the other damage that was caused by these tragedies. So even as a fire of a single building can do a lot of harm to the surroundings.

And to understand that, like how can you. Understand what the impact will be. You, you have to calculate it in a way like we're engineers. We, we are supposed to not give a random answer based on our feeling or intuition, but we are all to calculate and then measure and, and model. So this is what. We were invited for in this chapter previously, as you've mentioned, we've been known for our work in wind and fire, coupled modeling and environmental modeling of the fire outcomes is largely related to the atmospheric winds.

I mean, winds will be driving force for the, for the contamination. So it was very Easy to find a link between our work that was focusing on the winds and fires inside the buildings and extending it to understand how the winds affect the, the, the consequences of the fire outside of the building. We were focused on the inside, but it was very easy switch to also take a look at the greater picture outside now.

One thing that we were doing, we were usually focusing on numerical modeling with CFD computational fluid dynamics, which is something that gives you great answers, but in the very near proximity of your building, because it's very detailed simulation. You can do a simulation of a whole city, but it's quite expensive and you probably don't want to do that all the time.

So we thought with Karth or Thomas Thomas Lipsky from the Lulin technical university we thought, okay, so we have this understanding of the great model CFD on, on the near. There's plenty of other models being used, which I also do to my personal career and other developments previously, I have known we should like broaden it.

So, so this is why in this in this chapter, we take the reader into a journey. First we try to discuss what. Is a fire mission. And there's a great chapter in the handbook about that as well. Like what is a fire? What does it emit? What can you expect from it as a source of heat and smoke, then we go through multiple types of of models with growing complexity.

We start with something that's called the box models. Where you just assume a whole space is just one thing and you average things out within it. And that's the, that's probably the simplest way you can model contamination within an area, but you're. You are constrained by the size of the box.

So, so it works only in, in certain scenarios. Then we go into Gian plume models where you have a single equation, AIAN distribution equation that allows you to calculate. If I admit this amount of smoking here, given that PSIC conditions around me, wind blowing in this direction, how much will go like 500 meters AF away, a kilometers, five kilometers away, 10 kilometers away.

You can calculate this distribution. Now the problem with this is, is a very simple, easy calculation. It's just one equation you solve. You assume that the weather is not changing. Like, you know, you have one wind direction, one wind velocity, and it's constantly changing. And the bigger scale you go, like if I model a vehicle on a car, That's probably okay-ish to model it like that.

But if you model like McMurray fault fire, where you have hundreds of square, hundreds of thousands of [00:25:00] square meters burning together, and the plume will take days to reach a different place in the us. You cannot model it like that. So you need to take this different things into account. So we go into more complex models there's models.

I, I love them. They're called puff models where you it's more or less like Gian plume model, but you emit puffs of your fire and you model where the puff will go. So let's imagine. And each hour of a fire is a single puff and you just measure, okay, this puff goes here. This one goes here. This one goes here.

And based on that, you, you have a more or less. Overall image on, on where the smoke will go. Then you can go into very complicated models. Laurian particle models, where you emit Laurian particles into, into three dimensional setting and you track where they go with allows you for very high, detailed investigation or where the smoke will go.

and because of howing particles work, you can add chemistry to them. It's you can play a lot with them and ULA in models where you basically do more as a CFD of a, of a continent where you can really model the dispersion with a, with a complicated topography, complicated Windfield weather. At the cost, obviously it's not easy, but you can do that.

So you have a hierarchy of, of models that you can use for a particular problem at hand. And of course, CD, which we many of these models, like there's their weakest thing is the nearfield, like what's happening directly near to the fire so that we cover with the CFD. So if you would like. Learn about this, the, the, the, the chapter and the handbook would be just for you.

do you need this immediately in your life? I'm not sure, but if a day comes and you will need it, it's there waiting for you. So there's also a point of having a handbook. So if you, one day, find out yourself in the need for modeling things like this. Here you go. It's all there. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

Gus Gagliardi: I think it's stunning rooting through your chapter and just like skimming through a little bit. How many modeling examples are in this chapter that you produce? I just was thinking about how much time it must have taken to even a symbol, all, all of these like different modeling examples and all that.

I was like, man, I've seen CFD before and I saw like some of those. Like the cutouts and the nice renderings and like artistic renderings of the wind cityscape and stuff, which was neat that I'd seen from something you presented before. But lots of great. It's not just. Text. It's like a beautiful imagery of modeling and, and a lot more information and charts and, and, you know, distributions for what's happening with this material.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: So thank you very much. We, we wanted it to like if, if this is the first and only piece of research, you. On this specific topic, modeling environmental impact of fires. We wanted it to at least give you a fairly complete overview. Obviously we're talking about a whole field of science. There's hundreds of people writing papers of that.

There's dozens of models. We, we were, it was even, it would, it would be even impossible to give a list, a complete list of models, not, not even to go and, and, and discuss them. So we focused on the ones that we knew are most popular or the ones we had some experience in. I mean, it, it is not an exclu exhaustive list.

I, I guess, at, at some stage we'll build up on that and then present a more complete image. I think for, well, it took a few months of work. So for the time associated to make this chapter happen, I think we did a, a fairly good work completing all of this together, compiling it into, into one one piece of content.

Gus Gagliardi: The chapter that that now is, is in the hands of engineers to. Yeah. So like how long did it take to like physically write it? Because I've been doing more technical writing recently and I'm so bad at it. I'm not good at all. and so I was just looking at this document and how like, Nice and polished. It is, and like the, the terminology and everything flowing and having nice little poetic phrasing in there.

And I'm like, this would take me forever to write this. I can, I can tell you, let me find a manuscript folder on my, yeah, from the first draft till the one that we've sent. To [00:30:00] Brian. It was four months of work. Wow. Yeah, it was four months. I remember quite vividly. I I've spent my entire Christmas break reading literature and, and writing that it was fun.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: Like 10 hours a day reading it. Oh my God. And writing, I like this. It's not it was not Pain. I, I, I, to some extent enjoyed, enjoyed it. It was nice to learn. The more pain comes when you have to like rephrase stuff and then put it into context. So, yeah, it, it was few months. And then obviously it was like two years in editing, you know, many people having it in their hands.

Criticizing making changes, editorials and, and stuff like that. So the final product is a product of, of the work of many people. And it's not something you just go in and ride overnight, but yeah. Okay. Just writing it was months . Wow. That's incredible. That's cool. I don't think I've ever written anything that should have taken months in months.

Gus Gagliardi: oh, I mean maybe a term paper as a student that I put off for too long, took me months to write, but I guarantee I wasn't writing that whole time. No, no. It's like, and I don't think I would have time to write it now again with the podcast on, on the, with the podcast project on my back. So I'm not sure if I'll ever author another.

Piece like that. Well, maybe I will. We'll see. I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. Maybe you'll get that patron one day and then you'll be able to outsource some of this editing but no I wanted to talk about like, it's such a complex process of, you know, Just like, I'd like to talk with you about just like some of the basic factors for like these modelings, but I know that that's just like, what's the basic factors of fire, which, you know, but also a topic I'd like to discuss with you is just like, so if we.

Had infinite computing power mm-hmm like, what would we be able to do with these like models? You know, like a CFD for a whole city. Like if you could like model whatever, pick a reasonable sized city, but if you could model a reasonable size city and you had infinite computing power, could you get a, like a reasonable approximate approximation of like, Wind distribution of pollutants over a city from a fire.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: I mean, like. I was seeing you having some examples of the different mm-hmm zone modeling and like near and the, the different compartments. But yeah, I just wanted to ask that. So my brain always jump. So what's the extreme, yeah, we, we, we don't have to go into abstract thinking, I, I, I think I can give you examples of, of citywide simulations, because we are actually doing them right now.

Maybe not on a moderately size city, but on like a square kilometer of a city which is like quite a large chunk of a large city. So, so it takes us using our 128 cars of 128 CPUs. It takes us 24 hours to, to simulate a fire with all the distributions around it. So. It's not it's not something that will come in the future.

It's something that we will already have. It's just not, not that many people are using that yet. If you wanted to seem like what would we do if we had crazy amount of power and like infinite infinite resources. I'm not like you can spend whatever amount of resources you want to increase the fidelity of your simulations.

You can always use the smaller resolutions of your mesh. You can always use more complicated models. Does it translate to a better simulations? Not necessarily it's it's not such a direct link. I mean, it it's, it's a complicated, I'm actually gonna have a whole podcast episode with Jason Floyd about that, like in a month.

so there's an, an, the answer is, is it's complicated, but not so easy. One thing that we like the, the. Issues are with the problem definition, not with the solution. You know, if you think about wind, like what's wind, like what direction, what velocity, what gusts, what we, we there's even a thing called the atmospheric stability.

And based on that, you get different wind profiles. If you have a sunny clear day, or if you have a very. Cloud layer you'll have completely different atmospheric conditions. In, in those two days, you can have a wind in the winter. You can have a wind in, in the summer. So, you know, the, the amount of different wind context you can run into is, is endless, like in endless amount of fires you can.

So if I had an access to infinite Computational power. [00:35:00] I would do infinite number of simulations, like concurrently to each other to really work out probability distributions and see a risk based image of on how Wind and fire go together. Like I would love to know with probability of this amount of percent, the wind impact will be this.

And with this probability, it will be like this. And if the wind is extreme, but the probability is very low, the impact is extreme. Or maybe it's not, I don't know. Maybe with the wind that is very highly prob. Low velocity flow that occurs every other day. Maybe the impact is the biggest. I don't know that it's something that we're currently actually researching in, in a project that we're carrying at ITB.

And we're somewhere in the middle of it. We are in the numerical calculations now to really measure. Impact of wind different types of wind, different, different directions in our context on how the consequences of the fire in an urban settlement are. And then we'll be able to, to say to what extent extended this something important or, or not based on risk.

So yeah, I would, I would spend. Infinite resources on being able to do risk. not necessarily, you know, doing the fanciest simulation. I can. Mm, that makes sense. Yeah, I guess that's the whole thing is like understanding the very fluid and variable nature of the, the wind and just how quickly things can change the probabilistic.

You know, kind of distribution of what could happen and the dispersion of the pollutants, I guess that makes sense of, you know, You know, like, do we even know enough about like the way that the wind and the atmosphere to even make that model? Yeah. Even if you had infinite like resources you know, like you're saying the valuable use of those of that.

I I'll give you. I'll I'll give you for a context, a nice example. Like a few weeks ago, there was a severe drought in, in, in Europe heat wave. And there was like one of the hottest days ever in, in, in UK. They had a massive number of fires in London that day, like massive number. Like they, they compared it like it was the worst days.

Sinces world war II in London in terms of the amount of fires. Wow. And because I'm involved in the biolife project I'm on the WhatsApp there. And there was a discussion there, like, and Gilman was mentioning and the wind was like very low that day, like four meters per second. And I checked it for London and it seems to be somewhere around the average or median wind and We understand, or we know that stronger wind usually leads to worse outcomes of fires.

Like fire can spread, can grow bigger. It's it's usually connected with the worse outcomes. So if on the west day, since world war II, we had wind that was like around 50% chance and it was a wind that. Possibly not contribute that much to the damage. Like it could have been much, much worse with the worse wind.

And if the probability of that was 50%, we essentially won a coin us, you know, like if it was not, the outcomes could have been so, so much worse. So this is why we need to. Understand that, and then be able to, to model that, to predict that because if this time we won a coin, us, what's gonna happen on the next worst day.

Since world war II, will we lose the coin us? And how horrible will it be? What should we. What should we be ready for? Like, do we understand that as a society? I don't think so. So to, to gain insight into these questions, you first have to solve the fundamentals, which is how do you model them both together, wind and fire.

Gus Gagliardi: Yeah. And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, that's awesome. I like that real world context that Shere providing, you know, I think that's something that over the, like the history of our discipline has always been such a useful teaching tool and just way to ground the importance of what we do. You.

It seems like society. It's very easy to forget, you know these tragedies when you exist, you know, most of your daily life is not impacted. And then you'll see a flash of something like this on the news. Mm-hmm like what you're just saying about London and. It having its worst day for fire since world war II.

And it's like, you know, when you can bring to mind something so visceral like [00:40:00] that, it really has a great brings home. The meaning of like what we do and Notre Dame and gr fell. I mean, two tragedies that. They're still talking about to this day. I mean, they're still litigating Grandville. It would've happened in like 20 17, 20 16, something like that.

Yeah, I can't remember, but it's just incredible how much impact and cultural significance that these fires and this subject has on people and it just kind of. Goes under the radar for the culture of how we exist. We just kind of forget about it. Go back to, we are dealing with very real problems in fire, like we're in.

I mean, it, it, in a way it is abstract in a way it is something very. Weird complex difficult to understand. You start to realize the complexities, they, they prevent you from answering most of the questions usually, but in the end you have down to earth problems like real buildings that burn down real environments that suffer real people that suffer and, and yeah, that's what, that's why we are doing this difficult work to.

To, to, to help that and, and, you know, being down to earth and being able to relate the, the science to the real world problems. I think it's an engineering science for a reason. Yeah. We, we have to solve the problems without knowing everything first. Yeah. So I feel like I you've talked, you've covered it pretty well, but just like, so why.

I guess I'll just ask, instead of trying to put words in your mouth. Yeah. Why, what do you find compelling about like wind engineering or like the computational aspect of wind engineering or trying to be better about not like asking fully loaded questions and just like, obviously pushing my thoughts or opinions on people.

When I am trying to do an interview. It's cool. Yeah, I, I, I like computational wind engineering is is something that I find. Interesting. I mean, we are using the same tools for, for fleet mechanics in, in fire safety engineering and in computational wind engineering. But the culture is very different.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: They approach their problems in a different way. Like you have different scales in, in, in space. For example, like in wind engineering, you would consider a building and you can go away with two meter mesh on the building because it's a big block. But if you consider fire you, like, you need to model like these tiny details that will influence the fire.

So here we, we are in a kind of different world than when wind engineers in terms what we are expected from our models to be in time scale. In wind engineering, you can most likely go away with with steady state simulations, something you never see in fire, because fire is a transient event. You have to like the time, the time aspect of a fire is fundamental to the fire, to the safety to E everything happens on the timeline.

In winds, not, not really. It's like probability and just a single, single thing that happens at the time. So, so you go away with steady. So in, in the end, I mean, the tools are the same. I mean, we're also talking about building, so the thing you're modeling is the same, but you're doing it in a different way.

And. This is compelling. You know, if you are a, if you're a guy who's been doing fire modeling, they're all professional career, you know, building these buildings, putting fires inside modeling, HVC systems, smoke control systems, doing the same thing over and over and over again, and then comes someone and tells you, now you have to do it.

Like I forget about this interior. It's not relevant. It's, it's kind of refreshing, you know, to do something in a completely different way. And when you try to combine both, that's where the magic starts because you cannot simply combine them. Like you cannot put a fire analysis inside of wind analysis.

It will not work. It, it it's, it's, it's a different thing. You cannot just drop wind randomly on your, on your fire. By ex you just extend the domain by 10 meters and drop wind. It's not gonna work. It's not wind that you're modeling. It becomes pretty interesting when you try to model the interface between them.

It's not so simple. And I, I mean, I, I like dealing with difficult problems, so I, I really enjoyed being exposed to this one and trying to maybe not solve, but at least Try to work in this difficult setting. So yeah, that, that is rewarding and compelling and interesting for sure. For me using the, the fundamentals of computational wind engineering in fire safety engineering.

Gus Gagliardi: Yeah, I think that's awesome. That's funny that you're like, oh, well, it seems like you guys are playing on easy mode over here with [00:45:00] steady state equations and yeah. You know, just like, I mean, I know it's a different set of problems, but, but then again like, and they can look at us and they, they, they can Ask us, like what's your time steps?

Wojciech Węgrzyński: What's your what, how, how do you solve the, the chemistry of fire? Oh, we simplify that. Oh, you are playing easy mode. You're simplifying it. It way too much. They do take significant care in, in boundary layer problems, which we all. Like not everyone at ologists boundary layers in, in fire safety engineering yet to solve with boundary layers in mind when you're solving your flows.

And these, these guys would be very serious about them. So, so it's like we oversimplify something horribly in fire as well. That is very exotic from the view of the other field and vice versa, I guess, I guess that's with the, every field of engineering, the users model. Right. Yeah, that's definitely true.

Gus Gagliardi: Yeah. We just know the set of parameters and the distributions that we've simplified our equations around and, you know, you can't account for everything. So that makes sense. Well, I wanted to just ask you to zoom out a little bit and just speak more broadly about your career experience and just ask you like, you know on top of this endeavor you had going, what kind of trends have you been seeing just in your professional career?

Wojciech Węgrzyński: It could be in the lab or in your project work. I, I guess I can talk broadly about, Hm, fire engineering as I view it. One trend that is really emerging is, is artificial intelligence. And. it's it's a thing that's in one way it's a black box. No one really understands how it works. It opens a whole world of possibilities that you would not even imagine without it yet.

It's difficult to, to handle interpret and make sure that you have it under control when you're using it. So. It's definitely something growing and it, it will be growing and it will be amazing in the future, but together it's gonna be a hell of a challenge, you know, to make sure we are doing it in a great way.

Like, think about how people can misuse CFD. Without understanding it and then multiply it by a hundred. That's how that's how difficult the AI can be if you, if you misuse it too much. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenge, but it's an emerging trend that I see more and more in the years. And there are great people working on ITZ last year in Clemson.

There's CNN, Wongan in Hong Kong, protecting university and many others. Who are carving the path for everyone else in, in fire to, to use these magnificent tools, you know? So yeah, that's, that's a trend for sure. Yeah, it's so wild. I you're right. I mean, I think AI is just in such the early days, you know, I was looking at like Microsoft outlook documentation and I was looking, they had like little e-learning and I was looking through their courses yesterday, looking for how to do something.

And like they had. Like 80% of their documentation was about like, or their little courses were about AI. And it was like, what really is this? Why is it like, like how to, how to create a culture within your company? That's AI ready? And like all this talk about AI and I'm just thinking, as you're saying this, like this is coming and it's going to be a huge part of probably like society.

Within our lifetimes. And then the next, probably, I don't know how long wouldn't hazard a guess, but I mean, guess if we don't screw up, it's going to be magnificent. Like you will like if we make it work and validate it and make sure we are using the correct tools for correct problems, AI could take over significant amount of repetitive and Non-critical tasks, fire safety engineers are doing.

To allow them to focus on the things only they can solve, you know, viewing, building as a holistic sociotechnical system, right? No one, but fire safety engineer can do that. No algorithm will ever be able to do that. You need a human being with a great understanding of fire building building physics to comprehend.

And we will meet these engineers on the same end. You don't want these engineers to focus on simple things that can be solved by an algorithm. So if we can find this beautiful golden center of having the tool, not misusing it and benefiting from it fuel. It would be a beautiful world. [00:50:00] I'm just not sure if we can get to that point before we either break it or ban it, you know?

Gus Gagliardi: So yeah. Well, I'm a, I'm a cynic by nature and all I can think about is your commentary in your chapter about the error percentages before we developed some of the more. Modern models for CFD and how it was like 20 to two to 200% or something. Yeah. You know, scatters on. Yeah. But I can just, I don't know.

I think that. Maybe I'm just cynical for human nature, but about how people will use a tool with that kind of horsepower behind it. But I'm sure just as in everything in life, there will be people who do it the right way and people who do it the wrong way. Exactly. Yeah. And that's at the same time, it's, it is one of the biggest opportunities and perhaps one of the biggest challenges we have, you know, because we know it's powerful.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: We know you can use different like a, a iOS of course, just a name. Tons of different techniques and tools. And it's just, just, just a catch phrase. It's wider than CFD. Even like it, it has multiple flavors, multiple ways how you can implement multiple places in which. You can use computer to help you understand your data sets and problems at hand.

So we really need to learn how to use it. We need to learn how to control it. We need to learn how to know that the predictions of it are credible or not. This will be very difficult to solve, but if we get there, it's gonna be fun. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure we will gotta figure out how, how I, how we fit into that.

Gus Gagliardi: But it sounds like you got a good idea with still providing that critical large scale oversight for the, that can't easily be reproduced with the algorithm. Yep. But yeah, I guess just thinking about like What kind of resources do you like to use? Wojak it could be professional or I'd even take a non-professional podcast recommendation.

If you like to listen to podcasts or whatever you'd like to offer up to the viewers. Or if you've been watching something good lately, I don't, it's up to you. Dealer's choice at this point. You've done outstanding so far. So yeah. Cool, man. Shameless plug. Like there's the reasons right now, you know, I produce it.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: it's, it's a great reason. But if you ask me where I get my resources, I I'm a scientist. I, I mainly rely on scientific papers which is very difficult to recommend to people who are non scientists, because you will be very frustrated by the way, how they are written and their hard to understand and comprehend.

It's very rarely you find an answer to a problem in your paper, in the, in the scientific papers. So yeah, that's what we scientists have to work with. And I guess there's a. Space for people like Gus, me and others who try to, to build a bridge between engineers and scientists. So there's, there are credible journals, fire sector, journal, fire technology, which are great sources of knowledge, inspiration.

As I said, difficult to, to comprehend that points. And and obviously behind the paywall, I can go whole day about how paywalls are destroying the scientific environment and how much I had hates that. But yeah, that's, that's how it is my. I really I think it benefit a lot from being a member of like SAP and IFSS organizations.

These memberships like give me the, the ability to be part of engineering community and what they produce is, is absolutely outstanding. And I must say I learn more from being part of their projects, like being part of committees, being part of even, you know, writing that hand. I would never, never learn that much about modeling.

As I did, when trying to summarize my knowledge and write the, the handbook chapter and the same goes into committees. If you join a committee and you have to work at a problem and try to convey that knowledge to others, you learn so much your own on your own. So. Not just consuming content and knowledge, but trying to create new knowledge, maybe a best way to, to gain new knowledge.

So I would absolutely recommend participating in in the efforts of this bodies and Possibilities are endless because the needs are so huge. There's always a committee to join and participate. So, so these are these are great things. And outside of firearms, outside of engineering, I'm a huge fan of, of fin and smart, passive income podcasts.

That is an amazing ecosystem of, of very positive [00:55:00] way of thinking. About entrepreneurship and just life in general, it I've gained so much from listening to patents. He's been an amazing mentor even though he I've never met him, he doesn't know about my existence. So I view him as, you know, a God in the podcast world, but yeah, it's, it's, it's been I I'm sharing, I I'm on his journey.

For years now. And I enjoy every step of that all the way. I highly recommend smart, passive income and, and just Google path. You'll find him. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that Woj. I feel like that's a nice, neat bow on the podcast. I thank you for coming on. That was awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much guys.

Gus Gagliardi: Looking forward to the next one. Sounds good. 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.

This episode is the second solocast covering Fire Pumps. We deep dive into the code requirements for fire pumps. Tune in if you want to hear a detailed discussion code requirements for fire pumps.

First Episode on Fire Pumps

https://firecodetech.com/9-solocast-an-introduction-to-fire-pumps

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal I.

Hello, all welcome to solo cast. Number 41. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about fire pumps. Again, we talked about fire pumps originally in episode nine of the solo cast series. In this episode, we're gonna talk about some different topics. Some of those topics I'm looking to. Dive deeper into in this solocast episode are code provisions standards around fire pumps.

We'll see how far we go in the episode, but just wanted to give a preface. So you would have a map to decide whether you're interested in and some idea of where this episode is headed. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Follow us on social media. Also, if you want to drop me a line about a solocast topic that you want to hear about or a interview guest that you might think would be a good fit, please either drop me a note in the comments, or you can contact [email protected].

That's G G a G L I a R D [email protected]. So I want to start out this episode. Talking about the code section that pertains to fire pumps. So when I say code, a lot of people will use this term flippantly, but generally what I'm referring to is the international building code. As that is what is adopted in the majorities of the jurisdictions that, uh, I have experience in, or that I do work in.

And this is in reference to specifically commercial projects, not, uh, department of defense or other government or state entities. So when I say code, I mean the international building. And so a lot of times I'll try to specify what addition I am looking at when I'm making these episodes, but just wanted to add that clarification note.

So for this episode, we're looking at the 2021 international building code. And specifically we are looking in chapter nine. Section nine 13, which is titled fire pumps. Let's take a look at one of the first pieces of information in section nine 13 for fire pumps. And this is titled general and it gives a bit of the philosophy for.

This section in the building code. And when you need to look at this section in the building code, it states nine 13.1 general section goes on to say where provided fire pumps for fire protection systems shall be installed in accordance with this section and an FBA 20. So that gives you some idea when you have already determined that a fire pump is required and you are.

Looking to dive into the requirements for this fire pump and this space in which you enclosed the fire pump. You wanna look at section nine, 13 in the building code and N FPA 20. So nine 13 is not very long. So I'm just gonna hit the high notes for. Other pieces of information in this section that would be valuable.

So if you're going to design a fire pump, might as well go back and scan through this section just as a sanity check. Or as a checklist for things to make sure that you have given thoughtful consideration for in your design. The next section is protection against interruption of service, and that is nine 13.2.

It states the fire pump driver and controller shall be protected in accordance with NFPA 20 against possible interruption of service through damage caused by explosion. Fire flood, earthquake, rodents, insects, windstorm, freezing vandalism, and other adverse conditions. A great topic to consider when thinking about fire pumps is the.

Programmatic or code required features of the fire pump room. These are often forgotten and even by professionals that are experienced in implementing fire pump designed. So you can rest assured that individuals who have no experience with fire pumps or limited experience with fire pumps will forget these issues and they can.

Very costly. If you have to implement, uh, fire pump, programmatic space requirements, late stage design or in construction. So a sub part to this 13.2 is 13.2 0.1 protection of fire pump rooms. It states fire pumps shall be located in rooms that are separated from all other areas of the building by two hour fire barriers.

Constructed in accordance with section 7 0 7 or two hour horizontal assemblies constructed in accordance with section seven 11 or both. And there are a couple exceptions to this code provision and it states in other than Highrise buildings separation by one hour fire barriers. Constructed in accordance with section 7 0 7 or one hour horizontal assemblies constructed in accordance with section seven, 11 or both shall be permitted in buildings equipped throughout with an automatic sprinkler system in accordance with section 9 0 3 0.3 0.1 0.1 or 9 0 3 0.3 0.1 point.

So this exception is really frequently taken, um, in buildings that are not high-rise buildings, you and you have a sprinkler system. Uh, the building is sprinkler throughout. Then you can utilize this exception to not have the, uh, fire pump room or fire pump. Building enclosed in a two hour barrier, you can just have a one hour barrier around the space.

And so, um, if you're in a Highrise, you still have to provide the two hour fire barrier. But yeah, this is a really common section that is utilized and the rating around the fire pump room. Missed, uh, I don't know about often, but it's sometimes missed the second exception. States separation is not required for fire pumps, physically separated from the building in accordance with an FPA 20.

So if you pull your fire pump out of the building with the separation distance in accordance with N FPA 20, then you don't have to rate your enclosure. And this. Something that commonly happens because people don't want to give up the floor space within the building, to the fire pump. So the fire pump is frequently pulled out of the building into its own, uh, pump, building, or pump enclosure.

This is of course all under the assumption that you have the space on your site to locate a fire pump enclosure or a fire pump building. And you don't have site constraints that would not allow you to locate a structure outside of the building, which can also be a common occurrence. Nine 13.2 0.2 goes on to talk about some electrical requirements for a fire pump.

This section is called circuits, supplying fire pumps. So there is information about the survivability in the UL listing criteria in this section. In it states. Cable is used for survivability of circuits of supplying fire pumps shall be protected using one of the following methods. Number one cables used for survivability of required critical circuits shall be listed in accordance with UL 2196 and shall have a fire resistance rating of not less than one.

The second provision of this section states electrical circuit protective systems shall have a fire resistance rating of not less than one hour electrical circuit protective systems shall be installed so that they are in accordance with their listing requirements. Number three construction, having a fire resistance rating of not less than one hour.

Number four, the cable or Raceway is encased in a minimum of two inches of concrete. And there's an exception for number four. It states this section shall not apply to cables or portions of cables located within a fire pump room or generator room, which is separated from the remainder of the occupancy with fire resistance, rated construction.

Moving on, we're going to talk about the. Next section, which is nine, 13.3. And this provision is for freeze protection of fire pump rooms. The title is temperature of pump room and it states suitable means shall be provided for maintaining the temperature of a pump room or pump house. We're required above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or five degrees Celsius.

So this is a great reminder for you to coordinate with your mechanical engineer on the project and your electrical engineer on the project to make sure that you have a unit heater within your fire pump room space or pump house, or pump package, because it's a code requirement and it would be a pain.

I've had projects where, um, the mechanical and electrical portions of the unit heater were not coordinated. You have to worry about what kind of power you're getting. If you have a remote pump house and making sure that this detail is coordinated is a great way to show value to other disciplines that, um, you understand.

Um, niche requirements for fire pumps. There's a further recommendation as a Subpart below and it, and it's nine 13.3 0.1. And it says engine manufacturer's recommendation. It says recommendation, which usually means that it's not a code requirement, but let's read the section temperature of the fire pump room pumphouse or area where engines are installed shall never be less than the minimum recommended injured manufacturer.

The engine manufacturers recommendations for oil heaters shall be followed. So obviously this is a requirement and. You'll see this for many pieces of fire and life safety equipment is that there'll be installed in accordance with their listing criteria. So generally there are some pretty reasonable tolerances in the listing criteria.

So check that out for your, um, engine and get some data from your manufacturer. If you are unable to. Tell from the cut sheets or data sheets that you pulled for your fire pump? Nine, 13.4 is titled valve supervision. It states where provided the fire pump, suction, discharge, and bypass valves and isolation valves on the backflow prevention device or assembly shall be supervis.

Open by one of the following methods. Number one central station proprietary or remote signaling service. Number two local signaling service. That will cause the sounding of an audible signal at a constantly attended location. Number three, locking valves, open number four ceiling valves and approved weekly record inspection.

Valves are located within fenced enclosures under the control of the owner. So this section talks about how you need to supervise your valves to make sure that they are not tampered with, to make sure that somebody does not close a normally open valve or, or open a normally closed valve. And so probably the two that I've seen the most are either lock in chains or.

Proprietary or remote signaling station service. So tamper switches that are monitored by a fire alarm system or. Locks and chains on valves to make sure that they stay in the position that they're intended once again, uh, just to reiterate, you know, I said it in the beginning, but we are looking at these requirements in the 2021 building code.

This section is nine 13.4 0.1. And it's titled test outlet, valve supervision, and it says the fire pump test outlet valves shall be supervised in the closed position. Usually I don't see the actual hose connections for the test header supervised, but what you'll, what you will see is a control valve in the test header piping that will be supervised.

So this says specifically test outlet, valve supervision. So I guess that checks out with that line of thinking last section in nine 13 states nine 13.5, which is acceptance. Test acceptance testing shall be done in accordance with requirements for N FPA 20. Originally I had attended to cover a variety of topics in this episode.

It's such a nice little chunk of information to go through the code requirements for fire pumps and incredibly important because you cannot miss something that is directly, you know, implicated in the code or else you are going to be liable. And so it's a huge deal to understand these code requirements.

Really wanted to focus on the code provisions for this episode. And I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to drop me a line. If you want to chat fire and life safety or have recommendations for the podcast. We'll see you next time. 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.

Revit tools, the future of BIM, and how to problem solve are all discussed in in this episode of Fire Code Tech. Majd joins the interview from Estonia and shows great passion for all things BIM. 

Bird Tools Website:

https://www.birdtools-developers.com/index.html

YouTube Channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjDIGX1bwzw

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly.

Inside of the context of a normal interview. Hello, all welcome to episode 57, a fire code take on this episode, we're speaking with mod. Mo is a mechanical engineer with a background in programming and all things Revit. On this episode, we talk about MOJ and the company. He works for bird tools, which stands for building information, research and development, which is a very interesting company with some custom.

Tools for Revit users. If you enjoy Revit or anything on the more technical side of design, you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Maj and I talk about APIs design and how automation is gonna play a role in the future. What does the future of Revit look like and what are some ways that we can develop and improve the software or what competitors are looking to do to capture the market share.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. also, if you could do me a huge favor, you wanna support the pod, please go and give a five star review on apple podcasts. Let's get into the show. Well, ma thank you for coming on the podcast. Welcome to fire code tech.

Thank you for having me guys. And, uh, it's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to get the interviews kicked off with asking the individual about their background and just to get a little bit of context about, um, their career and their, uh, valuable experience for the listeners. Would you tell us about that?

Yeah, definitely. So, uh, I'm a mechanic engineer with, uh, back in MEP engineering and a master's degree in mechanical engineering and, uh, Before starting. Uh, so I'm founder at, uh, building information, researchers and developers, which is a company behind who is a company, uh, located in Estonia before that I've worked as an MEP engineer and I've been manager for several years, uh, and, uh, I have experienced with, uh, Mainly.

So my background is an meep one and I have experienced, I've worked on several, uh, MEP projects from, um, commercial buildings, uh, big transportation buildings, such as natural stations and, uh, air airport. And, uh, um, and um, most of my work was an EP engineering and, uh, bin management. So. uh, we found rabbit, uh, a couple of years ago back, uh, back when I was still an engineer.

And, uh, most of our work shifted from AutoCAD to rabbit and, uh, that's where we started to find new ways to do stuff and to automate stuff and to compensate, lack, uh, that. Maybe rapid has, or maybe that we feel that we need to implement. And, um, I started enjoying that and, uh, that's what led me to start, uh, my development journey and, uh, that.

All of that. That was the, uh, creation of Bluetooth and, uh, the company. So that's, uh, summary of my background. So very cool. Very cool. I appreciate the high level overview of your background. That's interesting to hear that you have a mechanical engineering background and you've somehow wondered, uh, really become invested in this.

BIM or Revit space. It seems like sometimes I see people who are, uh, like BIM managers or who are very invested in Revit. They come from more of a computer or software background. So that's interesting to me that you have a, a mechanical engineering background, um, to tell the truth. So, um, software development and, uh, it, knowledge was kind of my.

Hobby. So a hobby of mine and a career of mine kind of, uh, intersected somewhere. And, uh, that's what led to bur tools. And I think that's healthy to. Uh, people from architectural background from engineering background, uh, take on, uh, software development, uh, because one of the problems with the industry is that you have software developers coming from a computer background and, uh, maybe engineers that don't really relate to software.

So the software solutions that. Being implemented kind of you feel that there's a certain distance from what actual engineering or what the actual domain looks like. So having someone that has both, uh, size of the. Um, of the industry would, uh, maybe enable you to, to create, uh, better software that is better adapted to the industry's needs.

So that's something I appreciate. Uh, we're seeing a lot of people with different backgrounds starting to take on, um, software development and implementing APIs. So that's something I appreciate, uh, right now, uh, within our domain and industry. So yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, that's kind of how I found this podcast and really got more interested in BIM tools for myself was, is a hobbyist.

I started to. Code and to do a little bit of web development. And, you know, as soon as you kind of, um, start to and get invested in it and learn about it, you just realize how much interesting work there is to be done in the field. And so, uh, yeah, I definitely hear what you're saying and the very perspectives of people, bringing people together, all kinds of roles to understand and make better tools.

I think that's a great point. Um, just for how to just create better content in, um, tools for the whole industry. So I love hearing that about that. That's good stuff. Yeah. Glad it's meet you. Yeah. Yeah. So I was listening to one of your, um, podcast appearances you have on your, uh, bird tool. Well, I guess we should start with, uh, would you tell people a little bit about bird tools and you know, like, Uh, just a company's goals and, uh, you know, just a high level overview of bird tools.

You give us a broad background of a little bit of your professional role history in your, you know, kind of project background, but speak a little bit more about what bird tools is for the listeners that might not know about it. So, uh, uh, both tools is a package of, uh, evidence that, uh, aims to. Try to first automate some of the boring, a repetitive and mundane tasks that a user encount is every day.

And, um, second objective of, uh, both tools as a pack is to try and find new ways to implement, uh, functionalities that are not really. So maybe you can do them through the API. It's kind of hidden deep somewhere that no one really found. So there's a lot of stuff that have, have already been done, but we trying to explore stuff that, um, we kind of, uh, Uh, the first people to do, uh, maybe we'll talk in detail about that later on in the podcast.

Uh, so that's both tools as a pack. So both tools, uh, the bird and both tools comes from the company name, which is building information, researchers and developers. So bird is actually an acronym for the company name, uh, building information, researchers and developers is a company business so that, so we have, uh, we, we have our.

Software pack that is both tools. And we have, we provide the software development services. So let's say there's a company that needs their own automation workflow, internal one that needs to be customized because as you know, Uh, standards, uh, are everything but standards. So every locality, every region has its own, uh, set of rules.

Uh, so, uh, everyone has its own way to design. Everyone has its own way to. To sometimes, even from company to another, from firm to another, you have internal standards that differ. So, um, so to try to automate and economic model that, uh, for everyone, um, we provide that custom development, uh, software development.

Uh, service that tries to enable companies to have their own solution. So basically these are the services that, uh, the company behind Bluetooth provides. Um, the goal is always to try and make a difference to try and spread knowledge, to try and, uh, uh, bring value to the industry. So along with junior, it's not just, uh, um, uh, our business is it's also.

Certain journey to try and, uh, teach people or bring knowledge to people or spread knowledge about maybe rev about BIM, about, uh, software development. Uh, there's a lot of knowledge sharing on, uh, social media, online blog. Uh, Because you want to bring value along the way. So that's one of the main goals and missions of, uh, of us, of, of what are doing in general.

And, uh, um, a certain future goal is to try and, uh, see where we are going and try to find the, what, what is, uh, API over the future? What is, is it, should we do our own API for the future? Should we find a certain API, uh, that. B is the base of the future BIM platform. So that's always the goal and that's always a research research and development part of the, uh, business that we are always, we constantly, we constantly investigating, working on to find what the future would look like and to try and, uh, be part of it.

Uh, so, um, That's basically what, who we are and, uh, what we do. Yeah. I like that. I, you know, I heard you speak a little bit about your experience with the API and kind of how the, uh, API for Revit. And there are people listening who might not know what an API is, but. It's a application program interface. So it's how for coding or for different, um, ways to integrate with a, uh, platform or a piece of software.

And so what Mo is talking about is how can we make the. Way that we interface with Revit or, or BIM services more robust. And what does the future of that interface look like? So I think that's a very fascinating topic. What are some of the like big gaps or areas in which the, the current API could improve in your, in your opinion or your estimation?

So currently, um, the main, uh, platforms that is being used to. implement BI everywhere is rabbit. So, um, rabbit, the great thing about rabbit is. It's, uh, it can accommodate several disciplines, um, from architecture to structure to E P to so every discipline is in the AC industry is kind of accommodated. And, uh, but the problem is rather, uh, is that it's not really a multiplatform, uh, or a multi operating system software.

So you start. With a certain platform, which is windows that's one problem. Another problem is that, so rabbit is a, is like a 22 year old, uh, maybe even, uh, yeah, a 24 year old software, I believe. Uh, first, uh, came out in 1998. So, um, the engine behind the internal engine that rabbit uses is almost as old as rabbit.

So it doesn't, it hasn't had its own. Main revamp. So it's really lacking a lot of new features that you can you see, for example, in the gaming industry of. Um, or, uh, in, um, web apps or, uh, this is where, uh, Revit has really, um, is limited. So, and these are some of the platforms that, and technologies that we need to investigate gaming engines, gaming engine integration, the technologies behind gaming engines.

That's something that would improve performance and, uh, would, uh, improve. Especially the rendering part of the, of the, um, outcome. Also something that you need to investigate to make, uh, uh, maybe maybe enable more, uh, uh, features is multi-platform compatibility, uh, and be compatible with several, uh, devices and several browsers and several platforms that that's where you need to investigate, uh, all web APIs that are.

Around all the web technologies that emerge on a daily basis. Basically. Now, Autodesk, if you're talking about Autodesk, uh, and focusing on Autodesk Autodesk, introducing forge, which is something that we started working on, uh, heavily and forge is kind of supposed to be. API of the future has, is supposed to answer some of these, uh, um, limitations.

Um, it's it has already answered some, there's still still on, in an early phase, so we see how it evolves. But, uh, the future has started to, to, to, uh, be implemented as a. A series of web APIs. Uh, so yeah. Yeah, I think that's very interesting that, you know, we need to take a look at other industries and how they are growing and developing software and just applications online and learn from what they're doing.

I think that, you know, I wouldn't have known that before you told me about. The, just the kind of internals of it. Haven't had a revamp, but I could see that now, in retrospect, looking back at the development for Revit. And so, I don't know, I think it's an interesting topic, like a full revamp of Revit or a competitor to Revit that has the abilities to, you know, embrace some of the, uh, more futuristic technologies.

Interfaces and, and software development and whole, I think that, uh, that would be interesting, but haven't seen anybody who's really even close to. Capturing the market like Revit does, maybe you would have some insight on other people who are competing or starting to compete. Have you seen anything like that?

There's plenty of people that are doing amazing work. Uh, the problem is that, uh, everyone is taking one side of the industry and not the other. So you see a lot of great work in the architectural side. You see a lot of great work on the structural side, not much on the MEP side, unfortunately, but, uh, um, That's the main problem.

So rabbit has it all. So until we find someone, I think we start with rabbit for at least, uh, five or 10 years. Uh, five, if, if you're optimistic five, I think at least 10 years, because of mainly of that, uh, because, uh, Anyone who's starting, that is taking it from one perspective and not all perspectives.

That's the main problem, but there's a lot of work. So test that are doing great work. Uh, um, there's great work that is being done in trying to create some interoperability. We're doing some of the, that stuff within tools, interoperability between software platforms and there's a certain, uh, solution that is emerging that is trying.

Make interoperability between software platforms and softwares, which is, um, uh, uh, Specker. So Specker are trying to do that, trying to, to make some ity between, let's say Revit and rhino and, uh, uh, or Revit and, uh, and other it, a software platform. So, uh, that's one way to start, but having the. Solutions that can, uh, have underneath every discipline.

That's something I don't see, uh, happening anytime soon. That's where rabbit thrives. And that's why rabbit is gonna stick, uh, for, uh, for rabbit. Yeah, that's interesting. I appreciate that extra explanation on people kind of specializing and having good solutions for specific disciplines, but. Kind of the umbrella, everybody except for civil, you know, is always encapsulated in Revit.

And so I would imagine it would be hard to shake that base that Revit has, but that's very interesting. So. Um, speaking on, like, you know, some of the tools you made, the, the one that I saw from, uh, social media that you were showing that I know gives me pain all the time is the, uh, leaders, the leader tool, which I thought was a great, because it, uh, aligned all of your leaders at the same angle and the arm for the leader was the same length and it was all kind of standardized.

Um, but yeah. Specifically, I don't know. Would you give like some examples of some specific tools that you've made so people can have some idea of like, if they might be. Um, useful for them or if they should go check you out. Um, but I'll drop some links in the show notes if people want to go look, but also you could just Google bird, bird tools, manual, find bird, tool developers, but, um, yeah.

Would you, would you talk about a couple of the software solutions that you guys have made? Yeah. So, uh, one of them is obviously the tiger line tool you mentioned. So, uh, it comes from a personal pain with several projects where I had to do that myself sometimes. And, uh, um, that's where, uh, it was born and, uh, because you need, so, uh, unfortunately we still using notations.

Uh, I, I look forward to a day where we can just use our, uh, maybe. Mobile phone and have all that information show up, uh, in a neat way. But that day is it has, has come and, uh, it started to be implemented, but we still stuck with sheets for, and, uh, production drawings for a while. So. Um, having neat tags and a good presentation is always a necessity.

And that's where the tag alignment tumor was born to try and not just align tags and, uh, fix their angles, which is one of the future. But to also try to, uh, arrange those tags in a way where they don't interfere, where they don't cross each other. So, um, that's one of the tools, another tool that, uh, Uh, we've developed and published is clash prevent.

So, um, clash detection is one of the, so it's a necessity right now. Uh, and one of the main advantages that BIM gives us over all the kind, uh, uh, workflows. So, uh, we try to push that further into a prevention or avoidance, uh, concept. So instead of you doing clash reduction, why not? Just why you, you draw, let's say a duck or a pipe or a.

Have a certain clash notification happen as soon as, uh, you have a clash and help you avoid that clash immediately. So that's the purpose of the, it runs inside rabbit. And as soon as you have a clash to tell you your clashing, be if it's not, uh, a clash or if, uh, that wall is , or if you gonna place a opening later on, you can whitelist it.

If not, you can fix it on immediately. So, uh, instead of the old, the workflow where. Uh, model your, your entire thing full of clashes, send it to Navis works around the, so you need to export it to Navis works. Nav works would take. So the export process would take a lot of time for big models will be stuck with waiting for, uh, uh, NWC file to be generated.

Designed open in nav works generator, uh, model, assign every clash to someone, send it back. To the people in thel format, the people, the, your, your team, uh, mates would have to open that, uh, Check each clash individually, uh, or try to select it in rabbit, then find it the rabbit. So, um, and then fix the clash.

All right. Listed. So that process would take time. We've tried, we've kind of removed all that, uh, workflow and just made it, uh, um, you get your notification automatically. You can select your flash 3d, see it, fix it automatically. And. you can export repos, import repos. You can even, it has compatibility with Navis V so you can input repos from nav.

So that's another solution, a solution. Uh, we have 10 apps. I'm gonna try to talk about the rest quickly. So we have apps that convert card to them. So. If you have a, a layout with card blocks, you can just, uh, link the card, not import it, link it to, to a rev file and just click on that CAD link. And, uh, it'll find the blocks and either automatically find the nearest ceiling and place where.

New families to in the locations of your cat blocks, or it might also host them to the nearest store or it might host them to the nearest level. So that's one app. We have, we have apps that batch process stuff, batch export to, to NWC, for example, We have apps that can batch process models through Dyna and can batch process BMC 60.

So that's one of the things we are working on implementing for using rev to try and, uh, process BMC 60 using rev. So implementing forg APIs within rev is something that we are working on, on for an upcoming app, uh, as well. Uh, we have several apps that, uh, uh, can also, uh, so we have an app that, uh, is called Raven.

It's a communicator that allows you to monitor. Uh, so as you know, now everything has moved to, to the cloud and we are hosting models to B, C 60. So, uh, and the usual work sharing monitor. Support B, C 60. And, uh, you need to monitor, uh, the work sharing of your users so that you don't have overlapping synchronized with central operations.

So we found a solution for that. Uh, it's called Raven and the Raven can monitor user activity and allow you to synchronize while no one else is synchronizing. So it's a work sharing monitor for BMC 60. And, uh, yeah, so that's, I've tried to summarize, uh, As quickly as possible, but, uh, you can check out all those apps on our website.

Uh, uh, just Google, both tools, uh, is the first result. There's some results that are actual birds, birds using tools in the image section. But, uh, yeah, uh, the very first result is, uh, our website, so you can check them out and, uh, Yeah. Yep. That's funny. Yeah. There's, there's um, good examples and, and videos on the website of, um, the different tools and use.

So if you have any interest in, um, going and taking a look and seeing some of the, you guys also have free tools. So, um, yeah, there are some that, that have a cost to 'em, but they're not crazy by any means, especially compared to what software of any sort can cost for Revit or just in general. But. Yeah, go check it out.

If you're interested in some tools to maybe make your life a bit easier on Revit, but, um, Maja, I wanted to talk to you about, uh, what kind of, um, programming languages you use to make these tools, or, you know, how you. Got started. I mean, did you start in dynamo and just kind of slowly ramp up the, something like C plus plus, or, or Python or what are you using?

So for me, uh, I've started the programming. Uh, so, um, A long time ago with, uh, visual basic and the net platform. Uh, and, uh, now, uh, if we talking about rev, uh, somehow I skipped the whole dynamo and pricing and stuff, uh, for some weird reason, uh, not really with I started the, before dynamo was really, I think, or, uh, was really.

Uh, when back when I started macros were, were the things so dynamo didn't ship by default was rabbit. So, uh, I started with C sharp macros because I had, I already had an experience with the do net platform and I already had the. C and C plus first knowledge. So C C was easy for me to learn and, uh, that's how I got started.

Uh, now, uh, you definitely, so Dyna is a definitely a great place to start, uh, because it reduces, uh, anyone who wants to, to start that automation journey to the automation concept, uh, um, You can hit some limitations with Dyna or some functionality, limitations, a lot of performance limitations. So that's where, so for function, functionality, limitations, you first try to, to find the packages.

And there's a lot of packages that have some of the functionalities that. You need and don't find in the, uh, out of the box stores. So we also have collaborated with Sigma of AEC solutions to create a package called spar. Uh, there's a lot of packages that I create, rhythm data shapes that give you a lot of.

Uh, functionality is that you can't find out of the box, but even with every, all the packages, you, you're still gonna feel that you need more. And that's where you start. If you're starting with London, you might start creating your own custom Python nodes. Maybe people say that Python is easier. Um, I think that's subjective, but, uh, yeah, if Python is easier, you can start with Python within dynamo, uh, after you you've mastered dynam and all of, of the box nodes.

But, um, the ultimate goal is to create others because others are. Easier to deploy and easier to, to, and they have a performance that they can open perform dynamo pricing by a lot. So once you are deploying to a company are the way to go. I had a. New class last year where I talked about that specifically, if you want to check it out, uh, maybe we can post a link to that.

Uh, but yeah, what we do is create others within rabbit. But, uh, one thing to keep in mind is that if you are going. Down the road of, uh, software development. You're gonna need every API, every programming language that is there. So, uh, right now for rev, we are working on C shop. We, we still get some AutoCAD jobs.

So for AutoCAD, you're gonna go and find list, which is, uh, Programming language shows the 1960s. Um, if, uh, you're gonna, so every software has its own programming language that is better for it. Uh, you're gonna have a lot of re to create stuff in Python. And we're working on a lot of software development ventures applying and using the forge API.

So a lot of companies, the ones that are more innovative and try to be more of, uh, uh, try to be early adopters are trying to implement for in assistance. And. Well, we are among a few software developers that have investigated forge to a great extent, and that are really familiar with, with all this APIs.

So once you go forge, you need to check a lot of, uh, uh, frameworks, uh, that are suited to app developments such as react angular. Um, uh, you need to do a lot of CML, uh, coding. You need to, uh, be familiar with JavaScript and type script. So, uh, and really you need every, every. So as much, uh, as you can. So the more programming languages that, you know, the, the better, so yeah.

Uh, you, you need to, to deal with, with it all. Wow. That's uh, that's a good explanation. I appreciate that MOJ. I, it seems intimidating as somebody from the outside in and. Um, I mean, I've spent, I started out really interested in web development, so that surprises me. I've not seen anything about where like react and, and front end kind of software interfaces with like the, the built environment and Revit and whatnot.

So that's interesting to hear you talk about. Forge and how that is, um, changing things and, and pushing some, uh, JavaScript and type script into the equation as well. And then, so, yeah, I don't know. That sounds intimidating. So for, for somebody who's starting out, you would still tell them to try to go from using dynamo, which is a.

Built in kind of, uh, visual coding, um, with Revit or would you like, I don't know, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. You know, I have a little bit of experiences, but sometimes I would think I would just like to skip and go straight to, uh, Python or a C language if I could get some efficiencies and I'm gonna go that way in the long run anyways.

But I don't know if you have thoughts on. Yeah. So my own, uh, advice to anyone who wants to get started is to, so you have two ways you can go visual programming, or you can go, uh, uh, to the old school, uh, script based programming. So if you want to. I would suggest to someone getting started to try both. So open Dyna would try to do a workflow.

And if you want to try, uh, uh, writing scripts, you can do that either within dynamo or you have also a certain, uh, macro possibility. So you can write Python and C sharp macros. If you prefer person who can totally do that within the macro. Manager that is right next to Donald, but it's bottom that is colorless and, uh, and, uh, really very small.

So people skip it, but it's, it's also a possibility to, to start your automation journey. So for anyone who wants to get started, also suggest both ways to try that. Try visual, visual programming through Dyna. Also try, uh, scripted programming and see which one fits you better. If you feel that, uh, it's hard for you to understand the programming, a programming language and programming syntax.

So just go to a visual one and, uh, as, as long as you're achieving what you want to achieve, it's fine. And, uh, maybe I'll tell you a small secret. I'm more comfortable with old school programmers and visual programming. So I I'd rather me, myself as a programmer. I, I would find myself always going to a certain, uh, script based, uh, programming methods and a visual one.

I feel more comfortable and I feel that I write, uh, so routine, uh, way fast than I can. To assemble it and wire it together. So each one has its own way and I'd suggest for anyone to try both and see which one fits in better. So, yeah. That's great advice maj. I appreciate that. I've never heard anybody say that before, but I think you're right.

Um, why not tinker around with both and see if one speaks to you? So I think that's good advice. I appreciate that. Um, so like I mention. A little bit, um, you know, virtuals and you have been in the, the part of creating different YouTube videos and, and content like, um, I know that you spoke to like a big goal of the company is to, is to share these resources, but yeah, maybe speak a little bit more about, um, the YouTube videos and just what kind of content people can find if they want to, um, come see your channel and what you guys are doing.

So, uh, We try to build as much press as possible on social media, on YouTube, on Twitter, on LinkedIn. So these are basically the three main platforms and we have our own blog as well. So blog, uh, LinkedIn, uh, Twitter and YouTube. So these are the main platforms that, uh, we are really active, uh, on Facebook or any of that because I'm.

Privacy concerns. So I'm more, uh, comfortable with YouTube and Twitter and LinkedIn and social media platforms. Um, the main, um, content that you, you definitely gonna find tutorial about our own apps on YouTube or are on our other social media platforms, whether LinkedIn or, but, uh, other than that, as we like to bring value along the way, you, you can find a lot.

Tips and tricks. And, uh, some of them are really simple, uh, and others are really advanced. So several tips, tricks, uh, small, quick tutorial, short tutorial, short videos that can show you new stuff that maybe you knew, maybe you didn't about traffic about, uh, Navis works about sometimes AutoCAD. Uh, some introductions to what forge is, uh, how some glimpses about, uh, stuff we are working on that are not really usual, whether it's a certain, uh, uh, rapid apps that trans in the cloud on forge design automation for rapid, uh, whether it's, uh, it's, uh, certain.

Custom developed apps that we've built and that, uh, where we, we, we can share so anything we can share to, to bring value and to, uh, spread information. That's what we are sharing on social media and on YouTube. So on YouTube, you can either go there with the channel and find there are separate playlists.

Some are, uh, showcase, uh, up to toilets, some showcase, uh, rabbit tips, some try to teach people about rabbit and. About some, uh, uh, aspects of rapid from really simple stuff to really advanced stuff. So that's the kind of stuff you can find on, on our social media. And, uh, yeah, you can just, uh, find the links and, uh, make sure to subscribe or, uh, follow or give us a connection and reach out.

So I always, some also another secret about social media. I manage all of those myself because I enjoy. Talking to, to users and to subscribers. I enjoy. So anyone that has a question or anyone that has a, uh, certain that needs a tip or anything within reason. So I always answer, uh, any direct messages, so just feel free to reach out and, uh, Connect and subscribe and follow.

So every social media has some, you need to subscribe. Obviously you need to connect others. You need to, to press the follow button. So for each social media, just, uh, make sure to connect and contact us because I would reply. I would enjoy. Any conversation with anyone. So, yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that.

That's good. Yeah. That's how we connected. Um, yeah. And yeah, you reach back out and talk to me right away. So feel free to drop magic line. If you wanna talk about software or coding or, or custom tools, I bet you love the, uh, chat you up about it. Um, So I wanted to ask you about, you know, um, what other kind of tools and resources you use because you seem plugged in and really aware of what's happening in the industry right now.

So where do you like to go get information about BIM or about, uh, you know, software development or that sort of thing? So, um, one great, uh, place to find information. Anything related to our industry are the Autodesk forums. So the AutoD desk forums are really stacked with the, so almost any there's a lot of questions you may have that have already been asked by someone else, prime.

Just try the Autodesk forum. So anyone listening, trying auto the Autodesk for you'd find a lot of stuff that you're thinking about, and that have already been answered with someone who has an answer for them. The forums are great. Um, uh, Resources. Um, um, so there's definitely any search would start with, with a search engine.

So starting a search and, uh, going, um, to, would lead you to, to, to several resources. So far programming, there's a, uh, overflow.com, which can give you a lot of. Of, uh, also, so it's similar to, to the forum, but it has more, uh, specific, uh, so it's more specific to software development. Um, but mainly starting a search with a, a search engine would, would lead you to, to where.

So whatever my, my own advice to anyone that. Starting to learn anything or needs advice. Don't be afraid to, to use the search engine, to, to search for anything, whether it's Google or any search. I'm not, I'm not saying Google or not because I'm leaving such choice to the user, but don't be afraid to search for any question you have, uh, or don't hesitate, hesitate to search for something.

Wasting time to try to solve it or the before asking, because there's a lot of questions you may have that are already answered you, you might learn a lot along the way. So if you are doing something, just start doing it. And along the way, uh, there's a lot of stuff that you'll discover yourself is switching, but there's a lot of other stuff that sources will just get you to the point.

So searching is great. Uh, uh, um, Yeah. Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's the first thing you kind of learned that was you get into, uh, software development or any type of coding is you're not gonna get too far, unless you have figured out how to use online search engines as effectively as possible in searching forums or searching YouTube videos.

And just really doing everything you can to search for online resources is a great start for any. Technical pursuit. So that's a great, um, tip. I like what you said about just like going to the forums and, and searching through. I honestly, I've, I've been like directed to some of the Autodesk forums, but I've never like gone there first to search for items.

So maybe I need to start to do that more when I'm running into Revit nonsense. It's frustrating me. Yeah. And, uh, On search engines, mastering search engine engine, and advanced search and advanced cables. Uh, for example, let's say the Autodesk form. So, uh, mastering, uh, uh, advanced search, uh, within a search engine can allow you to filter out any.

Reasons and just give you ones that are specific to a certain site, let's say zero to desk for. So that's why I always, um, back when I was still a student, one of the things that were on my resume was, uh, Great, uh, search skills, uh, someone left and told me, how would you do put that, uh, on your resume? So I sat him down and told him, let's, let's try searching for stuff.

What, what is something that you're not finding? And we started searching for stuff, using some advanced search search skills. So. Uh, investing in, uh, knowing your search engine on your advanced search is really great because it allows you to find stuff that, um, usually you'd find on the, uh, let's say page 100 page, uh, 150.

You can narrow that down to the search page, using some. Search skills to always invest in that. Yeah. That's a great tip. That's a great tip. You know, like, uh, just always being aware of the search function in general, no matter what you're working in, you know, uh, PDF documents or. Like online codes and standards, or, you know, the search command or how to filter through data and parse out the interesting bits of information that you wanna see as a invaluable skill.

And I think that just like speaks to coding in general, kind of teaches you those things, like how to take a big data set and. Uh, do everything you can to filter through it as fast as you can. So I think that's a great tip. Um, I, sorry. Um, yeah, I wanted to ask you about, you know, what are your, uh, big thoughts on like where the industry is headed or.

Things that you're excited about for the future have been in automation manage. Yeah. So, um, um, I'm really excited about some of the emerging, uh, web platforms that I've, uh, Really dedicated to our industry. So the main one that is currently being introduced by Autodesk, uh, and that, uh, if, if you go back a year, uh, in time to a year 20, 21, you can see all keynote.

Uh, classes focused on forge. So forge is, uh, really a certain, uh, platform web platform that, uh, uh, exposes several APIs to try and build the, uh, let's say, solutions of the future. Um, some of these APIs are just, uh, running, uh, currently available software in the cloud, whether it's rabbit. So you can run an analysis of rev remotely over a cloud server.

And, uh, let's say you have a M C 60 model that you want to, uh, so you want to schedule exports on a weekly basis from a M C 60 server. Uh, forge can enable you to do that. You can create your own backend, uh, node JS or. Uh, technology you want for backend, uh, development and create your own backend servers that is scheduled to do that once per week.

And, uh, the 4g APIs, uh, you have APIs for document management and for BBC 60. So you can create an entire BBC 60 project from 4g. There's a series of APIs called B 60 API and auto that cloud APIs that allow you to do that. So you can automate all that, create your, your project C 60. Your models, initiate your models, all that.

And, uh, let's say you want to automate, uh, that task. We said exporting, let's say, uh, several forms from BBC 60. There are APIs to do that within for, and you can just run rapid server, have a backend server run, rapid instance, uh, in the cloud and automate that. Process. So, uh, forge is there to, to, to try and provide a platform for all these functionalities, automating cloud storage, automating, uh, uh, design, automating all of that in the cloud.

Uh, now, um, the question is what will the Fu platform or the future be? Will it be forge or will someone else come and. There's own series of APIs that do that. So there's also high, for example, that are, uh, uh, introducing a similar platform. So it's a platform similar to forge, uh, where they succeed in being the platform or the future, or will Autodesk have their own monopoly extended for another, uh, 40 years or 50 years?

Um, that's the main question, but what I see the future, uh, being is. Uh, several APIs, several series of platforms and APIs, web APIs, probably that, uh, someone can just, uh, use all those APIs within his own. Uh, let's say, web app or, uh, Website or whatever. And, uh, uh, so it's a series of a, of APIs that will define the Fu what the future will, will look like.

Which API is it? Is it all of those APIs, but anyone that is not gonna investigate in a new generation of APIs and a new generation of, uh, of, uh, multi-platform compatibility platforms is not gonna, is gonna be left behind. That's what I'm definitely sure about, but, um, For the future to come immediately.

Um, I think you're gonna, you need, you're gonna need to give it like five, five or, or 10 years to, or to, to have all those APIs be able to, to provide with all the functionalities. You need to have everyone be on board with those APIs and to find the persons that is gonna. Uh, create the, uh, platforms that is gonna use all of those APIs for all disciples, not just for architecture or for me, P or for civil.

So we need to achieve multidisciplinary, uh, um, functionality. We need to achieve multi, uh, platform compatibility. We need to. Uh, better performance and, uh, yeah, we, we have also a lot of trends right now, uh, that are a lot of buzzwords that are being used. Machine learning, digital twins, uh, Um, uh, the multiverse.

So these are a lot of buzzwords that you hear also is in the BIM, uh, industry. Some of them are, uh, really just buzzwords. Others are really interested. It's interesting to investigate. And, uh, so there's a lot of trends and it's, uh, constantly evolving business and one needs to. Keep an eye open and to keep up with all the progress.

Hmm. So the one you mentioned that really kind of peaks my interest is I don't see. I mean, I, I don't know. What kind of ideas do you think like machine learning could have as application to our industry? Like is just, I mean, I guess there is like, Infinite amount of different things that you could try to, uh, pass through, uh, machine learning in order to get a trend or, uh, a function based on a building configuration.

But yeah, I don't know if you have any specific thoughts on machine learning and how that could apply to our industry. So, um, I also had a class about that in year 2020. I'll try to, um, so. That would range, uh, from just simple statistics of a data, which is also attending topic, storing da data over a maybe cloud database and extract data from several, uh, um, formats, close formats to, to have a.

A more decentralized system of data and just running statistical, uh, functions to, to try and define the relations between all of that, uh, that will, can extend from that simple statistical uh, um, process to maybe automating having a certain visual, uh, operators that can, uh, use reinforced learning to, to just operate the software.

And. Find the optimized solutions on its own, which is similar to things that are being done within the gaming industry. So for example, you can go look up, uh, Mar IO. So it's, uh, Certain, uh, uh, project where a reinforced learning is used to have, uh, certain let's say software, uh, or a virtual, uh, gamer, uh, complete, uh, custom, uh, super Mario browsers or super Mario world in this case, I believe, uh, levels.

So a machine can just clear that level, self. Um, similar technology can be used to, to train a certain algorithm to try and, uh, configure stuff or try and just, um, you give it, let's say, uh, floor plan. It, it would, uh, find the best, the optimize, the solution to, to draw your dots, draw your pipes, draw your.

Place so it's really, uh, broad, uh, and the vast domain. Uh, but what we can start with is the simple stuff. So usually clustering to find simple patterns, uh, to let's say, uh, um, um, uh, collect for example, Uh, rooms together into H V C zones. That's something Sean throwing from Sigma AC solutions has been working on.

So he should be next guest. He should, he should have him on the podcast. He's really interesting. And has a lot of thoughts about the matter, maybe use a bit of casting to, um, let's say also align, align tags. So if you can find a pattern. A blank area is, uh, is, uh, is found on a certain drawing. You can just move your, uh, text to that, uh, area by finding patterns and finding imaging recognition algorithms.

So implementing such algorithms can help you do that. So simple stuff like that can be done right now. Maybe we can try investigating, try researching the other advanced stuff, reinforced learning, automatical that having a completely autonomous algorithm do all this stuff, but that's gonna wait a little bit and that's gonna take time and that's gonna take time to be trained and to achieve what we want, but we can start with the simple stuff.

Uh, for example, using some physiologic to match views to the. That's something. So the tagging thing and the, um, uh, physiologic matching thing are things that I've done for several, uh, uh, uh, firms that are featured at U 2020. So these are things that are currently feasible and that we can implement. So that's just at.

Try to implement the things, the simple, uh, things and start small and then go big. I think we need to take that approach and we can even go there. We need some time, but, uh, uh, it's not, uh, I don't see, see it as impossible. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, just start with the leaders and the little things that give you pain on a day to day basis, but I think that's a great point.

Well, Matt, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and just talking to me about software and BIM and your career. Uh, I appreciate that a lot. Um, where can people find you we'll throw a bunch of links to the content and the, um, different. Uh, things we talked about in the description, but where can people find you if they want to reach out?

Yeah. So, um, um, you can reach out, uh, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, uh, on YouTube. So any platform we are on that has, uh, direct messaging, you can just, uh, Send the direct message and, uh, 99% of the time you guaranteed to, to get an immediate reply. The other 1% is, uh, maybe, uh, 24 hour delayed reply. And, uh, if not, if you prefer emails, you can also find our email on our website, on our contact page, uh, any, any, so, um, Just check out, uh, our, uh, social media links and just feel, feel free to reach out at any time.

Anyone, uh, if, if you need help with something, if you need to ask a question, if you just, uh, if you use a tool and have feedback, so. Any kind of anything you have on my, so on our contact page, I've also added something that if you just need someone to talk to. So I, for any reason, just, uh, don't, don't hesitate to reach out.

Uh, we always reply and I enjoy, so one of the, uh, things that I enjoy most, uh, on this journey is making new friends and that's how. I guess we met and, uh, uh, this is something I enjoy making new friends and, uh, making new connections and that's what makes, uh, all the effort worth, worth the time and worth the, uh, effort.

So. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Good stuff. Yeah. 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 end 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.

In this solocast episode we are talking about initiation devices! What is the difference between a smoke detector and a smoke alarm? What are the codes and standards pertaining to smoke detectors? What are the different coverage approaches and types of smoke detector? Tune in to find out about all these topics and more.  

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal interview.

Hello, all, welcome to fire code tech, the solo cast series episode 40. On this episode, we're speaking about smoke detectors. Yes. I went back through and cataloged some of the solo cast episodes, which basically means I took a look at the distribution between fire suppression and fire alarm videos. And I realized I'd done about half as many solo cast on fire alarms as I have on fire suppression topics.

So this episode, I wanted to speak a little bit more about smoke detectors because it is such a common fire alarm feature. Break down codes and standards, smoke detectors, and what that word means. What are the different types of smoke detectors? What are the different coverage options for smoke detectors?

But let's get into the episode. Don't forget to follow us on social media and hit that subscribe button. So you don't miss when I upload every Monday. Oh. And if you could give us a five star review on apple podcasts, that would be a huge. For this episode, we are taking a look at NFPA 72, the national fire alarm and signaling code specifically, we're looking at the 2022 edition.

For those of you who may not be aware most NFPA documents have a very similar layout, a standardized approach to how they develop their criteria. And the first three to four chapters. Very commonly have the same layout. And chapter three is usually where they will house definitions for whatever subject you are reviewing in the NFPA document.

So in chapter three of NFPA, 72, 20 22, we can find the definition for smoke detector. The specific section is 3.3 point 77 point 21 in its titled smoke detector. And it's pretty broad. It says a device that detects visible or invisible particles of combustion. So there are a pretty, I would say a large variety maybe to be more specific.

There are about, uh, six to 10 different types of smoke detector, and they all have different applications for which they are advantageous or disadvantageous to provide some context for our conversation for smoke detector. Let's talk about the word detector, because it is a crucial piece of this definition detector is to sense something or to provide a device that senses something.

So there are gas detectors, flame detectors, heat detectors. So you can sense a variety of things. So a detector is just a common name for advice that senses things. In this case, we're talking about smoke. So what are the ways in which you can detect smoke or what are the different detection? Methods?

Detector is defined as a device suitable for connection to a circuit that has a sensor that responds to a physical stimulus. Such as gas, heat, or smoke. In addition to the types of detectors, there are a variety of different device configurations or means and methods in which you can use technology to, uh, detect certain fire phenomenon or hazardous conditions.

There are single spot type detectors, which is probably what most people think of when you hear smoke detector. A common misconception is that a smoke detector is not the same thing as a smoke alarm frequently. When you'll be talking to people who aren't in fire and life safety as a discipline, they will use these terms interchangeably and they certainly are not interchangeable.

A smoke alarm is defined as a single or multiple station alarm responsive to smoke. That doesn't help a lot with how to caveat the difference between smoke detectors and smoke. Alarms smoke alarms are generally a single device that annunciates and detects smoke all in one piece of equipment. And so what you have inside your home, if you live inside a house or oftentimes in apartments as well is smoke alarm.

Put very simply a smoke alarm detects smoke and provides notification in the form of a alarm tone and a smoke detector is strictly used for sensing the. Criteria that you're looking for. So that could be heat flames. Uh Gasier. So that is the difference between smoke detector and smoke alarm. I can't think of a case in which a smoke alarm would not be used in a residential type occupancy.

So particularly in sleeping rooms, dwelling units, single and multiple family dwelling units or homes. These are all common places which would have smoke alarm requirements within the code, or would allow you to use. Smoke alarms in lieu of smoke detectors for commercial properties that are code required to have fire alarm control units and fire alarm systems.

Generally you would use smoke detectors. It's important to understand the difference between smoke alarms and smoke detectors. There will be times where these two terms will be conflated and you will have to determine what is code required and then Institute that device type. Speaking of code requirements.

Let's talk about where in the international family of codes that discusses smoke detectors and what kind of requirements you might find in this code exce. Requirements for smoke detectors can be found in the international building code, which is largely the document that is adopted throughout the United States, um, to varying degrees with amendments.

And so let's look at section 9 0 7, which is titled fire alarm and detection systems in the building code. Chapter nine is. Fire protection and life safety systems. And then we are in section 9 0 7 again, which is fire alarm and detection systems. Similarly to how you would find out if you have a requirement in your facility for a sprinkler system.

Now, now seven in the building code is where you would go to determine if you are required for your facility to be equipped with a fire alarm system. We've talked about this process before, but essentially you have to analyze all the salient qualities of fire and life safety in your building. And see if you hit any of the thresholds within this chapter or within the rest of the building code or fire code.

This sounds like a daunting task, but in time you will know which of these common triggers generally indicate their requirement for a fire alarm system. On the topic of smoke detectors, there is specific language in chapter 9 0 7 for when some smoke detectors are required. Not all of the different situations that might cry require a smoke detector are located in chapter 9 0 7.

But a fair number of them are. And it also talks about smoke alarms as well, even though that's not specifically the discussion of this solo cast, uh, I will talk about smoke alarms in the future. It's a great topic and very common topic like previously stated. There are a number of areas in section 9 0 7, as well as chapter nine, in which location requirements for smoke detectors are state.

In addition to the code requirements of section 9 0 7 in the international building code chapter 17 of NFPA 72 titled initiating devices has the requirements for general usage of smoke detectors and specifically spacing criteria. Other considerations for the installation and design of smoke detectors.

There are multiple different types of. Coverage approaches or protection approaches when using smoke detectors, there are two big types which are total or complete coverage, or sometimes commonly referred to as area coverage. And this is smoke detectors and a detection system located. Throughout an entire facility, and then there is partial or selected selective coverage.

And this is commonly referred to as specific hazard. Protection. So an example of total coverage or complete coverage would be providing spot type smoke detectors throughout a facility. One instance in which you might have total coverage requirement in the code based on the international building code.

Is, if you have a requirement for a duct detector in your facility and you cannot locate a duct detector inside the unit. So if you want some more information on duct detectors, I believe that was our first solo cast episode, but suffice to say. That is one of the ways that can trigger total or complete coverage within a facility, an owner can elect to provide total coverage as a risk reduction option for their facility, but it is not explicitly required in the code in a lot of places.

More commonly you will see. Partial or selected selective coverage, specific hazard protection with smoke detectors. So you can think of the smoke detector at a fire alarm panel or outside of an elevator door or fire door as an example of. Partial or selective coverage. The theory behind each of these approaches is you are protecting a specific hazard and you're interested in smoke production of a specific piece of equipment or to trigger a specific function in the case of a fire for.

Specific hazard approach or partial coverage and total or complete coverage is to broadly sense if there is any smoke within the facility to either trigger the, uh, alarm and shut down of the air handling unit or to give the occupants a chance to have. Faster notification of fire within the facility.

Let's talk about the different types of smoke detector. A little bit. I made it a short list of about six different types of smoke detectors, and I'm sure there are more that. Maybe I'm even not aware of, but so far on this list, I have duct detector, which is a spot type smoke detector that is listed for in use in ducts 2 cents smoke.

And then there are aspirating smoke detectors. Think of a system. That is used for very early warning fire protection and uses a piping tubing system and a fan in order to sense the very incipient phases of combustion spot type detectors. For smoke, laser smoke detectors. There are ionization smoke detectors detectors, which, uh, photo electric and ionization are two different types of spot smoke detector.

And some detectors will use a combination of these methods in order to create a better possibility of eliminating nuisance or false alarms. Also, there are beam type smoke detectors, and I don't see these used as often, but they are sometimes used commonly for big atriums or large facilities that it may be difficult to house.

Smoke detectors on. I've seen them in malls. I've seen them in big atriums. And so that is a common usage for beam detectors that is gonna do it for this episode about smoke detectors. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for listening. And we will see you next time. 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.

This episode is a special one! The podcast centers around a communications and marketing professional. We discuss parallels between her career and fire and life safety professionals. Kaelynn Gagliardi gives great tips on writing from her time as a professional journalist. Also we talk about user experience, content creation, and branding. Oh and by the way its my wife! Big shout out to the her she is the first Fire Code Tech fan ever. 

Kaelynn's Writing Tip Links: 

https://copyblogger.com/ https://www.grammarly.com/ https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HPPqYzl0i3sRdo5fCEuNB?si=0XaBc6bQR5iwdeFAyXO6ig

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly.

Inside of the context of a normal interview. Hello? Well, welcome to episode 56 of fire code tech. Today. We have a very special episode with an interview with my wife, Kalin Gagliardi. In this episode, we're talking with Kalin about her career in marketing and communications. We speak about why it's important to cultivate a personal brand as a professional living in the digital age, Kaylin started her career in journalism and has over 200 articles during her time as a journalist.

So she gives her tips on professional writings and how you can. We've a better narrative and story into your next fire and life safety project. This episode is really special to me. Kaylin has been a part of the podcast since his very beginning, and she has been such a big help along the way. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and follow us on social media.

Oh, and if you do me a huge favor, go and give us a five star review on apple podcasts. Let's get into the show.

Well, Kaylin, welcome to the fire code tech podcast. Thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Well, I always like to get these things started with, you know, telling the listeners a bit about your back. And your professional career. Would you mind telling us a little bit more about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So I am, I like to think of myself as a formal journalist turned communications professional. Um, I have experience working for large corporations for small PR marketing firm. Um, and I've worked in internal communications. So employer to employee communications, um, I've done client communications.

I've been a part of brand awareness campaigns. Um, you know, I've done a lot of blog writing. Social media. I've been a part of digital advertising projects, um, media pitching community, giving planning events. I've kind of worn a lot of hats. Um, in addition to, you know, having a, a previous career as a journalist, that's very interesting, good to hear about some of the different roles that you've had so far, you know, um, sometimes I like to dive into.

you know, schooling, you know, you touched on that journalism piece. And so I'd like to hear a little bit more about your education and how those first couple roles. Shaped your career. Yeah, so I, um, went to Oklahoma state university and I was, um, a student in their journalism and strategic communications school.

I, uh, was, you know, my path was print journalism. Um, I really enjoyed writing growing up and, um, you know, took college as an opportunity to dive into that a little more. Um, Uh, yes, I was a student at the journalism school, but honestly, I feel like a lot of my education came from working for the student newspaper where I wrote like more than 200 articles.

I think by the time I graduated, um, You know, I really enjoyed it. And that was kind of my outlet to really finesse, um, my writing and just, you know, be a sponge and soak up, you know, all the knowledge that my peers had to offer our advisors had to offer and, you know, our professors too. So it was a really good learning lab for me.

Um, and then while I was in school, I had four internships, um, that, you know, allowed me to learn in the real world. Um, so it was a really. Um, I felt like once I left school, like I knew what I was getting into. Yeah. I think that's one of my favorite like facts or one of your most impressive facts is that you had an internship all four years of your college experience.

And not only did you have an internship, all four summers, but you also were frequently writing for the newspaper, you know, on a weekly basis for the school newspaper. Speak a little bit more about those internship experiences and how those. Like help set you up for your professional career. Sure. So I think, you know, having experience, like I said, you know, it really allowed me to see, okay, this is the field that you're getting in and this is what you're gonna do.

Um, on the a daily basis. Um, you know, I got to talk to other professionals who had been in the field for. Um, decades and, you know, go out to lunch with them and pick their brains, um, you know, pick the brains of my managers, um, you know, talk to them candidly about, Hey, should I continue doing this? You know, what have you enjoyed about your career?

What are the really cool things that you've gotten to? Do you know what opportunities are there in the field? So I think. I would highly recommend, um, at least having one internship because, um, you know, it really opens your eyes to what you're getting yourself into and also what opportunities there are, um, within your field.

Yeah. That's uh, great advice. I always, um, try to encourage people to get a sense of what career they're looking to go into. , you know, you can't really ever know what a job is gonna be like until you actually get in there, work with your manager, see what the process and flow for the job role is. And really just kind of get a sense for what that day to day looks like.

Cuz you can have an idea of what a job might be in, in reality, it might be something completely. So touching on that journalism piece a bit more, um, you know, we're doing an interview right now, but, um, how was your experience with interviewing people? I know you've told me some stories, um, previously about how it could sometimes be challenging or.

You know, it seems like you had a, a wide variety of interview experiences during your time as a journalist, for sure. Um, I've conducted a lot of interviews and been a part of a lot of interviews. Um, and I think, uh, doing your research and knowing, you know, your, your subject, first of all, is key. And, you know, I think that, um, just being a human is really important too.

Um, because that's when you're gonna get people to, you know, um, open up to you, you know, when you say, Hey, here's some commonalities we have, or here's, you know, something that, um, We both share interest in, um, you know, to kind of open the door a little bit, to get them to feel com comfortable with you, um, and you know, to share their story.

Um, because that was one thing I really loved about journalism is it's storytelling. Um, and you know, you have to get people to open up to you so that you can share their story. And the more comfortable they are with you, the better stories they're going to share with you. Yeah. That's a great point. I think that people need to feel some sense of rapport and there has to be some sort of personal chemistry when you are having an interview or else it kind of just feels flat or like, There isn't any sort of chemistry in what's happening in the conversation.

So I can really appreciate that point of trying to level with somebody and provide a point of commonality between two parties. That's that's a great, I like that. So trying to draw a through line, um, you know, into you. During college was gonna move on until after to after college. But I think there's more meat on the bone for like in college.

Like what kind of professional societies and things were you a part of that, you know, helped. Form you and like start to build your rapport and network during that time. Yeah. So I was a part of a couple of professional organizations or student organizations, um, society, professional journalists, S PJ, and then also PR S S a, um, which is the student version of public relations society of America.

Um, you know, I. Spent a lot of my time working for the student newspaper. Um, otherwise I probably would've been even more involved. Um, but those, I think were the main, um, groups that, you know, I was a part of that really, um, allowed me to grow as an individual. Um, And I think that having just being a part of those groups and a, you're gonna find people who are interested in the same thing as you are.

Um, so, you know, it's easy to brainstorm bounce ideas off each other, think about things in a different way. Um, and then also, you know, a lot of times those groups have an advisor or are led by a professor, um, you know, which can be really great to. , you know, have someone that you can, you know, talk to about your ideas or ask questions about, and that's just someone else that you have, you know, at your disposal, as you know, someone who can give you guidance as a student, um, someone that, you know, you can come back to later in your career.

Um, so I would definitely recommend, you know, as a student, for any students who are listening, you know, take advantage of those groups. They only get harder to join as you get older and, um, more expensive yeah, that's a good point. Get involved while it's free. And while people are trying to, you know, professionals are trying to break your break, their neck to get students involved.

And, you know, I feel like professional societies are always so hungry for people to get involved and start to. Be a part of the organization. Well, and I had one thing to add to that. You know, when I say they, that they get harder, um, to get involved in life, continues to happen. And I feel like you have more time as a student to really make those connections.

Whereas as an adult, you know, a lot of times those, those commitments have to happen after. Um, and it's a lot more, yeah, it's just more labor intensive to try to facilitate these connections. And I mean, it's a lot easier as a student. I mean like a lot of times there people are coming in and as speakers and bring in free food and like, they're really doing everything they can to try to make it easy for you to be involved as a professional.

So, I mean, you there's, and I was not the best about it. When I was in school, I went to a couple. You know, SFPs and, um, society of safety engineers, um, as SSE at the time, I think they're as S S P now, but yeah, I mean, the message is, you know, when you're in school, if you're in school, do everything you can to really capitalize on the resources that, um, higher education has to give because, um, I know I've heard other people say it before, you know, they wish they would've taken advantage of some of the.

Um, laboratory or, um, whatever facilities that your college might have at their disposal. So, um, lean into professional societies and just the resources that your college has to offer, but, you know, moving forward, you know, I, people in the journalism industry often talk about marketing as. Going to the dark side.

And today I really wanted to talk to you because I think that in the digital age that we live in, it is impossible to disassociate being a professional and having a personal brand and, you know, being a professional and managing your personal image. So, you know, moving forward into your first. You know, foray into a different field out of college.

Like just speak to me broadly. You know, this transition from journalism major to marketing professional and kind of what that means to be a marketing professional. Well, I'll do my best to answer that question. And I can only speak from my experience. Um, but you know, newsrooms are shrinking. I think. You know, that's, most people are pretty aware of that.

Um, you know, we've had fewer people who are expected to stay up to date on, you know, your local community news, what's happening in your state. And then, you know, what's happening in the country overall. So journalists are inundated with a lot of information and are having to sift through a lot of, um, you know, press releases, um, updates.

Everything. So, um, you know, going from being a journalist, to being someone who's sending out, those press releases, you know, it helped me have that perspective and a better filter for what busy journalists care about. And, you know, what's going to catch their eye and what are they gonna be interested in?

How can we take what we're doing and make it part of, you know, a larger story? How can we make the journalist job easier, um, and get our message. So it really helped me to have, you know, that filter as someone who's working in communications and marketing. Um, and then, you know, it also as a journalist, I think you're innately curious.

And so, you know, That is such a sought after skill in any industry. And in any role, like you want someone who is going to be, um, you know, asking really good questions and getting to the why of, you know, why are we working on this project? You know, why is this our goal? Um, and so I think that, you know, those.

Things helped me to, um, step into the marketing and communications world without necessarily having, um, you know, gotten a degree in that. I think, you know, journalism, marketing, public relations, strategic communications, they're all closely connected. Um, and you know, making that switch early in my career, um, was a good move for me.

Yeah, I think that's such a great point about curiosity and, you know, learning to really be invested in what you are working in. You know, I, I think I was talking to one of my coworkers recently and I was just, he said, I think that you're easily. Amused like I am. And that's that sort of curiosity has really been a blessing to me in my career.

So I think that's a great point. And then, you know, another awesome thing you touched on that to me is a real hallmark of any great professional is the ability to ask good questions. You know, I can always remember back in school, I would be sitting through a webinar or a lecture or a guest speaker. And my professors would always have really great, great questions and not just, you know, uh, good questions for, uh, you know, a student, great questions for a professional, you know, like things they were interested in, things that really, you know, they wanted to know and had a true interest in and brought life to the conversation and that the topic or the speech.

I think that being able to ask good questions is a really big deal for anyone who's worth their salt at what they do. So I really like those two points about what you touched on so far. . Yeah. And another thing that I'll add, you know, I touched on it a little bit earlier, but storytelling, you know, that's, uh, what journalists are paid to do essentially.

Um, but even as a marketing professional, like the best marketers are storytellers, and if you can humanize your product or, you know, your service in a. Um, that shows how it impacts people's lives, uh, and, you know, draw a connection. Um, you know, you're gonna be more successful as a marketer than someone who just says, Hey, here's our product.

You should really try it. Um, you know, because it goes back to, Hey, you know, you're peaking, someone's interest with the story. You're showing them how your product or service can be useful in their lives. Um, so I think that all of the best, I mean, if you think about like even commercials, you know, the commercials that tell a story, like those usually catch my attention more than, you know, just someone pushing a product.

Um, so that that's also, um, a commonality I see between the two fields. Yeah. You know, I was just. In the process of creating some contract documents for a project I was working on just today. And the, one of the notes I had from Brandon was, you know, tell this story a little bit more. It's not clear why we have this other structure or this, you know, piece of the puzzle.

Why is this here? You know, if somebody looks at this and they're not as acquainted with the project, how are they gonna understand this? They're really in the, in the, you know, design process. Right. You know, as an engineer, we're constantly writing legal documents. And so that's one other through line or parallel between, you know, your perf your experience in professional writing is I see that, um, you know, there is so much writing in preparing, uh, shop drawings.

I mean, not shop drawings. Design documents and specifications. So, yeah. Um, what tips would you, I know I'm putting you on the spot here. We didn't prep this one, but what tips would you have for people who are looking to buff up a little bit on their writing abilities? I know I've struggled with this recently and you've kind of helped me through.

A little bit, but what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Um, I think first of all, just say practice , um, you know, you can't get better at something if you don't put in the reps. Um, so, and you know, that's, um, One of the things that, you know, I was talking about earlier, I was getting a lot of reps at the student newspaper.

I would not be the professional that I am today if I hadn't gotten those reps. So I think, you know, first and foremost practice, and then, um, second of all, you know, there's a ton of free resources on the internet. You know, if your issue is grammar, you know, there's, um, resources that specifically cater to grammar, um, you know, If you have difficulty with sentence structure, I mean, all of those things, um, you can easily find resources for, um, and I will follow up with GU and see if he can add some of those links, um, to some of those resources in the show notes.

Um, so you have access to those. Yep. That's a great point. And you know, one item that we've talked about recently, that's helped me. You know, if you are not sure on how to tell the story or. How to really structure what you're trying to communicate to write a skeleton or an outline of what you're thinking.

You know, if you have a technical report in which you are trying to commute a communicate, a message, what are the salient points that you're trying to convey? And after you write those four bullet points, how do you weave that narrative together? So that's something that you offered to me when, you know, early in my new role as, uh, how to, you know, kind of buff up on your writing ability is.

You kind of sketch it out or flow chart. It, that's something you do in school, these bubble diagrams and different spider charts and stuff. But you know, when you get to be an adult, you forget all that stuff. And you're just like, man, I'm having trouble writing this. What do I do? So. Um, for me, that was a helpful, uh, little reminder on writing technique.

Yeah. And everyone has their own process. You know, I think my process is kind of to do an initial brain dump and get everything from my brain, um, out on paper. And then oftentimes here's, you know, the conclusion that I want to make. Okay. Here's the points that support that. And I kind of work backwards.

Because for me, sometimes the introduction is, is the hard part. Um, I know all the facts, I just have to figure out, okay, how do I wanna present this and set it up. So, um, I think, you know, there's a, a lot of different, um, you know, options for just brainstorming and getting your ideas out on paper and kind of organizing them, you know, like you were referring to the different charts and, um, You know, bubble diagrams and things, but, um, you know, everyone has their own process.

So I would just encourage you to find what works for you. Um, and then, you know, to hone in on that and refine that, that's a good point. That's a good point. So moving on, you know, some of the things that we hinted on, let's talk a little bit about. What it means for somebody to have a personal brand or for a company to be thinking about their image or social persona.

What do you see as, you know, what does that mean in today's age to you? I think that's kind of a loaded question. Um, you know, a personal brand is huge. Um, you need to definitely have, you know, an updated LinkedIn. If you have a personal website, keep your personal website updated, make sure it's user friendly, easy for.

Managers and recruiters to, um, use, um, and find the information that they need. Um, you know, and, um, even more so than just like your online presence, I would say, um, be kind, treat your coworkers, your managers and your clients, you know, with respect. Um, I think that Indi, I mean, it's a small world and so, you know, making sure that you treat everyone and have just outside of your digital presence, just a good reputation in general.

I mean, honestly, As a manager, like that is way more important to me, you know, than whether or not you have a LinkedIn profile. Um, because I want to recruit those people who are, um, you know, great to work with and are, um, hungry, humble, and smart, um, to be on my team, you know, instead of someone who's just great at social media.

And then, you know, from a, um, company perspective, um, you know, having a great customer experience, um, you know, like I said, word of mouth, you know, um, even for companies there's glass store, there's so many review sides, trust radius, G2. Um, where people can go and rate you for your customer experience and, um, you know, people really pay attention to those.

And so I would say, definitely be keying in, on what is your customer journey, you know, even before, um, you know, they become a customer, like what is that sales journey look like for them? And then, okay, now they're a customer. What does that customer journey look like for. Um, you know, are they getting the support that they need?

Where could you, um, you know, enhance that, that journey for them? Um, So, I don't know if that answers your question. I think I viewed off a little bit there, but you did, you know, speak to personal brand and company brand. So I would say, you know, those are my tips. Yeah. Well, as all my questions, it was, uh, ambiguous and extremely broad.

So I think you did just fine there. Um, no, I, I think that the one point that really struck true to me and it was, it was, uh, A bit, well, I guess it is personal brand, but the, you know, we work in Oklahoma city, the greater area of Oklahoma city. And I can't count how many times that our rapport with other industry professionals or knowing somebody and being able to have a good reputation has paid dividends in our career.

I mean, uh, you. We've both been working for five to six years and I can't count how many times it's been a boon to us to have a good name in the community and to have coworkers that would vouch for the quality and the standing of your work and your attitude and your disposition. So, um, I think that. You would really be doing yourself a disservice to not think about that because you know, as people move on and you, and you realize as you get to work for a while, people, people will move on.

You will work with quite a few people, even people who you would never imagine would be, um, uh, you know, a benefit or a proponent to your career or whatever your goal is. Um, they'll pop up. You'll be surprised. Treat people. Try to be a good steward, hard worker and, um, be involved and be kind. And it just always seems to amaze me the people who will come out of the blue and, you know, be a boon to your career.

But, you know, we talked a little bit about. Um, professional and social image, but you know, something we talk about frequently together that I wanted to pick your brain a little bit more on was your journey from individual to like individual contributor, to a manager and kind of how you've seen that transition and your.

Growing pains and, or, I mean, you don't have to speak specifically to anything, but how you, you know, the struggles and the learning curves of going from somebody who focuses on doing a task and providing a product into, um, you know, the different challenges of management. . Yeah. Um, I would say, you know, as an individual contributor, um, I think sometimes you can be like, well, I'm doing all of this work over here.

Like what does my manager have to do? And, um, you know, as someone who is in a leadership role now, um, I can tell you there's a lot of work to do. . You know, but being in a leadership role is fun. Um, I think that there are definitely some, uh, growing pains and just like a learning curve, um, as with any new role.

Um, you know, if you have a company, um, where you are, you know, bringing up ind individual contributors, um, into leadership, you know, I would definitely encourage you to think about the training, um, for. Those new leaders, because I would say that anything that I could get my hands on, um, I, you know, I was trying to read and look into, because I wanted to be, you know, a, a good leader.

Um, I think, you know, oftentimes there are people who are put into leadership roles that, you know, maybe that's not the best fit for them, or maybe they just wanna be individual contribu. And so to that end, I would say, you know, make sure, like, think about the, the growth paths at your company. And, you know, it may not always be, um, leadership for everyone.

And so think about how you can maybe offer a growth path that, you know, Isn't um, leadership oriented and maybe offers, you know, um, growth, but, um, you know, as an individual contributor, because I do think, you know, that it is hard and it's a unique position and it's not for everyone. Um, but you know, one of the biggest things that I've taken away, just, um, in my, you know, fairly short time as a leader is, um, make sure that you're being human and be a human first and a manager second, you know, um, I think that thinking about how, you know, you can support your employees and I've heard people say it.

You know, think about how you're there to serve, you know, your employees. Um, you know, it's my job to coach them. It's my job to make sure that they're challenged and that they're growing, but also that they're supported and that they know that I'm there for them and that I'm going to help them, you know, through the challenges.

And, um, yes, it might be hard, but they're gonna be a better employee on the other side of, you know, this project or, you know, this report that they're trying to master or whatever it may. Um, so does that answer your question? Of course, of course. I think that, you know, I, I feel like I don't have much to add to that conversation.

I like what you said, you know, I I've had different struggles in my small forays I've had into trying to lead others or manage others or be a mentor. I think it's something that is exceeding exceedingly difficult and, and not everybody is geared for. You know, the one piece of advice I always like to give young professionals reaching out to me, either through LinkedIn or through personal connection is to really try to find who is well suited for mentorship or for teaching, because, you know, you will stumble upon people who really shine at it and you need to lean into the people in your community who, first of all, you can, you know, Mesh with on a personal level.

And then second of all, they have the technical proclivity for mentoring and providing the technical knowledge for, you know, how to grow you as a professional. So, you know, that's not really, it's a little bit more management and professional development, but I don't think even I've had as much.

Management experiences you, now that you've been in your new role for a little while, so it's been cool to hear you go through your journey. Um, but you know, moving onto some, um, professional development topics, even though these all have kind of been professional development topics, but. You know, what piece of advice would you give yourself if you were starting out again as a professional, you know, what, did you have any big Eureka moments in the first couple years of working or, you know, What kind of takeaways can you offer the fire code tech listeners?

Well, you know, my piece of advice to myself would be, and I think I did a fairly okay job at this, but take advantage of all the opportunities that come your way. Um, you know, as a young professional, I think you, um, You know, you have to do learn the, the foundational basics at, at your job. Right. Um, you know, and as you learn those basics and you get to take advantage and be a part of, you know, other projects and, you know, learn new skills and grow from those.

And, you know, sometimes things fall on your plate that aren't necessarily in your job description. Um, and when those opportunities come, you know, I really encourage you to look at them as an opportunity versus as something you have to do. Um, because I think I have grown so much over my career just because I've taken advantage of some of those opportunities and, you know, difficult projects and, um, you know, things like.

Um, and, and I'm better for it. Um, so I would say, you know, learn as much as you can because you never know where your career is gonna go. You never know who you're gonna meet working on that project. Um, and what opportunities they may have for you down the line. Um, and you never know, like what skill you might learn that, Hey, maybe you're able to be an even better asset to the team because you learn this one, you know, Excel shortcut or whatever it might be.

Um, so that would be, my advice is take advantage of all the opportunities that come your way, um, and have a positive. yeah, that attitude thing is so big. And we, and we talk about that. We both had experiences with, you know, um, individuals in our career who maybe don't have the best attitude, you know, are learning attitude or a positive teamwork attitude.

And it can be caused such friction in a team or, you know, in a business transaction, it can be something that. Takes the wind out of everybody's sales. So, um, that one is huge and yeah, I think that that's a huge piece of advice. Don't be afraid to say yes to something, you know, that somebody is asking you to do that.

You don't know how to do, you know, it's okay to not understand it completely and to say yes, and to figure it out along the way. And in fact, um, Once you get to a certain point in your career, you just always be comfortable in figuring it out. And that's kind of what the two true mastery looks like. You know, being comfortable enough to say, I may not know everything that I need to, to get this done, but I know that I could figure it out.

So, um, don't be afraid to really go out on a limb and, you know, obviously you don't want. Put yourself or your organization in a spot where you are acting completely out of your competence range, but as long as everybody is aware of, you know, your ability to perform and, and the expectations, I think there are so many.

Um, profound opportunities to grow as a professional and to bring value to an organization by trying new things.

My next question on professional development is centered around, you know, resources. What kind of resources do you like to use to keep yourself in touch with what's going on in the. You know, I understand that it's, we're not explicitly in the same industries, but I do know that you consume a lot of different types of, you know, content to help you shape you as a business professional.

So I'd love to hear about that. So I would say, you know, daily, I get email newsletters, um, that are catered to my industry with articles, quick articles on, you know, Hey, four things you can be doing here, or, um, you know, is your organization prepared for this or have you thought about this? Um, that just so you know, make me think outside of my daily to-do list.

Which is always good. And then, you know, I've got some weekly newsletters. I have, um, an organization that I'm a part of, they send out a monthly magazine. Um, and then one thing that I would say that, you know, spans industries is just make sure, you know, what's going on in the news. Um, you know, no brand ever wants to, uh, come off as insensitive or tone deaf and also, you know, not only for PR reasons, but also for, you know, marketing opportunities.

If you see that there's been a shift, you know, in the economy or a shift, um, you know, in the ways that people are thinking about things, um, maybe that sets you up for an opportunity or you have a great message or. Um, where, you know, you can go after sales, um, in a different way. So, you know, I just think, you know, read the news, listen to the news, whatever makes sense for you, but you know, know what's happening in the world.

Yeah. I think that's a good point. I can be. Pretty bad about keeping my head in a hole sometimes as far as what's going on with news or just the general news, but it is a great idea for, you know, whatever industry you're in to be aware of. What kind of, you know, trends are happening as far as like, you know what technology is trending, what legislation is coming out, how is that gonna impact your role?

You know, not just what is the state of the industry now, but where is the, you know, whatever metaphor you wanna use, hockey, puck, soccer, ball, baseball. what, what, where is the thing that you're chasing? Where's that going so that you can be on top of it as a professional? Um, at which I think is so very important, I can think, you know, another way to extrapolate that message to fire and life safety is just your, you know, design professionals in specific is, you know, what kind of buildings are trending?

You know, what economy is popping O tech is down. So what's important now, you know, or we still concerned about, you know, data centers or, you know, Different and X or Y type of building. So, you know, just kind of thinking about that and being appraised of what's happening in the community is a big deal.

You know, the speaking of trends I wanted to pick your brain for our last question is what do you see as a trend in the industry right now for. You know, you as a professional, I know you keep pretty appraised of what's happening. Have some ideas about that. Love to hear. Sure. I think one thing that I've been thinking about a lot is, um, you know, just the evolution of marketing and how, you know, TV that used to be.

The main way that, um, brands got their message across and, you know, promoted themselves. And then we've seen that shift, you know, over the last couple decades to the internet and, you know, then to social media and you know, I'm thinking, okay, where is this going in the future? Um, And there's been a lot of talk about the metaverse and how, you know, that's gonna be a multibillion dollar industry, you know, in the next decade.

And, um, you know, how can you position your brand for the metaverse and what are some things to think about? And here's what other brands have done. Um, and so I think reading those case studies and, um, learning more about the metaverse and technologies like you hinted to, um, is really fascinating. And also me, you know, on the pulse of like, what is happening and what can I look forward to and how can I position my team, um, and my organization to think about X, Y, Z, um, you know, that's gonna be coming down the way.

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great point. I think. Um, I haven't thought about the metaverse and how that might, you know, interact with my industry, but I'm sure there's something there with the, all of the technology and 3d BIM and, uh, alternate reality technology there is out there, but I'm sure you wanna say that.

What do you mean? Just the fact that you haven't thought about. I say it all the time. Sometimes people will message me with really interesting recommendations of the things that I say that I don't know about. Hmm. It's something that's panned out for the better really well. I mean, the metaverse is like, it seems like a gimmick at this point, you know, it doesn't seem so tangible, but you know, we were just reading Reddit, ready player one the other day where, you know, they basically.

Have the metaverse and everybody's kind of plugged into that. So it doesn't seem like that's too far away. So obviously I need to start thinking about it, but I think that I lied and that wasn't my last question. And then my last question is, do you have any questions for me? Yeah, I'm curious, you know, I listen to the podcast, but obviously don't work in your industry.

So where do you see are like the biggest gaps or, you know, how can you translate all of this, you know, marketing, jargon, um, and speak to someone who works in your industry? Like, what would you say are your three biggest like takeaways? Yeah, I think that for me, I think that fire and life safety. Does a pretty bad job at marketing.

Um, we, you know, that's kind of the whole reason I got into this podcasting was that I would just felt like unheard as a young professional. And so I think, you know, number one, we could do a better job in trying to reach people and getting more creative on how to reach consumers or people who are in our industry.

Top line funnel people into the industry to begin with, because I know that this is a theme in general for all engineering disciplines, but we're a starred for new young professionals to come into the industry. You know, I've said frequently that when I graduated from the Oklahoma state, Uh, fire protection, safety technology program.

It was like a class around 40 and you know, maybe only a quarter or a third of those professionals will go into my specific kind of industry. And then, you know, within that, maybe half of those. So an eighth of all of those kids even go into something that could be a fire protection engineer. So, I don't know, that's all anecdotal, but I would really be happy if people would try to think more about the personal brand and the company brand in order to reach people and let people know about how good of a field it is and how much opportunity there is.

I think that's, um, the big one in my mind. and then second of all, personal brand for me has been a huge, huge, huge boost to my, um, just status as a professional, um, having fire code tech, having, you know, a updated LinkedIn being somebody who routinely engages people who. Don't know, um, in personal life, but have reached out to, you know, a topic that we talk about a lot is not being afraid to, you know, reach out to somebody in your network.

And, you know, not obviously not be a bother, not be insistent or, you know, just a, an annoyance, but, you know, having the ability. Reach out to somebody and ask to pick their brain about a topic or subject that maybe you're struggling with or interested in, um, that has been a professional or, you know, just kind of personal brand thing that has been an exceedingly huge boon to me.

And then, um, Yeah, I think one more topic of how this relates to everybody. We talk about content a lot and just content production and content development. And, you know, I really didn't know what I was getting into early on. Just, you know, what this is or what the role looks like. But at the end of the day, it's a giant marketing exercise or marketing endeavor.

I mean, the podcast is. I'm a marketing vehicle in itself. So sometimes I get people who will reach out to me and want to, you know, talk to me about creating a podcast or video content. And I, you know, first thing I, I think about for them is, you know, do they have a personal brand? Are they posting on social media or do they have, you know, um, a couple dozen followers on or connections on LinkedIn or, you know, no.

Ostensibly social media presence. It's gonna be a pretty heavy lift to produce content that anybody is gonna see with that kind of, um, just interaction with social media and personal brand. So if you have an interest in releasing content or. Um, you know, producing anything or really any business can benefit from having, you know, people in your, um, following or just connections that will be able to see the good things you're doing.

Otherwise you're kind of just operating and avoid. So, um, that's three things that I just, you know, kind. Rambled through, but no, I appreciate that. Well, miss Kaylin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I just wanna thank you so much for coming on for the people who don't know Kaylin has been a part of the podcast before it was even conceived.

So. She's been a huge help in all, everything from the branding to picking the songs, to trying to dissuade me from starting the podcast two months before we were supposed to get married and then, you know, me being really mule headed and just doing it anyways to much of her consternation. So, um, I really wanted to have Kalin on because she has been such an integral part of the podcast for such a long time.

It makes a lot of sense and she has a lot to give to the listeners. So just wanted to give an on air. Thank you. I've been thinking about adding a thank you to you in the conclusion, little snippet of the. Podcast audio, because you've always been just, um, somebody pushed me along and encouraging me to keep going so big.

Thank you to you, miss Kalin. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. And, um, you know, it's, it was actually a lot more fun than I thought being on the podcast. Um, you know, GU knows this, but no one else does some, I don't like attention. So, um, you know, this was actually. Fun. So thank you for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

And then one last note, you know, to the listeners, um, you know, Gus is so passionate about fire code tech and so dedicated and, you know, he does put a lot of thought. Um, and effort into, you know, his guests that he's booking, um, the topics that he is covering and, you know, he wants to hear from you. So if you all have ideas, thoughts, you're interested in being on the podcast, um, please reach out because that means a lot to him.

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.

In honor of the Fourth of July this solocast is dedicated to fireworks. We break down firework fire protection through the discussion of key terminology, hazard determination, codes and standards, and protection strategies. 

NFPA 1124: 

https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=1124

NFPA 1123: 

https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=1123

NFPA Brochure Fireworks Fire Safety

https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Seasonal-fire-causes/Fireworks

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal interview.

Hello, all, welcome to the fire code tech podcast. I'm your host GU GLI. , this is episode 39 of the solo cast series. And today we are talking about. Fireworks. I thought that it would be cool to take a look at the safety and history and some terminology around explosives and fireworks in honor of the 4th of July as always.

Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, if you could give us a follow on social media and a five star review on apple podcasts, that would be a huge deal. A good way to support the podcast. If you enjoy the content that comes out each week. So let's get into the show, always like to start off with terminology and definitions around the fire and life safety subject.

I'm talking about. This gives you a solid base in the. Code requirements. If you can understand the legal definition of the hazard that you are dealing with in the us, for most of the jobs I've ever worked on, the IBC is the defacto code for commercial jobs. So let's start by taking a look at the definitions around fireworks and explosions.

In chapter two of the international building code today, I'm looking at the 2021. I. So there are many categories of explosives and these categories all go back to how much the item or substance derates or detonates. So let's take a look at a couple of these terms in chapter two of the IBC. First of all, the term explosive is defined as in chapter two of I B C.

With the following language, a chemical compound mixture or device the primary or common purpose of which is to function by explosion. The term includes, but it is not limited to dynamite. Black powder, pellet powder, initiating explosives, detonators safety, fuses, squibs, detonating cord, igniter, cord Igniters.

The term explosive includes any material determined to be within the scope of USC title 18 chapter 40, and also includes any material classified as an explosive, other than consumer fireworks. 1.4 G by the hazardous materials regulation, D O T N 49, CFR parts 100 through 185. So that's a lot to chew off, but basically.

They are trying to give a broad umbrella term for explosive. So the D O T has six classifications of explosives and there are some subcategories within these classifications. These categories range from 1.1 to 1.6 and the most dangerous and fastest to explode are 1.1 fireworks in specific are a subcategory of 1.3 and 1.4.

So let's talk about what the definitions for fireworks are within the building code. Fireworks is defined as any composition or device for the purpose of producing a visual or audible effect for entertainment purposes by combustion, deflation, or detonation that meets the definition of 1.4 G fireworks or 1.3 G fireworks.

One point 3g fireworks is described as large firework devices, which are explosive materials intended for use in fireworks displays and designed to produce audible or visible effects by combustion Def ration detonation. Such 1.3 G fireworks include, but are not limited to fireworks containing more than 130 milligrams of explosive composition, aerial shells containing more than 40 grams of pyrotechnic composition and other display pieces, which exceed the limits for classification of 1.4 G fireworks, such 1.3 G fireworks are also described as fireworks under UNO 3 35 by the D O TN.

So as you can see these. Fireworks are classified by the amount of explosive that is in the actual charge for the firework. If you've had much experience with hazardous materials, you'll quickly see the trend that in hazmat, usually hazard in severity are closely related to the amount of the hazardous item that is in storage.

Moving on one point, 4g is small firework devices containing restricted amounts of pyrotechnic composition designed primarily to produce visual or audible effects by com combustion or deflation that complies with the construction, chemical composition and labeling of the D O TN for fireworks UNO 3 36.

And. Us consumer product safety commission, asset forth and CPSC 16 CFR parts, fifteen hundred and fifteen oh seven. So in both of these fireworks definitions, there have been some federal regulation and. Also department of transportation, regs that are tied to the transportation and protection for these products.

So the first step in providing fire protection for fireworks would be to classify what type of hazardous material they are. You would need to look at a product safety data sheet or. STS for these products and make sure that they are classified as a 1.3 G or a 1.4 G firework. And then after you've made the determination through your evaluation or through another.

Expert that is suited to make the determination of the classification. The next step would be to define, um, what form these explosives explosives are in, and then quantify how much of the explosive you have when you are looking to store or use these items in a closed or system. Hazardous materials. If you exceed the maximum allowable quantity stated in table 3 0 7 0.1 0.1 in the international building code 2021 edition would require you to house these materials in an H occupancy.

And depending on what you're storing, it will decide. Sort of H occupancy that you are supposed to be housing, these hazardous materials inside of. So we are looking at chapter three more specifically section 3 0 7 and in 3 0 7, there is a table 3 0 7 0.1. Point one which establishes the different types of hazardous materials, the maximum allowable quantities and the applicable extra protections that can be provided in order to increase the amount of hazardous materials stored or implemented in open or closed systems.

1.4, 1.4 G and 1.3 are all listed in this table. Interesting to note that 1.3 G is not listed in this table. So that's telling you that they don't care if it's a firework or not. Once you hit 1.3, you're either going to provide a H one or a H two occupancy at a very small amount of storage. At five gallons or five pounds of 1.3 division explosives, you are pushed into a H one or H two occupancy.

H one is the most protection that you can provide for an H occupancy. So you can tell that they are taking this very seriously when you are classifying something as a one, three. 1.4 and 1.4 G however, have, are both listed in the table. And there is a greater amount of storage allowed for 1.4 G it goes from 50.

Gallons or 50 pounds to 125 pounds allowed, stored without any of the modifiers to increase the amount for 1.4 G. So buildings that are constructed as a H three occupancy are built for a deflation hazard. There are a variety of protection features that you can provide in order to safeguard a space from a deflation explosion.

H one, however, is a detonation hazard and there are not so many protections that are available for detonation hazards. Generally you have to separate these hazards from large buildings or structures, or provide fire separation sufficient to treat the building as a standalone building. But there are setback, distances and extreme fire protection requirements for H one occupancies.

N FPA 68 is the standard on explosion protection by deflagration venting deflation. Venting is one of the strategies that can be used as one element to, uh, protect the spaces outside of where explosives are stored or processes that could trigger. Explosion are house. If you want another good primer on hazardous materials, go check out solar cast.

Number seven. I'll also drop a couple good links to some interviews that we've done that have great hazardous materials professionals. There is a whole NFPA standard for the manufacturer transportation and storage of fireworks and that's NFPA 1124. So go check that out. If you want some more information on the protection and fire and life safety features around fireworks.

In FPA 1124 categorizes facilities that manufacture fireworks as magazines. And I don't know why they call 'em that, but there are several different types of magazines and there are associated fire protection features for these magazines. Seems like this could be NFPA 11, 24 could be a whole. Solo cast episode in itself.

So to end out this solo cast episode, I'm just going to go over some common building protection features that would be associated with protecting a building housing fireworks, or 1.3 or 1.4. Division explosives consideration needs to be giving to the ventilation and heating of these structures. And to make sure that heating in specific does not provide a source of ignition to the fireworks that are in storage in these facilities.

Construction type in the fire rated nature of the building construction also needs to be taken into consideration when designing a building for the housing of fireworks or explosives. Also, you want to consider the storage configuration and separation of groupings of explosives or fireworks that you are working with consider storage of other combustibles and separating them from any explosives or fire hazards.

I would recommend housing your firework storage in a building equipped with a sprinkler system with a appropriately hydraulically designed system associated with it. And perhaps some advanced detection for this kind of facility, even though in the us, it's common to see small transient facilities, that house fireworks as.

Stands for the sale of these products. I'll drop some links in the show notes to some resources I found from the fire protection resource foundation and NFPA and NFPA 1124. And I think that's gonna do it for this episode. Happy 4th of July and hope y'all were safe and we'll see you next time. 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.

Welcome to episode 38 of the Fire Code Tech Solocast series. In this episode we are speaking about 3d modeling software. In this episode we discuss the history of revit and stick around till the end to get my top 4 tips for gaining proficiency.

Free Revit Course: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAg47jdYMs

Transcription

Hello. Welcome to the solo cast of fire code tech in these episodes. It's just gonna be me, your host, Gus Gagliardi. There's gonna be a range of topics, but I'm gonna talk about specific technologies, installation, standards, codes, and how they work as well as some other interesting topics that don't neatly fit inside of the context of a normal I.

Hello. All welcome to episode 38 of fire code tech. The solo cast series. In this episode, we're talking about Revit. Revit is. A 3d modeling software. And in this episode, we're going to break down the history of the modeling software, some of the features that make it a industry tighten and the background on my tips for how to be proficient and efficient and Revit.

Thank y'all for listening. If you could do me a big favor and go hit that subscribe button, wherever you listen, you could listen on YouTube, Spotify, apple music, Google play, wherever you like to listen, hit that subscribe button. also, if you would do me a huge favor and go and give a five star review on apple podcasts that helps out with the algorithm and is a great way to show support that doesn't cost you a dime and also give us a follow on social media.

With that being said, thank you all for listening and let's get into the show. So I wanted to talk about Revit because Revit is the 3d modeling software. That is the. I'd say it's the number one in the architecture, engineering, and construction community for how design drawings and documents, contract documents get developed.

Um, I've had the opportunity to use Revit since about 2017 and over the last. Five years. I have gained some level of proficiency with it, but Revit is 3d modeling software. A lot of people are very acquainted with 2d modeling software that is still in common use. That is AutoCAD. Both of these technologies or softwares are owned by.

Autodesk. Autodesk is a software company that acquired Revit. We're gonna go over a little bit about the history of Revit, but reason why I wanna talk about this subject is that I'm fascinated with Revit and it is, um, unavoidable. If you do business on medium to large facilities in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.

And maybe for some professionals who aren't as mired in the details of the production of construction documents or, um, the contract document production, then this might be informational for you. So the history of Revit is that the company was founded in 1997 and it originally had a different. and then it was changed to Revit technology corporation in 2000.

And then in about 2002. So the product Revit was generated by a venture capitalist back company, a. And it was developed and they had attempted some other software projects before. And then they finally struck painter with Revit and sold the company to Autodesk in 2002 to the tune of over 130 million.

there are a lot of 3d modeling softwares, but the biggest advantage of Revit and specific is its ability to associate modeled elements with database parameters. So, um, for those of you who maybe have never worked with Revit, if you draw a wall in Revit, You can generate a wall and there will be a variety of properties that are associated with the wall.

How tall is the wall? How wide is the wall? Where is it located in the project? What type of wall is it? Is it a brick wall? Is it a concrete wall? And so. the wall will have its own specific ID and all of these properties and characteristics will be logged inside the program. So if you have a building that you've modeled and you have hundreds of walls, you can make a schedule in which all of the walls will be displayed on in.

Not quite Excel, but a tabular inventory, similar to Excel's layout in which you can revise elements within the schedule to alter the modeled elements. So if I go into the wall schedule in this hypothetical scenario and I select all the walls in the project and I decide to change the. Property of the walls from.

a brick wall or a masonry wall into a concrete block wall. You can do that instantaneously with just the click of a button. And so this is the big competitive advantage of Revit and the kind of. Differentiator from its competitors. Couple of its competitors are ArchiCAD and reflex. Uh, I don't know too much about these, um, by and large Revit is for most firms that I've ever worked with the dozens of engineering and.

Consulting firms I've worked with CAD is it's either CAD or Revit. Revit is pretty much unavoidable for projects after they reach a certain complexity. So Revit, even the name of Revit has to do with this competitive advantage of the database being associated with the model elements and the model elements being associated with the database parameters.

And. You know, I've seen this term, it's called bidirectional associativity you know, so the ability to modify parameters in the database and change properties in the modeled elements and vice versa. So the name Revit. Comes from a contraction of the two words revise instantly. So I found that pretty interesting as somebody who's been working with this program for half a decade and, you know, didn't even really know why it's called Revit.

I always just thought it was some random name that didn't have any real meaning, but of course, um, that's not the case. so Revit is not only just a benefit to users during the design and construction phase of a building's life cycle. Revit can be in building information modeling, um, can be of value to a building owner or engineers, or really anybody at any stage of the building's life cycle.

It can be a benefit. In design during construction. the main life cycle of the building as people are using it. And, you know, BIM models can be used to keep accurate logs of maintenance and other features within the buildings, during the operation of the building. And then all the way to the death of the building in the demolition.

There might be valuable information in the, uh, destruction of a building in. Building information model more specifically a Revit model. So this is a concept that's really gained traction, I'd say within the last decade, um, you know, from. You know, Revit's been around since 2002, but I think in my experience and from people I've talked to in the industry, it's really taken a hold since around the 2010, 2012 range.

And so it's around to stay. It's gaining more traction all the time. I work with less and less clients who refuse to use the 3d modeling capabilities. So it's a very interesting piece of software. Revit utilizes something. It calls families in order to model 3d elements. So there are a variety of Revit families and many are.

Out of the box ready to go, and you can also create custom families. And when you think about, uh, Revit families, they're just a 3d or 2d modeled element, uh, with associated parameters. So let's give my four tips for Revit and. You know, becoming proficient with Revit. My first tip for Revit is to use your key bindings key bindings come with the out of the box, Revit key command as Ks.

So if you press Ks, you will be able to go into Revit and assign different. Tasks key commands. My recommendation would be to put as many key commands for common tasks, able to be used by one hand. really your left hand so that you can click with your mouse and your right hand, and you can do key commands with your left hand.

This will greatly improve with efficiency. If you're not always having to look in the toolbar or ribbon, the command that you're looking for. And really this is a, uh, software and PC recommendation in general. Anytime you're using a program that has key commands. It will save you. It may not seem like much time, but if there are a dozen different tasks that you use every day and you are spending, you know, whatever, six seconds, a task, 10 seconds, a task looking on the ribbon for the right button.

Or if you just know. That you can press it without even looking at the keyboard. If you are a proficient typer, it will save you mountains of time. Second tip is to understand the interface. Now I'm not saying that you should go and read every tool tip for every Revit command. I don't think that's necessary.

And most likely you're probably not gonna use. Most of the. Different key commands probably you'll use a select variety of key commands and use those most frequently until you gain some proficiency. But what I am saying is to understand the interface, look at the major tabs and the components on the perimeter of the program in order to get a good sense of.

Are the features. Um, so you don't have to look inside all of the system tabs, but I would say try to get as much situational a awareness about the buttons on the extreme perimeter of the program, and that will help you. Um, it kind of goes from the outside of the program more. broad to more specific as you get into the ribbons.

Don't know if that makes sense, probably needs a visual, but that's tip number two. Know your interface. Tip number three is. Make sure that you have all your tabs turned on, so you can go to options and Revit and out of the box. Sometimes not all the systems tabs will be turned on. So I know I've installed Revit before and had to turn on the, uh, electrical system components in order to get fire alarm devices.

To uh, show up or display. So if you're having trouble finding something, be sure to go and take a look and make sure that you have all of your tool ribbons turned on. My last tip is to take a course. If you are just starting out with Revit, there are some good free re resources on YouTube and I'll drop a link to a full free course and Revit.

Um, produced by free code camp. Free code camp is a software development company, but they do tutorials on a broad variety of subjects. I've used free code camp for learning how to get started with web development. But if you're interested in learning how to code, or if you're interested in learning about Revit, you can check out the YouTube in the description.

um, also just as a last note, Revit has a interface for programming. So Revit is designed in C plus, plus I believe, but there are interfaces with. Python. And you can also use the visual based coding of dynamo, which is built into the program to automate some of your tasks in Revit. That's all I have hope you enjoyed the episode.

We'll see you next time. 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.