Fire Code Tech

On episode 27 of Fire Code Tech we are speaking about Clean Agent Fire Suppression Systems. This solocast breaks down codes and standards around Clean Agent systems. In addition, we break down the pros and cons of these systems and some common design considerations.  

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 episode 27 of fire code tech. On this episode, we're talking about queen agent systems. This episode is dedicated to one of the alternative methods of fire suppression and some of the different topics around the subject. As always, we're going to get into the codes and standards associated with clean agent systems, the type of clean agent systems.

Um, and some of the design considerations for these systems, don't forget to hit that subscribe button, wherever you listen to podcasts and also follow us on social media. Also, if you could give us a five star rate and review on apple podcasts, I would greatly appreciate that. Let's get into the show.

Let's define what a clean agent system is. Clean agent is defined as in NFPA 2001, which is the NFPA standard for clean agent extinguishing systems as a volatile or gases fire extinguishment that is electrically non conducting. And that does not leave a residue upon evaporation. So why is this important?

If you have a very valuable asset, such as a data center, or say a museum collection storage application, and you have, uh, critical operations or pieces of property and, or, uh, life safety equipment that are so critical and so valuable that you want to go above and beyond the, uh, letter of the. And provide, uh, additional fire suppression in order to sort of short circuit, the fire sprinkler system and save your asset and limit your loss potential.

Uh, clean agent is the option for you. So clean agent is a gassiest suppression system. And one of the common misconceptions is that, uh, you can apply a clean agent system in order to. Omit your fire sprinkler protection requirements in the building code, and that's not true. And it's probably one of my most frequently asked questions about clean agent systems is, oh, well, if we have a Gaius suppression system, can we eliminate the use of water based suppression inside of my high value asset, uh, room or protection?

The answer is no, without explicit a variance without an explicit variance from the authority, having jurisdiction, you cannot eliminate, uh, water based fire suppression. If it is required in a room. Furthermore, if you do obtain a variance and, you know, eliminate water based suppression for a room in lieu of clean agent systems.

Or any alternative, uh, fire extinguishing system, you are negating the benefits that are attained through having a fully sprinkled building there's specific language in the, in the building code, um, in 9 0 4, which is the code section we're gonna be talking about that speaks to the code requirements around clean agent systems.

Just a quick recap on, uh, some of the topics we've covered so far. First of all, we talked about the NFPA standard that governs the installation of clean agent systems, which is N FPA 2001. And now we're going to talk about the code section that has requirements for clean agent systems, which is, uh, chapter nine more specifically section 9 0 4, which is alternative fire extinguishing systems.

So alternative fire extinguishing systems act a little bit different than, uh, let's say fire alarm or fire sprinkler systems, where there are a bunch of explicit requirements for when these systems are, uh, needed in chapter nine, section 9 0 4, there are some different sections in here, which we will speak to when these systems are required.

Like for, uh, kitchen, suppression systems. But for a clean agent, there's not gonna be an explicit requirement in chapter nine for when these systems are required. So you might ask, how do we know when these systems are required? The answer is they're not required by code, but they can be used as a additional suppression mechanism in order to safeguard high value assets.

There are a couple different broad types of clean agent systems. The first are, uh, hydrocarbon gases and, uh, HFCs like, uh, FM 200 systems are made out of, um, manmade man manufactured like combinations of gases in order to be used as a gases suppress suppressant. Then there are, uh, inert gases, um, such as systems like Intergen, which is a proprietary blend of inert gases, like nitrogen argon, and carbon dioxide, depending on the, uh, protection, you know, what you're protecting and, um, you know, what kind of space is going to be.

Uh, used and some other factors like cost and configuration of the room. Um, you'll select one of these gases suppressant, gassiest suppressants, and, uh, this will dictate the rest of your design, including design concentration, and, uh, a number of other factors. Specifically, when we're talking about code sections that are applicable to clean agent systems in the 2018 version of the international building code, uh, section 9 0 4 point 10 specifically is titled clean agent system and points to N FPA 2001 for the, uh, listing insulation and maintenance requirements for clean agent systems.

Just for the sake of conversation and the additional information for if you're looking for code requirements for other alternative automatic fire extinguishing systems, other system types that can be found in chapter 9 0 4. Uh, section 9 0 4 are wet Kim systems, dry chemical systems, foam systems, carbon dioxide systems, halo systems, which these have been deprecated, but there may still be some of these systems installed, uh, water missed systems, uh, cooking, hood, fire suppression systems.

And this one I had never really heard much about, but aerosol fire extinguishing systems. So I can't think of any systems that I've ever. Been in the design process for that have been, uh, used aerosolized fire extinguishing systems. So that's a little strange, I wanted to speak a little bit about the pros and cons of clean agent systems to give you some context for when you want to apply these systems or give counsel to building owners for when these systems are a good idea.

Um, since there are not as clear cut, uh, situations in the building code for when these systems are required. So we've already kind of talked about that the systems are used for high value assets and to increase reliability and continuity of critical business infrastructure for clients. But, uh, one thing we didn't mention was, um, if clients are, or building owners are, uh, really concerned about the potential for water damage.

You might offer this, uh, system as a combination or a two-pronged fire suppression approach in order to further limit the possibility of water from the sprinklers discharging onto your high value asset. Some of the negatives of these systems, uh, they are a significant cost add to a project. And like we talked about, there are.

Not an explicit code requirement. So this is an elected fire suppression system, generally in combination with the fire suppression and fire alarm systems that are usually already required for buildings. So it's a significant cost consideration to add these systems. Uh, generally they are paired with a, an additional, uh, increas.

Initiation device like a aspirating smoke detection, like a Veda system, you know, don't have great numbers for exact cost figures, but I've seen, uh, back the envelope calculation figures like $10 a cubic foot for some of these systems, which if you can imagine, if you have, um, any sizeable room that these systems could be cost prohibited very quickly.

Another consideration for, uh, giving counsel for installing these systems might be the, um, the tank storage and how you have to store the Gasier suppressant in proximity of the room and or space. So you have additional panels for the controls for the system. Unless you're using your fire alarm panel. As you're releasing panel, you're gonna have tanks of Gaius suppressant that are usually attached to high pressure piping that have to be fairly close to the, uh, room or asset being protected.

What I see is the huge benefit is that say you have a Gasier suppression system for Daner data center, and there is, uh, you know, a wet pipe sprinkler system. Or if you'd like to go, uh, even further down the rabbit hole protection, uh, single interlock pre action system, then you have the aspirating smoke detection system, which.

Basically have the ability to sense the fire, uh, extremely early, uh, potentially release the Gasier suppressant and extinguish the fire, and then minimize the down the downtime for the facility by. Um, not having the water damage and the, uh, further interruption presented by, uh, drenching, your electronic equipment with water.

One design consideration. You have to be careful with, with Gaius, uh, suppression agents are, um, sometimes these can act as XYX. Um, so these inert gases, oftentimes at their extinguishing concentration. Um, can have the potential to, um, be dangerous to, uh, life and health. So you have to keep that in mind when looking at different, uh, design applications, um, you know, there are gases suppression agents, uh, carbon di or carbon dioxide is not a clean agent system, but carbon dioxide at the extinguishing concentration is, um, At, uh, immediately dangerous to life and health, um, concentration in the room.

So you have to think about what the space is being used for. If people are going to be occupying this space at a regular basis and all these things, when you're determining which, uh, system is appropriate, you know, one of the extremely limiting factors about clean agent systems is that room configuration and you know, how much suppressant you.

To, uh, be viable for these systems to be used. So if you have, uh, you know, a large room with high cloud storage, um, it's likely not gonna be a situation in which a clean agent system is going to be able to work for your application. Due to the cost and the amount of suppressant needed. I do think that it's, uh, a very important thing to be aware of if a client has, uh, you know, um, say a critical piece of infrastructure or they're expressing a great concern and fire and life safety, then there are definitely a lot of good applications for these systems.

In order to give the, the client an increased benefit in fire and life safety. You know, oftentimes I see, uh, erroneous pieces of fire and life safety equipment being put into place. Um, cuz people, you know, think, oh, the more equipment is better and you know, that's, that's generally not the case. I usually try to counsel people.

Um, to just not go placing fire dampers or, you know, combination fire, dampers, or other pieces of, uh, fire and life safety equipment that is not required in just willy-nilly because, um, there's not a real added, uh, benefit to fire and life safety or asset protection. If you're applying these systems without thinking about why they're used.

That being said, I think clean agent is an excellent system for, um, high value assets and providing the client a, uh, added sense of protection. Think that's gonna do it for this episode of fire code tech. Next time we talk about clean agent systems, I will try to get more into the calculations and some of the design considerations, but today I just wanted to go over some of the misnomers about the subject and some pros and cons about when to apply these systems.

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 this episode we are taking a deep dive into fireproofing. We get into topics like the codes and standards around fireproofing, UL certification validation, tunnel fire proofing and much more. In our first panel discussion for Fire Code Tech this episode is packed full with interesting content about passive fire protection. Are panel for the episode consists of Phil Mancuso and John Dalton, two career professionals in fire proofing and passive fire protection.

Transcription

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

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

Hello, welcome to fire code tech. This is episode 45 on this episode, we're talking about fireproofing. It's our first ever panel episode of fire code tech. And on this episode, our board for the panel consists of. Phil man QSO and John Dalton, Phil and John are career professionals in fireproofing and passive fire protection.

So in this episode, we dive deep on what are the codes and standards around fireproofing? What are the testing means and methods, and how do they differ across different occupancies and hazard groups like commercial occupancies tunnels, and also petrochemical facilities. This episode was really special and John and Phil are very passionate about their industry and promoting people, getting involved with, uh, fast fire protection and fireproofing.

So I hope you enjoy, don't forget to follow us on social media and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Well, Phil and John, I just want to welcome you both to the podcast and say, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Awesome. Well, For the listeners, this is the first time we've ever done a panel discussion.

And so, um, generally how I kind of start these, um, podcasts or interviews off is trying to get a little bit of background about, um, who we're speaking with to give the listener, um, a way to key in and, and have some knowledge of the, the person's history. But yeah. Um, would you both mind giving a little bit of exposition on, uh, how you found fire and life safety or how you kind of, um, got into your, into your roles now?

Um, sure. I'll go up first, I guess. Um, so, uh, it kind of fell on my lap, I guess you could say , um, The company itself, actually that I've, uh, been working for for about the past 20 years. I, I actually started in my, uh, teenage years just working during the summers, more like filing paperwork and different things like that.

And, uh, over time, um, they had an opening and they're technical and I figured I'd take, Hey, any, uh, temporary job, see how it works out. And, uh, here I am. um, there was a lot of family and so forth in the company as well, kind of working in various areas. So it was kind of an easy, uh, an easy transition for me.

And, uh, the rest is history. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. That seems to be a very common theme in the industry is, um, somebody, you know, has some exposure to fire and life safety, and then it turns out to be a good career move. So that's, that's uh, interesting to hear. That's a, that's a pretty common theme. Uh, John, uh, what about you?

How did you find fire and life safety? Yeah. Uh, it kinda landed on me in a, in a strange moment of a way. So I started working, uh, with the company in, um, 1999 and I was an R and D technician there for about two years or so. And I was doing a concrete pour because we have a, an ad mixture site and a, a bucket landed on me and I, I.

It it, I picked up to look to see who had dropped a bucket. And there was, there was a gentleman up there on the back of a concrete mixer and he and I got involved in a shelter match about his, um, his, uh, his work habits and dropping buckets. And about two days later, I get a phone call from, from, um, from this guy who, I didn't know at the time said here, I, I hear you're an R and D technician with some potential.

I'd be, I have an opening in, in the fire protection technical service team, if you want to come down and have a chat. And I had no idea who he was and until I rounded the corner into his office, and there was the guy who had been having a screaming match with like two days prior. And, uh, it just kind of started from there very similar, I think, uh, pathway to fill, like I started, um, pretty much sort of just answering the calls and, and, and, and like taking information and then going, finding out where the answers were.

And then, you know, over time as people retired or moved on, I just kind of, uh, Got promoted and moved up in within technical service and, and sort of I'm the technical service manager now in I role similar to what Phil had, um, obviously in competing companies, uh, for about the past 10 years or so. Wow.

That's I can't believe you, it literally fell onto you. It hit you over the head with the job. That's I'd never heard that one before, so that's interesting to hear that, John. Well, so I wanted to, you know, preface our conversation with today's topic centers around fireproofing and, you know, um, diving into this topic.

So for those who, you know, for those who might not have much knowledge about, uh, what this term means, you know, uh, in, uh, both of your estimation, like broad overview terms, what, what is fireproofing. Uh, I'll, I'll jump on that one, Phil, cuz you took the first one if you want. But, um, fireproofing is in our terms is a product that you spray roll tr onto structural steel or concrete in order to give it a fire resistance rating.

Um, we don't actually make anything fireproof as such, but it's the, the fireproofing that you see spread on the structural steel in buildings. It, you see it in on the under side of tunnels. You see it a lot in petrochemical, uh, facilities, just to protect the steel, to keep the building upright, to keep the, the building square so that the fire stopping products can work, um, to support the sprinkler pipes.

Um, there's a lot, a lot to it. Um, that that's probably it in the nutshell. Fill dunno if. yeah, it's it's, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. It's nothing, nothing new there . Um, but, um, yeah, it's basically a, uh, layer of insulation that you apply to steel. Uh, it can be applied in different ways. Um, it could be, you know, like a cementitious type material or a, uh, paint on material or mechanically attached material.

But, um, ultimately it's use is to keep the limiting temperatures down to a, uh, a specific number and, uh, or a specific value to keep the steel from hitting a, uh, a point of, uh, collapse. I see. I see. Well, that's, that's very interesting. So I immediately, after, uh, John contacted me, I was like, I gotta figure out the codes and standards around this topic, or try to find somewhere in the code where it's specifically required.

But, um, I wanna get your perspective before I just run my mouth for, you know, my code nerd business. But, um, when is this fireproofing required? I, I can understand there are probably many situations in which you might need these, um, systems to give, uh, specific, uh, fire rating to, um, different materials, but yeah, in either of your estimation, when are these systems utilized?

it's entirely code driven. Um, you know, the, everything is, uh, modern, the modern, uh, international building code, obviously an ever changing code. But, um, most of what's in there has been historically, um, similar over the years, uh, with, with, with various minor changes and tweaks over the years. But, uh, for the most part, what you'll find in, uh, what we're dealing with is chapters, uh, five, six, and seven of the code.

And, uh, um, the fire protection requirements are all based on the use and type of the building different, various, uh, aspects that are all put together. And, uh, it all kind of falls onto one table in chapter six that, uh, determines the hourly fire resistance.

very nice. Yeah. Yeah. There's a that structure fireproofing, I, I think is the most common area in which I've seen it in my career in a, in a variety of buildings. But, um, you know, uh, I guess depending on which version of the building code you're looking at, there might be, uh, more or less. Um, I was just looking through the 2015 edition and I found a couple areas, you know, I, I do a lot of hanger work, so, uh, at the company I'm with now.

So, uh, SIM cementitious spray for, um, columns and hangers is, is fairly common. Mm-hmm so, yeah, I appreciate you talking about that kind of win piece of fireproofing. Right. And, and one thing to keep in mind too, is that even though everything's kind of backed by the international building code is everything all kind of walks down to the state level and then the local level.

So it's all, uh, It's all interpreted down the way, depending on, um, you know, who, who wants what, but it's, again, we're, we're dealing with, uh, life safety here, so we're all trying to do the right thing. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's such a great, uh, conversation point. I always try to express to people, you know, when they, when they come for solutions or asking what a system is required, I say, you know, do you know what you're dealing with in your jurisdiction?

Because if you don't, uh, I can't, I can't even begin to, to answer your questions. So I appreciate you touching on that point of the, of the jurisdiction and the, uh, local adoptions, cuz it's so important. No problem. But so I wanted to further go on in the discussion and you guys touched on a couple of different types of these fireproofing solutions and, and kind of what the intent.

Is for them, but I'd like to speak more specifically about, um, the different types of, uh, solutions. Um, you said, uh, you could, if you can travel it on, if you could spray it on, but, uh, I was taking a look at a couple of your, um, company's websites and it seemed like there's kind of like four, uh, broad types of solutions, but yeah, I'd love to speak about those more detailed, um, in specific sure.

I'll, I'll swing at that. Phil. Um, there are sort of two main types of fireproofing. There is the sort of more traditional, which is cement and gypsum or gypsum mixed in a bag with a binding or as a binding agent with a pumping aids and, and mold inhibitors and a few other bits of fufu dust and stuff like that.

You mix it with water and you spray it onto the steel that's sort of by far and away has been the most common traditionally around the world. Um, It it's been around in various forms for quite some time. And there hasn't really been a huge development in that over the last 30, 40 years or so. Um, and then I suppose the younger brother of that is the, um, is the esent fireproofing, which is often sort of referred to assent paint, which is a product that expands and forms an insulating char when it's exposed to heat.

So they're, they're the, probably the two by far and away the most common types. We also see board products. So for instance, gypsum wallboard is an excellent insulator, uh, for the steel, there are specific mineral fiber type boards that are also used the leather most less, uh, much less common than say the, the product that you sprayed comes in a bag mixed with water or the ENT there to by far and away, the biggest, they would probably account for 95% of the fireproof and sold around the world.

right. And then there's various different. Each segment can be broken down further depending upon the, the environmental conditions in which it's going to be exposed. So if you have a, uh, an oil R in the north sea, that's gonna be exposed to really severe winter weather for nine months of the year, you tend to speak typically will have a, a really durable, epoxy type insent that can withstand a lot of environmental degradation.

Or if it's an interior conditioned office space where it's hidden behind a, a wall or above a drop ceiling, that's a much less robust product. Um, and then everything in between. Wow, that's interesting. So you could probably break it into seven or eight different product type categories, and then most companies will have products in each segment.

Huh? Wow. I guess I spend so much time focusing on the interior aspect of the buildings that, uh, I don't, uh, think of that fire rating on these exterior pieces of equipment and or structure that, um, might take a beating. That sounds like a pretty harsh environment, you know, on the, on the north sea with the petrochemical facilities, uh, it sounds like, yeah, you'd need a different tool for that.

Application's pretty interest the fires. Yeah. The fires that they're gonna be exposed to are much less severe. So they, the product on the interior of the building, it's going to be exposed to an, a TM E one 19 type fire, which is a relatively slow burning fire. It's typical to the ISO, a 34. Um, and it's not, you know, it's been around a hundred years, mimics how wood burns as opposed to a petrochemical fire where you've got this huge initial blast of heat, um, reaches 2000 degrees FN height after five minutes and maintains that temperature for as long as you're raining is it's a much more severe fire.

Uh, similarly. Fireproofing products used in tunnels that they have a different fire test curve, which is probably the most severe of them all that'll reach 1,350 degrees Celsius, um, which is an extremely severe fire. And so it's, it's, there is a huge variety of, um, pathways to achieving a fire resistance rating, depending upon the type of fire and the type of exposure of the product.

Wow. Yeah. 1300 degrees Celsius is ripping hot. That's that's crazy hot toast. Your marshmallows on that. yeah. Toast your house on that, but, uh, no. Uh, so you talked about a couple of, uh, ASTM standards, you know, and that's probably something that is, uh, hyper critical for these applications are the, um, listing agency standards in which these systems are tested.

Uh, would you both mind, uh, speaking about a couple of these more common, um, standards that are really important for fireproofing and for people to understand when trying to apply these solutions? Um, I guess, uh, I'll take that one. Uh, uh, there are various, uh, standards I'll, uh, you know, as John was alluding to before, uh, I'm gonna I'll stick with just the, the, the standard ones, but, uh, there are various tests that can be used, um, throughout the industry, uh, depending on the material that's being used.

Uh, the two most common are gonna be the, uh, AST ASTM E one 19, or the, uh, uh, UL 2 63. That's that cellulosic, uh, fire curve that John was alluding to earlier. And then, uh, once you start getting into the Hydrocarb. You get into UL 1709, which was a much more severe test on top of that. There are other various tests as well that can be done for the petrol, for the petrochemical and jet fire blast explosion.

Uh, there's all different types of physical property tests and things that the, uh, uh, the materials have to withstand, uh, weathering. Uh, we can go on and on, continue to talk about that. Uh, maybe on another, uh, another time, but, uh, uh, you have tunnels, uh, that's the, uh, RWS the, uh, Rick water stat, uh, test it's, uh, all different types of, uh, all, all various things depending and, and test depending on what the end result.

Um, needs to be, but, uh, you know, the majority as John was mentioning earlier, I think the majority of what we're dealing with here is gonna be primarily, uh, the cellulosic end hydrocarbon end. Um, you know, the hydrocarbon end has been, uh, changing a lot more recently. I would probably say more so more or less the commercial, um, aspect of the business, but, uh, you know, just, uh, using, you know, kind of, kind of moving toward, uh, different, uh, products types, um, that are a little bit more durable, but, um, those, those are your primary, uh, uh, factors that are used in terms of those types.

Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. I've never had the opportunity to work on a project centered around a tunnel, but it seems like, uh, such a high hazard, um, and such stringent applications, especially in the seems like the EU takes tunnels, uh, extremely, extremely serious. They do in they're fire and life safety application.

They definitely do, but yeah, , uh, it's talking to go ahead. No, no, I mean, I, I was just, you know, you'd mentioned it like, so, um, we do a lot in tunnels, like tunnels are one of our things and, and tunnels are one of those buildings. Like every, you know, every fire proofer or every engineer, you know, you sometimes you're, you're driving around or you're walking about, and you see a building that you worked on, you think, yeah, that was one of mine.

Or I did that. We did that. Tunnels are kind of like that, you know, they're just so big. Like they're huge. Civil engineering works, that when you, when you're walking down a tunnel and you're looking up at your fireproof, and it's one of those sort of career defining moments where like, no matter what part of fire protection you're in, whether it be sprinklers or, or, uh, smoke movement or whatever, it's like a signature thing.

Tunnels are just, they're, they're all inspiring to work on. But they're one of those things, because, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's a difficult time in terms of the tunneling fire protection world, because there's a lot of moving parts to it. Um, especially with sort of the development of, of electric vehicles and, and autonomous driving and stuff like that.

It's kind of fraught with risk and, and because the, um, the, the, the, the dangers are so great in tunnels, it is a kind of, one of those ones where you kind of, you're always checking yourself. You're always thinking, did I do the right thing on this? Like getting somebody else to look at your work that that review was big.

On the tunneling side, I buildings like a fire story office block. They're very similar. They're all kind of the same. Whereas tunnels are ones that give you pause. I agree. And, uh, I agree exactly with what John just said. And you know, when it comes to the commercial structures, you pretty much have, uh, standard UL designs.

Sometimes you move off of those a little bit in terms of engineering judgements, but it's all very straightforward. Uh, petrochemical takes it a step further, but, uh, tunnels, um, uh, from the initial design phase to the project start in completion could be five, 10 years. Um, sometimes with some of these, uh, projects and the amount of paperwork, the amount of tests, um, um, application instructions and just every, you know, uh, dotting every ti uh, I crossing every T.

Everything that's in there is just very extensive. And, uh, I, I, I agree with what John said is, you know, you look at it and then you see the final result. It is definitely awe inspiring, uh, to actually see it once it's all said and done. Wow. That's awesome. I love hearing about that from you guys about, um, I have some projects like that in my life, but, uh, it's uh, the only thing I would compare to, um, in my experience is that hanger work, you know, such a, such a greater impetus for fire and life safety and so much, uh, specific design knowledge where you have to really understand what you're doing.

Like, I'm sure you guys would say, you know, you can't just walk into tunnel fireproofing. If you don't have significant experience and that you just would get. You'd get your lunch eat. And so, um, it's, it sounds like that is, uh, your guys' experience with tunnels. And I love hearing about that because, uh, kind of the most severe and biggest fire and life safety, uh, challenges are, uh, the most difficult and the most rewarding, um, when done.

Right. So that's really neat to hear you guys about talk about those. And I, you know, we like our, our standard fire curve is the as TME 1, 1 9. And, and we do, you know, between our companies, we've probably done thousands of fire tests and it's the same fire test all the time. It's a standard size furnace standard size beam.

You might play around with it a small bit in terms of the loading on the beam or whatnot, tunnels it's, it's generally speak in a different fire test for every, every project. Any to tunnel of any size will want their own fire test because their concrete's gonna be slightly different than it. That becomes a thing.

And you know, you're sitting in the fire test lab and they, they turn the gas on, they turn the heat on, and then all of the work that you've done for years, designing your, designing your system and, and looking for it, it's kind of, you're just sitting there waiting. And I often think it's, it's like when, you know, when my son was born, I'm just kind of pacing back and forth, kind of waiting for something to happen.

And you're just sort of looking at the monitors and you think, oh man, yeah, this is, but it, it really is sort of a stressful three or four hours that you're walking back and forth, peering into the furnace, you know, seeing what the thermal couples are reading and, and an exhilarating time. Like it, it really is.

I often find that when I like after a fire test for a tunnel or. It, you just, you just have to sit and just stop and sit down and, and kind of calm yourself a bit because you're so stressed out for so long, you know, making sure everything has gone wrong. And, and, um, there's a, there's a saying in, in fire, in our side side of the fire protection that, you know, the only way to win is that I'll test them.

And testing is so important to us and to, to everybody in this field that, that once it happens and it's over with you are so relieved. You're so provided. It's gone well, its not done worse than if it fails with a couple of minutes to go spend all this money. Oh my. And you don't get anything. Yeah, that's, that's crazy.

I can't imagine the stress of having to, uh, be in that situation. I've had big acceptance tests before that have felt like that, where you have trouble sleeping the night before and you're pacing in the morning and you're looking at everything and double checking your testing documents, but that's awesome.

It sounds like a, quite a momentous occasion when you pass a test. But yeah, it'd be great to hear a little bit more about that, that testing process, since it seems like it's so integral into how the business of fireproofing operates. Yeah. So, so when we, when we do it, um, typically speaking, what we will get is a like on the RS or, or any of them, like, I mean, if you, are you talking about in commercial construction or are you talking about sort of on the hydrocarbon Petro tunnel type side of things?

I mean, you could just speak to either broadly. I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell, tell you the difference between, uh, the applications or the testing, but yeah. And whichever one in specific that you would like to, to go over. I mean, um, I have more interest in, uh, the, the tunnel stuff sounds very interesting or that, I mean, I don't get a chance to do as much petrochemical stuff, but I'm sure there's listeners who have experience in that too.

So, uh, whatever you'd like to go over, uh, John, Phil, I mean, if you want, I'll take the Petro and RWS, if you wanna take the commercial sure. Go for it. You can start. Okay. Well, so, um, the, the. I Phil will touch on it a bit, but generally speaking, when we do E one nine type fire test or something like that, we will go to somebody like underwriters, laboratories or Intertech.

Um, they're the, the two big players on this field in the United States and Canada, and then maybe go to Warrington or effect this in Europe. And, um, tho those fire tests, the commercial ones are fairly straightforward. You don't really see a lot, the ones for the, the, um, the, the hydrocarbon, the jet fire type tests.

They are visually very spectacular. So if you can imagine a, um, you have a, uh, a steel box about a meter square, and it's positioned 60 feet away from a, um, uh, a flame shore, I suppose, is probably the kindest way to putting it. And they, they. you, you fireproof it, you, you term a couple in, you're trying to make sure that the temperature on the backside doesn't exceed a certain temperature.

The temperature on the steel itself doesn't exceed. Typically speaking for us, it's a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, 5 38 sea. That's the temperature, which steel will begin to lose its ability to carry the load. And once it begins to lose its ability to carry load it's curtains really quickly, once it starts to soften it, it will be gone within a couple of minutes.

Right? And if you've ever seen a, the aftermath of steel in a full scale fire test, that's, that's behaved where badly or hasn't gone. Well, it is amazing how to form. It becomes, it is just big U shape hanging down between the supports or it is snaked. And, and so what, on the, on the jet fire tests are the, are the RWS tests.

These are huge samples. Um, they're visually very arresting in that you, you have, some guy goes over with a, with a, a, a. Uh, a lit rag or something like that, lights the gas. And then within a second, this gas is shooting 60 feet across the, uh, across the, the, the, the test area. And it's impinging upon your sample and it'll just blast away a temperatures in excessive 2000 degrees FHE for, for as long as you can get it to go hours.

And then you kind of start pacing back and forth and, and you're trying to, you can't really do anything at that stage, but it is a, uh, it's a very spectacular, uh, fire test. It's same with the RS test. It's the RS test is a furnace test, but it's a huge sample. It's, uh, one meter wide, three meter long curved, like typically you would see in the tunnel and they apply a load to the top of the curve.

You fire proof on the underside of it. Obviously you let it cure. And then they, they, they like the furnace close the doors, and all you can watch is the thermal couples. And you're again, you're trying to maintain. So on the, on the RWS test, the ability to carry the load is obviously hugely important because you don't want the, the segment to fall in on you, but in tunnel fire tests, one of the things that it's, it's not really just about temperature it's you wanna stop the concrete from Sping.

So when you look at big tunnel fires that have happened, like the tunnel ti, uh, fire test between England and France, the Mount Blanc fire, uh, Italy, France, the, one of the things that the firefighters commented upon after our survivors did was that not only was the smoke and the extreme heat dangers to them, but the Sping concrete.

So the Sping concrete, the concrete that's exploding as it's exposed to these super hot temperatures. Poses a danger to the firefighters and to the people trying to escape. So we have very different criteria than the E 1, 1 9 UL, 2 63 commercial fireproofing. Um, it's not just a case of a temperature race, but there's also various sort of bits and pieces.

Um, one of the things that came about say post nine 11 was the ability of fireproofing to withstand the blast. So for a lot of, um, a lot of these fire tests that we do on the petrochemical side, we will position the sample, um, in a blast area, they will direct, uh, uh, a, a blast or the, a blast impact onto the sample, examine the sample and then light the fire and see how it does after a blast.

So we have a, a very varied type of pass fail criteria within, within the fire proofing community. It's not really just very straightforward. There's a lot of. Stuff going on and, and there's no real on the Petro and the, uh, the tunnel side. There, there is, there's no codified requirements. So a lot of projects will have very different requirements.

So certain projects will have, they want to do a blast test, then followed by a, a, um, a jet fire test. But during the jet fire test, they want the fireproofing to be impinged upon by a, a hose stream, sort of replicating what would happen with a rapid cooling and heating that you could expect to see if a firefighter were to come across this situation with these hose.

If he hits the, the extremely hot fireproofing with the water from the hose, will that negatively affect the fireproof and will the impact of the water knock the fireproof and off the steel will the sudden decrease in temperature and then, and then increase in temperature, will that affect the fireproof?

And so it's a, it is a very, like the testing side of it is very interesting and, um, That's the sort of thing that gets you outta bed in the morning is that sort of testing. Wow. Phil, that's fascinating to hear about you talk about the variety of tests and the understanding of the fire science of the different, uh, um, type of applications.

Yeah, that was, and there's definitely a lot more involved as John mentioned with the, uh, petrochemical in the tunnel, but when it comes to the commercial side, it's, uh, more or less, uh, um, replicating, uh, what you actually have on a, on a, on any given building construction. Um, essentially what we do as, uh, manufacturers is, uh, it's up to us to take a, a common construction assembly, whether it be a floor or a roof construction and, uh, uh, build that in a furnace at the, at the laboratory.

Um, again, whether that's the underwriters. Or UL, uh, Intertech effect, Warrington and so forth. And, uh, we're essentially building, um, I'll, I'll, I'll speak to the E one 19 and what we do at UL, uh, being that that's the most common, at least here in the, uh, in the, uh, states, um, we construct, let's say a floor assembly.

Okay. It consists of a metal deck. And, uh, what they'll do is they'll put a, uh, the topping, the concrete topping on it, exactly how they would build it on a job site, uh, with the welded wire fabric or the, or anything else that's in there. It's a specific concrete type, uh, density, um, compressive strength, everything like that is all followed.

Uh, we have to allow that to cure and, uh, below that supporting it, we is generally a, uh, now a four beam assembly. Uh, it's up to the manufacturer to decide what they wanna test, how they want to test it. Um, thermal couples are put on there to, uh, evaluate the limiting temperatures and, uh, A specific thickness is applied and generally they'll either test a high, low, or, uh, there's, there's, there's some calculations that's done in the background, but, um, uh, this is done with all the different type of materials, whether it's the cementitious or the ESC esent nowadays being the most more, you know, the, I would say the more difficult one to, uh, to deal with in past, just cuz you're dealing with, uh, different, uh, aspects of charring and uh, and stuff like that where you don't really run into that as much with the cementitious materials.

But, uh, uh, essentially all we're gonna do is we're gonna we're. Uh, construct the assembly. We're gonna load it, um, similar to how you, how traditional building would be loaded and, uh, conduct that fire test. And, uh, it's, it's a simple fire test. Uh, not much really happens during the duration. It's kind of a slow test, uh, for the cellulosic, uh, essentially the temperature, uh, in the furnace.

Uh, it reaches about a thousand degrees after five minutes, and then, uh, it slowly increases up to, uh, 2000 degrees Fahrenheit or, uh, 10 93 Celsius, um, over the duration of four hours, uh, or depending on whatever the, uh, you know, the final outcome or the expected outcome is. Um, and with that information, the laboratory will take the results and they will essentially create a, uh, a fire test or a UL design.

And in our case, um, there's, it doesn't sound like it's a lot, but, uh, it definitely, um, Definitely takes quite a bit to, uh, at least lately to, uh, you know, go from, you know, a design stage, you know, coming up with a new product or, uh, or, and so forth and kind of deciding what, what needs to be done competitively and kind of get in there and, uh, do all the testing and, uh, you know, keep your fingers crossed and pass.

Um, one of the big things too is, uh, actually following the, the building code, which refers to E one 19 and making sure that these tests that are being done out there are full scale tests. Um, there's a lot of, uh, smaller laboratories or other, other suppliers trying to come in and, uh, testing things, uh, to a smaller scale, non loaded, which unfortunately looks

It looks good on paper, but, um, uh, uh, but unfortunately it does not give the end result that's needed to actually meet building code. Been one of the more recent battles that we've been dealing with, thankfully, thankfully, successfully, but, uh, You know, the, the, the big key here as I, and I'll mention it, I mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again, is life safety and just making sure everybody is, uh, getting the end result that they need to meet whether it's code or, uh, or, or whatever's specified for the specific instruction.

Yeah. It's, it's very interesting to hear you guys talk about testing, cuz I know how, uh, costly it can be to go through some of these testing processes with these, uh, big organizations like, uh, UL. And so I know that that probably only adds to the duress of, uh, witnessing some of these tests and kind of formulating a plan and going through all these, I imagine that is, uh, uh, a big, uh, consideration in trying to get, um, one of these products through, uh, listing.

Um, yeah, it's it, it is. I don't, I mean, it's probably happened to you too, Phil, and probably to you as well, GU, but you know, we've had instances in the past where, so when we, we decide we're gonna do a fire test at UL, um, it's very, it's a lengthy process. They have to go and pour a concrete slab and put the beams on and the concrete's gotta dry.

And that takes about nine months and then you spray your stuff and it takes a month or two, then they've gotta find a spot for you to go into the furnace. And, and there was sort of, we had won about five years ago where we'd done all of that and the gas shut off. After four minutes, there was a malfunction of the furnace and, and, and they couldn't get it restarted.

And it, it became an invalid test. It happens, oh my gosh. so you've spent a year get getting to this thing. And all of a sudden it, it goes pear shaped, but. I was just, and then you've got to make the phone call because everybody's sort of waiting at home, wanting to know how'd you do? Yeah. yeah. Yeah. You spent three days.

Well, it was looking really great. Yeah. You spent days leading up to this, telling everybody how stressed out you are over this thing going down, and then it just goes sideways for something that you can even is outta your control. Yeah. And you're like, we have to do this again. And it's, it's a long process and they try and help you out and do it, but you're still, you're still, you know, they can't bump somebody else off their furnace because they messed up for yours.

And, and, but, you know, when you, when you talk about like the likes of underwriters and Intertech, you they're very expensive. Yeah. But you kind of get what you pay for, like you get, you get knowledge that they're not gonna put their thumb on the scale for you, that you, you know, that well, they're very expensive.

They are backed. Such a stringent adherence to the requirements of the standard and the building codes. They they're very thorough in terms of coming to make sure that, you know, the product that you're making is the same that you test it, all of that, like we know it's expensive and it adds a lot to the cost of the, the product that you supply, but the supply or the architect or the end user, you know, they know then that they're getting product that has been very rigorously tested.

And, and there's no, there's no small scale at UL. It's a, it's a full on fire test. It's, you know, 14 feet wide, 17 feet long, fully loaded. It's a, it's a monster, whereas it's not, you know, you know, when you're dealing with somebody like that, that you're getting, you're getting all of what UL brings and you're getting the technic.

Experience that UL or Intertech or factory mutual will bring to bear, you know, they, they are great organizations as much as we might grumble about them until the cost. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. No, I think that you're right. You know, we're, we're dealing with lives here, so it's good that we have a very rigorous process and you know, we're not, uh, cutting corners.

So yeah, I, I appreciate the notes on both sides, the grumbling and the saying, Hey, you know, you do give what you pay for in most aspects of life. So . Yeah. But, uh, Yeah, I, uh, we talked a lot about, um, kind of, uh, uh, ASTM and, and, you know, UL and some of these, um, big organizations, but I'd love to hear more about, um, I know that you guys have been, uh, involved in some professional organizations.

I'd love to hear about your, uh, community involvement and kind of above and beyond, uh, what you're required to do at your, at your day job. Um, just being a part of the fire and life safety industry, both of you. Sure. Um, John, you want me to go on this or I'm, I'm sure we can go back and forth on this cuz uh, John and I are generally involved in, uh, all the same organizations over the years.

Um, uh, when it comes to the, uh, sprayed fireproofing. I guess for the majority, uh, you have your testing labs, they have their own, uh, you know, small organizations for all the suppliers, but, uh, the big one now that's been, um, uh, growing substantially over the past. Uh, several years is the, uh, national fireproofing contractors association.

That's the N FCA. We're basically our in our industry. They're all specialized applicators. Um, you don't necessarily want to give. You know, everybody access to a life safety product, just because there's a lot involved on estimating and building, you know, the product products and applying them correctly and so forth, they represent you.

Right. So there are, there is an industry organization where they all get together and, uh, yeah, there's a lot of training, different stuff, involved manufacturers get involved and, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a very good, it's a very good thing for any industry to have. Um, you know, in my, uh, in the past, I was part of fire stopping for a while.

There's an similar one called the F CIA. Um, uh, so those are, those are generally some, um, very important aspects of any, of any building or, or any, any construction material industry. Um, one of the other ones that John and I are heavily involved in is, uh, ASTM, um, John, uh, John's the chair on our, uh, our, our main, uh, organization, the, uh, that's cuz I'm better than the face of it.

Wow. Shots fired. They do give me kind of a quasi sub chair of one of the things, but it's not really realistic. It's just kind of thrown in there that, uh, John, John runs the, uh, the S FRM side for the most part, the cementitious fireproofing. And I've been kind of involved with the esent, uh, side of it for the most part, trying to help develop a lot of standards.

As you know, John's job. There is easy, cuz he's fairly , he's dealing with a lot of, uh, existing standards that have been around for decades. Um, there is a lot involved to update those standards, keep 'em current with, you know, the ever changing, uh, uh, industry code and so forth. But uh, on the ENT side, we're kind of coming in from a clean slate and uh, we're trying to develop our own standards and uh, Sometimes, piggybacking on some existing standards that are out there.

Uh, that's kind of been my job over the last, I'll probably say 10 years. I, uh, I'm sure Mo many people would like me to kind of work on things a little bit faster and get things done. Unfortunately, I'm kind of working on my own schedule, but, uh, uh, you know, those, so those there's a lot in the background that, uh, that's that's involved is, you know, again, we're, we're supplying products that need to be tested and those standards also need to change, uh, periodically.

Um, so, uh, there there's, there's a lot in that and, um, I'm sure John can probably add to, uh, you know, those who were involved with, uh, ASTM and, uh, the real big thing. And I know John, you would agree with me on this is that we need to get more people involved, right? Absolutely. Um, yeah, that's gr you know, um, so to Phil's point, many of the standards that I look after, so, um, there's a couple that are referenced in the building code.

So CME 6 0 5 and 7 36. Talk about bond density and thickness testing of, of applied products. But there's a slew of other ones that are in there too, to talk about how to test and provide test reports to your, um, to your, uh, to the, to the third party. So the architect or the building specifier, or the product specifier will be looking for test reports, making sure your product is not damaged.

One of the things that, you know, Phil and I have constantly been trying to do with the ASTM is that ASTM standards evolve and they change and. They change because products change the methodology changes. Um, the raw materials may change the ability to test them changes. And, and it's sort of very frustrating to us when we, we make modifications to test standards and there's about 600 people on our that get the test standards that we work on every five years to have to be recertified.

We make a few changes to the standard. There is a flurry of people commenting saying we don't like this. We don't like that. Okay. Well then tell us what you would like give us some feedback at, during the course of our meetings as to what we, we meet twice a year, but give us some feedback during our meetings, we would like this standard to change.

It's very frustrating. As people manufacturers who put in a fair amount of our own time into developing and writing test standards that you, you write the test standard, you submit it to the TM, they review it, make sure it's it's legal and current. And, and then you get people who come out of the woodwork, who haven't bought ANTM standard for 30 years complaining about the fact that they can't get something done or that they're trying to test a product to a standard that was written in 1986 when it's gone through 12 iterations since then.

And we would like, I mean, we really like the testing agencies. To, to get involved. The, the people who come along and physically do the testing of the products, they're the ones that are using these standards all the time. And as I said, it is kind of frustrating that when you, you, your, your applicator gets a, uh, a nonconformance notice on a building because they, the testing agency has done something that hasn't been in the test standard for 15 years or 20 years.

That that can be a tough one. And, and, um, you know, to Phil's point, and I don't know what sort of your background is in terms of fire protection costs, but like you, can't not, everybody can just rock up and buy, uh, set of sprinklers and install it. You have to be certified to be an applicator. You have to, you, you want people that are competent to be able to do this.

And so the N FCA has been really making a lot of great strides in terms of, and, and, and underwriters of orgies to qualified applicator programs so that people who buy the product. Are qualified to install it. You don't want it to be like before, say in England, before Grandfield, it was like the two men in a van, right.

Was their reference. So that any two guys would've with a van and a ladder could show up and, and if they wanted install certain amount, certain aspects of the fire protection thing. So cladding, uh, not, not fireproofing because they have a scheme there, but there's, we, we don't want that. We would like to get away from that situation.

So I know most of the big players in fireproofing will not sell to qualified applicators people who don't know what they're doing. Um, whereas there are, you know, we, we would really like to see, uh, greater adoption of say N FCA requirements for, uh, qualified individuals that only you can only sell and install two qualified individuals.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point on qualifications. I think, uh, in general, in the fire and life safety industry, something that, uh, seems like a dynamic tension, you know, don't wanna make it too rigorous to where it's a, it's a barrier to entry and people, you know, can't make it happen, but you, you wanna get the, these situations where it's two guys in a van and you know, these kind of fly by night operations that are not doing the right thing out as well.

So yeah, mm-hmm, I appreciate you talking about that, John. Um, Yeah, it's uh, very fascinating. You, you speaking about the professional organizations and kind of the, uh, broad, um, goals and like trying to get people involved on the testing side and, you know, seeing these, uh, standards change and evolve with time.

Um, I'm a little bit more acquainted with how the codes and standards process change, but yeah, like what kind of frequency do these testing standards? Uh, change, if at all? I mean, I don't know how, how long have, have some of these been in place? Uh, the more common ones, some of them, um, the, uh, some of the more obscure ones have been around for quite some time.

And it's just a sort of re-validation every five years we have a vote on it and that people, there are some people who will vote negative all the time because they have a particular slant or they wanna see something included. Um, but the, the commonly used ones, the T E 6 0 5 TM. Uh, 7 36 even ASTM E one 19 and TM E 84.

They will change. We, we meet twice a year, every October and, and November, December and sorry, every October and every April. And they change, I would say in about once or twice, every five years, once or twice every cycle, you will see your modification to it or a change to it. Um, or a further adoption. So like, as Phil said, he's, he's taken on a, a whole slew of workload related domestic.

They change regularly. The, the problem, not the problem. The, the difficulty sometimes is that it it's a consensus they're there are consensus standards and they are like, in any like the, like the, on the sprinkler side, like NFPA 13 or, or I think you said your hangers is like STM or NFPA 4 0 9, right? They, those N F P standards.

Tend to be a bit more rigorous. Like they, those co I'm on the NFP 5 0 2 committee and, you know, it's a, it's a there's they're well attended and people are very invested in them. We would struggle sometimes to get more than 10 people at our TM meetings. And so, wow. It, the process can, I mean, we've before, like back in the mid two thousands, it would be just Phil and ice staring at each other across the table.

I do remember that room in our end though, but, um, now we do get much, it's much more heavily involved and, and we do get a fair amount of comment via email about them. Yeah. But because they're consensus standards, they, they, people can put the sort of kibosh to your development if they really want to. So if somebody objects and objects and objects, it can lead to.

A lot of like, so Phil has a standard in there at the minute, one of the inspection standards for the ments. And that must be on its 50th iteration. Yeah. Jesus. And it's not, it's not Phil's fault. It's just that every time you put something out, there's one vested interest or this vested interest who kind of draws the kibosh in and doesn't like the idea of shell versus should or something like that.

And it can be, it can be sort of many times over the years, I felt like trying it's, it's definitely a challenge when it comes to that. Um, and, uh, you know, I I'm working on the, the there's actually three practices, uh, being put through I'm working on the, uh, cementitious SFR M practice for inspection as well as the ANC.

And then there's also one being worked on in the background for, uh, boards and wraps. And, uh, yeah, anytime you put the stuff through, you think you've finally got it. And, uh, It goes through valid and, uh, you always end up with, um, some sort of comment. A lot of 'em are valid. Some people just have their own agendas.

Some people have you change something one round and then the next round, they also comment on the change that they made, which sometimes interesting . But, uh, we do run into a lot of it. It becomes a lot of politics, I guess, uh, internally and, and, uh, or, you know, the goal is to make everyone happy. And, uh, you know, when we're dealing with, uh, the inspections, you know, you're dealing with the inspectors, you're dealing with the suppliers, you're dealing with the construction managers and the construction teams.

So we've, we've seen a lot more, uh, attendance recently due to these, uh, due to these practices. And, uh, we're getting close. We're getting close. I, I guess I've been working on it for about three, four years now. And, uh, if we can keep it under a year, for it to get adopted, I'll be very happy. I just wanna get it all off my, uh, my desk, to be honest with you.

Wow, that sounds like, uh, quite a, quite a struggle there. Well, I was gonna ask, uh, if you wanted to tell people how to get involved, but I don't know if you want any more chefs in the kitchen with, uh, trying to get something through for three years and having people vested interests coming in and. And throwing a wrench in the plan, but, uh, okay.

The more the matter. Yeah. yeah. So if somebody who's listening right now wants to get involved or is interested in hearing about the hearings or proceedings, how would you go do that? I'm kind of acquainted with NFPA, you know, and, uh, how you'd throw in your kind of resume and into the pod and, you know, be considered for standards and codes, but how does it work for some of these, uh, different agencies it's relatively inexpensive, um, too.

And, uh, essentially you just go to astm.org for ASTM, you go on there and, uh, they have various different, uh, means for you to become involved. Uh, you could be, uh, you know, a supplier and engineer so forth. Um, um, in fact, I, I don't think there's actually a specific requirement, uh, uh, you know, to become a voting member and different things like that, that.

That that does vary, uh, but, uh, just to become involved and, uh, we, we would always, uh, suggest it for anybody. Literally just go to astm.org and, uh, follow the, uh, prompts to join. Uh, you would pick a, uh, you would essentially pick a specific, um, um, how do you want, how do you wanna say that John? We have E E five and E six.

So yeah, co and standard committee. So you have E five, which are the, uh, the fire standards and you have E six, which tends to be where we get into the, uh, the different, uh, physical properties and stuff like that. Oh, very good. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Uh, I sounds like something I might wanna get involved in and bug you guys more frequently about, but yeah, but, uh, so I like to end these episodes with.

Little bit on just the professional development or the current kind of climate of fire life safety. And you guys have talked about some, some interesting, different, common topics that are kind of impacting you in the field right now. Like John was speaking to, uh, electric vehicles and, and battery alternative fuel vehicles and how that's a, a challenge for tunnels, or I had the thought of, um, I don't know how you, uh, both are responding to, um, mass timber or, uh, wood construction becoming more prevalent, um, around the world.

But yeah, I'd love to hear about what you guys are both seeing as trends in the industry. Sorry, not to seed the pot there with my own ideas on what I'm interested in. Uh, yeah. Wood timber or, or wood timber. Yeah. Timber construction. Um, timber construction does have a concern for us. Yeah. Um, for, for any number of, sort of, um, Any number of reasons, the biggest thing.

So there have been some fire tests that have been run detailing the use of timber that will, you know, it, it sort of sustain the ability to sustain the load. Nobody really cares about the temperature, right? Temperature is important, but if you're in a building, you're not really worried about how hot it is, it's really hot, but whether it's gonna come down on you and, and the, the thing that like the E one 19 as a fire is it it's used everywhere.

Like, so whether it be here or in Europe or in the UK or whatever, it's, it's the same fire test curve, the slightly different in terms of the term couples that are used, but it's the same. And, and so they run at according to that curve and there's very, very little leeway allowed in terms of how hot or cool it can get relative to the curve.

So they either turn up the gas or turn down. Right. And, but it doesn't really reflect how buildings burn. Now there's far more plastics in buildings than there were a hundred years ago. The, the, the thing that concerns us a small bit concerns. Me is that when you're doing steel or concrete, you're not contributing any fuel to the fire.

The, um, with, with mass timber, you are, you're contributing a huge amount of fuel to the fire. Now you can get on and on and on beyond that and say, okay, well, we're going to do this and we're gonna have a better sprinkler system and all of that. And, and the second thing that, that concerns me a small bit about it is this that, so anecdotally we know that there are issues with respect to different products that are used.

The glues that are made may not always be the same. So you're gonna put 'em in fire rate construction. It's not just a case of making them and putting them in there should be fairly strict quality controls of respect to the types of glue that's used the type of lumber that's used. So if you've got Northern white pine, which burns really well, is it the same as having an eight by eight section of, of white Oak.

Probably not, it's not the same, but so there's, there's all of this thing. It's just, okay, it's just it's wood and it's fine for us. The steel is all a sin. If 58, 36, they're all much of a muchness in terms of the fire resistance ratings. And we know we've a long, long record of it. I like the idea of wood.

My fear is that as soon as there's a big wood fire, eventually there will be that you're going to have a problem. I know, you know, we, we see the NFPA magazines and stuff. Wood is a Arsen Lovett, right? Even in my hometown of Walham Massachusetts here, we had a huge fire like four or five years ago, right.

Wood building, almost complete burned to the, and that that's my concern is that that you're going to have an issue with wood. That the first time there is a big wood building fire, you're going to have. Big recoil away from it because of the fact that it's going to burn. Now you can put fire retardants in there, you can do all sorts of stuff.

But at the end of the day, the, the, the raw material itself is combustible. And I would like to see, I know there's a lot of vested interests sort of weighing heavily that it's the best thing ever. Yeah. I wouldn't live in one . Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate the exposition. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Phil? What are your, what are your thoughts on, uh, trends or you don't have to double down on timber.

I liked John synopsis. I mean, no, John covered that pretty well. I won't, I won't touch on that. Um, I, John and I are both on the same page when it comes back, when it comes down to that. So we'll, we'll have to wait and see, I guess, um, some of the other big things is, uh, you know, in terms of our industry is again, trying to make sure everybody's doing the right thing.

Um, again, there haven't been any revolutionary changes in fireproofing in the testing standards, but. Things evolve. Um, John, uh, I'm sure you'll agree with me here. Uh, some of the, one of the big things that happened, and I'm not gonna cover it in detail, cuz this can take hours, days, weeks to, uh, try to explain, but uh, dealing with things like load restrictions, um, that's a big change that's happened in the fireproofing industry over the last, uh, five years or so I would say, um, making sure, uh, the buildings, uh, and the fire tests used are based on the construction, the steel that was tested again 8 30, 6, 8 50.

Um, a lot of this involves restraint restrained or unrestrained. We won't touch on that. Um, they, these all kind of work together in making sure that the end user is, is, is, uh, putting the product on to actually meet modern building code. Cause that's, that's the key, uh, building code tells you what to do.

They tell you the fire rating requirements, depending on the, the individual building type use height area, no matter what it is, um, you know, it, it all comes down to that thickness that is put on that steel and the durability of that product. That's put on the steel, making sure everything's following building code.

And, uh, you just wanna, you know, you, John spoke earlier, uh, John and I, uh, that, you know, the people who install our products, they're, they're generally a trained contractor. Uh, you don't want anybody getting in there. And, uh, typically, uh, if anybody kinda walks in and says, okay, Uh, you know, I'm now a fire proofer today and, uh, this is what I'm doing.

I'm now installing fireproofing. Um, they generally weed themselves out after getting in trouble. , um, typically expensive mistakes for them and not only them, uh, the general contractor, the owner, because, uh, ultimately their mistakes end up, uh, rolling down the line, I guess you could say. Um, so, so again, the big thing is, is making sure everybody is, uh, getting on the same page and, uh, load restrictions, full scale testing, proper patching.

Uh, that's another big thing is making sure you're using the proper materials to patch fireproofing. Um, each manufacturer has their own specific material and, uh, the only items that can patch those materials are the same material or an approved patch. So, uh, that's all, some something that's, uh, changing slightly in the, in it's been changing in the industry over the past, uh, several years.

So, but besides that, it's, uh, It's a piece of cake. If I, if I could double down a small bit or, or just sort of highlight another thing that I see gust, that that is, it's a trend for us. Mm-hmm um, it is sort of in terms of fire, uh, fire protection engineering. Um, so it is not a widely, um, discipline. Okay.

And so I'm lucky I live here in, in Massachusetts. And so Worcester Polytechnic is just out the role for me. And, you know, you've got Maryland and I think Cal Berkeley and, uh, Oklahoma state do something, but it's not really widely taught. And so there's a real sort of lack of understanding within the fire protection engineering community about.

fireproofing about the fireproofing that we do. So I, again, I apologize, but I don't know your background, but, um, I was there much a, was there any emphasis at all? Because I know from talking to people who, you know, graduates fire protection engineering graduates from WPI that they don't, they don't have anything, they don't do any fireproofing at all.

Fireproofing of structural steel is not a thing. It's not thought there, it's not, as far as I know, not thought in Maryland. And we come across a lot of fire protection engineers, both Phil and I, and, and probably our, uh, colleagues and other companies who have never had anything to do with fireproofing of steel.

Yeah. And, and. The thing that's kind of pushing, like one of the big macro things that's pushing in on this industry is performance based design. So we see a lot of, sort of move towards that, where people are going to engineer the fireproofing out, gonna remove the fireproofing in lots of areas. And a lot of times the engineers who are doing these analysis have no real experience with fireproofing of steel.

It's a, it's a paper exercise. And we would probably, I think, like to see a little bit more education of the fire protection engineers to, um, to, to understand a bit more about the fire protection of structural steel, the fire ratings of, of foam plastic, that's where we play. There's, there's, there's a real lack of knowledge.

Um, not only education obviously, but a real lack of knowledge of that area in what we do. Yeah. I think that's a great point, John. Uh, you know, I went to formal schooling for, uh, Fire and life safety at, uh, Oklahoma state. So, uh, even in that program, I, I wanna say, you know, we covered the topic of fireproofing, but very, very limited amount of, uh, you know, knowledge.

And, you know, my background is, uh, as a fire protection engineer on the design side. Um, and you know, I've been involved with, you know, like four, 500 projects over the course of my career. And you know, how many times I've gotten into the nitty gritty on fireproofing is, uh, infant small. So, um, I think that you're right.

Um, we need to do better about, uh, facilitating this education piece. And, uh, I love talking with you guys about it and, um, kind of getting some more information out there for people who want to know about the subject. So I think that's a great point. But, I mean, there are lots of people that, like, there are lots of knowledgeable people out there, but, but it would be great if one of the schools that's heavily involved in fire protection engineering, they'd maybe give a course, they tend to do it more like the structural steel, like the, the structural engineers, I think do some of it, but there's not really, you get some people, Kevin Alba, I think has a, uh, joint license.

Mm-hmm but you, you, you really kind of, you don't see it that often you don't see PE se too often. And, and there are the people that we would want to see doing a lot more of the work in, um, in this field. Yeah. You know, I think it's an interesting topic because, um, across the nation, at least I can speak for the us.

Um, there's a real shift between who does the, the fireproofing or the fire stopping, you know, uh, smaller to medium size firms might have, uh, an engineer do it. And you know, maybe some firms have their architects, uh, specify, um, building construction and fireproofing. And then, so you kind of get everything in between that spectrum.

Mm-hmm , uh, maybe some firms have the structural guy more involved or not involved at all in that option other than to make sure that it's there. So, yeah, I think, I think you could get, you'd be surprised how many people, um, and how many disciplines touch that, uh, fireproofing, or maybe you wouldn't be surprised.

I don't know who I'm talking to here. Yeah, I did see of talking to somebody recently and they were talking about, um, the amount of new fire protection engineers, every. Is so small, you know, it's like 250 or something. I, I thought I saw that only 250 new fire protection engineers every year, which I don't really think there's any goes anywhere close to satisfying the need.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I can speak to the program that I graduated from. We were only producing about 45 graduates and about, I'd say maybe only probably a third or less of those go into actually being fire protection engineers, you know, they might go into environmental health and safety or go work for a petrochemical company and, you know, or do loss prevention for a FM or a UL.

So, I mean, yeah, I think that the, the need for knowledgeable people is you guys have stated is exorbitant. And, you know, if people want to get involved, there's so much opportunity out there for people who want to do the work and, um, be a part of this process. Didn't Russ Harvey go to Oklahoma state. Was he an Oklahoma state?

I believe it might have been. Yeah. Yes he did. I believe it was Oklahoma state. And, um, I, so Russ Harvey is a colleague. Yes. Colleagues of he's a colleague of sales. Yes. And, and, and, you know, the one thing that I'll add to what John said is, you know, a lot of people when they're looking for a career path, especially, you know, in the younger age, you're always looking for that niche industry.

Right. Um, fire protection is one of those. And, uh, you know, you can, uh, you know, the one incentive is it's it's niche. You can get into it and, uh, you can make a good name for yourself and you can be very successful at it. So, you know, that's, that's one thing that I'll, I'll definitely say is, uh, get in now we'd like to have more people involved.

Um, and, uh, you know, it'll only make for, uh, you know, a better industry and everything moving forward. Yeah. It is, it is a great industry to work in. Like it really does have a lot of really highs to it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. There's so there's a lot of opportunities and, you know, for people who are, are good at what they do and in, uh, firing life safety.

So that's awesome. Well, good to end on a promising note, but, um, I just wanted to thank you guys so much for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed this episode. Um, thank you very much, guys. That's great. 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 safety. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time.

On episode 25 of the solocast series we are talking about smoke control systems! In this episode we strive to answer questions about codes and standards, common occupancies with smoke control systems, and critical definitions about smoke control systems.

https://www.csemag.com/articles/how-to-use-nfpa-92-to-design-smoke-control-systems/

https://www.constructionspecifier.com/smoke-control-getting-it-right/

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 episode 26 of the solo cast series. Today, we're talking about smoke control systems in our continued pursuit to detail every aspect of fire protection engineering. Today, we're talking about smoke control, which is a rather difficult topic on today's episode. I want to answer questions like what are some critical definitions in smoke control?

What kind of spaces in occupancies or smoke control systems require? And what kind of codes and standards do we have around the topic of smoke control? Do me a big favor and subscribe. So you never miss an episode and give me a follow on social media. I promise I'll post about some neat fire protection subjects.

Oh. And if you could give us a rate and review on apple podcasts, all right. Enough of that, let's get into the episode to frame our discussion today. I just wanna say that, uh, I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with smoke control systems. Um, just how to avoid them. Mostly there are engineers and firms that specialize in these kind of systems because of their complexity and difficulty.

If you finish this episode and you're still confused, that's okay. I'm gonna drop a couple links to some interesting articles that detail these systems more completely. So let's get started with some definitions around smoke control systems. What is a smoke control system? Well broadly there are two types of smoke control systems, smoke containment systems and smoke management systems.

Let's start off with smoke containment. Smoke containment is defined in N F P 92. The standard for smoke control systems as a smoke control method that uses mechanical equipment to produce pressure differences across a smoke barrier. The smoke containment category contains systems that include stairwell, pressurization, elevator, pressurization zone, pressurization, vestibule, pressurization, and area of refuge pressurization.

So as you can see here, the common theme is, uh, pressure differential across the smoke barrier or the intended smoke proof membrane. The second major category of smoke control system is smoke management systems. Smoke management system is described in NFPA 92 as a smoke control method that utilizes natural or mechanical systems to maintain a tenable environment in the means of egress from a large volume space or to control and reduce the migration of smoke between the fire area and communicating spaces.

A quick caveat that smoke control systems are not smoke and heat removal systems like you would see in warehouses where they have smoke and heat venting. So let's talk about what occupancies and spaces might require these systems. Since we frame the discussion with what are the different types of smoke control systems.

The IBC has specific provisions in chapter four, which dictate certain occupancies and or spaces that require smoke control systems. There are some similarities and differences from occupancies that adopt the international building code or the NFPA codes and standards. So you need to understand which one the jurisdiction you're working in has adopted the majority of the discussion today will be centered around the international building code approach.

It will provide value and insight, even if you are working in an occupancy that has NFPA required smoke control systems. So chapter four, section 4 0 3, 4 0 4 and 4 0 5 have specific building features that may require a smoke control system. These chapters respectively are Highrise, atria and underground buildings.

So let's go through these each in specific. High rise. Building is a building that from fire department access exceeds 75 feet as defined in the international building code. So there are a couple different situations in section 4 0 3 that might require a smoke control system. Specifically these spaces that are common to have smoke containment systems are the elevators and stairways in Highrise building.

There's an option to provide a smoke proof barrier or a smoke barrier as defined in NFPA 92, but sometimes in lieu of the smoke barrier, it is, uh, chosen by the design professionals to utilize a smoke control system. Let's move on to atria. This is one of those things. Um, and if you haven't looked at it, I'd recommend you go take a look in chapter two of the international building.

There are some definitions in here that, uh, require when you have to implement big sweeping changes for fire protection systems, atria and Highrise are two of those definitions that have huge impacts on building design. so the definition of atrium is in chapter two and it states in opening connecting two or more stories, other than an enclosed stairway elevators, hoist ways, escalators, plumbing, electrical, air conditioning, or other equipment, which is closed at the top and not defined as a mall.

Stories used as this definition do not include balconies within assembly groups or mezzanines that comply with section 5 0 5. So the important part of this definition is the connecting two or more stories. So think of, uh, you know, a grand interest to a building might have, uh, an atrium. So if you take a look at chapter four, section 4 0 4 for atrium, uh, you can find the specific provision that requires a smoke control system.

After you've determined you have an atria. So 4 0 4 0.5 smoke control smoke control system shall be installed in accordance with section 9 0 9. Which is the chapter in I B C chapter nine, section 9 0 9 smoke control systems that talks about the specific details of the requirements for that system.

There's an exception here at states in other than group I two and I, one condition, two smoke control is not required for ATMs. That connect only two stories. So there's a small exception for. Uh, occupancies other than institutional occupancies, moving on section 4 0 5 0.1. Uh, which is the underground buildings requirement.

So in section 4 0 5, it describes, uh, what kind of underground structure would require a smoke control system? 4 0 5, 4 0 5 0.1 general states the provisions of 4 0 5 0.2 through 4 0 5 0.9. Applied to building spaces, having a floor level used for human occupancy, more than 30 feet below the finished floor of the lowest level of exit discharge.

So this is a similar requirement to high rise buildings in which the measurement is based on. The level of, uh, exit discharge. So, so in high rise building it's fire department access, and then for underground buildings, it's level of exit discharge. So we've paired a fire and life safety feature with a building dimension.

In this case, it's 30 feet, uh, below, below grade or 30 feet below the lowest level of exit discharge. I wanna speak briefly about NFPA 92, which is the standard for smoke. so NFPA 92 is important because it details. The calculation means in methods as well as some of the component architecture that is common for smoke control systems.

Like we talked about before, there are a number of ways to design smoke control systems. So it's a bit more open ended than some systems, uh, in fire protection engineer. Smoke control system is a giant integrated system that that is the fire alarm system is integrated with the H V a C system in order to, uh, create a tenable environment or to pressurize a space.

The standard details, not only critical definitions and calculation procedures, but also the important documentation and testing applications that are common to smoke control systems and, uh, very complex. So, uh, as another note, Uh, many jurisdictions have additional provisions for documentation and testing required for smoke control systems.

For instance, the state of Oklahoma has a detailed procedure for what is required for. New smoke control systems, documentation, calculations, uh, engineering reports. And, um, so the documentation and commissioning slash testing of these systems can be substantial. So that is another, uh, good reason why these systems, um, should be avoided if possible.

The cost of these H V a C units and the, uh, substantial added fire alarm system component architecture is quite a cost add. So. If possible, um, and you can avoid, uh, an active smoke control system. Um, generally architects and, uh, owners will like to another reason for the importance of documentation for these systems is that fire protection engineering documentation can.

Uh, exceedingly hard to come by for existing facilities. And these are very complicated systems, uh, that require oftentimes, uh, large amounts of makeup air coming from. Uh, potentially unconventional places like windows or doors that open on fire alarm signal. So if you don't have detailed documentation of the specific sequence of operation and what is required to happen when the system engages it can be.

Dang near impossible to figure that out, uh, retrospectively for a facility when you're going to modify an existing smoke control system in the future, here's a list of some of the documentation required in NFPA 92, the 2021 edition. This is in chapter seven more specifically 7.2. This section is called detailed design.

So in 7.2 0.2, this section describes what features are required in the design report that you need to have as a deliverable for the creation of this system. And this is a bit of a strange system because there's a lot more interface than, uh, usual in between the FPE and the contractor installing. It's a, it's kind of a joint, um, Procedure to develop this report.

So some of these components of the report are the system purpose, the design objectives, design approach, building assumptions, location of the smoke zones. Um, some of the critical factors like, uh, pressure differences, um, fan and duck specifications, calculations, damper, specs, inlet, or exhaust size information.

Detailed method of activation smoke control system, logic, or operation, and how the system is going to be commissioned. So this is kind of a full life cycle analysis of this fire and life safety system. And you can tell by the detailed nature of this report, that it is a substantial amount of work to complete.

One of. Reports, I think that's gonna wrap it up for this episode on smoke control. We'll readdress this topic in the future, and maybe I can get somebody on the pod who can address more specifically calculations and some of the performance based engineering that is common for these systems. Thanks for listening.

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

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

On episode 44 of Fire Code Tech we are speaking about the engineering team with Paul Inferrera. On our second episode with Paul we get into the history of NICET as a certification. Tune into this episode so you can hear tips for taking the fire alarm NICET exams.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcription

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

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

Hello, all welcome to episode 44 of fire code tech. On this episode, we have Paul impre. Paul has had over three decades of experience in the fire alarm industry and has plenty of great insight on the subject. We speak about the history of N set exams and what it means to be an engineer or an engineering technician, and how these two terms collaborate.

We also talk about Paul's work at the Cape fair community college, where he teaches two classes on fire alarm in Bo over a thousand questions in help for preparation of the N. We finished the episode with a couple questions on fire alarm and a brief overview of what Paul is seeing as trends in the industry.

If you want to hear more about Paul's career, go check out episode 10 of fire code tech, which was Paul's first appearance. In that episode, we talk about the origin of Paul's working life, some high level topics on basic fire, alarm fundamentals, and much more about the Cape for your community college. Do me a big favor and hit that subscribe button and follow us on social media.

Also, if you wanna rate and review fire code tech on apple podcast, that would be a huge help to the pod. Well, Paul, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. Welcome back to fire code tech. Yes, sir. Guess I'm glad to be back, man. It's been, uh, I guess it's been, I don't think it's been, uh, yeah, it's been a full year.

It's been more than a year. I think I talked to you just after the pandemic started. I can't believe it's been that long. I guess we talked a couple times since then, but yeah. How have things been since, uh, the last time I talked to you? Well, as always pretty busy, I, you know, do a little teaching online and I also have a, um, do fire alarm design.

Um, so we've really been slamming with, with the design work and, uh, of course the work comes the, uh, the training, so they kind of go hand in hand. Very good. Very good. Well, I wanted to start off since we have, in case people wanna go back and listen the episode where Paul talks a lot about his background and some really good topics on fire alarm and the Cape fear community college.

We're gonna touch on some of those topics again, but if people want to go back and listen, that's episode 10, so you can. A bit more about Paul's background, but for the purpose of this conversation, uh, we kind of talked a little bit, um, off air about covering a little bit of the history of technical institutions and, uh, in specific NSAID, since you have.

Ambassadorship with N set. Yeah. Paul, would you, would you wanna break into this conversation with telling the listeners a little bit about the history of technical institutions in specific, uh, N set? Oh, sure. Um, actually. Technical Institute think go back pretty far just after, I guess, world war, you know, one in 1918, um, industrial and educator representatives met in, uh, 1923 to address the lack of technical education, uh, during this meeting the term.

Technical Institute was adopted. And that was to designate two year schools that offered, uh, technical education. Um, technician was another term that was adopted at this meeting. And that was to describe the graduate of the technical Institute. Um, these institutions evolved into today's community college system, and some are still dedicated to technical instruction, kinda like, you know, ITT and all those technical institutes that you see commercials for on TV.

Um, later our study was, uh, done of technical institutes, uh, now was conducted between 19 28, 19 30. And the results were published in 1931. And that study, uh, listed the areas of technical education that were unique to technicians. And that study was applicable for the next 25 years later at the end of world war II.

And, uh, and towards the beginning of the cold war that started in the 60. Wow. That's very interesting. I would've, uh, I don't know what I would've guessed, uh, about when these institutes started, but, uh, it's fascinating, um, to hear that beginning of that journey, you know, um, about the world wars have an impact, you know, uh, what kind of.

Other impacts, do you think, uh, like world war I and world war II played on the, the, the labor and just kind of the impact on, um, engineers and engineering technicians. I mean, that sounds like a really fascinating topic. Uh, yes. Um, actually I guess prior to world war I, uh, United States was primarily a, an ag aggregation economy where a lot of farmers and not too much industry, all the industry was basically in England and Europe.

Uh, of course, world war is kind. Slowed them down a bit, and that really helped out the United States to become, or to begin to become an industrial power. Um, of course, all wars in history have contributed to the advances in medicine and machinery. And this byproduct was accelerated in world war II. Uh, the world went from horses and single shot rifles, uh, to mechanical vehicles, aviation and advances and electronics that develop radar and early versions of the computer.

Um, of course this equipment need to be maintained by individuals with technical training and the United States deemed the lack of training as a national emergency, uh, and create the war effort. Um, these advances in technology were, uh, finance way into automobiles and kitchen appliances. And towards the end of world war II, the government were, were competing with the private sector for facilities, instructors to provide training.

So, um, basically it was world war II and all the technical advances and all the needs to, to produce and maintain that equipment basically was the, the birth of the technician. Wow. That's awesome to hear about. Yeah. I, uh, I started my career off, uh, as a contractor in, in getting a nice head certification.

So it's, uh, really fascinating to hear about the, the history, you know, um, I mean, I feel like we've talked a little bit before about some of the advantages of, you know, technical certifications, but yeah, I'd love to hear some more from you about, you know, kind of the different things you can expect, you know, uh, beneficial to your career after you get, um, one of these technical certifications, one thing the most.

Common feedback. And course in the day I was doing the expo circuits and the ni ambassador thing. And you got a chance to meet the public and, and meet aspiring technicians. And like said the most common feedback was when, you know, I, I know what I'm doing. Why do I need to become certified? Um, But, you know, the advantage of certification is to establish and demonstrate proficiency.

So, uh, like your doctor, they may have went to med school, but you wanna see a license on the wall from a state exam, they passed to practice. So it generally gives. I guess the public, a little sense of security that, you know, somebody's proficient in, in what they're doing. Um, and also having a nice certificate demonstrates you're proficient in your field and will enable a higher wage.

Um, companies with nicer certified technicians can compete for higher value projects. Uh, for example, all government projects will list nice at certification in their specification. Um, and the public assures that life safety systems will work as design and installed and probably maintain. So. I guess any certification tells two things.

One, it tells the qualifications of the person holding that certifi certificate and it tells the, uh, public or the person that's getting those services that they're done by a qualified individual. Yeah. And I said, certifications are similar to a lot of certifications that, uh, that I don't believe they have an education requirement, but they do have an experience requirement and a testing requirement.

Is that correct? No, absolutely. Um, I. So it is nice that it is a two part process that evaluates experience and technical knowledge, uh, persons who, which becomes certified will participate in a computer based exam to evaluate their knowledge upon passing the exam. The candidates experience will be evaluated by N set.

Uh, I, that offers four levels of certification. With incremental experience requirements. Uh, level one is six months. Level two is two years level three, five years and level four is 10 years. Um, upon satisfying the experience requirements, uh, nice that we'll deem that candidate to be certified and issues a certificate.

So, um, you can pass the exam, uh, but of course you have to have the knowledge to back up, uh, experience to back up that knowledge as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it can be challenging for people. I know that when I was coming out of school and I had, uh, people who were early in entry level positions and. They didn't have, um, kind of formal schooling in, in fire alarm or fire suppression.

And so it was really kind of daunting for them to, to pass the NSET. So, yeah. So I was gonna suggest that. People who maybe don't have formal schooling and fire and life safety. Um, maybe now would be a good chance to talk a little bit about, we talked about it in our first episode, but, um, speak a little bit about your coursework at.

To Cape your community college and how that could be leveraged if you don't maybe have the same, um, formal education around fire alarm, um, in order to pursue a I set, uh, certification. Yeah. And of course, actually the school of life is gonna gonna teach you a lot and that's. You know why the experience experience is part of that certification.

Um, but there's people, I guess, like me that are good test takers and they can read a book and pass a test and not even know what they're testing on. So that's really why. The experience comes into play. But again, those people that are well experienced, they may not be proficient on the codes and, and things in the book.

And, you know, sometimes codes read like the dictionaries really dry and really boring. And, um, so our course will, will kind of expand on that and give you kind of the layman's I guess, presentation, um, of that material. And, um, Each we have two courses, the, the 1 0 1, the 1 0 2 and the, the 1 0 1 is geared towards a nice at level one or two technician.

And the alarms 1 0 2 is more design based, uh, designed for that level two that wants to go to level three or level three or four, uh, and focus on design. And, but the big, I guess, value of the course is that we have over a thousand questions in both courses that come almost directly from. The, uh, N F P a codes and standards.

So the feedback that we get often that these people will go through this course. And when they come out on the other end, they just realize that they're much more proficient in, in these codes and standards because they've taken, you know, like I said, almost a thousand test questions, and eventually it's gonna stick.

So, um, it's this really good course. And it's been, been in development for almost 10 years now, so we've definitely put out a bunch of technicians. Wow. That's awesome. You know, the, the number one piece of advice I give people when they go to take, uh, certification exams is do as many practice problems as you can, because the test is, you know, uh, questions or practice problems.

And the more comfortable you are with answering questions based on the criteria that you need to use for the test and the better you're gonna be at the exam. That's awesome that you guys have such a huge, uh, basis of questions for people to get keyed into. Yeah. I said it's a, it's one of my pride and joys cuz the, um, I said you don't really, I guess realize it, but um, of course you don't wanna memorize things.

You wanna know where to find things. And that's like I said, once, that that course will do is it'll get you into that code book. And um, if you don't know it on the test, you'll definitely know where to find it pretty quickly. Yeah, I think that's so important and something that comes in time with like, experience like you were speaking to before, but also the, the course could be helpful with is providing that base knowledge.

That's kind of hard to get, you know, NFPA can be a little bit intimidating at first, you know, understanding the composition, the layout and the, just some of the easy tips and tricks about how to navigate the, the codes and standards. So I think that's also a benefit there. Yeah. I think as far as, you know, the fire alarm technicians, the big, the big question is, you know, is it electrical code or is it fire alarm code?

So, um, that's part of the practice you'll get is you'll, you'll read that question and you should be able to determine right away which code you're gonna go to just from a few keywords on that question. Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. Yeah. I wanted to ask, um, you know, some stuff for me, a fire alarm isn't, uh, harder than fire suppression, but I wanted to ask in your experience, what do you see, um, students having the most trouble with maybe that are just kind of breaking into it?

Um, yeah. Or how you've seen them kind of overcome that, um, you know, just kind of struggling with difficult subject matter or how you kind of coach them through that. I believe the most challenging aspect is probably not even. And associate with their technical experiences, actually the taking the test or they taking the exam.

Um, of course any exams is intimidating and, um, the more practice you get and the more confidence you get, of course, the better you're gonna perform during that exam. Um, so the, the, our course, our, our courses online is computer based. So you're gonna be in that testing environment to where you're taking a test on the computer and have to.

Hopefully, you don't have to reference the code book, but, um, our time test or, or will put you in that same environment that you will be when you take that computer based test. So you shouldn't feel as anxious or, or nervous because you did almost a thousand questions already. So, um, people said the exam easy after the class, which that's part of the best, you know, the best, um, feedback we can get.

Is that the nice exams easy, cuz it certainly was not easy for me. . Yeah, that's awesome. I think you're right. I think that confidence piece is so huge. You know, how good do you feel about the coursework going in? Can be big, cuz sometimes you'll get a huge case of the nerves going into, uh, An exam. And you might realize that you wasted time or you, you know, weren't working the way that, you know, you should be.

So I think you're right that test taking acumen and just kind of getting settled in and, you know, getting calmed down is, is a big thing. But I wanted to kinda circle back to our discussion on, you know, certification. And, and I said, and just talk a little bit more about, I've heard you say this term before and, uh, but it's the, the engineering team I I'd really like to, to break into, into what that means.

I think that's an important term in our. Um, it, it certainly is, of course, you know, no one does any one thing by themselves. Um, it's usually a team effort and every, every person that team has their role, um, the team concept was actually defined again, back in, in the fifties, um, in the 1955, a paper was published that describe the members of the team.

Uh, it basical. Divided him into three, three team players. It was the, the scientist that conducts research that leads to new ideas, uh, an engineer that developed designs, procedures, and practical applications for those ideas that were developed by the scientists and the technician are tasked to build, operate and maintain that equipment that was, uh, designed and developed by the engineer.

Um, eventually N S P the national society professional engineer. Created a committee in 1958, uh, to establish recognition standards of engineering technicians. Um, this NSP committee became permanent and evolved into now what is called, uh, the national Institute for certification in engineering technologies or friend

So it. Wow that I like hearing about that that's so I hear people get this confused a lot, or, you know, maybe people who are not so well versed in, in the industry are just getting in the, in the industry might not understand, but what do you see as the difference between a technician and an engineer? Uh, well, in the early stages of establishment technical training, uh, some engineers fought, uh, the effort fears that they would lose their job to technicians.

Um, and I believe there was a, um, one of the gentlemen that did these studies and, and producing these papers actually went on a, uh, a little speaking tour to basically just, um, present his report, uh, that he, that he made. And, um, An engineer, you know, stood up and said, you know, we gotta stop this, this engineering technician thing before we all lose our jobs.

And the response was, if you're doing engineering technician work, you need to talk to your boss because you're not doing engineering work. So. It is a team effort. You know, we're not gonna put engineers out of business. Um, and several organizations struggled with the definition of a technician and their place in the process.

Um, it was generally accepted that engineering technicians were graduates of associate programs and technology. However, most cadets were not nationally recognized. Uh, the first definition of the engineering technician, uh, came in 1953. And describe them as what, who can carry out in a responsible manner, proven techniques, especially prescribed by professional engineers.

Um, the relationship was further refined in the creation of the engineering team concept, which we discussed earlier. So, um, there's engineers and there's technicians and, you know, they do their thing and we do ours and together we produce a product for the public. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And you know, I've heard you say before, you know, if you're doing a, a job and you're afraid that an, that an engineering technician is gonna take your job, then, uh, maybe you need to take a look at your job because you know, an engineer and an engineering technician or not doing the same kind of work.

So I thought that was interesting before I've heard you talk about that. Yeah, of course in our world. It's, it's, it's pretty basic where I like to make things, things basic in that the engineers they're gonna use the building codes, Andi classifications, to determine the extent and the type of protection that's needed for that, that structure.

And then once they do that, that, that, uh, plan will go to a technician. And I say, what I do is I connect the dots and make it work. So that's basically what I do is I'm not. Playing engineer and, and laying out this system, I'm just taking his, his layout and, uh, and making it work. So can't do one without the other.

Yeah. Yeah. I see that. Uh, I've had somebody speak to me recently. In, uh, fire suppression, there is a big disconnect between, you know, what the engineer provides and what is necessary for the technician to, um, construct the system. Um, but I wanted to ask you, uh, what are your thoughts about, um, what the fire protection engineer or what the electrical engineer provides?

Um, is it sufficient or do you see. Gaps that could be bridged for making this engineering team more sound well, um, to make it the most sound. I think that all parties would need to understand their role in the process. Um, Some engineers may get their feelings hurt and think that we're doing their job.

And some technicians may think that the engineers, you know, um, don't really know what they're doing, but I think together it, it is a, it is a team effort. Um, because you know, we technicians will use the code book and, and we'll apply the code in a prescriptive manner where the engineers will use their education.

And, um, that experience. To solve problems, cuz you know, as an engineers, do engineers solve problems and once they solve the problem, then the technicians will learn those procedures and those, uh, how to, how to do that, how to stall it and maintain the systems. Yeah, I think that's a good point. You gotta gotta work together as a team and not get hurt feelings or you know, about people stepping on toes.

And most of the time in the best teams that I've worked with, it's people working together or the contractor, you know, not trying to. You're just being on the same page, uh, as a team is, makes it the best solution for the, the building owner and the occupants. So that's a good point. So I wanted to just, uh, You know, we talked about the last time we got together some different topics, like, um, transmission and signaling for fire alarm systems.

But, um, yeah, I just wanted to just kick around some different fire alarm topic. You know, I've had the opportunity to onboard a couple people recently at the company that I work with. One of the things that, uh, I have to teach 'em early on is a little bit about notification device layout. Um, particularly it gets pretty difficult when it comes to, um, speaker layout or.

Or, uh, like mass notification or voice evacuation systems, but, um, yeah. Do you typically use like a software for fire alarm and mass notification system layout, or you do hand calculations for, um, the layout of those devices is just a curiosity. I had. Um, well, the last time I did hand calculations was on the nice a exam because they don't let you use your laptop.

But, um, , I would say, well, a hundred percent, percent of the time. I would use industry spreadsheets or programs that are designed, uh, to calculate the, the load and the draws. Um, of course they do come with disclaimer that you need to know what you're doing, and they're not gonna take liability if it doesn't work.

Um, but they do come from the manufacturers. So in my opinion, that's better than anything that I can produce. Um, and you know, you also get a nice, nice, pretty report with the manufacturer's logo on there. And it is something. You know, I guess it's gives the HJ a sense of, um, Confidence that you've actually done your due diligence to produce these calculations as far as the, the voice evac.

Um, and that, that goes back to the role of the engineer and the technician because the engineer would establish thess or the acoustically distinguishable spaces. And that's the spaces that you have to have intelligibility for the system. They really wouldn't go around with a, with a voice meter and tell us, you know, what levels to, to set these devices at.

Cause pretty much, a lot of times they'll just show a device and then I'll have to, you know, do my. My work and figure out how bright the, uh, the device has to be, or how many, you know, amps that the, uh, speaker needs to be provide, you know, adequate intelligibility in that space. Um, there is software, um, I think system sensor has the evac or E software, um, that was developed in Germany.

And it was actually started out as a, a software program to set up. Speakers and for concerts and large venues where you wanted to have a good quality sound that would distribute throughout the facility, uh, that later evolved into a piece of software that system sensor developed that allows you to actually lay out these speaker systems and, and things of that nature.

Um, the software is pretty pricey. Um, I used it once on a trial version, but that's really. In the engineer realm. Um, I, I would believe if it was a design build to where we were working hand in hand with engineers to lay that out. I, I think that software would be a good tool, but basically the, the engineer's gonna is gonna establish the spaces where they want eligibility and I'll take my, my codebook and, and my knowledge of the, the devices to, to set them according.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. It's just, uh, you know, with orange DRS, it just seems like it's a pretty straightforward equation. And then when you get into mass notification and voice evac, it just is more difficult. So I appreciate you talking a little bit about that. Yeah, I guess the most difficult thing, and actually the first step is decid.

What spaces that you want intelligent building, because you're not gonna do that throughout the entire. Um, so if you've got a mechanical space with lot of loud compressors or something, you're not gonna put a speaker in there cuz no, one's never gonna hear it anyways. So what you'd do in that, in that sense, you would put a horn STR in that space and that would get the occupants out to an area where they could hear voice instructures like the hallway.

So you, you, so say the guy was in there working on a compressor and he'd seen the, the STR going off, uh, he'd run out to the hallway. And then actually that's when he would hear their speakers in, in the voice evacuation. So you would use horn strobes in conjunction with speakers to, to move people around and get 'em to where they could hear voice instruction.

That's a good tip. Yeah. Some spaces you're never gonna be able to get that intelligibility that, uh, mention of that software. Uh, you know, in order to model the sound made me think of, uh, I've done work on several aircraft hangers and you can almost never get intelligibility in these, um, very large kind of cavernous spaces with, uh, hard perpendicular structures.

Um, so that's a, that's an interesting tip. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I, and I've found, um, some people, you know, they just wanna crank up the volume and blast it throughout the facility, but like you said, you're just gonna get sound bounced and all around, and you're really not gonna hear anything. Uh, for me it's general rule is that.

You wanna place speakers in half the distance, the traditional horn stroke. So if you got, you know, horn strokes on a hallway and you want to go voice, you would probably put a speaker at, at half intervals, uh, between the two horn strokes at a lower, at a lower volume. So you have a nice even intelligible, uh, voice messages going down that corridor and not have one, one or two devices that are cranked way up to where it just bounces all over the, all over the, the surface.

that's a good tip. Yeah. I like that. So about twice as many speakers, as you would have horn strokes to get that, um, constant intelligibility. Yeah, I was, uh, you mentioned design build, but, uh, I just wonder for your firm, uh, what is the kind of ratio of how much you do work you do in design bid build or design build?

Uh, just outta curiosity. Uh, Yeah, I have my initial assumptions, but I don't know, uh, how that stacks up. Well, our, our target number is zero. Um, zero design build it's it's it's well, you gotta, you gotta find your niche and, and, and we're we are, we work under the direct supervision of a professional engineer, so.

We're not gonna strike out our own and start, you know, start up an engineering firm. And, um, and North Carolina recently changed things up to where in the past, you know, we would get a job. With nothing. And we'd we'd team up with an engineer and, um, they would lay stuff out and work with us and we would, you know, do the design and they would stamp our drawing.

And, uh, here recently, the North Carolina said, you can't do that anymore. If, if you stamp that drawing and you have to be on staff at that firm, um, you know, we do shop drawings. We can't, you know, we can't keep a, a engineer on staff full time cause they would starve. So we basically produce shop drawings.

We don't wanna get into that design build world. Um, like I said, we got our little niche producing stock drawings and, and, uh, that goes pretty well for us. That's okay. I don't think you're missing out on too much. That design build stuff can be really difficult unless you work for a firm that just that's all they do.

So I had the opportunity to do a little bit of both, but, um, it's. It's definitely a different gear, a different type of project team, team composition. Yeah. And you probably see those more in your, your suppression world because typically a suppression system's in a, in a facility that has high hazards or special circumstances that you can't really just open up a book and say, you know, do X, Y, Z, you have to get a, you know, risk analysis and engineer evolved.

And it's, it's, it's, it's a full blown deal. Um, so. That's through niche. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I'm sure it varies highly from system to system, uh, and you know, notification devices or. Initiation devices, but, uh, I never really, I'm always kind of, uh, using just rule of thumb guidance, but, um, how many devices typically do you see on like each notification device notification appliance extender panel?

I always kinda use 50 as a rule of thumb, but, um, I never get to do the. The actually calculations. I mean, I review the calculations, but, um, yeah, I don't know if you had some, uh, anecdotal, um, information on that subject. Yeah, again, that would be the, the role of the engineering technician. So, um,

it really depends on, on the, the manufacturer. Um, I guess. 50 devices. You probably think about a four circuit, you know, power supply. Um, that's probably about, I guess, six amps. So, um, we really never see the, the power supplies on a, on a project. Uh, typically they won't even tell you where the panel's gonna be and you'll, you know, work with the installer and the owner to establish those locations.

Um, With the new E D devices that are out, they consume, you know, much less power. So back in the old days of 50, that's probably gonna turn into, you know, maybe a hundred. Um, but it's not only the load. It's also the, the voltage drop. Um, you know, you could have, you know, 50 devices, but if they're running a mile, you, you're not gonna run all those devices on that circuit because you're not gonna have enough voltage, you got enough power, but you don't have enough voltage.

So that's really what, what the technician is gonna do. Or we do is we just, like I said, we connect the dots when we make it work. Um, and pretty much nine times out of 10, I can lay these things out and, uh, and won't get in trouble. It's that 10th time that you make an assumption and, and. Actually do the calculations and then get burnt.

But, um, yeah, I, I think you're, you're good with that, that ballpark, and that's a good starting out number. Um, but, but like I said, until you actually get into the calculations, um, and see that that's when your results will come out. Um, yeah, no, I appreciate that, that piece of guidance, that definitely helps me have some, uh, more information to make decisions on thinking about length of run and thinking about how, you know, close to the notification extender panel or the original fire alarm panel is from the most remote devices, uh, something to take into consideration.

So. Yeah. Uh, it's interesting too. You were talking a little bit about the, you know, the laws, uh, where you work at and, and how that kind of influences the role of the, of the engineering team. And, you know, the composition, I just, uh, yeah, I thought that was a great point. And how knowledge about your state or your legal entity that kind of governs?

Um, the, the different roles is really important in what you're allowed to do as a professional. Yeah. And of course that's, that's driven by the, the engineer because I don't get those memos. Um, and that actually came from the North Carolina board of engineering examiners. And, um, I believe what, um, prompted that action was that some, you know, some engineers will stamp a napkin if you pay 'em, um,

Of course, you know, they don't don't look at it or, or don't do whatever. So I think that's why they, they came up with that requirement to have both those people in the same, under the same roof. Cuz I guess in that sense, they're not just stamping a piece of paper. They're actually working with a technician or working with the, the design firm to actually let these systems out.

Um, and that really, that really you find those on the, on. On the smaller projects. And we'll see, 'em, you know, let's say somebody, you know, that there was a residence that was zoned commercial, and now that house is now a daycare and they go in and they wanna turn this house into a daycare. Um, well, what they would have to do is get an architect and an engineer and lay all that stuff out and then come to us and let us do the, the shop drawings and, you know, $10,000 later, they got a nice fire alarm design for a, you.

Small small business. So it's that financial burden. That's gonna put that small project or that small structure. Um, I guess it's gonna price them outta, outta a fire alarm system. And that's not really, really good when the cost is your deciding factor on protection. Yeah. Usually cost is one of the main factors, uh, like, you know, that you're always fighting against even for fire and life safety, which is remarkable as people who install systems to help save people's lives that were still, you know, Pairing stuff down to just the, the fewest nuts and bolts we can have just to the absolute minimum of what the code allows.

And they're still, you know, shaking us for, for, you know, not using any more conduit that we absolutely have to, or, you know, getting the, the pipe scheduled down to the thinnest that you can. Um, so yeah, I definitely hear what you're saying about price being a big factor. Yeah, many, many years ago, I went out on a, I was a, I was plant technician then and I had to go out, I guess we had a client, they had an, their insurance company came in and told 'em they had to get a fire alarm system else.

They're gonna raise their premiums. So they wanted me to go out there and kind of just see what would be involved and, and putting a fire alarm system in. And this was a, um, This place produced wooden signs. So they did a lot of woodworking and had, you know, lays and sand and stuff. And at one point there was, uh, Pau in the corner.

And I know my days of woodworking that saw us is almost explosive as propane under the right conditions. So we, uh, went in, did our little design, gave them a price, and I think it was probably. $6,000 maybe for the system and everything. And they said that it'd be cheaper to pay the premium on their insurance than it would be to put the fire alarm system in.

And I just said, okay. So, I mean, they made the choice to pay a couple hundred dollars a month, extra and risk having their place burned down. But I guess that's the choice I made, man. That is, uh, that's kind of sad and disheartening to hear that. Did a business owner would choose to that. But I guess, uh, it's just, like you said, uh, it can be cost prohibitive, these systems and in getting engineers and you know, or technicians on to install.

But yeah, that's a little bit disheartening. I mean, I understand the expenses is not small, but on the scale of. You know, a lot of the buildings that I'm working on or that I've worked on in the past $6,000 is, is pretty, is pretty small compared to, you know, what other trades have to pay to get their systems installed, you know, to a H V a C or some of these other, um, kind of more widespread disciplines.

That's, uh, fairly INP. Yeah, but not to consider the loss loss of live and property when there's a fire. You know, if you get sued by an employee's relative, because they died in a fire, that's gonna be a lot more than $6,000. Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt. Well, Paul I'd know, uh, uh, one more time or we should, uh, plug Cape fear community to college.

And you know, another benefit that we talked about before, but. Just thought bear mentioning again, is that it comes at a very, very reasonable price for people who are looking to, um, get some continuing education credits or wanna buff up on their fire alarm skills for the nice set exams. But yeah. Yeah, I think that's, uh, that's a great deal.

Yeah. We don't like to, to name names, but if you compare our cost per CEU to all the industry training on the market, we definitely have 'em beat hands down our, our 180 5 for our course. Uh, we'll give you 14.4 college credits. And, um, if you're gonna use that for your CEP, that's 45 CEP points, um, real quick.

And then you've learned something in the process. And of course your engineers can use those, use those for PhDs as well, ares. So we, we even, we even train engineers. Yeah. That's a good deal. I, I still need to, I still need to sign up. I was telling you last time, but I'm still serious about getting in there and learning something myself.

I'm sure that I got, plenty to, plenty to buff up on. Well, um, you know, we've, we definitely. Hurt some engineers feelings, but you know, that that's the whole point is that, that that's not their job. You know, their job isn't to know all the nuts and bolts of the far alarm code, because that's what we do. So, um, I worked at a company.

We had a FPE on staff when I was developing the, the curriculum and he took a couple test questions. Didn't do very well. And, but like I said, he was, he's an engineer. He wasn. A technician. So, um, just Google, uh, fast at C FCC, F a S T at C FCC. And it should pop up at the top and, uh, check out our website.

And we'll definitely, um, take you in April when the next class starts our next semester. sounds good. Sounds good. Well, Paul, what kinda to round it out for the end of the podcast, what kind of, uh, trends other trends have you been seeing in the industry? I know that it seems like we can't shake this, this COVID business, but, um, what else are you seeing in trends with work?

I know we've talked about, um, things being abnormally busy around. The end slash beginning of the year, like you, you were saying to me, um, on air at the beginning of the podcast, but, uh, what else are you seeing? Well, we were, uh, we're definitely seeing a lack of qualified personnel to, to install and maintain fire alarm systems.

So, um, I guess, I guess, like I mentioned, a lot of that COVID money was being shifted over to capital projects and we probably had more schools and colleges and we've had. 10 years of doing design work. So, uh, if you want to do fire alarms, its definitely work out there. COVID or not. Uh, fire alarm people are essential employees, but I think we're past that essential pandemic, uh, hysterics, but, um, Fire alarm technicians are in demand.

For sure. Yeah. I've been seeing across the board. It seems like there is just an absolute, uh, vacuum for people needing qualified professionals. Like you were saying, it just seems like everybody I'm talking to says, yeah, we can't find enough people to do the work. We can't find enough people to, to hire, you know, so, uh, I'm definitely seeing that on my side.

Yeah. And between me and you, if they keep waiting the wages, I might just quit my job and go back to installations. So

that's pretty funny, much less stress, much less stress. Just, just pulling, just pulling wire and putting fire alarm devices in. Yep. Yep. Sounds good. Well, Paul, anything else you'd like to talk about before we end it? Where can people find you at if they want to, uh, learn more about Cape fair community college or draw fire, LLC, I'll drop some links, but, uh, plug anything you got sure.

Just, just Google it. You'll they know where we're at. You can't hide from the, the big, big brother. Um, but yeah, it's fast. It seems to see, or, or Google the, the program and, uh, it'll definitely pop up there for. And, uh, someone LinkedIn as well. So it was hard to hide. sounds good. Well, Paul, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again.

And, uh, yeah, it was good talking to you. Yes, sir. GU I appreciate the, uh, invitation and we're always glad to share an, any knowledge and experience we may have.

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.

Welcome to episode 25 of the solocast of Fire Code Tech.  In this episode we are discussing the topic of carbon monoxide detection. On the first solocast of 2022 we break down the codes and standards around CO detection, when these devices are required and where these devices are located. To round out the episode the history of NFPA 720 to give a better picture of how to apply this life saving technology.

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 wall. Welcome back to Farco tech. On this episode, we're talking about carbon monoxide detectors. Carbon monoxide detectors are a complicated part of fire and life safety. So I wanted to speak about the codes and standard requirements around this technology, as well as speaking to when and where these devices are required and how they are installed before we get started in the episode, don't forget to subscribe.

So you never miss an episode. And follow us on social media. Also, if you could give us a five star rate and review on apple podcasts, that would be a huge help. Let's get the table set with some common misconceptions. First carbon monoxide is not carbon dioxide, which is the relatively inert gas that is sometimes used as a suppression.

The Google definition of carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless, toxic flammable gas formed by the incomplete combustion of carbon. So this gives you some idea in which these detectors are gonna be located, but I wanna start off the episode with. Where are these devices located or when are they required?

So like many topics in the fire and life safety code structure of the United States, which is how we've framed all of our discussions so far. We're gonna take a look at the international building code in chapter nine of the international building code for this discussion, we'll be using the 2015 edit.

Let's look at section nine 15, which is carbon monoxide detection. As we frame all of our code in standard discussions, you need to understand when these documents are applicable. After you've determined the applicability of the building code document, you can look at section nine, 15 carbon monoxide. In this section, you can find where these carbon monoxide detectors are required.

Sometimes when I'll be speaking with people about carbon monoxide detection, people will get confused and try to apply carbon monoxide detectors to all occupancies. Maybe if you've had some experience working on department of defense jobs, this might be a common misconception. If you take a look at nine, 15.1 point.

Which is titled where required in the international building code. You can see that only E I and our occupancies have a requirement for carbon monoxide detectors. What do all these occupancies have in common? These are occupancies with a greater impetus for fire and life safety, because there might be individuals sleeping or compromised individuals like young children in these occupancies.

It's important to think about the baseline methodology for why some occupancies have a greater focus on fire and life safety. Understanding the fundamental fire and life safety properties of specific occupancies is one of the key tasks of fire protection engineers. This specific requirement in nine, 15.1 0.1 states when required carbon monoxide detection shall be provided in group I one I two I four and R occupancies.

And in classrooms in group E occupancies in the location specified in section 15.2, where any of these conditions in section 15.1 0.2. Through 15.1 0.6 exist. So here's the big requirement for where carbon monoxide detectors and or alarms are required. Nine 15.1 0.2 fuel burning appliances and fuel burning fireplaces.

Carbon monoxide detection shall be provided in dwelling units, sleeping units and classrooms that contain fuel burning appliances or fuel burning fireplaces. So if you have a facility with EI or our occupancy and you have a fuel fired or gas appliance, you need to be thinking about carbon monoxide detection.

The other key part of nine, 15.1 through 0.6 is dwelling units, sleeping units and classrooms. Within thesei and R occupancies. These are the specific rooms and or spaces that are required to have carbon monoxide detection. Another piece of equipment that will require a carbon monoxide detection consideration is forced air furnaces.

Nine 15.1 0.3 states. Carbon monoxide detection shall be provided in dwelling units, sleeping units, and classrooms served by a fuel burning or forced air furnace. So this is a requirement that you'll see mirrored in the department of defense requirements for carbon monoxide detection, but also in commercial occupancies, which we talked about in which we have H V a C equipment that is in use of fuel burning.

There are a couple more requirements here for fuel burning appliances outside of dwelling units in private garages. But I wanna move on to the location of these carbon monoxide detectors. Nine 15.2 states' locations we're required by nine, 15.1 carbon monoxide detection shall be installed in the location specified in nine, 15.2 0.1 through nine, 15.2 0.3.

So this requirement is speaking about, okay, so we've determined that we need carbon monoxide detection. Where are these detectors going to go? Where are these detectors and or alarms going to. Nine 15.2 0.1 speaks to dwelling units. This section states carbon monoxide detection shall be installed in dwelling units outside of the sleeping area, in the immediate vicinity of the bedrooms.

So what that says to me is the carbon monoxide alarm and or detector needs to be placed within the immediate vicinity of the dwelling. and in accordance with the listed spacing criteria and performance data located on the technical documentation, we're gonna get into the standards portion of the application of carbon monoxide detectors here in a moment.

But I just wanted to throw that bit of information here while we're on the subject. The next section, when we're talking about the location. So this is a subsection. Nine 15.2 location. And that section is nine 15.2 0.2, which talks about sleeping units. This section says carbon monoxide detection shall be installed in sleeping units.

And then to caveat that requirement, there is an exception below and the exception says carbon monoxide detection shall be allowed to be installed outside of each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping unit. Where the sleeping unit or its attached bathroom does not contain a fuel burning appliance and does not serve by a forced air furnace.

So as a brief recap, let's talk about the subjects that we've covered so far. We've talked about, which occupancies are required to have carbon monoxide detection, that's educational, institutional, and residential occupancies in accordance with nine 15 in the international building. and then we've gone on to say in these occupancies, what spaces are required to have detectors and or alarms.

So we looked at dwelling units, sleeping units and classrooms in which we have specific conditions with fuel burning, enforced air fuel furnaces. And then most recently we just finished speaking about. In these rooms and spaces specifically, where do these detectors need to be placed? Moving on, let's talk about the standard portion of the codes and standards puzzle.

So the codes and standards, piece of carbon monoxide detection is a little bit tricky because it's changed over the last decade. Uh, pretty severely starting in about 1993, there was a petition to create a document specifically pertaining to the requirements of carbon monoxide detection. It was originally at a recommended practice until 2005.

And we're talking about an FPA seven 20. The name of this now deprecated standard is standard for the installation of carbon monoxide detection and warning equipment. I'm providing a brief overview of the history portion of NFPA seven 20. It goes on to state that the numerous revisions of the standard, including some important technical terminology and, uh, sort of location and placement advances that were made as the standard progressed in 2009, the document was completely extracted from NFPA 72.

At about this time, the fire protection research foundation made some discoveries through their diligent efforts in order to determine some better spacing criteria for commercial applications. The 2015 version of NFPA seven 20 is the last in existence. As they've basically elected to incorporate the requirements from NFPA seven 20 into NFPA 70.

In my opinion, this is a smart decision because a carbon monoxide detector is effectively a initiation device for a fire alarm system. And there are many such systems already covered in an FPA 72. This makes a little bit of muddy waters for incorporating codes and standards, because if you're looking at the 2015 edition addition, uh, the international building code, like we are for this discussion.

NFPA seven 20 is still one of the reference codes and standards. But if you're looking at the most recent version of the building code, or if you're looking at the 2018 version of NFP 72 or the 2022 addition of NFPA 72, you'll find that the carbon monoxide detection requirements are incorporated in chapter 17, which is initiating devices.

So I think that covers it for this edition of the solo cast of fire code. But I hope you enjoyed and that you'll tune in 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 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.

This week we are speaking with John Mackey. John breaks down macro-economic factors that are moving in fire and life safety. We speak about Li-Ion batteries, PFAS foam, NFPA 915 and much more for technology/trends. Tune in also for insightful knowledge about mergers and acquisitions. John speaks to several of his previous roles as well as his current position and founder of the Mackey Group.

Transcription

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

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

Hello, all welcome to fire code tech episode 40. In this episode, we're talking with John Mackey speaking with John, we get into some very timely topics, such as what are some of the big market factors that are moving for fire and life safety. John has a special interest in technology and where the field is going.

So I pick his brain about NFPA nine, 15, the standard for remote inspections. And we talk in depth about technology and how that's gonna change the way we. New work. John's current role at the Mackey group centers around helping companies facilitate mergers and acquisitions. We get into what does this mean for the fire and life safety space, as well as some other topics like the history around this subject tune into this episode.

If like me, you are interested in learning about some business development topics and some high level macro economics for the fire and life safety. Before we get into the episode. I just want to remind you, please subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Oh. And if you want to do me a huge solid, give me a five star review on apple podcast helps out the algo rhythm and let's get into the show.

Well, hello, John. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to fire code tech. Hey, good morning, Gus. Happy to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. Awesome. Well, I always like to get started with a bit on your background, John, would you mind telling me a little bit about. Um, your first role or so, or first couple of roles in fire and life safety and kind of how you found the field.

Yeah, no problem at all. Um, I, the very interesting path, I think, uh, and how I found myself in fire, the first half of my career was all in human resources. I'd worked in us manufacturing, uh, building materials, retail, um, I was working for Coors brewing company at the time out in Denver, Colorado at the brewery.

And, uh, got a call from a head hunter that said, Hey, we've got this great opportunity for director of HR in Marinette Wisconsin for Ansel, uh, being a Midwest guy, uh, an opportunity to get back closer to home. Uh, my wife and I, uh, explored the opportunity and. And took the leap and, uh, went to work with mark Vanover who at the time was the president of Ansel.

And, uh, I guess the rest would be history at this point because it's been a 15 year run, uh, in fire protection. Um, that opportunity, ed Ansel really exposed me to some of the, the best people in the, in the industry. Uh, some of them are still working here today. Mark Ross, Dennis Kennedy, uh, Dave Pelton, uh, and some have retired bill Smith, mark Vanover and, and many, many others.

But, uh, that really set the tone. you know, back in 2000, uh, 2006 is when that started. Um, and today, uh, I look back at that opportunity. It's just really transformational for my career and, and for, uh, you know, what I'm able to do today. So, Cool. Yeah, it's interesting. Uh, how you have a bit of a varied perspective.

Um, it seems like it's a common thread for people to kind of, uh, find their way into find life safety. But, yeah, I appreciate that little bit of exposition on, on, uh, your origin story. Um, I wanted to ask a bit more about, um, you know, some of those roles, you work for some interesting companies, and I feel like that, uh, has shaped what you're doing now.

Um, so I wonder if you would speak a little bit more about the roles you hold did or held, um, for Ansel and some of the other business develop. Kind of roles you had, uh, at, uh, Hillerin company. Um, or yeah, if you would just speak a little bit more about your career experience. Absolutely. Uh, yes, like I said, uh, the ANSO role was truly the, the gateway to, um, a really interesting career path.

You know, like I said, early on, it was all human resources. It turned out I was in the HR role. Ansel for about 18 months. And then Tyco went through a restructure and I was given the opportunity to, uh, lead a global merger. Right? So Tyco fire products, which was primarily the, uh, mechanical fittings and the sprinkler business was merging with the Ansel special hazards in the fire protection equipment business.

Um, and I was given the opportunity to lead that. I never really had a background in mergers and acquisitions. Uh, but I was the, the one person that really understood both aspects of the human resources function in Ansel, as well as the fire fire product side of things. And because I had relationships on both sides of the business, uh, Colleen LER, the president at the time thought was a great opportunity for me to, to step out of HR and lead this global merger.

And that really gave me a perspective of. Really understanding the bigger strategy for the fire business and how you build business models to support and drive that I was in that leadership role for about 18 months and traveled around the world. Really got to understand the fire market globally. And then the recession hit in 2000.

And, uh, we, uh, got through the first couple phases of the project and decided it was time to reallocate resources. So I rolled out of the merger team and into a regional sales P and L where I led the Eastern us, uh, across the integrated product portfolio. So sprint. Uh, fire extinguishers, uh, special hazards foam and even mechanical fittings.

And what I truly enjoyed about that opportunity is one really spending time with the customers and the end users of the fire products, uh, which was really, really insightful, but then being able to understand what we did in the, in the development of the strategy for the combined business. And then being able to be in a role where I was able to drive that strategy, uh, deeper into the market and did that in the field, really got to know the customers through that process.

Some of them are, are good friends of mine today. Um, and then also working with the sales team and, and a well run group of folks that you know, were really passionate about the products that they represented. And, you know, I'll say lifelong. You know, people in the fire protection space, you know, if it's special hazards folks or sprinkler sales people, um, it was really, really interesting to see what we're able to do from a sales perspective.

I left Tyco in 2012 of with an opportunity to go work for my largest customer, which was the Hiller companies, uh, down in mobile, Alabama. And I was at Hiller for about almost eight years. And while I was there, we led, um, all the M a strategy, uh, both, uh, identifying targets to help Hiller grow. And if you don't, if you're not familiar with Hiller, Hiller is the oldest fire protection contractor in the United States over a hundred years old.

Um, well rooted in the Marine fire protection space, but they were in a gross curve around commercial and industrial markets. Really going after the service space in fire protection. And they asked me to lead a number of efforts around the M and a, uh, the service operations and how we change the service model and the deployment of technology, uh, to meet customers' needs and to be able to grow the business quickly.

And then I left, I left Hiller in, uh, 2020, right before COVID, uh, to start a little consulting business, uh, where I. You know, advocate for the industry and help drive M and a, uh, into the markets. Um, either on the sell side, if you're a contractor looking to sell your business or on the buy side, if you're looking to, to acquire, um, and a number of other things, but, uh, it's been a fun couple years and helping drive some of those initiatives across the.

Wow. What a interesting time to be starting your own business last year. Um, was it just before the pandemic that you're kind of starting your own endeavor or when did that kinda happen? So I had, you know, kind of dabbled on a, you know, a little. Consulting practice on the side for a few years, just, you know, doing advising calls and, you know, just helping friends think through how to grow their business and, uh, not necessarily getting paid for it, but just, you know, being helpful.

And I feel it's important to help support each other in our industry and, um, fellows opportunity for me to kind of pay things. So I'd done that for a few years, but you know, officially turned the lights on the, on the office and hanging a shingle to say we're open for business that started in mid-February of 2020.

And as we all know, uh, the us came to a screeching halt, I think around March 13th or 14th of that year. And, uh, but I was very fortunate to have a client that was committed to what we were trying to. and, uh, we, we muscled through the first couple of months of COVID and, uh, for the pandemic. And then as we all know, the fire protection space, uh, came back, you know, full speed, you know, then to may and, uh, the rest of the summer of last year and, uh, spent a very interesting journey for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple points you talked about in your. Your kind of background and of load to expand upon. Listen to you. A couple of the interviews at the fire protection podcast. And, uh, was really interested to hear that you had a lot of insight for just, um, the market and the, the global and the national perspective on the market factors for fire and life safety.

So, um, I think that's really interesting. I'd love to speak with you about that. It was, it was unique to get a clip of what you were thinking in the midst of the pandemic. So I'd love to hear more about. What you're thinking now that, uh, we're looking at, um, I don't know if you can call it post pandemic, but, um, this, um, more sustained, um, kind of new landscape that we're looking at, but yeah, I'd love to hear more about the, what you're seeing in the market on, uh, in a macro picture.

well, sure. Yeah. I, I think we learned, we've really learned a lot about our industry. Number one, and number two as contract owners, you know, what drove success and helped them. Get through the pandemic, especially the uncertainty of what was gonna happen on the short term. And then what we learned throughout the year.

If I remember back to that fire protection podcast that I did with drew slum, uh, we talked a lot about the role that technology was gonna play in, uh, getting through the pandemic and, and where we were coming from. And that discussion was the early adopters of technology were already in a leadership position, or at least in a better position.

To one, understand the service cycle, what inspections would due and when the best or the, you know, best in class or, uh, the, the, the better software solutions were able to, uh, really deploy their technicians remotely and allowed for a remote workforce. So you had dispatchers and schedules that were working from home technicians were weren't necessarily coming into the office.

And they were able to manage the work through the internet, you know, office, cell phones and tablets, uh, and ultimately take care of the customer, uh, through that process. And I think that, uh, you know, the companies that were able to really get up and running quickly, when I say quickly, end of April and early may, as long as they were in cities, they weren't in lockdown.

Most of those fire sheets and fire marshals said, you know, fire protection service is an essential, uh, part of our community and, uh, the work has to be done. And so those technicians and those contractors were able to go take care of that. And I think roll the clock forward to where we're at today. Um, I think that was probably the cornerstone of why the industry was, um, success.

Um, getting through the pandemic early, and then you look at last year's industry performance. Um, very strong. You talk to most of the contractors in the, in the space. And I might say space being fire, life safety as a whole. Um, everyone seems to have said they had record years and, um, that, that continues into today with regards.

The volume of work that everyone's getting done. Everyone I've talked to is talks about how immensely busy they are and, uh, with regard to upgrading new systems and staying on top of, uh, the inspection work that needs to be. Yeah. I think that technology piece is really interesting. Um, you know, I work for a company with the, this a bit more progressive as far as looking at new technologies, as it relates to the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, um, things like 3d laser scanning and, you know, uh, apps to make the business stronger.

So I thought that was a really. Good point that you brought up and one, uh, phrase that you were speaking about in your conversation with drew was, and I thought. Um, a good point as, uh, somebody with an entrepreneurial mind, but also just for businesses in general was you said, uh, easy to use, easy to buy, easy to pay, and you were describing, you know, how to get a competitive edge as a business.

I thought that was a good takeaway, but yeah, I didn't know if you had any more thoughts about that and the role of technology and business, um, kind of being adaptable. Yes. Thank you. It's. . And when you look at this concept around easy, uh, easy to use, easy to buy, easy to pay, it all speaks to the end user customer.

Right. You know, you're on the architect engineering side, I'm coming out from a contractor perspective. If you are the OEM, look how we live our personal lives, right. We're living off of our te our phones. You know, we're doing, you know, one click. You know, buying on Amazon or best buy.com or, you know, pick a website or, or an app that we're buying through.

And so now that expectation rolls over into the business to business, or, you know, the commercial side of, of service. And, or I'm not saying we're gonna sell engineered systems through one click buying on, on, on a app. But I think when you talk about a service contract or servicing your facility, we can make it pretty easy.

And so. Easy easy to use is two way one. Your customers experience has to be pretty easy to understand and how this, the workflow process or go where the work flows through the system. But it also, it has to be easy to use in the office. It can't create a significant administrative burden, uh, on the folks that are back in the office trying to manage the work.

Uh, so it has to. Practical. I'm not gonna say it's simple. but it has to be practical when you talk about easy to buy, it just has to be very simple for the customer to make a decision to buy right. I'm a big advocate advocate for just, you know, click here, boom, one button and then easy to pay, uh, look at how we're able to, to manage cash, uh, today as a consumer, you know, if it's, you know, credit cards that are already set up on a, a profile on an application or on a website.

If it's the ability to pay through Venmo and PayPal and other, you know, cash management type systems, uh, or even traditional commercial applications, like, you know, bank transfers and, um, you know, automatic handle cash handling processes. Uh, but give you, give your customer. A few, uh, options to pay. And with the more technology you can bring into that process, the less administrative tasks or responsibilities they have with regard to how to cut a check, uh, because you know, when someone's gotta write a check today, uh, think of all the steps associated with that probably takes you, you know, maybe a minute.

Whereas if it's a, you know, you know, approve the payment with one click of a button that takes seconds. And so, um, that's the concept around making it easy for sure. Yeah. That's a great point. Um, I think that you, we get so, um, you know, focused on performing the task. I think in fire and life safety in general, sometimes we don't think about keeping up with, um, some technology that has become so commonplace in, uh, other market sectors.

Uh, I think that's a great point in streamlining the process at every step and kind of, um, giving people the opportunity to, uh, not have to think so much about, um, being involved in the process. I think fire and life safety as a whole could benefit from that. Um, but, uh, I wanted to also speak with you about.

Your history in kind of the inspection, testing and maintenance, um, industry. You had some good points on your podcast with drew about just the nature. Of that kind of business, how it's a kind of churning workflow that, uh, has set intervals and, uh, a business model that is predictable. I, I never kind of, I guess that makes intuitive sense with, um, you know, what, uh, ITM and, uh, expecting fine life safety systems is, but, uh, yeah, I don't know.

I just thought that was, uh, uh, remarkable to hear. Your time, uh, being involved with, um, that market and, um, just kind of the unique business prospect that it is. Yeah. I think that when you look at the inspection test maintenance, uh, aspect of fire life safety, it truly is the core of what we do. Um, and what I mean by that is, yes, it's very important that we're installing fire alarm panels or even going further designing.

You know, uh, fire protection systems, installing those panels, installing that foam system, um, hanging those fire extinguishers or those sprinklers, but at its roots, um, it's all driven around inspection, right? As we all know, NFPA codes and standards drive to a certain rhythm, you know, weekly, monthly, quarterly semi-annual annual.

And within those codes, they also drive to a standard of what it means for that system to be compliant. And to me, that is the foundational piece of our industry because ultimately it drives safety in the communities that we live in. Uh, the places we work. And, and I think ultimately makes, uh, makes, makes for a better place, a safer places for us to, uh, to live and, and to, you know, live our lives.

So in that context, ITM creates an environment where one, we know the system's gonna be inspected. It meets a certain standard through testing and, and, um, the inspection requirements. And then when it doesn't, if it's deficient in one form or another, then it's maintained and it's. Right. There does serves a couple purposes.

One that helps maintain a safe environment for all of us. But two, I think if you're the building owner, it creates the opportunity for them to extend the life cycle of that system. Right? When that system's properly maintained within the codes and standards driven by N FPA or, you know, the international building code or the AJ, you know, they might be able to extend that sprinkler system in our 10 years.

Because they were doing, you know, proper, uh, internal inspections of that piping system to make sure that there was no corrosion or no, uh, bed, uh, micro organisms living in that pipe. Right. Um, yeah. You're able to, uh, cycle a fire pump to ensure that it's gonna meet the pressures that are required when that fire sprinkler system is asked to do its job.

Right. So. It, it really supports what we're trying to drive to the broader sense of fire and life safety and, and the importance that ITM, uh, creates. And, uh, it's a great, you know, fundamental piece of our industry. And I think that anyone is in the business side, the contractor side, um, it should be a cornerstone of how they grow their business, um, specifics of service and, you know, inspection.

Yeah, that's great. That's all great information. If you think about it, um, the installation and, you know, the modification of a system is just a very small section of the lifespan of a system that inspection testing and maintenance period of the system is much longer, uh, in the life cycle than any of those, uh, other points of the business.

So. I appreciated that, uh, bit of exposition, uh, as a transition from, or just a, a further expanding on the topic of ITM. We're speaking a little bit off air about, uh, talk that you had given on. Uh, NFPA, uh, is at nine 15, the remote inspection testing and maintenance. Um, yeah, I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on this new NFPA standard and, um, kind of the impact that you see it having on, uh, the fire and life safety industry.

Sure. Yeah. I gave a presentation on this, uh, at the fire suppression systems association, annual forum. In the, uh, spring of 2020, it happened to be the last, uh, conference that the Fs a had face to face. And the, the approach, there was one at this point, the NF, uh, NP nine, 15 committee had come together. They had met a few times and the information was now starting to come out about, you know, how this, this code was gonna be structured, where we're at today.

The code is, uh, still in. In development. And as I understand it, it's up for vote in, um, 20, 22, uh, with the expectation that they're trying to put it in place, uh, by 2023, um, a lot of moving parts and pieces right now. Um, so what I'm gonna share is, is, is to what I've learned, uh, up to the point of where we're at.

Um, obviously things can change between now and the time we get to the vote cycle. And then ultimately what's, um, implemented as part of the, the approved code, but what NFPA nine 15 does it creates an environment where we can now put internet connected devices onto fire and life safety systems to drive compliance and, uh, a level of, uh, um, insurability or a comfort that that system will operate in the event that it's needed to put out a fire or even detect a fire or some other issue.

So where it's transformational in it's original context, it says a couple things. One the local age SHA is to defi define what is remote. And the initial concepts was, you know, imagine a, a pipeline out in the middle of a, you know, You know, out in the middle of nowhere, pick a state anywhere in the United States.

And it's really hard to get technicians to that facility. Why can't we fly a drone over it with a camera and visually inspect the status of the pipeline? Same concept can be said for imagine a, a million square foot warehouse that has sprinkler heads. And those sprinkler heads are 40 feet in the air.

It's very difficult to get technicians in a man lift to go look at those sprinkler heads. Well, why can't we fly a drone? up to the, you know, the rafters to go inspect those sprinkler heads. So those concepts make a lot of sense. Well, now let's think of how we can make it a little bit easier with regard to how you inspect a, let's say a high rise building.

Why can't I put one sprinkler technician on the first floor and put pressure devices on the risers, uh, throughout the facility test, press. or check pressure versus a technician that has to go floor to floor, to floor, to floor. So does that make it a little bit more efficient to get that inspection done?

Same can be said for a fire alarm panel, I've been able to have one nice set, you know, authorized or, you know, certified technician in a facility let's say in Nevada, um, at the central office, but his technicians are out in the field. Physically, you know, running the test or watching the test through a laptop at a hospital.

Um, and you, you know, figure out ways to communicate electronically with all these IOT type. And I IOT internet of things, devices, uh, to test the equipment. So, uh, concept's great. And I think it has the opportunity to, to change the industry. Uh, what I brought up at the conference was the impact or the role that a lot of the large OEMs, the original equipment manufacturers are playing, uh, in the, in the market.

Every, every one of them, um, speak to when I say everyone of 'em Johnson controls, Siemens, uh, carrier. and a few others, Honeywell have all said that they're gonna drive towards this smart building technology. And so when I say smart building, it includes, you know, your ventilation systems, your water management systems, your electricity, um, access control, security, and there then pulling fire protection into the suite of central, uh, building manage.

right. Every manufacturer has every OEM has some concept that they're talking that they're pushing well, what nine 15 allows is for those fire systems to be plugged into these other building systems as part of the smart building concept. And once they're, you know, created, you know, electrical or electronic devices attached to these fire systems, it starts to.

Um, impact our market. And what I mean by that is that the role that a fire protection contractor today has, will change the more, um, as we get more technology adopted and into our industry, I'm not saying that's a risk. Um, but I do say that's a challenge and it's a challenge because I think the contractors that can grasp technology faster and help drive to some of those solutions.

Um, are gonna be in a better position, not any different than what we saw with the pandemic and the companies that adopted service management technology and inspection capabilities. They were in a better position to stay on top of their customer base nine 15 creates the same environment for contractors to be able to really understand.

you know, what their customer's expectations are. What does the local fire service expect with regard to remote inspection? And what's my role as a contractor to go meet that need, uh, to drive compliance in our, in our market. Yeah, well, yeah, I think it presents a lot of interesting opportunities for contractors and people all over the industry.

Um, haven't thought about some of those hard to reach places like, uh, being, uh, looked at by drones. You. The company I work for does a lot of work in, uh, aircraft hangers. You, we have these buildings that are a hundred plus feet tall, and they have 20 foot of structure, you know, in between the, you know, the, the sprinkler heads and, and, uh, where you can, you know, have to weave up with the lift.

So. I could think of a lot of different situations, uh, you know, in which, uh, remote inspection or some sort of electronic monitoring would be advantageous. Uh, one that people always complain about is duct detectors. Um, being able to locate 'em and test them is always. And, uh, it is always a pain. So I think those are some good points.

It's gonna be interesting to see how, uh, how it impacts our, our industry. I think it's a positive. I think that, um, our, our contractor base has to, um, take a, you know, recognize what's happening and in their local market, get their arms around it and, uh, do what they can to, to help solve the problem. And. Be ready to compete, uh, with the OEMs , as they're gonna try to go up as much market share as they can.

Yeah. I was thinking when you were speaking about this is, you know, how is the little guy gonna compete with the, with the JCI's of the world who are, have the ability to be a one stop shop for, uh, fully integrated building? You know, I think it's gonna be increasingly difficult for the con uh, building owner that is willing to pay the premium.

I, I conceptually I agree with that, but I do think that the opportunity for the contractor, I I'm a big advocate around, bigger in our space doesn't necessarily mean better. And what I, what the intent behind that is that the rubber meets the road in our local markets. And, you know, you can be ABC protection.

Birmingham Alabama. And you're gonna compete against, you know, the top five largest fire protection contractors in the United States, but that customer expects that local relationship to solve that local problem. And you can't necessarily do that from the corporate office in Milwaukee or the corporate office in Massachusetts.

Uh, it has to be solved right there with that customer. And I think that's the value that our contractors bring to the. . Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. It doesn't matter how big you your company is or how many solutions you offer. If you don't have that, uh, relationship at the community level to provide the timely response that the building owner needs to conduct their business.

So that's a great counterpoint. Um, so I wanted to speak a little bit more about, um, what you're doing now. Mergers and acquisitions and your new role at the Mackey group. Um, we kind of have a wide variety of people in the audience, so I just wanted to get like a bit more explanation on like what kind of services, uh, you offer or like the kind of business that you're, um, involved in now, since it seems.

Uh, fairly broad in my uneducated opinion. no, you're, you're, you know, gosh, you're spot on there. It is pretty broad. Um, you know, when I, when I went into this, I guess its core, um, I've always tried to position myself personally, and now my company professionally as an advocate for our industry, right. At the core of what we do, it's about, you know, creating safer environments for all of us.

And so how do we continue to advocate for that? Right. We're all passionate about in this context, fire protection, but you could be an H V a C, you could be a plumber. You know, you could be an electrician. You're very passionate about what you do. So in that, in that context, the Mac group was created to help, continue to advocate for fire and life safety.

So that said it's core. Which you see what's happening in the market today? Um, a lot of my time is spent in the mergers and acquisitions space either on the buy side of the market. So helping investors understand how the market's structured. Uh, the, uh, ups and downs are the dynamics of the market itself.

Uh, the strength of service, the strength of installation, the strength of the overall mix, where the growth opportunities are in vertical markets being, you know, healthcare or power generation or telecom or data centers or storage. Right. So helping the buyers, uh, with transactions that's number one or, or the broader strategy.

And then secondly, Helping contractors who are trying to think through their transitions, right? They're, they've been in business for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. Uh they're at a point where they need to think through, do I continue to position my business for growth or do I get it ready for sale? Um, I just wrote a podcast or excuse me, a blog a few months ago, um, should be, uh, published this month.

That talks about, uh, I wrote that was in front of mine, Dave Pelton. And we talk about. Uh, the process that these owners need to think through, um, with regard to growth or ready transition at will, we've talked to most of the contractors, we've talked to, don't know where to begin, um, with regard to getting ready to sell their business.

And so we kinda lay that out in that article and, um, some other platforms to share that information, but the Mackey group is, is intended to help both buyers and sellers through the M and a space. And then that becomes inherent with regards to then how do you. Other companies grow, cuz not everyone is, uh, buying our sell.

So people just need to grow their business. They need to raise some money. They need a strategy on how to grow it. Uh, so I've got some clients that up with that. Um, and then, like I said earlier, just to continue to advocate, uh, for the industry as a whole, you know, speaking at conferences and doing podcasts like we're doing today or, you know, simply writing, you know, for Barbara magazines for, for the blog on that.

Yeah, that's all good points. So, um, I mean, uh, besides the fairly obvious reason for wanting to sell a business for, uh, the prospect of money or a buyout, uh, What kind of reasons do companies look for mergers and, uh, you know, as far as, um, joining with another company and then acquisitions, as far as like buying up smaller companies or buying small companies for market share, I mean, what are the kind of business situations that come companies look at merger, mergers and or acquisitions.

To further explore that topic. Yeah. So let's talk about the, the merger side of it first, right? So there's obviously two sides to the coin, mergers and acquisition. So let's focus on the merger side and this goes back to my days at Tyco. Um, and then what we see happening one part of our market today. So the merger.

Generally speaking, the driver behind that is how do I become more efficient on managing my business? Right. And it has to deal with scale. And what I mean by that is size. Imagine the size when you had Ansel and you had type fire products individually, they're very strong. They owned both, you know, both paths within their market.

So the special hazard side and the position to the Ansel head or the fire equipment side and the sprinkler side for Tao fire product. but the true value of bringing emerging those two businesses together was just around scale. How do I leverage customer service? How do I manage warehousing? How do I manage, uh, dollars for R D?

How do I manage this global network of what's required? So those synergies kind of drive, you know, on the bigger side of, of those transactions. So roll that down into a contractor. Let's use my Birmingham, a Alabama example like earlier. And so let's say you're a fire protection contractor at Birmingham, and you're really good at sprinkler.

Right? Well, now I wanna go merge with my, you know, subcontractor partner that I use for all my fire protection jobs on fire alarm. Right because the two owners decide, you know, we're gonna be collectively better if we merge our two businesses and share resources, right. Let's share a building. Let's share trucks, let's share inventory.

Let's, you know, share labor. Um, because two is greater than one. So that's the merger idea and that still happens today. Um, I think it's a little bit more selective on how it happens today, but there are a number of partnerships out there across trades, fire, alarm, fire, sprinklers, special hazards, where people are working together, uh, to.

You know, solidify their position in a given market. So now let's roll over to the acquisition side, the acquisition side's a little bit different. And what I mean by that is that one it's been going out for about 20 years or so. It's been probably longer than it, but significant you can draw line back to about 20 or early two thousands and say, you know, when simple go down, Sinta started to buy a lot of companies.

So that facilitated a lot of acquisition activity. It started to consolidate the market. And what was happening was that, you know, somebody like SIM who was already big, were buying their biggest competition and some of these key vertical markets that, that, that simpel wanted to, you know, to really get their arms around the same could be said for Simas Sy customers have said, Hey, we need a fire protection solution in this market or that market.

And so said, TASS went ahead, made those acquisitions. the driver behind that is truly an investment play for their group of investors. And those two examples. Those were publicly traded companies and their stockholders had an expectation about growth, right? And in today's environment, roll it forward to where we're at.

You know, where we have been over the last five or six years now, it's a lot of private money, a lot of private equity type money coming to the table to invest in our industry. And a lot of that is one, it's an investment play. They're in it for a period of time, three years, five years, seven years. And their expectations that the profits that, you know, the industry generates or their portfolio of companies, generat then takes care of their investors, not any different than a stock, but a different type of model with regard to how they manage that.

Um, so when you look at acquisitions, I acquisitions would be specific. Revenue and profit and the growth of that, uh, portfolio a merger is more internal as I look at it. And it's internal with regards to how do I drive some synergies to make my running my business more efficient. Number one, and number two, if I merge with my, you know, counterpart my subcontractor counter counterpart in my market, I'm able to help then meet the needs of more customers.

um, which again is internal metric with regard to, I, you know, how do I run my business a little bit better? So there's value for both. I think when you look at, you know, you know, what, if I'm a, a contractor today or from an investor today, where do I play? I think there's space for, for our industry to continue to manage both.

Um, what's interesting is just the rate. That our consolidation and these transactions happen, uh, is, uh, significantly, uh, faster today than it was, you know, even three years ago. Uh, just a lot going on. Wow. Yeah, I appreciate that explanation as somebody who's more of an individual contributor, it's always seemed kind of nebulous to me.

Some of these, um, ideas around, um, you know, uh, business, you know, some of the business development topics and just, uh, larger, um, business pieces of information. So I appreciate that explanation. Spread some light on, uh, some of the histories around mergers and acquisitions in the industry. So yeah, I think that's always a good perspective to have, um, for any professional, but, um, yeah, I wanted to speak with you about this, um, idea.

You talk withdrew a little bit on the podcast. It. A problem that I've heard brought up, um, more than a couple times in the last year, which is, uh, the need for, uh, people to join the workforce and fire and life safety, or this kind of churning need for people to join the industry. And, uh, how you were talking about the low visibility of fire and life safety being a problem because, um, we're kind of last on the list for.

New people who are, you know, technician or kind of across the board to have the opportunity to enter the space since there's already, um, low volume of people coming into the workforce for some of these, uh, technical roles. But I thought that was a great point and I keep hearing it, uh, with everybody I talk to about the need to, um, increase visibility and to.

Bring people into the craft because of the, the, like you've been speaking to the, the work increase. Um, yeah. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a great challenge for us. Uh, when I was go back, you know, 15 years ago when I was at, at Ansel, given presentations to the senior leadership at Tyco about the challenges that we're facing as our baby boomer employees, uh, were getting ready to.

So now we're, you know, we're actually past the peak of that on the back side of it. So now our workforce is starting to feel that. And what I've learned over the last 15 years is, you know, you know, one, you really have to take care of your employees. We have, right? So competitive pay and benefits, truly committed to training and develop.

Um, and it's twofold. One, what does the company company need to train that employee around and how do we develop that employee to meet the needs of the company? But I think more importantly it's as a company, do we truly understand what the employee wants to do with their career? I've been very fortunate to go from human resources to M and a to sales and business development.

You know, now to, to run my service operations and technology, I've won a lot of different hats over, you know, a 25 year career number of different industries. Right? I've been fortunate enough to work out the number of leaders that were open, willing to support me and open doors for me to do. But as, as you know, business owners today, as you look at your employees, are you creating pathways or at least opening doors for, for people to develop in the areas that they choose.

Right. And so, you know, somebody who wants to go pursue, let's say they're a fire sprinkler technician, or maybe they're a designer, but maybe they wanna go pursue a fire protection engineering degree or a four year degree in fire science. Their pathway at the end of the day may not be a full time job with you, right?

Because now you're gonna help them go get certified to become a, a firefighter in your community. Right. That's part of the process and I'd, I'd rather be part of a company that helps nurture and grow people to do what they, they choose for the career, the profession, uh, because I think that feeds upon itself.

You open doors for, for more people that more people than I gonna be attracted to your, your company. versus just somebody. Who's just kind of one way. Well, I'm gonna, you know, develop you for that. Nice set three, but I don't want you to become a nice set four cause I need to take away someone else's job.

That's shortsighted. I think we need to look at the bigger picture. Um, so, um, that's one, as you look at the contractor space and how we have to become more committed to training development of our people. I also see an opportunity across the industry for the large manufacturers number. And the large professional associations to come up with a, a common solution or at least, or let's say common, I say a structure to how we attract and train people come into the space, right?

Pick any OEM, you know, um, Ansel's better served when they're out there supporting and sponsoring training programs dedicated. Restaurant service technicians or fire extinguisher technicians, Amex would be the same, right. Um, Viking would be better served. Viking. Sprinkler would be better served when they're supporting apprenticeship programs and training for sprinkler technicians, um, or maybe valve repair technicians or whatever it might be within the local market.

Uh, because the, now you're able to get talent earlier. You know, most of these trades are recruiting from high schools through job sharing through, um, co-op type programs, you know? So from a fire protection perspective, how do we get these young people into the shop to shadow or technicians to be exposed to either statewide or, you know, local education programs.

So they can really learn, uh, the industry. Uh, and start to go down a path, uh, that will keep 'em in the space for a long time. Yeah. I like that your point that you made about, you know, um, taking care of existing employees and also looking at. You know, how do we provide incentives for people to get into the industry?

I like, I like the idea of professional organizations taking a vested interest in, um, giving back to the community and, and, um, providing ways to make it easy for people to get involved. I think that's a great idea. Um, yeah, I wanted, so to round out the interview at the end, I know we've talked about a lot of, um, large market factors, but, um, yeah, I just think, uh, even maybe more broadly in general in business, um, what kind of trends do you see going forward?

We've we touched a lot on, um, technology and adaptability and. And, um, kind of, uh, some of these topics that are been hot and heavy in the, in the industry right now, but, um, yeah. Do you see any markets that are, uh, it seems like a lot of different markets are experiencing a boon right now, but do you see any specific markets, uh, experiencing a boon?

Have you, um, had any experience with any of these, uh, Any of how fire and life safety touches like cryptocurrency or anything like that? Uh, not necessarily on the traditional cryptocurrency side. Right? So when you look at what's the influence that fire life safety's gonna have on that market, um, where fire and life safety's gonna fit.

Is, um, in the server farms and, uh, the infrastructure required for cryptocurrency, right? These essentially are large, very large, very complex data centers. Right. And they need fire protection. There's a lot of redundancies. I understand that and how they're structured. Right. But if even if you're 12,000, 20,000 square foot facility full of servers, you have generators, you have different types of airflow.

All right. How are we gonna protect? Those banks of servers, not any different that we do with a, a data center today, but it just adds another level of complexity with how you protect that space. Right? So, um, so let's use that from a broader perspective. So it's telecommunications and data centers. I think those are always evolving, right?

Every major data companies continue to evolve how their data centers are built, how they're managed. Um, how big or small they are and where the levels of security come into play. Uh, you can say the same for telecom right now. We're on 5g, but we know that as soon as 5g is implemented, six G's coming right behind it.

Right. So that infrastructure continues to change, right? So you have a fire protection need in that space. I think the other big issue is energy storage, right? So we have a, you know, Regional markets across the United States. We've got power. Our, our power grid generates excess power. They're using, um, energy storage systems.

So lithium eye, anti battery packs, and battery systems to collect that excess power. So one, how do you store it? How do you manage that safely? Because as we all know, if you've ever seen a lithium eye on fire in a Tesla, Uh, thermal runway is a significant issue. Um, and there doesn't seem to be a really strong solution to put those out.

So now it's thermal management. And how do you control temperature of those battery packs so that they do not get to thermal runway? Um, so I think that energy storage is gonna be a significant challenge for our industry for the next 10 years, 10, 15 years, and then roll into that then feeds into power gen and what we do with generators.

Uh, And how we control power. I also see opportunities in, um, firefighting foam. You made to reference to that earlier, and the pressure that we have around PFOS and PFOS and the foam space, um, and that also rolls into. Fuel storage and large refineries and chemical plants and, uh, oil and gas networks. So what are we gonna be doing around firefighting foam and making sure that we put our good, um, fire protection agents that are no one, put the fires out and create a safe environment for us, but two do not have a negative impact on our.

So it's a delicate balance, but I think the foam landscape is gonna change. We already see, you know, the, uh, HFCs and the, uh, refrigerant type gases that are used in fire protection are under pressure right now with regard to how that supply chain's gonna change. Um, so I think that's gonna be interesting to see, you know, across the market.

So data centers, energy storage, which is power gen. And then how do we manage agents across firefighting foam? Um, HFC type gases, um, have the potential to, you know, change how we, how. You know, manage fire protection over the next 20 years. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the change in foam. I had a, I was in the back of my head.

I was thinking, man, I wonder with your experience with Ansel, if you're still keeping a thumb on the huge changes that have been happening in that market, uh, it's been really, really interesting for me to, to take a look at what the military has been doing. Just the, the shift away from foam in general. So, um, that's a, I see that as a big market mover as well, but, um, yeah.

Anyways, John, um, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Where can people find out more about you if they want to connect? So, um, first pace, first place will be my website Mackey group, LLC dot. Um, kinda gives you some perspective of what the, what we're all about. Um, I'm on LinkedIn, um, just typing John Mackey.

There's a few of 'em. Um, I am not the CEO of whole foods or retired CEO of whole foods. uh, but, uh, you'll find me there. Um, and then, uh, all my contact information, both on LinkedIn as well as my website is, uh, all up to date and it's probably the best. Uh, to track me down, I will be at, uh, usually any one of our conferences.

Uh, the first one coming up in February is the fire suppression systems association, uh, in Fort Myers, Florida, I'll be there. And then each of the Ettes, um, national association for fire equipment distributors in March, April, may, and then I'll be at NFPA, uh, in June in Boston. So, um, we are in a relationships industry.

I make a point of, uh, getting to each of our conferences. Shake hands and, and, uh, support people wherever I can meet people and, uh, just share perspectives on the industry. And, um, you know, we do that face to face. Uh, we've learned how to do it through video calls and everything else, but, uh, the end of the day, it's, uh, so much better to do it in person.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you again, John. And, uh, yeah, it's been a good one. Thanks, GU. Thanks for the time. And, uh, be. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

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

On episode 24 of Fire Code Tech we are talking about specifications. What is specification and how do they relate to construction documents? What are common elements and important details to include in fire suppression and fire alarm specs? We answer all this and more in the solocast this week.  

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 episode 25 of fire code. In this episode, we're talking about specifications. I wanted to talk about fire protection specifications because there's such a crucial part of being a fire protection engineer and having a concrete understanding of FPE fundamentals for baseline knowledge.

It's crucial to understand the full scope and process of producing contract documents and specifications are a key part of. In this episode, we're gonna talk about what are specifications and what are the components that are common when generating or utilizing a pre-written spec. Also, we are gonna discuss what items are more commonly on the documents in contrast to items that are typically located in the specifications.

Hope you enjoyed this episode and don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social. Let's get into the show. Also, if you do me a huge favor and give us a five star review on apple podcasts, that really helps us out on the algorithm. So let's talk about what are specifications or as they are more commonly referred to as specs.

Although like we talked about the fire protection plans are a crucial part of conveying the scope of work for a project. Sometimes you need a written explanation of the construction process and the materials and qualities that are required to be bid for a job. Good quality specifications are just as important.

And some engineers would argue more important than having quality five protection plans. Specs are generally a written set of instructions and qualifications used to tell the contractor or general contractor. What needs to be provided in the extents of the construction scope? There are specification divisions, one through division 48.

From my experience fire suppression specifications are generally found in division 21. And fire alarm and security specs are generally found in division 28. Specifications are a component of the contract document. Which means that this is a contract between the buyer of the construction project and the general contractor and contractors of the construction project, an agreement for what will be built and constructed and what services and materials the building owner is paying for the specs are used in combination with the fire protection plans in order to paint a picture of the exact construction elements that are require.

There are prescriptive and performance details illustrated in the contract documents. The specs are a sequential list of these items. Specifications. Start out with contract details that are more general and then move into more specific system engineering related items. The first couple spec sections are detailed requirements for bidding and the construction process and are often referred to as the front end specs.

Oftentimes owners with large numbers of buildings will have their own specifications for construction projects. If you're working for a fortune 500 company, there's a good chance that there are gonna have some template specifications for the project. Let's talk about common items in the two most common fire protection specifications, starting with fire suppression and division 21.

Fire suppression specifications are usually in division 21 and more specifically wet pipe fire suppression systems are usually section 21 13 13. Sometimes at the beginning of the specs, there will be a summary of the system and the scope of work that is going on with the system. For instance, if you have an existing system or building, and the project is contracted to replace the system and repair the extents of the system, it would state a small brief couple of sentences to indicate this scope of.

Frequently, there will be a list in a summary portion of the specs, which will describe the different systems or components of systems that will be talked about in the spec section. For instance, for fire suppression, you might talk about piping material. You might talk about sprinkler types, discussions, demolition, new equipment codes and standards and much.

If there are any terminology in special terms as a part of the specifications, oftentimes there'll be a definition section in the beginning of the specs that will detail specific definitions that are pertinent to the spec section. A really important part of the specs is the submittal section, which will describe what are considered to be required as submittals.

So if you need qualifications, shop drawings, calculations. Or anything like this, they need to be detailed in the submittals portion of the spec. There are different parts to specifications. Oftentimes the specs will start off general and then lead to execution and product specifications. Specific insurance requirements.

Like if your building owner has FM global as an insurance provider, you will locate details about the specific insurance requirements in your specifications. Local codes and standards are sometimes referenced in the specifications and also mirrored those references on the fire protection plants. How fire stopping will be performed for a project will usually be referenced in the specification.

Will each trade take care of their fire stopping or will one specified contractor for fire stopping take care of every trade's fire stopping. What type of pipe and sprinkler will be used in the project will be specified in the spec section in division 21. So if you have schedule 40 pipe only, or schedule 10 and schedule 40 pipe will be detailed in the specs.

If you'll notice these are all very pertinent cost items for how to buy and construct a fire suppression system. So that's why it's important that they're located in the specs. There are requirements for what needs to be on the shop drawings in codes and standards like N FPA 13 and N F P 72. But in addition, you can put what's required to be on the shop drawings in the specifications.

This way, not only will you have the common qualifications and details required in documents like N F P 13, but you'll have the specs to lean on to make sure that the shop drawings have all the components that you desire for documentation. If as a part of the project, you're expecting the contractor to perform a flow test for their hydraulic calculations.

Or if there are seismic qualifications to consider for the seismic soil category classification, you need to locate these details in the specifications. Sprinkler finishes for tenant improvement spaces or high finish high Des high interior design coordination spaces need to be located in the specs. If you need custom cover plates for your sprinklers, it's a good, I, it's a good idea to indicate this detail in the specifications generally, towards the end of the spec section execution details like commissioning, functional testing and documentation required to close out.

The projects are very. also, there will sometimes be there's a whole spec section that indicates what's required in the on and M manuals. But generally each spec section will link the on and M manual specification section. Here's a templated system description that I found online while doing research for this solo cast system description.

What pipe sprinkler system, automatic sprinklers are attached to piping containing water that is connected to a water supply through an alarm. Water discharges immediately from sprinklers when they're opened sprinklers open, when heat mails feasible link or destroys ible device, host connections are included if indicated.

So this is an example of a broad system overview. Like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, I just wanted to give this little bit of narrative, cuz I thought it was a good descriptor of what you might find in the summary of a system Des. if there are special cleaning detail requirements as a part of a project, you'll find them in the specs.

Once was a part of a project that had, uh, detailed remediation and cleanup after a fire. And we had a lot of details in the specifications about the requirements for cleaning and from the industrial hygienist, as far as what would pass for clean in the scope of the project. If you have rigorous testing for a system like a high expansion foam system, you'll have a lot of detail in the specs about the pre functional and functional testing required for commissioning a foam fire suppression system.

We could do a whole episode about this topic. It's quite in depth. If you want to require only OS and Y gate valves for control valves in your fire suppression system, or if you're partial to butterfly valves, wherever they're required by code, you can indicate that as well in the specs. If your facility only uses Viking or LIC valves, and you wanna keep them all consistent for ease of maintenance, this is a great detail to have in the specifications.

Division of work between civil plumbing and fire protection trades can also be illustrated in the specifications. Sometimes it is beneficial to clearly delineate where scope for one track, one contractor ends and one contractor begins in order to make sure that the work gets picked up. It's very common for fire departments to have regional requirements for their host threads and what fire department connection is required for the project.

You definitely want to indicate the fire department connection requirements. If the project needs a stores five inch instead of a SI maze two and a half inch connection, then you want to indicate that specifications are usually edited in specific programs that are hand tailor made for this process. I think that's gonna do it for fire protection specifications for this episode.

Next time we'll dive deep into fire alarm specs. And what are the common qualities of those specifications? And look at some other specs. If we have time. Namely fire pumps, jock pumps, controllers, and maybe even we'll get to fire protection, water storage tanks. 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.

On episode 42 of Fire Code Tech we are speaking with Zach Green. An entrepreneur in the fire and life safety space who cut his teeth in the military and fire service. Zachary is the founder and former CEO of MN8 LumAware/Foxfire. These companies sell photoluminescence products of all different kinds including egress components, firefighter gear and signage. Tune in for great advice for professionals for all backgrounds and to learn more about Zach’s book Warrior Entrepreneur.

https://www.warriorentrepreneurbook.com/

Transcription

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

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

Hello, all welcome to episode 42 of fire code tech. On this episode, we're talking to Zach green. Zachary is an entrepreneur in the fire and life safety space. Speaking with Zach, we get into his origin story, which centers around his time in the fire service. And in the military, we dive into Zach's book, the warrior entrepreneur.

In the episode, we talk about some of the key takeaways and tips for those who want to take on the warrior mindset that is needed to be successful as somebody who is in business for themselves. Join us for key takeaways, like how to cultivate the mental steadfastness. That's required to endure some of the hardships of entrepreneurship and the mindset and strengths of those who have been successful in entrepreneurial and professional endeavors.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social. Oh, and if you could do me a huge favor, go and give us a five star rate and review on apple podcasts. Hello, Zach. Good morning. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to fire code tech. thank you so much. I'm excited to be on with you today.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I always enjoy starting the podcast episodes with giving the listeners a little bit about your background and how you found fine life safety, but, um, for you, you could, if you could give some exposition about, um, your origin story of your career. Certainly. So, um, I served at the United States Marine Corps, uh, back in the early nineties, uh, got out in about 99.

And, um, about two years later, September 11th happened, you know, a day that affect all of us very deeply. But for me, um, I, I really had a lot of survivor guilt. I felt bad that I, you know, was in the, the Marine Corps infantry and did all that work. And I never got a chance to, you know, take the fight to the enemy if you will.

So I joined our local volunteer fire. And, uh, it was a great way to give back to the community and still kind of stay in the fight. Cuz the new front lines of the battlefields are no longer in a far off distant land. They're here in our backyard. And uh, during that time in the fire service, I developed a, uh, photo luminescent technology for firefighters to see each other in the dark and over about a 10 year time period, uh, literally, uh, turned the company from the truck of my car into about a 30 million operat.

Wow. That's awesome. Excellent. Well, um, I'd like to, you know, uh, dive a little bit deeper into your time in the fire service. Um, would you just, uh, talk to me a little bit about, um, your time in the fire service and kind of how that, and, uh, also maybe a little bit more about your time in the military and how that's kind of shaped you and your pursuits.

Certainly. So, you know, in the, in the Marine Corps, I was originally trained for artillery, a fire direction. Controlman my job was to do all the mathematical, uh, and scientific calculations to get what we call rounds on target. Um, I spent three months going to various different schools from survey school to meteorology school, to learning about.

Different types of muzzle philosophies and all this really amazing trigonometry. You know, I never thought I'd use my, uh, math stuff, uh, in high school. And in typical Marine Corps wisdom, they then assigned me to a, uh, infantry unit and had me do the same job for mortars, which I pretty much could teach you how to do on the back of a napkin in about 10 minutes.

Um, I was assigned to a cold weather infantry, uh, unit our job, again, keep in mind. This was before September. Was, if the Russians were to roll through the Northern flank of Norway, we would kind of be for lack of better words, the road bumps. Um, so when I got outta the Marine Corps, I, I did both enlisted, um, Paris island.

And then I went through the officer candidate program, as I was getting close to getting my commission. I realized, you know, I just didn't wanna do this anymore. Um, the. Marine Corps was in a nutrition mode as all the, uh, uh, branches were under Clinton's, uh, leadership. And also, uh, there was no combat deployment.

So I, I got out now, what can I use of those skills out in the real world? Obviously it, you know, setting up artillery, firing tables and doing infantry operations is probably gonna get me arrested if I do those things out in the civilian world, but it was those intangibles. Teamwork confidence, mission accomplishment.

Those were all the things that really prepared me as I got into, um, my job as a volunteer firefighter and ultimately working through climbing the corporate ladder, um, at my full-time job, which was with Eli Lilly. Awesome. Well, you know, I've always, uh, kind of sensed a similar, um, disposition from firefighters and military personnel.

This kind of. Um, This kind of stoic, um, unflappable, just like, uh, look in the eyes of an individual who's been in the either kind of paramilitary structure of the fire service or, you know, the mil, the military structure of, uh, you know, serving. Um, yeah, I don't know. I just always thought that was interesting.

Do you have any thoughts on, um, why these two were so similar? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they definitely attract the same individuals. I, I say in the Marine Corps, we have a really great ability of taking things that are really fun and making 'em as miserable as possible. And in the fire service, we have a great job of taking things that are miserable and making it as fun as possible.

I think the common thread with all these are these warrior attributes and those are service above. The team above the individual and mission accomplishment above everything. You know, we always say in the fire service, we can't dial 9 1 2 after you dial 9 1 1. When we show up, we have to solve the mission.

And the same thing goes with that mindset in the, uh, The military also. And that's why I think you see a lot of that, um, transferable skills. And in my recent book, the warrior entrepreneur, I really dive deeply into that. And what is it that makes a warrior warrior? You don't have to be a, a Marine or a firefighter.

You could literally be a, uh, a, a single mom. That's trying to raise two or three kids and working two or three jobs. And it's that undying. Thirst and, um, dedication to accomplishing your mission no matter what it is. And also a very unique attribute and that is using conflict, resistance and adversity to help shape you, to prepare you for your ultimate crucible, which always ends up happening at some point in time in your life.

Sometimes you can have multiple crucibles and that is usually the crisis in your life. When everything kind of falls apart, it could be. Divorce. It could be death of a family member. It could be a drug alcohol or addiction. In my case, it was thinking my business was gonna go bankrupt. We were running outta money.

And when you're in that crucible, you have two options. One option is to succumb to the abyss. If you, uh, spend too much time near that abyss, which stands for failure. Death suicide destruction, giving up. Um, eventually that abyss will consume you. Uh, the philosopher meets you once said, if you stare long enough into the abyss, eventually the abyss will stare back.

And that's basically what that means. But the warrior again, has to have that resistance has to have those intangible skills. We just talked about to not get through their crucible, but to conquer their crucible. And the only way they can do that is to transform and change. Because if you don't change.

After you conquer your crucible, you're gonna get right back into that area. And we can certainly talk later on about some of the changes that I made and some of the changes that I've witnessed during the research for my book about how warriors are able to conquer those different crucibles that they end up having in their life.

Yeah, definitely. I love all that. That's great stuff. I have heard this sentiment a couple of times from firefighters, you know, about on, um, people's worst day that they are, um, have the fire service, um, has to show up and give their all because, um, people don't have a choice of who shows up. So that was always very, um, impactful, impactful for me.

Yeah. And we always say that we've gotta be on our best when you're at your worst. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. I mean, um, we could talk about the book now, but, um, let's, I mean, I, you answered kind of one of my first thoughts, but maybe you could speak a little bit more about it. Um, which is. You know, who is the book for?

You know, I think it obviously applies to people who have been in the military and people who have, um, you know, been in the fire service, but maybe speak more broadly to the appeal of the book that you've written the warrior entrepreneur and who can, you know, take value from. So, yeah. Thank you for asking.

I mean, the, the book is really for anybody that wants to conquer their crucibles in their life. Now I will tell you when I originally wrote the book, it was designed just for entrepreneurs. And the reason I did that is I saw so many. I saw so many similarities between my warrior journey in the military at fire service and as an entrepreneur and those journeys were number one.

Um, it's tough. You know, you gotta have a lot of grit. Number two, you have to be able to accomplish the mission. The only way an entrepreneur can fail is to give. Now, now quitting is the easy thing to do. It's sticking it out and making it through all those tough challenging times is where the real rubber meets the road, so to speak.

So as the book started to develop, and as I started doing research on the fight or flight systems, sympathetic, parasympathetic, uh, systems within your, your body. I started to research, um, several things about the difference between college athletes and non-college athletes between the stressors that come in the military and, and, uh, the first responder world.

Um, and I realized they all had that common thread that goes all that theme that goes all the way back to Homer and the ID and the Odyssey. And that is. As the hero starts to develop and they have to get tested. They have to be tried in that trial. And testing is really what develops you. Iron sharpens.

Iron is another way of looking at that and then prepare you for that battle you're crucible, and then that transformation and change to get through that crucible. And when you look at it in that. The reality is, is it could be the, the, again, the mom that's working two jobs, just try to get their kid through school.

It could be that kid. That's the first person in his family to go to college, but they gotta work two jobs and do all this extra stuff while the other kids are out partying on the weekends. It could be that. Navy seal. It's trying to get the inspiration to make it through buds. It could be, um, the entrepreneur that has just failed time and time again, but continue to get, come out there and, and give it their all and try to figure out how to solve that problem.

So I guess the, the short answer to your short question is it's for anybody that wants to accomplish, uh, greatness in their life and, and overcome obstacle. Yeah, that's great. I love that. I mean, I was drawn to, um, you and your book, you know, um, you reached out to me, but you know, I was looking into your book and your profile and I was really drawn because I think that, you know, whether you are somebody who owns their own business or not the entrepreneurial.

Set is the mindset that helps people be successful in business and successful in life. This kind of, um, non-acceptance of the status quo and to be, um, a bit, uh, riskier and have that grit and determination is something that serves anybody with the professional career. So, um, that's one of the main through lines of this podcast.

Um, kind of, uh, self betterment, usually in regards to a little bit more fire and life safety, but, um, self betterment and kind of what are the tools and tactics to, um, have some of that self-improvement. So I think that's a great line of, um, you know, discussion about how the, the book is versatile and those who could gain benefit out of it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I wanted to talk a little bit more. I love this idea of, and I think, um, you touched on a little bit, this, this grit, this determination, this, um, kind of, um, ability to push through difficult tasks. Uh, I think that. It's hard as an entrepreneur. Sometimes you don't know there's, there's uncertainty, there's risk.

Um, it's, it's sometimes hard to know if you're doing the right thing. And then as a professional, too, you know, especially for people early on, um, to have that confidence, to have that ability, to know that you're putting in the work and you're going in the right direction, but it seems like that's a theme in the book.

I'd love to hear, uh, a bit more about that from you. If you. Certainly. So yeah, you, you definitely bring up some really, really great points there. I think the first thing that you look at, if you decide you do want to take that entrepreneurial journey is what is the problem you're solving. I think when you look at the fire code, every single thing in the fire code is solving a problem.

A lot of them were the result of accidents that happened or tragedies or something along those lines. Um, you know, I grew up in the Cincinnati area in the Beverly Hills supper club fire, which was one of the most lethal fires in our country's. Developed a lot of different codes that came out of that. Um, those were lots of problems that were solved in my case.

The problem that I solved was I got lost in a fire and I wanted to create a product that was gonna help reduce disorientation and increase accountability in the fire service. So when you look at, you know, those, those traits, the intangibles, and I guess I could sum 'em up in one word grit. Being an entrepreneur is exceptionally difficult when you're a firefighter.

When you're in the military, there's a handbook there's literally decades. If not centuries of doctrine and lessons that we've learned on how to fight that enemy, whatever that enemy could be. Um, there is a team. There is equipment. There are tools. They're all paid for by the government. So you don't really have to spend money outta your own pocket.

When you get to the entrepreneur world, it's completely different. You have, first of all, you usually don't have any money. Second of all, there is no handbook. Third of all, you don't usually have a team. It usually starts with one, maybe two people out of the truck or the car or garage or some area like that.

And then the challenges just start to become absolutely overwhelming. So it's those intangibles that we need to, to conquer those cat challenges now, specifically, what do you need to be an entrepreneur? What are the things? And I kind of boil it down to three things. One is you solve a problem in a unique and elegant way.

Two, you have to have an unfair, competitive business advantage. I didn't say illegal. I didn't say unethical. I said unfair because we are small in a startup. You don't have the resources and the manpower to compete against some of these larger companies that are out there. So you have to have an angle.

What is that unfair advantage? In my case, my unfair advantage was I decided if I'm gonna be selling to my brother and sister firefighter, I don't wanna outsource my sales team to, to some big sales distribution company that hasn't felt the heat of a fire and gone through the disorientation that occurs when you're, when you're, uh, crawling down a dark smokey hallway.

I wanted someone that had been there and done that. So my competitive advantages, I hired only fellow firefighters on my sales team that I built up to about 400 across the country. And, um, as the other companies would come in and try to sell product. They weren't, uh, they didn't have that brotherhood and, and we all know in the fire service, it's, it's, you're either a firefighter or you're not real simple.

It's very binary. Um, another advantage you could have is maybe you develop some type of coffee cup and you're able to negotiate a special deal with. Starbucks where they're gonna only use your special coffee cup and nobody else's, that's a great competitive advantage. And then the third one, which always screws up entrepreneurs and especially with the entrepreneurs that I've met in the fire service, I've really yet to meet one.

That's figured out this, this third one, and that is sales, marketing distribution, going to a trade show here and there. Somehow the trunk, your hair. That's fine. That's great. I did that early on. But to really get to that next level, you need great sales, marketing, distribu. If you've got the greatest product in the world and nobody knows about it and they don't know how to buy it.

And there's no system in place to manage those orders. You're not gonna be very successful. So really focus on how people get it and how they buy it and how they distribute it. Because at the end of the day, you can have a really bad product, but if you've got good sales and marketing distribution behind it, you're gonna do pretty.

Conversely, you can have a, uh, a pretty, uh, um, great product, not have good sales and marketing distribution, and you're not gonna do well. So it's, um, you know, it's one of those things where it all comes down to how people find it and how they can buy it. wow. That's some great tips there. I love the point about sales, marketing, and distribution, because, uh, as somebody who runs a podcast, it's literally a hundred percent, um, marketing and distribution.

Um, you know, I would tell people if they wanted to get into the podcasting business, I'd say, um, how do you feel about, you know, posting on social media? Because if you don't have. You know, determination to post on every social media you can every week. Um, and then you're not into that sort of thing then you're probably, um, not gonna make it cuz uh, that distribution piece.

Um, I think in probably many businesses is huge, huge for, uh, You know, it appears to me that any kind of startup or, um, young company, that ability to build a distribution network and kind of facilitate their ideas and their, um, their value, um, is a huge, huge challenge. We're living in the absolute best time on planet Earth's history to be an entrepreneur, the ability to build those social media connect.

We never had that opportunity, not even two years ago before the pandemic, since the pandemic it's got even better, but you know, my kid has already an amazing social network because he doesn't go outside and play, kick the can and, and, uh, stick ball like I used to do when I was growing up because the kids are playing online now.

So it starts with that community, build that community up and then start to distribute your content out there. Well, if you just have the content and no community, I would tell you to pause on getting your content out there until you really started to build up a following the community and then do it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Um, it is a hard thing to do to build that community, but the, the community kind of has its own momentum. It's really, um, uh, uh, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, if you, if you build that distribution stream, um, whether it's for a podcast or for a business, kind of that, um, churning incoming and outcoming of content or sales items, um, then, um, you'll I don't know.

Absolutely. I just think that's kind of builds off of itself. Absolutely. Another theme. It seems like in the book, uh, where your entrepreneurship is, um, some of these mental health items, um, I'd like to hear a little bit more about that. Cause I think it's so important in today's day and age for people to, um, have as many tools as they can around the subject.

Certainly. So the, the mind and the body are connected. You know, we spend a lot of time in the military training, our body honing our body. But if you neglect your mind, the, the body really doesn't do anything. I mean, the body is basically the output of what the mind tells you to do. Um, One thing that we have done a great job in the last couple years is recognizing the horrible problem we have in the military.

And even in the fire service with, with suicide and PTSD and those issues and how to identify them and how to make sure we have a space that people feel comfortable to share that vulnerability. Cuz we know that in the military and in the, in the, uh, police and fire service, sometimes when. Raise your hand and say, I need help.

It can be career limiting. Uh, so we we've done a great job of at least addressing those because we weren't almost doing anything, you know, 20 years ago. However, we got a long way to go. Um, in the military, there was a study done where they asked people if they felt stressed, uh, and if they felt emotionally, you know, challenges, when it came around PTSD and those type of issues, the numbers came back, I think were, were artificially low.

They came back at 17%. I do think that number's gotta be larger. Let's say that number's twice that amount who know. but it's interesting cuz that same questionnaire was asked of entrepreneurs and it was over 70% yet. Nobody talks about the suicide rate and entrepreneurship. Nobody talks about the depression.

Nobody talks about the unbelievable stress. It is when you have to go bankrupt or restructure your business or go through those type of things. So there's quite a few things we can do to help address that. The first one is getting a good night's sleep. That's very difficult as an entrepreneur, because the reality is, is nobody is an entrepreneur gets an opportunity to sleep eight hours.

You know, you, sometimes I, I had times where I spent, you know, literally 20 hours in a day in the office or on the air. In the airplane and, and traveling around next one is your physical and your emotional are connected exercise. Get out there and move the body has an amazing way of releasing endorphins and ways to help reduce stress by that exercise.

Another thing that's becoming more and more popular now it's mindfulness. It could be something as simple as just taking. A walk in a beautiful park or on the beach or some area, and just being, you know, not focusing on business, not focusing, turning your phone off, which I always have a really hard time doing and just being present.

Um, there's a lot of other great mindfulness around meditation. I actually did transcendental meditation for a couple years and it literally was a game changer. It was just five, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the. Just get a chance to kind of clear your mind out. The other thing is we are naturally people that like to be around other people, especially when you're an entrepreneur, because you've got that outgoing personality be around other people take times to, to, to disconnect from work and especially other entrepreneurs where you can share stories and you can realize that you're not alone and develop that network.

And that com uh, community like you. And I just talked about around distribu. Build that entrepreneur community. So if you do are struggling and you're having a bad day and you call someone up and say, Hey man, let's go grab a drink. Or, you know, let's just have a chat on the phone or let's go for a walk or something along those lines.

Um, because as we talk about in the framework of the Warrior's journey, when you're in that crucible, it is the biggest crisis of your life. It is very difficult at the bottom of that. Crucible is the abyss. And if you spend too much time in that abyss, it will consume. We saw the horrible example of what happened with Kate spade.

Arguably one of our nation's great entrepreneurs, amazing fashion icon, but didn't go through what she needed to go through to address that depression and all that stress to come along with it. She ultimately, um, uh, succumbed to, uh, suicide. Then we look at someone else. Elon Musk, Elon Musk has battled a tremendous amount of depression and challenges with emotional mental health.

But. He worked on tools and things to help get through that and to be able to fight through those demons and get past that cruc. Yeah, that's incredible. I love that. Uh, throughout your, you know, interview so far, you've had concrete examples of how to deal with some of these challenges and that it's not just fluff or, uh, this kind of, sometimes you can run into a.

The self-help space of people who don't want to offer real solutions. They just wanna talk about the problem. So I love that she talked about, um, meditation and, you know, just kind of mental and emotional health. I think that's all so important. Um, I think, uh, you know, Interestingly enough, the, the mental hurdles that you go through as a professional are the biggest ones.

If you can't convince yourself to send an email, because you're worried about the response, then, you know, you're never, you're never gonna be able to progress as a professional. So, um, I think that how this ties back to, you know, um, being effective is, uh, it's kind of all encompassing and being successful is being able to conquer that mental.

Absolutely all BA the battle, start with the battle of the mind before you can battle the, the opponent or the environment around you. Yeah, that's great. Well, you've given some awesome advice so far for people who want to be an entrepreneur. And, you know, even more specifically for people who are in fire and life safety and want to be an entrepreneur, but I wanted to pick your brain for any other piece of advice for somebody who maybe, um, can't.

Get themselves off the edge of wanting to start their business idea or, um, maybe in that vein of advice. So the first advice I give and I do a cha I I'm really privileged to speak at a lot of different universities and there's been a really large increase in entrepreneurial programs, which I I've got mixed feelings on.

I don't know if that's a good thing or not a good thing. And the reason I say that is you're too young. You don't have enough experience. If you start this, when you're in your twenties period, I don't care what anyone says. Um, you need life experiences. In my case, you know, having experiences as a firefighter, having experiences spending close to 20 years in corporate America, before I start my own business, soak up every single bit of information you can.

If you're on the fire service, attend every single leadership training event, you can. Try to get extra type of, um, involvements because you're doing it on their dime. You know, when I worked at Eli Lilly, I, I got certified to be lean six Sigma. That would've been tens of thousands of dollars. If not more than that, if I had to pay for that on my own pocket, I went through John Maxwell's different leadership programs, tremendous opportunity.

And as I went through all that, not only was I able to give a lot of that benefit back to Eli Lilly when I was working there, but I also was able to carry that with. Forward as I, um, started my own ventures. Um, the other thing is, and then this is probably the top advice for firefighters is when you come up with a great idea, the natural response is to protect it and make sure nobody finds out about it.

So what ends up happening? You either get a patent, which is tremendously expensive, and by the way, patents aren't even worth the paper they're written on. If, unless you have about a million dollars assigned to that patent, because patents only work if you defend them. And if you're not willing to defend them, uh, why would you even have one.

With exception of one area. And that is, if you you're creating a product, you want to get a patent and then you wanna sell that patent to a larger company to have them potentially, uh, defend it. Then. Yes, I, I agree with it. That's on one area, but this is what happens. You get some firefighter develops a great idea.

He starts thinking about it and he's so scared of tell anybody else, cuz they're gonna copy it. And as a result, nobody finds out. Now, um, as much as firefighters are, are brothers and, and we love them. Um, a firefighter will, will steal your idea in the, in the New York minute. I remember this story sitting down at my firehouse, where this guy's talking about how he started his own lawn care company.

And he bought this, uh, lawnmower and how much he's making. And within like a week or two, the two other firefighters listened to him. They bought a lawn mower and they started going after his clients and trying to find everything else that's out there. I. When I started my company FOXFIRE and the fire service, two.

Literally ripped off every single thing I'm doing to the point where they're even copying my logo and my colors and everything else. Um, I used to get really upset about that, but the reality is don't. Um, first of all, it's flattering. Second of all, it tells you there is a business. There, but third of all is I'm gonna spend my time energy on developing new product in innovative products and focusing on that distribution and not trying to fight somebody else.

Um, because, um, again, if you can stay one step ahead of them, if you can be okay with the fact that, uh, yes, somebody may steal your idea, but the benefit of you getting that idea out there and distributing it and talking to people far outweighs the risk that you would have of somebody stealing your.

Spend the money you would've spent on that patent on Facebook targeted ads. I guarantee you you'll make your money back 10. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think there's a, you know, a scarcity mindset and then like a growth mindset and people who are worried about, you know, oh, there's only so much space.

And I know that that competitive advantage is important. Um, that you talked about earlier, but, um, so, so many times I think people get so tied up in worrying about, um, getting outpaced or somebody else being in the space and they never really give it a chance. They, they don't, you know, in reality, I think there's a lot more bandwidth than, than people are aware of usually, um, especially I can speak for, uh, you know, podcasts is really what I'm kind of, um, drawing my experience from, but, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's great.

Great tips for people who want to get into, um, creating a business. So I wanna circle back to, you know, we've hinted a couple times at LumAware, but I want to talk, um, more about the arc of your story with LumAware. Um, so you get this idea to, uh, create, um, I don't know what the, what the technical word is for, um, lighting from the absorption of, uh, you know, light from.

Um, ceiling lights, ENT technology vote, luminescence technology. Yeah. I was trying to talk to somebody the other day about it and I kept saying interes and I was like, I know that's not right. That's for fire separations, but, um, yeah. Would talk to me more about like the incipient stages of this idea to this boots on the ground.

Um, trying to sell, um, I think that's fascinating. Yeah. So, you know, it's a common problem we've had literally back. Caveman time. And that is what happens when it gets dark out. You get disoriented, you can't find your way around and I wanted to solve that. And so I remember. After I got lost in a fire very early on in my career, uh, a week or two later, I was watching a special on nine 11 and they were talking about how they had this incredible photo lumins and technology in the stairwells, um, of the world trade tower.

So it was actually installed after the 93 truck bombing, uh, where buil, uh, New York fire and building code officials got together and said, Hey, we need to create something else in the code. That's gonna help people in case the power goes out in case. The generators and the, and the backup plans fail because we all know there's a guy named Murphy, he's got a law of physics and it's pretty accurate.

And that is anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst time. Um, so they started to put that in the code building code 26, New York city, September 11th occurs. We talk a lot about the people that died that day, but. Over 17,000 people that got out of those towers before they ultimately came down six different times during the nine 11 commission report, they specifically talked about this photo luminescent technology, helping people find their way out of the world trade towers.

So as a result of that, it started to infiltrate into the NFPA, the I B C the IFFC codes that are out there. So I took that same technology, and I knew that I wanted. Player in that space, but I had to have that competitive advantage, which I didn't have early on. And so I just focused exclusively on.

Firefighter protective products, helmet bands, wraps, paints, resins, uh, shirts, all these different types of things. And the goal there was, was to build my brand, build my community. And as I started to sell these products outta the trunk of my car, I literally made 5,000 bucks over about a six month time period.

Uh, but then I ended up going to F D I C as we all know one of the, the largest firefighter trades show in the United States. Um, in three days we sold close to a hundred thousand dollars of. Now the problem is, is I didn't have any, um, money to, uh, buy the raw materials. I had no way to fill those orders. I had no distribution to, to get those out.

I had no way to set up a collection system to get paid on all those type of things. And people are like, Zach, you gotta stop taking these orders. I'm like, no, I'm a Marine. We overcome, we adapt. We figure things out. We improvise. And that's what I did. So I ended up rating my 401k. I pulled out money out of.

Um, uh, savings. I maxed out credit cards. I was able to get most of those orders out. Um, but then I'm starting to run outta money again. So I did the next thing, which was, went to venture capital and start and raised a couple million dollars in venture capital financing. However, when they, when you raised venture capital financing, they wanna look at what's the total available market.

What's the maximum that's out there and the maximum, total available market and the fire service really isn't that big, you know, there's about 1.2 million firefighters in the. About 31,000 different departments. So I needed something else there to help sweeten the pot, to get these investors to invest.

And what I looked at was something we see every day and we don't even realize it. And it's, uh, exit signs. There's a hundred million exit signs in the United States. They all need batteries. They need light bulbs, they need electricity. And there's a section in the code there that says you don't necessarily have to have an electrified.

Exit sign. What you do need to require though, is that it's visible for at least 90 minutes when the power goes off. And that's what I focused on. I was able to get our glow to glow bright enough and long enough that it met that standard. And before, you know, we started, um, we landed a pretty big opportunity with Krogers.

We then, uh, landed a monster opportunity with home Depot, uh, started to get some other really, really large, uh, companies, both as customers. And then eventually home Depot started to carry it themselves and sell the, um, exit signs and safety products. We also have a total portfolio products to help you get into code compliance with the stairwells ranging from a liquid stair nosing product that goes on the leading edge of the step to, um, tapes on the handrail.

And really kind of building that out. So that that's kind of what the, the arch in that journey has been, is now really focusing with what LumAware is focused on. We still do a ton of business on our Fox fire brand, which is our firefighter brand, but because we do so much on the LumAware side, um, Over 25 million close, you know, close to 30 million.

Um, and we're over 30 million. If you include the sales that we've done in, in the firefighter products, that that really has been the, um, you know, main focus of the company. But for me will always be a company of firefighters for firefighters in those we protect. That's awesome, man. It's incredible to hear about your effectively shark take moment, looking at the, the market size and what the, what the market would bear for the product that you're thinking of.

I think that's, uh, pretty fascinating to hear about. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I wanted to, you know, discuss a little bit about the perspective and it's something that we've talked about a little bit off air. You know, what was it like going from somebody who was an individual contributor to the CEO of a business that was making millions of dollars?

Um, I think that that is quite a transformation and I'd love to hear more about that. It was quite a transformation. It's a transformation. I don't think I did a really great job at to be perfectly honest. I think, um, being a founder and entrepreneur is a very different set of skills than being a CEO or president of a small to mid-size company.

I did an exceptionally good job of being a CEO of a startup company, where my focus was more on vision. Wasn't really focused on profit. It was just simply about getting the name out there and being the cheerleader and the evangelist for this technology. , but what you see with a lot of small businesses as they transfer from a startup to a small business, is that the CEO and founder usually holds the company back from, uh, maximizing its potential.

And the reason why is based off of this incredible concept that genome Wickman came up with in his book, rocket fuel, and it talks about you need an integrator and a visionary, and it's rare that those people are in those same categor. If you're a fan of psychology, Carl Young talks about people are thinkers or feelers.

People are, you know, some people are finan or, um, number motivated. Some people are visually motivated. Um, it's hard to have both of those. Be the same, actually, he says, you can't be the same. You can't be a thinker and a feeler. You can have little bits of each, but you can't have equal amounts of each. And so as the visionary, my job is to constantly be innovating, is to, um, you know, be the cheerleader for my company, the spokesman for the company to get out there and talk to people and come up with new ideas.

And as a result of that, I was neglecting those finances. I was getting to the point where I was so paranoid with my emails, cuz there were so many bad emails. I just figured, Hey, I'll just stop checking the emails. Uh, not really a good thing to do. And importantly, not very courageous. You know, one of those warrior attributes is courage.

You have to have that courage is not the absence of. It's being scared and then pushing through that. So when I got to my crucible where we thought we were running outta money and, and we were, I mean, we were ready to, to, you know, have to reorganize the company in bankruptcy. I was probably gonna lose my house and foreclosure.

It was a bad, bad situation. And that was my crucible. And my transformation that I made was stepping down as CEO and bringing in a new CEO. And that's when the company really, really flourished. So that that's something I think it's really important for people to know is starting. The company is very, very different than running a company requires a completely different set of skills.

Yeah, that's remarkable. I think that this kind of forest for the trees, um, Mentality, or this is, is common in entrepreneurs, this ability in this creativity to see, um, what the market needs or the broad picture of, you know, uh, an idea and how it's gonna be fulfilled is like a common theme for an entrepreneur.

But it seems like. You know, from what you're saying, like the technical details and the minutiae of, um, looking at financials and, you know, kind of really grilling down and executing on, um, some of those details is I could see how that would be a challenge, uh, challenge for me, for sure. Uh, it sounds, sounds really hard.

it is, but, you know, that's the, the hallmark of being a, a warrior. You take those challenges. You, you, you break 'em down to the small parts, you figure out what you need to do and, and you conquer 'em. And, and for me, it wa it was tough, but, but I did it. I brought in and expanded the team. That's awesome.

That's really interesting to hear about, um, Yeah. So I wanted to get into, uh, just, uh, a couple topics on the, I know this whole conversation's been about professional development, but usually we, towards the end of the interview, we kind of hit on, um, More recommendations for professionals. So all that to preface, uh, the question, um, you know, what do you see as, as somebody who is, uh, um, a serial entrepreneur, what do you see as meaningful, uh, trends in, in business you could speak to fire and life safety or just, uh, business more broadly.

What do you see as, as kind of trends for, for people to be aware of? Right. Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, the first trend is, is, is happening as we speak. And it's evolving and changing. That is what is pre COVID COVID and then post COVID look like, um, you know, I, I imagine when you have changes, like you take everything it's in perfect order.

You put it in a box and you shake it up. Sometimes the stuff on top drops to the bottom, sometimes the stuff on the bottom goes to the top. Sometimes things move around. So take advantage of what the. COVID and post COVID world looks like and look for opportunities there. The second thing is the beauty now of what we're doing, which is being able to talk to each other and not be in front of each other.

Uh, that is tremendous. Um, we've never experienced anything like that in the history of our, our country and, and really our economy for that matter. Um, it used to cost me thousands of dollars in two to three days. To have a meeting over in the, um, west coast. Now I can do it just by clicking a button and going on the zoom call.

So look at the opportunities that are created there. Uh, the shopping, the way that we consume data and the consume product has changed now and move more towards online, which really opens up, um, the opportunities and lowers the barrier of entry because you don't have to go out and. Buy a, uh, a building and lease a space to, to do business.

You can literally just open up your iPhone and create a Amazon, uh, account or an eBay store and just start selling stuff. It's incredible. So lots of opportunities out there be creative stuff that maybe you look at. A couple years ago and it just wasn't ready. Maybe now's the time to revisit it and to look at 'em and to try to find that out.

The other thing that I'd like to offer for your listeners is we're putting together a warrior framework training. This is gonna be a 90 day course where we're gonna take you through the warrior attributes step by step, by step and teach you how to apply those to business. It's gonna be really designed for people that.

We're starting a business. Maybe they have a small business. They want to scale it. They could be somebody in corporate America, or somebody in the fire service that wants to kind of move up to that next rank. But we're gonna really dive deep into how to handle adversity, tackle adversity, hold you accountable.

Through a series of coursework and also one-on-one calls with me where we're gonna be going over, uh, the warrior and, and that can be found on my website, warrior entrepreneur, book.com. You know, all you gotta do is just fill out the, uh, contact us, uh, section there with your information and, and we can get you information on taking the preassessment for the warrior F.

Awesome. Yeah, that's a, sounds like an interesting opportunity for somebody who, uh, is having trouble getting, going and needs a little bit of, uh, uh, tutorial on, uh, the right mentality for getting the job done. Um, yeah, the last question, Zach, uh, what kind of, it sounds like that one last one was pretty good, but, um, what other kind of resources would you recommend to professional?

You know, where do you like to go and do research and get information about, um, business or professional development? So obviously what we're doing right now is, is a tremendous new resource and that's just podcast. There's some great podcasts that are out there, listen to them, uh, digest them, share them, share those with other people.

Um, the other thing is, um, there's a lot of really great tools that are out there, um, that can help you. Two of my absolute favorite tools. One is a, um, website called fiber F I V E R. What makes five or so incredible is that you can get really agency quality, uh, material from website dev design, to whiteboard, uh, videos to, um, infographics at a really, really inexpensive cost.

It's, it's a pretty tremendous, uh, platform where people can, can bid off of that. The other one is a company called, got print G O T print. Um, Tremendous tool for, um, printing that is, uh, significantly cheaper than virtually anything else that I've found out there for printing, because that can really, uh, those prices add up, not just from a business card, but to putting together flyers, to banners, to.

To whatever else is out there.

Awesome. Well, I think that we have run the gambit here, Zach. Um, where can people find out about the book or, uh, follow you on social media? Yeah. So LinkedIn is usually the best way for, uh, social media, uh, Zachary L. Green. You can always email [email protected]. Again, I encourage everyone to, to go onto the website warrior entrepreneur book.com.

Uh, I am offering a specialist for your podcast listeners that if, uh, they type in the coupon code podcast, 2 0 2 1 again, podcast 2021, they can get the book for 50% off. And also, um, there, they can sign up to see if they are eligible. For the warrior, um, framework take the assessment intake tool that we have, uh, which is a amazing 20 question, uh, questionnaire that was put together by a special forces intelligence officer to assess, uh, your warrior traits.

Um, we you'll get a free report as a result of that. And if you score high enough, you'll be eligible to attend that warrior framework training. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for your time, Zach. And, uh, yeah. Thanks for coming on the show. Have a great day. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

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 code gen standards interpretation.

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

On this episode of Fire Code Tech we are talking about fire protection plans! What is the difference between design drawings and shop drawings? How are sheets numbered and displayed? What are common details and components of fire protection plans? Find out all this and more in episode 23 of FCT!

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 episode 23 of fire code. on this episode, we're talking about fire protection plant. Following in line with our series about common topics and fire protection engineering and building a basis for a young professional. I wanted to talk about common themes, details, schedules, and the scope of fire protection, engineering plans and shop drawings.

So that's a lot to unpack, but. I wanted to help build the basis for young professionals to have, um, knowledge about the industry and common practices around, um, generating, uh, shop drawings or engineering drawings for fire protection. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social.

Oh, in one big favor. If you could help me out go and rate us five stars on apple podcasts and send a review, if you would. All right, let's get into the episode. So let's talk about what is a fire protection plan? Well, a fire protection plan might mean something different for an engineer or. Um, engineering technician, um, depending on, uh, what you are contracted to do, what you are contractually obligated to provide.

So for those who are unaware, the design side of fire protection involves engineers and providing documents with broad criteria and scoping in regards to local jurisdictions. And. Setting up a kind of, uh, broad scope in order to give insight for systems and specific components that are required to, uh, make a building fire and life safety compliance.

This differs from shop drawings, which are usually from a contractor who is. Showing details and developing drawings in order to detail the specific layout of a system for the purposes of constructability usually, um, or also they can be generated for permit. And so to send, to building code officials or, um, owners or engineers and architects for approval.

In the, in the submittal process. So for the rest of the conversation, we'll say, um, design, fire protection drawings, uh, in reference to what architects and engineers produce and then shop drawings for, um, the more constructability oriented drawings that are produced by a contractor, the process of fire protection engineering, um, from.

The conceptual stage to all the way into constructed and acceptance tested looks a little bit like this. So the architect and engineer produces design drawings. These drawings are meant to be produced in order to give the, um, general contractor and subcontractor, uh, project criteria and functional requirements in order to design the fire and life safety systems or more broadly.

All of the systems required to not only bring a code compliant building, but one that functionally meets the requirements of the building owner construction documents occur after the project has been bid and the bid has been accepted in the typical design bid build case. Um, for those of you who don't know, there are multiple project delivery methods.

There's design build. In which the, uh, contractor and the architect and engineer work in tandem has joint venture of sorts. Then there's design bid build in which the architect and engineer serves as a representative of the owner. And the general contractors send in their bids and competitively buy for the contract in order to, um, win the contract.

And those bids can be evaluated and selected on a variety of reasons, but typically the biggest and most important reason to select the GC is, is cost and quality. So typically the fire suppression contractor will send. They're bids, which are, um, estimates of labor materials and, um, you know, other cost item factors within the job.

And so that's really before the shop drawing phase, but. Just trying to describe some of the life cycle of the project for fire protection. So after the, the bid is accepted in the subcontractors and, and general contractor is awarded the job, then the shop drawings will be produced depending on the fire and life safety system that is being constructed.

The shop drawings will be. Designed and modeled at different times during the project life cycle. So now that we've given a broad overview of what shop drawings and what design drawings are, let's talk about what are some of the common components that might go into these, um, fire protection plants. So for fire protection engineering drawings, there is a variety of detail level that can be provide.

depending on scope and complexity of the project, there can be a very great level of detail provided, including, um, sprinkler head layouts and some more detailed components of the fire and life safety system that might not be as common, um, on smaller to medium size projects. But for the conversation sake, let's say that, you know, I'll give an example of common, um, industry items that are provided, you know, common practice within the industry level of detail items that are provided, but keep in mind that there is a wide variety of what different consulting firms provide for their fire protection plan.

Some people refer to fire protection as only, um, in regard to the fire suppression element of the building. But when I say fire protection, I mean all fire and life safety systems in a building. So as a fire protection engineer, I am looking to holistically, um, review and detail the systems involved in fire and life.

and represent them in a way that they can be bid. So there are some common details to all, um, kind of construction drawings. Um, you know, whether it's a shop drawing or an engineering drawing, there are certain, um, items that are very typical throughout these, um, drafted drawings. One of those items is the north arrow.

Which is, um, basically orients the viewer of the drawing to the Cardinal direction. Um, displacement of the building, generally, it's fairly typical to have north be planned north on the page, which means that, uh, the top of the page is the direction of north. That is not always the case. And so you wanna check the drawing, what you're looking at.

The second extremely common item is the graphic scale for a drawing to be created to scale means that you can obtain dimensions from the drawing, um, utilizing the, you know, scale that it is drawn at common graphic skill sizes are an eighth of an inch equals one. a quarter of an inch equals one foot, half an inch equals one foot or an inch equals one foot.

Depending on how big the building is. They can also scale much larger. So generally eighth inch equals a foot is pretty standard. And so there, if the building is bigger than what it takes to put on one sheet at an eighth inch equals a foot, usually they will divide up the. In how many sectors it takes in order to get, um, a plan of the building of the entire building on a scaled drawing that equals an eighth inch equals a foot completed.

Design drawings will have elements of fire protection systems like main lines for fire Sprinklr systems, fire, alarm notification, and initiation devices. Fire alarm and other system control panels, and enunciators textual notes describing what needs to be done for the project extends or clarification details on a sheet.

So drawing, naming conventions vary, but by and large, the industry follows a set standard of abbreviations for different floor plants. Or different plans from different engineering and architectural disciplines. So there are C drawings which are civil drawings, a drawings, which usually refer to architectural drawings.

I for interiors, uh, for fire protection, you could have FP drawings for a combination of fire alarm and fire suppression. You could have FX for fire suppression, FA for fire alarm. E for electrical M for mechanical, MH for H V a C uh, P for plumbing. Oftentimes there are G sheets for life safety or for general documentation at the front of the drawing set plans are usually in the 100 series of drawings and drawings generally go from 100 series drawings to about.

Uh, typically 700 series drawings. And so if you had three floor plans, you might have drawings named FP 1 0 1 FP 1 0 2 and FP 1 0 3. If you had a second floor with one drawing, you might have FP 2 0 1. And so there is a specified sequence of drawings in the. Um, kind of conventional architects and engineer layout.

And so usually plans is in the 100 series sections in the 300 series. Another way you could break up elevation is to have subsequent levels having, um, adding at 10 place numbers. So you could have like one 11 or one 12 for second floor drawing. Um, details and details are generally on 500 series drawings.

So FP 5 0 1 might be where you locate some details, standard details for fire suppression, piping, or fire alarm wiring details. Uh, 400 series drawings. So FP 4 0 1 is where you will have your enlarged plans. Enlarge plans are a much closer look at a specific area within the floor plan in order to give more detail and more nuance to what you're describing or showing, um, programs like Revit will automatically cut an enlarged plan.

If you used the view references or the call outs correctly. Um, sections by that same token are a vertical slice of the building in order to illustrate a, uh, section of the building as if you were standing, looking at it, um, and elevation and not in plan, uh, plan is in reference to, if you are looking at the building, uh, from a bird's eye view, looking down on the building and elevation.

How you would see a wall standing up and looking at a wall 600 series drawings are usually for schedules like fire suppression or fire alarm, riser schedules, and 700 series drawings are generally for, uh, matrices. So you have a fire alarm matrix or a foam controls or a special hazards matrix. They would be FP 7 0 1 7 0 2 7 0 3.

The reason for a fire suppression riser diagram is to give greater detail than what you can see in plan. Sometimes if you have a building with a complicated system, It could help the contractors bid the drawing in order to show vertically how the system proceeds through the building. Um, the building can have mul multiple lead-ins and places where the water supply comes in.

So all of these details and, um, designs are to help the contractor be able to bid the system involved. And to provide a code compliant life safety system, um, matrix, uh, typically it's the fire protection engineer's job to specify how the fire alarm system behaves. So the inputs and outputs that make the fire alarm system, um, react how it's supposed to these requirements for what needs to be monitored and what the inputs and outputs need to be can be found in NFPA 72.

Shop drawings vary greatly based on what system you are designing. But I have the most experience with fire suppression drawings, more specifically water based systems. Shop drawings have a list of requirements for working plans. As they're described in chapter 28, which is plans and calculations in the latest edition of NFPA 13, which is 2020.

In section 28.1 0.3. There's a list of over 20 items that are required to be on working plans depending on the project. Some and, uh, many of these details may not be required, but for new construction, you always want to require as many of these details as the contractor can provide some of these details for shop drawings, our working plans are the name and address of the property.

The telephone and address of the contractor, the compass and the graphic scale like we talked about before is some of the standard graphical details, water supply information, including location type size dimensions, capacity, configuration, elevation. Static pressure flow rate, residual pressure and flow, ate location dates and sources.

So the reason why that is, uh, such an involved requirement is because those are all the details that are pertinent for hydraulic calculations, which is how you're going to size and design your system. So as you can see from these requirements, we are looking at all of the pertinent design criteria.

Sprinkler information in order to show the layout and location of all the sprinkler heads and mains and hangers. And then also show our work on how we calculated the system. What's the water supply like and all of the factors around the design of the system, so that we have good documentation and justification of why the system was designed the way it was.

I think that's it for this episode. There's a lot more that I could talk about for shop drawings, but we'll save that for next time on fire code. Thanks for listening. Everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

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

On this episode of Fire Code Tech we are discussing aircraft hangars. Diving into the fire protection and design considerations that make these facilities unique and challenging. Check out this episode if you want to learn about codes and standards for aircraft facilities, common fire protection systems, and how other disciplines deal with this occupancy.

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. Welcome to another solo cast edition of fire code tech. On this episode, we're talking about hanger, fire protection, something that is near and dear to my heart. So there is a bunch to dive into for hanger fire protection. So in this episode, we're gonna look at some of the common fire protection systems as always the codes and standards around the subject.

We're gonna take a look at some of the other design features associated with hangar fire protection and hangers in general, they provide a unique set of challenges for design, um, for all trades, not just fire protection. And so, yeah, this is an episode that I've been thinking about for a while and. I have quite some experience with, so I hope you enjoy, and we will do a couple episodes on this subject.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Oh. And if you feel so inclined, it would be a huge help. If you would give us a five star review on apple podcasts, let's dive into the show. So standard. Disclaimer, here we are looking at the fire protection hazards and codes and standards through the lens of the codes and standards in the United States.

Um, I will be giving reference to more specifically the adopted codes and standards in Oklahoma. So right now the state has adopted I B C 2018. That is a bit of a preface for our first topic, which is what are the codes and standards around hanger fire protection. So as you can imagine, there are specific requirements in the building code for aircraft hangers.

That section specifically is section four 12, which. Aircraft related occupancies, as we've talked about before chapter four has special occupancy related chapters. And when you have a building or a facility type that is, uh, especially dangerous or has unique properties that, um, require more advanced fire protection features generally you'll find a lot of these features in chapter four of the building.

So there are some provisions in the building code that are mirrored within the standard for aircraft hangers, which is an FPA 4 0 9. Let's talk about a couple of these special requirements that are located in the building code. Once again, that's section four, 12 aircraft related occupancies. So our discussion today will focus more on aircraft hangers, but.

Section four 12 in the international building code covers a variety of buildings that are associated with, um, many types of Aircrafts. So one of those buildings is, uh, Eric traffic control towers. I don't have much experience with these buildings, but they have, uh, many special requirements due to the abnormal configuration of these buildings, uh, abnormal in that they are very tall.

And, uh, have a limited number of egress points because of their height in configuration. The discussion today will be centered predominantly on aircraft hangers. Now there are a couple of different types of aircraft hangers. Um, there are light and heavy maintenance aircraft hangers. There are, um, fuel cell hangers, which is where they do repair on.

The fuel tanks and compartments of Aircrafts. And then there are paint hangers, which is where they do the commercial painting for the exterior of the aircraft. Um, and then there are manufacturing hangers, so where airplanes are assembled or manufac. So, as you can imagine, there are, um, further requirements for each of these special type of hanger, but the most common type of hanger would be the, the light or the heavy maintenance hangers.

Um, so we'll focus our discussion on that aircraft hanger for today. So the beginning of section four 12 for aircraft related occupancy. 4 12 1 general aircraft related occupancies shall comply with sections four 12 through 4 12, 7, and the international fire code. So in four 12, we can see specific sections that top talk about construction types, um, and.

Construction types and fire area play a huge part in what fire protection systems are required in the facility. So before we talk about hangar classification, let's just start with the preface that if you can think about it as a fire and life safety system, likely the classification of the building as an aircraft hanger will affect that.

Life safety system. So just for conversation sake, let's list off some of the life safety features that will definitely be impacted. If you have a aircraft maintenance facility that you're designing. Egress building construction, fire, alarm, fire, suppression, fire rated fire, separated assemblies. There are other design features that are impacted like the sloping of the floors and the type of heating or conditioning that you will have selected.

Oftentimes aircraft hangers are not conditioned, so they'll be heated, but not cool. Depending on the fueled nature of the aircraft, whether it is fueled or UN fueled or what type of work is being done in the hangar, there might be hazardous classification of the electrical system. So that class one D one or class one D two.

Hazardous classification for electrical is a topic for a whole video. But for the purposes of this discussion, there are parts of the hanger which can be class one, div one, or class one. Diviv two, which effectively means that there are in class one, di one, there are situations that could be hazardous for flammables and combustibles present.

At all times and class one, dip two is, um, in some instances there will inadvertently be flammables or combustibles, but so that adds a huge cost for, uh, rated explosion rated, uh, electrical devices and hanger, depending on what kind of work you're doing inside of the aircraft. Hang. So before we talk about what are the different fire protection approaches for aircraft hangers?

We have to talk about the classification of aircraft hangers. So there is group 1, 2, 3, and four aircraft hangers, and then there are, um, other chapters in NFP, 4 0 9 that have huge sweeping implications for the hanger is. Pain hangers, which is chapter 10 in the latest edition of NFPA 4 0 9, uh, as always, but more importantly with hangers, you need to know what the addition of codes and standards you're working with.

Um, in the reason why it's so important for aircraft hangers is there are only versions of NFPA 4 0 9 made approximately. Every four years. So there are huge, huge changes in what is allowed between the additions. Um, the 2011 edition. Is much different from the 2016 edition is extremely different from the 2022 edition, which is the latest version that has come out.

This can mean the difference of needing two fire protection, water storage tanks for your facility, or maybe not needing them at all with the 20, 22 edition of the. So it really pays to understand codes and standards and what version of the standard that you're using. So let's get back to hanger classification, cuz this is the first step for determining what fire protection systems are required for your.

So, as we talked about before, there are four types of hangers and the most hazardous type of hanger in the group, one through four categories is group one. So depending on the maximum fire area inside of your hanger and the construction type. You can classify your hanger. So once again, we're looking at the 2022 edition of N FPA 4 0 9, which is the standard for aircraft hangers.

And more specifically, we're looking at chapter four, which is aircraft hanger groups, chapter four, lays out the process for determining which group your hangar is in, which will in turn stipulate. A lot of requirements. The protections and the features that your hanger will need to have. So we start off with the most hazardous group, which is the group one aircraft hanger, and it says in 4.1 0.1, a group, one aircraft hanger shall have at least one of the following features and operating conditions in aircraft access door, height of 8.5 meters or 28.

Single fire area area, a single fire area in excess of 3,716 meters squared or 40,000 square feet provision for housing of an aircraft with the tail height over 8.5 meters. So as you can see here, the two biggest drivers for if you have a group one aircraft hanger. The square footage of the aircraft hanger or the height of the aircraft.

So over 28 feet servicing an aircraft with over 28 feet of a tail height or door height. So if you can get a aircraft with a top clearance up 28 feet, then you are meeting this requirement. So. Yeah. So you can tell briefly by taking a look at the square footage of the largest aircraft hanger bay. So let's take a look at group two aircraft hangers, 4.1 0.2, a group two aircraft hanger shell have both of the following features in aircraft access door of a height of a 0.5 meters or 28 feet or less.

A single fire area for specific types of construction in accordance with table 4.1 0.2. So for group two in group three aircraft hangers, there are tables which have construction types, which give additional allowances for, um, how large or small your fire area can be before it is a group two or group three aircraft hang.

So group one is nice and neat at 40,000 square feet and, and 28 feet of door height, but group two in group three, have a little bit more nuance as they take into account the, uh, square footage in comparison to the construction type. So under there are a couple different thresholds, um, 30,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet, 15,000 square feet.

Um, and based on, you know, if you're type one through five construction, you can be within these group two and group three hangers. After you determine which group of hanger that you are classified, as you would go to the specific chapter for that group of hang. New to the 2022 addition of the standard.

There is a performance based design approach. I won't talk about that in this episode, since I have no, uh, experience with performance based design, really, uh, especially not in the form of aircraft hangers, since it is so new, but thought it was worth noting chapter six, which talks about aircraft hanger groups and their fire protection requirements.

Wanted to end with 6.1 0.1, which will be a starting place for our next discussion on aircraft hangers, which states some of the fire protection systems that are allowed for a group. One hanger that section states the protection of aircraft storage and servicing areas for group one aircraft hangers shall be in accordance with any one of the following home water dealers system as specified in 6.2 0.2.

In addition, supplementary protection systems as specified in 6.2 0.3 shall be provided in hangers housing as single aircraft. Having wing areas greater than 3000 square feet. Part two, a combination of automatic sprinkler protection in accordance with 6.2 0.4 and automatic low level low expansion foam system in accordance with 2.6 0.2 point.

Part three, a combination of automatic sprinkler protection in accordance with 6.2 0.4 and an automatic low level high expansion foam system in accordance with 6.2 0.5. So this section basically gives allowance for the combination of fire protection systems, which will be allowed to protect group one aircraft hangers.

As a recap, there are high expansion foam. Or low expansion foam in combination with sprinklers. That's gonna do it for this episode of fire code tech. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening, everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

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