Fire Code Tech

On this episode of Fire Code Tech we are catching up with Aaron Johnson. Aaron has over a decade of experience in the fire service and fire/life safety consulting. This episode is packed full of great content on aircraft hangars, EVTOL, and foam fire suppression alternatives.   

https://evtol.com/opinions/fire-protection-codes-evtol-regulations/

www.aaronj.org

https://amzn.to/3qybWNz

How has the pandemic been on you and effected your business?

What kind of conferences do you like to go to?

Will you speak on your career shift and your new role?

What are your thoughts on the changes recently to NFPA 409?

Would you speak about some of your writing projects recently?

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, what's going on.

Y'all welcome to episode 41 of fire code. On this episode, we're talking with Aaron Johnson again. So excited to talk to Aaron. There has been a lot of shake up in the aircraft hanger and aircraft fire suppression industry. We get into some great nuggets of some foam alternatives, and what's been happening in the, uh, aircraft hanger industry and NFPA four.

Oh. Erin also has some great takeaways for people who are looking to get into the fire service and professionals who want to get involved with codes and standards. I really enjoyed this episode with Erin because we already had the baseline of Erin's career and some of the more templated topics of fire code tech taken care of in episode four of fire code.

And yeah. If you have any interest in aircraft hanger, fire protection, you're gonna love this episode. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media Owen. And if you could give us a five star rated review on apple iTunes podcasts, that would be awesome. So helpful.

Well, Aaron, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to fire code. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here and I love listening to your show so glad it can be a part. Awesome, man. That's touching. I appreciate that. Um, man, so you're only my second guess I've ever had on a second time for fire code tech and one of the original, uh, I believe you came on before the podcast had even launched.

So. You're one of the, probably five people that I had on the podcast, um, who just took a huge leap of faith in coming on and talking to me. So, uh, yeah, it's been a, it's been a while. How have things been. Oh, things have been good, man. Things have been great. And, uh, you know, a lot of changes recently, always exciting stuff.

And, um, like I said, anytime that I get to talk about fire protection with somebody I'm always up for that. So yeah, that's a good deal. So, uh, H how was the. How was the pandemic in, uh, your, uh, section of fire safety? I mean, uh, you know, how did it feel writing that out? I know for me, it was, uh, a really busy timer.

It seemed like the emphasis on safety was only kind of compounded by the pandemic, but, uh, yeah. What did it, what did it mean for you in, in your line of. well, I think, uh, I mean, for me it didn't have, um, a huge impact. I mean, we, we still, we were essential, so I still went to work every day. Um, I guess some of the things that did change is our inspection schedules and those type of things.

We pushed some of those inspections, um, around a little bit, or we maybe had to reschedule a few things when not as many people are in the buildings are on site. Um, It was a little bit different, a little bit eerie with a lot of people, not at work, not on the site. So sometimes it seemed like a, a ghost town, but, um, but other than that, it was a lot of business as usual because, you know, we still had to be there and respond if anything should happen.

Um, and still do all the, we still had to be prepared for our audits and for, um, insurance inspections and all those things, even if they were. Over virtual calls and those type of stuff. So we still had to still to keep going and keep working. So not a lot, not a lot, really, um, different from me through the pandemic.

So yeah, I feel you, it, it seems like pretty much other than wearing masks all when I would travel, it's been pretty much, uh, business as usual, you know, masks at work mask traveling. But other than that, it's just been like full steam. Yeah. I mean, I would say that too. I kind of forgot about that. I hadn't traveled in a couple years, so I'll be glad to get back to that.

So looking forward to some conferences and stuff next year. Oh yeah. I've been wanting to it. I've been, so, uh, had so much FOMO about people going to S F P E and uh, N an FBAs conference is coming up online. Um, I'd love to go to some of those conferences that I heard a lot of good stuff out of people who went to S F P E, but, um, yeah.

What kind of conferences are, have you been to in the past? Are, are you interested in going to, as somebody who's been more fire service oriented? Yeah. So I always like the, I think one of, I go to lots of conferences every year and I've always tried to do that and I'm always, uh, I'm a big proponent of continuing education.

So, but one of the best, uh, is the national fire protection association of the N FPA conference every year. Um, it's always packed full of information and interesting people. Um, It's always in a pretty cool location usually. So I'm actually looking forward to going to that one, uh, in 2022. Um, I'm excited about that.

I go to, uh, I also look forward to the, a working group it's, uh, aircraft rescue firefighter. So it's a conference and an association for people that are in that industry. Uh, it's pretty, it's pretty interesting. There's a lot of. People from all different types of airports and within the aviation field.

And, um, a lot of, um, apparatus manufacturers, all kinds of vendors like that are there. So it's a neat crowd or different crowd, and you get some different types of topics to discuss and learn about some different things that you don't get at other conferences. Um, next year I'm looking forward to ill be going for the first time to the F SSA conference and, um, a couple of the Nafe head conferences as well.

So I'm kind of looking forward to. Trying those trying something new, um, and seeing how those are. So I'm looking forward to that. Oh, nice. Yeah. It's uh, some of the business development people in my company, like to go to some of those more general aviation conferences and I haven't had the opportunity to go to any, but man, it seems like just, uh, a hotbed for, uh, networking with professionals and.

You know, seeing what's happening in the industry and getting a pulse for, uh, where things are going. And what's important to the people who are in fire and life safety. But yeah, it seems like a good deal. But man, I was gonna say, you were talking about like, uh, people who, um, produce apparatus. Appra I don't know how you say it, but fire apparatus is apparatus, but.

People on the internet, love fire trucks. I, uh, it's been interesting. I was looking at like, uh, Reddit or something and like, there's basically some fire service, like Reddits, where they just will geek out so hard over fire trucks. and people love it on the internet. I'm always like, kind of blown away. I'm like, yeah, it's neat that it's a fire pump and a truck at the same time.

Y'all are going overboard on this. Yeah. They have a lot of those on Instagram too. So they always catch my eye and I'm not really, even one of those, like, uh, you know, like I'm not a, uh, what do I wanna say? I'm not like a kick the door down, die hard, you know, one of those types of firefighters, but even when I see those.

Trucks pop up on my Instagram feed. I always have to click on 'em and check 'em out. I don't know if it's something the photography that makes 'em look so great, or just the knowledge of the power that they have and what they can do or what it is. If there's something about that makes you click on that picture every time people, people love those.

I talk to, uh, One of the guys that had on the podcast, Mike Snyder. And he was part of, uh, like a historical society where they had one of the first New York super pumper trucks. And he was part of like some historical society where they like, uh, Um, kept up, kept that super pumper truck and whatever would, uh, get together and talk about it.

So it's, uh, remarkable to me how much people love those trucks. yeah, that was interesting. I think I, I remember listening to that when I was in interesting to hear him talk about that truck. Man, Mike's a smart guy. He was, he was, uh, we kicked around the idea of doing a whole podcast over the super pumper and he was like, he was into it.

So maybe I'll get, maybe that podcast will come out. I don't know it hasn't happened yet, but, well, that's neat. It was cool to hear about, uh, you've been how things have been going. But, um, another thing that I'm interested in hearing about from you is your, uh, the kind of career shift that you've had recently, um, going from working as.

More of, uh, somebody in the fire service and a fire marshal to, uh, moving towards more of your own consultancy. I'd love to hear about. Yeah. So I, um, I've worked in the fire service for 15 years in different roles as a, um, aircraft rescue, firefighter and inspector all the way up to, um, fire marshal. Um, and then I was just, I kind of always had in the back of my mind that I eventually would want to do some consulting type of work.

I didn't really ever know what that would, would look like, but, um, As time went on. And one of the things I became passionate about is, uh, codes and standards and developing codes and standards and being part of that process. And I've always kind of preached that whether I was a, at all my levels, whether as a firefighter and inspector fire marshal, I was always preached to our guys.

And anytime I got a chance to speak at a conference, I'd always try. Work that in the importance of being involved in the code and standards process, how it's, by the time you're putting out a fire, the firefighter you're already at somebody else's kind of will, right. Somebody else already made the decision on how you're gonna do that.

And, and they already made that decision. So it's very important to be, to be at the other end of that spear at the end of that spear, so to speak and, and writing and developing those code and standards. That's some I've always been passionate about. And, um, I just kind of realized, you know, there's a gap in.

Technology moves a little bit faster than the code and standards process. And there's a gap in that. And there's people that have, you know, they found a new way or they have an innovative fire protection solution for a certain fire problem. Um, and they know it works and we could see it work, but if it's not in the codes and standards, then, um, it's not gonna get accepted.

It's not gonna be an acceptable, an acceptable alternative or an acceptable solution. So that's something I'm always passionate about is helping those people in those organizations kind of move, move in that direction. So I've. I, I started doing that kind of on the side, along with my fire service career, about 10 years ago.

Um, I would take some work and do some side jobs like that for people. And finally just got to the point where I was, um, I was starting to refer people out and I started saying, Hey, what am I doing? I like doing this work. I need to stop referring these people away and just keep the work and do it myself.

And, um, so I, I made that transition, um, in October of this year. And so, um, it's, it's going well, like it's exciting. And I get to be involved in a lot of fun stuff and fun projects and different things, man. That's awesome. I love that. Uh, I love. You're talking about like a certain level of advocacy for, um, you know, fire and life safety alternatives, and how much.

It always has struck me as really incredible how much of an uphill battle it is for, uh, a product to make it into the fire and life safety markets. Um, whether it's the listing or just people having knowledge about the solution or kind of fighting the stigma of this is the way we've always done it. So I think that's a really interesting point you made about, you know, Working with companies and kind of, uh, helping build a knowledge base around, um, new alternatives and different projects.

I think that's, uh, that's a fascinating line of work. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it is it's, um, it's a. It's, uh, it's a long process and, uh, anything I can do to help people along that road, that's what I like to do and enjoy doing so for sure, for sure. Well, uh, you know, I know that, uh, something that's been, um, a lot on my mind recently and I've seen you post about it.

So I wanted to pick your brain on it a bit. Is. all of the changes in NFPA 4 0 9 and, and what's been going on with the, with the foam alternatives and, and that, and how that market's kind of been taken off. I've kind of felt. Uh, crossed on it at times, you know, I always want the most safe solution and the most effective fire and life safety solution to be, um, available and for that to win.

But it's, uh, I can't help it feel. A bit curmudgeony about, uh, you know, kind of seeing, seeing the, um, seeing foam not be, or kind of people shying away from foam and wanted to distance the industry from foam. So, uh, I feel, uh, I feel two ways about it, I guess, but love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, no, I think that, I think the changes.

And 4 0 9 are great. Overall. I think they're, um, they're needed and it was time for that. Um, we'll get to the phone alternatives a minute, but one of the bigger changes was the addition of adding in, uh, a way to do a fire risk based assessment or performance based design alternative, you know, and I think that's important because, um, one of the.

Areas of technology that I've been working in is when electronic vertical takeoff and lift aircraft or EV toll, um, and urban air mobility. So those types of aircraft that run out of electric or hydrogen, they're gonna require a whole new type of fire protection. Then a foam system will allow, so having a risk based or performance based design AC, having that actually now as part of 4 0 9 and written in there and pointed to, and a process and a system for that, that's gonna go a long.

Towards, um, better protection for these new technologies. So that's one of the biggest things that I was glad to see come into 4 0 9. Um, and then with, of course with foam alternatives, there's a lot of stuff out there. A lot of things out there and that risk based performance based design assessment is gonna allow some of those other things to come in.

Um, I don't know what you've been seeing Gus out there, but I'd like to hear what, hear what you've been seeing, but I've been, I've seen, um, started to see some, some people trying to push some water mist, um, systems. I've seen some Novec type systems. Um, but the biggest one we've seen too is the, um, ignitable liquid floor drainage assembly.

Um, it's a safe that safe spill makes I'm sure you've seen them around too. Um, those are some of the people that are starting to kind of. Realize, oh, there's a, now we don't have to have foam. So what, what can we use to replace that? So it's neat to see these other industries kind of starting to rise to the top and try to fill in that gap and say, well, we have a solution that we can, we can offer.

Yeah. I think safe spill was the first one that I got to, uh, speak with the safe spill people and, um, see their solution. And they came and gave a talk. Um, uh, gosh, I can't remember for the life of me, the fellow who's on 4 0 9 now. Tristan, Tristan. Yeah, Tristan and, um, bill, uh, came to, uh, our office as we do so much hang of work.

And we're talking to us about, um, the solutions that they're bringing to the table and, you know, Leanne who's. One of my biggest mentors was, you know, kind of was all open ears and, you know, interested in hearing about what they're doing. But yeah, now more recently, I haven't heard about the water miss, but I've heard about, uh, the, the Novac or the clean agent, which is, seems really counterintuitive to me for what a hanger is, the hazard, you know, the volume that a hanger, um, is associated with.

But, uh, yeah, just heard recently about that, but. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the water miss. I mean, I understand water miss and how that could. Applicable, but, um, I guess I just haven't seen that. No, I just, I haven't seen it in person, but I've just, I haven't, I don't know all everything about it, but I've, from what I've seen, there's a couple different systems.

Um, um, there's a company called. VI fired kill. And then of course, Mar off is probably the biggest one that we would be familiar with, but they I've seen a couple different systems where there's one, some that are just, um, floor nozzles that pop outta the floor. And then I've seen others ones where they use, um, floor and in combination with some overhead water missed nozzles as well.

So, um, like I said, I don't know a lot about that system, but it's just one of the things I've started seeing, um, that people are trying to use in their hangers. So. Yeah, I think that's interesting. I think that there are, you know, I'm a fan of foam, but there are a lot of, um, complications. The system is complex.

The, it, the system is expensive. Um, you know, uh, the, the nuisance alarm, uh, kind of debate or just the statistics around nuisance alarms and nuisance discharges of these systems, uh, provide complications. I I'll acknowledge that, you know, I'm open to a different way of doing things. And I really like what you said about a more performance based design approach and, and kind of, you know, okay.

Let's, let's have some discussion here. It doesn't need to be all prescriptive and it doesn't need to be all performance based. So I think that's a good deal. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. . Yeah. Yeah. It seems, it appears to me. So like, I don't know about those Novec systems, but, um, I was talking today with, uh, one of the fire protection engineer I work with and I was like, how's this gonna work out?

Because like, uh, even a medium sized data center room is like for like a, maybe. Um, like, I can't remember the square footage as he was throwing out, but you know, like a quarter of a million dollar for like a medium sized data center room, which is like a couple thousand square feet, uh, could be a quarter of a million dollars.

And, you know, you got a hanger that. Could be what, you know, 40, 50,000 square feet. So how's how do those, uh, economics work? I just don't get it really, but maybe I need to talk to somebody about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that one of the demos I had seen online was, um, , it was kind of a, a system that works with your, you know, your de your detection system.

So when it detects the, the fire, it only activates a couple of, um, of nozzles where it needs to be. And they could be like monitor type of nozzles and the Nove was being expelled out of that. Hmm. So, you know, maybe the design isn't quite like a total flooding type system. It's more of like a, a monitor nozzle system where you put, like, you.

10 nozzles on each side of the hangar, then you only have a couple that have to activate where the fire is or, or something like that. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes a lot more sense and try to total flood a hundred thousand square foot hanger. yeah, I know. Right. but, uh, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's uh, the hanger thing is it's a complex problem and for fine life safety, it's kind of one of.

One of those occupancies, where we get, uh, more of a seat at the table than, um, as compared. A lot of other occupancies, like, uh, business are just general storage or industrial facilities. So I don't know, I'm a little bit, uh, protective of this, uh, this big hazard and these, um, complex systems, but I'm excited to see, I'm always excited to see new developments and, and new good systems.

And, you know, I'm a, I'm a proponent that if, if a safe spill or if a water missed, or if a gas use suppression is gonna. Uh, you know, uh, the solution that is, is better all around economically safety wise and, um, maintenance wise. And I'm all for that, but it's, uh, it's been kind of interesting. I think, I feel like these changes in 4 0 9 have really opened things up.

Yeah, for sure. It'll be interesting to see what, what starts to come out of it. You know, so the new edition is up now on an FPA website it's already been published. So, um, you know, these things take a few years coup a year or so for people to start adopting and implementing, but, um, it's there. And so the good thing is that people that.

You know, are still in the previous editions of four. I, they at least have that document to point to, to say, you know, I know we haven't adopted this yet, but here's what this document allows. And here's how they got to that point. So hopefully that'll be helpful when these people are trying to use, you know, alternative, um, means and methods or other ways to protect the hazard that they have.

Hmm. Do you know if like, uh, most of these alternative solutions are mostly being used for like smaller hangers, like group, like, uh, two and three hangers, or you think that, um, any of these have a place for like group one hangers? I don't know. That might be too much on the spot there, but yeah, not, I think they all could.

Potentially be used for the group one hangers, but I think that what we're gonna start seeing first is the, the group twos in the group threes. Yeah. It seems like, uh, I saw a safe spill got there. Um, first military installation, which is a big deal, um, for, I think it was a temporary hangar structure, but, um, it looked pretty good.

Um, from what I could see on social media, Uh, so that's a, that's a big deal for them to get their foot in the door on the DD side of things. But, uh, yeah. It's interesting. So yeah, no, it's, it's good. It's really cool. Like, I, I like to tell everybody now's a good, it's a pretty cool time to be in the fire protection field, especially in, uh, in regards to aviation and all those kind of things that are all new, new developments, new technology, and, um, something's always happening and coming out.

So. It's pretty fun. Yeah. So, uh, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. So I was reading, uh, a mere fire blog about, um, and I've heard some other people who went to the S F P conference talking about it, but, uh, just this notion that fire and life safety is, is having trouble finding people to come to the field and kind.

Needs advocacy for fire and life safety. Uh, I've seen that, um, in my, uh, short career, but yeah, I was just wondering if you've kind of seen that, uh, recently or just in your career in general. You mean like a, a shortage or a lack of people interested. Right. Is that yeah, really what it was about? Yeah. Yeah.

I remember reading that article too. Um, yeah, no, I think it's a true, I don't think that people are aware of it and of what all it is and maybe even of how to get into it. Um, and all the different facets and things that you can do. I know like, uh, for example, from the firefighting side and you go to fire academy, right?

That's all that's on your mind is being the, the guy. Goes into the burning building and saves the baby and, and, and that's it. But once you get there, you realize there's a whole range of other things you can do in the fire service. And still be part of that. If that's the path you want to take, um, you know, cuz dragging the hose and into the fire and kicking the door down, saving the baby.

That's not for everybody. Not everybody. Wants to do that or desires to do that. And that's not in everybody's blood. So there's all different niches. Like for example, you know, I decided to pursue the aircraft, rescuing the RF niche, right. Um, that's its own thing within firefighting, but also I, I wanted to pursue the fire inspection side.

Um, and so there's a lot of people that don't know that that exists and that in, in the state of Florida. And I think it it's probably the same in other states. Um, you don't have to be a firefighter to be an inspector. You. You can be part of the fire service and just enter that way. Right. And just do the fire inspection of fire prevention side.

Um, so I think, you know, I do see that, that there's a lack of people that are interested in that in the field. And, um, and I think it's, it's due to not knowing how to get started or how to get into it or thinking it's something bigger than it is one thing I'm always kind of surprised about is that, um, There's usually in the, in the, um, the, the NFPA standards that regulate fire inspector qualifications and those kind of things.

It seems like every time they come around for their. Update. That seems like someone always then puts a public comment for, um, you know, requiring a certain degree level associates. Bachelor's masters for cert different things, different levels of certification. And it always gets shot down. And I'm glad because part of it is if you do that, we're already a field that is having trouble getting people, right.

People seeing it. So now you're gonna make it harder for those, for people to enter it right. By requiring that they have this or. That they have a certain, um, college or higher education degree. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but, um, some of the things we do don't really require one of those higher education degrees, getting the people in, um, learn, helping 'em learn the code, um, getting 'em started and getting 'em passionate about the, this field in this industry.

So all those things that, um, they can bring that don't require a, a higher education degree. Yeah. I think that's a great point. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is for getting the message out about how much promise there is in the field and like career opportunity and like, uh, things that I've heard you say about, um, coaching people up and like getting them to get involved and to, um, kind of pursued career development and professional develop.

Um, yeah, I, I don't think that we need to be making more barriers for people to get into the field because, um, I think that from what I've seen recently, and maybe it's just a, a, a national trend, but seems like there is a shortage of, um, people getting into the field, uh, from my conversations with, uh, professors, from my program at, at Oklahoma state, uh, to.

You know, just, um, speaking with people like yourself, it seems like the consensus is that we need to find a way to, uh, increase the, the knowledge of our, our industry to people coming in to, um, I guess their working years. but, um, yeah. Right. And one thing too, I've always in the, from the fire service side, if you're a, a young kid or no matter what your age is, but you're trying to get into the, the industry.

You're trying to get into the work of the fire department, the path that people take here. And I'm sure it's probably true for other parts of the country is, you know, you go to the fire school, you get your, your fire certification, then you just have to apply for a job. And then the next thing people wanna do is, oh, I'll get my paramedic.

I'll become a paramedic. Cause that's usually. People look for to get hired. And so the paramedic program is, could be $12,000, right. Or more, and it takes a year. A pretty intensive year of education and doing, um, classwork and you have to do clinicals, those kind of things. And so I would always tell people that, you know, they wanna get into the fire service and they might be, maybe they have their firefighter certification, but I would always say, well, why are you gonna do the medic?

Because, um, if you have. One firefighter opening, or let's say there's five positions at a fire department. They're gonna have about 500 applicants or more for those five spots. But I said, if they have an inspector's opening, there's not gonna be as many it's gonna be, it's gonna be, you know, there might be five people that apply for that inspector's position.

So I said, why wouldn't you, um, Go and become a fire inspector, which is 200 hours of classwork. Some of those you can do online and then you take a state test, right. That's how it is in Florida. And I know it's different in other parts of the country, but there's always a similar certification program.

Right. That's and I'd always say. That's gonna open the door for you because if the fire service doesn't work out, that opens the door to other things, you go work for a sprinkler alarm company and do inspections there. Right? Cause you already have that knowledge of what the code's supposed to be. So it gives you a lot of other opportunities and other things besides just the fire service.

But sometimes it's hard to. Get people to expand their mind or to, to look outside of that traditional path, you know? Yeah. I think that's a great, great, uh, piece of advice. Aaron, I think that people need to hear things like that, you know, kind of other than going into the conventional routes that, that everybody's kind of aware of, but you know, there, there are jobs.

Being an inspector and, um, some parts of the industry that are always looking for people. It seems like inspectors is always one, but, um, on the more design side of things, it's always, uh, like suppression contractors, uh, or always looking for designers. So that's kind of where I got my start on the industry because it, they just can't keep enough people, um, designing these complex systems.

Um, so there's, there's lots. Uh, kind of pieces of the industry that will, um, constantly be of need of people. So I, I love that you highlighted a way for people to, to make it into, uh, department, um, in, uh, in an alternative route. But, um, yeah, so we were talking a little bit off air about a foam test that I have coming up, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit on the pod about it, but.

Yeah. I'm so for those who don't know, I've, I'm about to tomorrow and the next day go to my first, uh, preliminary and final, uh, foam test. Um, and I'm excited and a bit apprehensive about it, but, um, I know that I'm sure that during your time, Aaron, you've probably witnessed, uh, at least a couple of these have.

Yeah, I've witnessed a few I've witnessed, uh, we, I worked a lot more with low expansion foam systems than the high expansion foam systems. Oh, I got you. Yeah. It's interesting to me, it's been kind of a huge learning experience for me to go through the checklist and all the stakeholders involved and.

We're using some, uh, like, uh, an expensive flow control valve for the, for the deluge valve for the high expansion foam system. And so instead of, uh, having to simulate the fire sprinkler flow throughout of a test hydrant or the FTC. Um, they're gonna kind of dial in the, the pressure loss on the diaphragm, on the Del valve.

And so there's so many, just little, uh, pieces of the testing and the technology that have been kind of, uh, fascinating, uh, to try to wrap my head around, but it's been fun. Yeah, it's really cool, man. It's, it'll be a fun time. A fun experience. oh, yeah, for sure. Don't get, don't get lost in the phone. You know, not supposed to do that anymore.

Yeah. They, it's always funny to watch those YouTube videos, those people that get stuck in the phone. Oh, no trapped. And , that's dangerous. Yeah. I've heard people, uh, getting, uh, heard or, or entered or getting lost in the foam. But, uh, man, it's funny. There are so many other parts of it. Like, like they're talking about doing safety meetings before the, the phone test.

Some of those ancillary pieces of where do you, where are we gonna meet up? If things go wrong or, you know, on the site and all these kind of general components that are not nuts and bolts of fire safety systems that, uh, I was kind of surprised by. Um, now, do you know, uh, what kind of foam that they're actually using?

Like, is it a PFOS free type of foam or is it still just a traditional foam? Cause I know most people are trying to get away from that type of foam. Oh man. Um, if it is a PFOS free, you know what kind it, it is, cuz there's, there's not a lot, not a lot of brands out there. It doesn't seem like, yeah. Yeah. So I've had experience in a couple hangers so far with, uh, these are high expansion foam generators, uh, the Viking type, um, the new, the new Viking type, but we do have new hand host stations and I've had a couple hangers I've worked on so far that are using, uh, flooring free.

Um, foams in these hand hose stations. Um, okay. I forget what the name of the, the foam is, but man, I can't tell you, I've had this question so many times over the last year with PFAS becoming such a big thing. Um, one specific client we had, that's a fortune 500 client, but. They were. So I was on phone with their environmental, like the project managers for their team, just over and over again, kept coming back to us, you know, that, that, uh, that Indiana has, you know, required that all foam, you know, P F a S is not allowed anymore.

Right. You know, and we're like, yes, who is specified and designed that it's not gonna be, uh, PFOS foam. And, and we know that. Outlawed by bill HB dash, whatever, whatever in Indiana in the Indiana municipal code, like we're aware. Um, but, oh my goodness. In the last year I I've been, uh, grilled about by clients and just doing my own research about PFAS foams.

Um, it's been really, really interesting, um, and challenging to, to get people to people it's like PFAS is like her foam has become like a four letter word, like putting trigger in people. Um, after all the stuff that's happened with P a S. Um, yeah, it's something we never even talked about or thought about till about a year ago, right.

Or maybe two years ago now two and a half years ago, then it became a big thing and it's blown up. So, um, it's I always wonder what's gonna be the next thing, you know, in another 10 years, what are we gonna realize that we've been using that we shouldn't have been using all this time? Oh my gosh. Yeah.

yeah. I talked to, uh, I talked to, I interviewed, uh, somebody in the fire or who had had a history in, um, aircraft rescue firefighting. And they were telling me about how they had been battling, uh, Certain type of cancer that was, uh, related to some of the PFAS stuff. So, um, it's, uh, it's been crazy to see the impact in the industry and seeing those commercials on the TV that are like those mesothelioma commercials for lawyers.

If you have been exposed to P a S related firefighting foam call one 800 PFAS. Yeah. Right. You know, so it's been. It's been really wild to see the impact that it's made on our industry. Um, I found a guy who had a podcast where literally his whole podcast was to talk about PFA S he had like 10 episodes where all he did was talk about the litigation around.

PFASs like, you know, people who have been exposed, like people's horror stories. And so like, people are going in. I mean, I understand it's like people's lives here. Yeah. But still it it's kind of shock. Yeah. Yeah, it is definitely. Uh, how have you seen an impact, like, uh, like your line of work? I mean, I'm sure people are running for the Hills from, um, the P F a S is kind of ubiquitous or fluorinated.

Foams are all over the place, especially for low expansion, uh, for the DOD jobs that edict coming down for banning, uh, a F was a huge. Yeah, no, I've, I've seen, you know, from the, uh, a lot of people that are in the aircraft rescue firefighting field, they, a lot of 'em came from the military. So a lot of them.

You know, they've done a lot of training in where they kept their hands and their skin and things in the foam. So they're kind of, there are some concerns from them there. Um, but I think as far as like the industry, the hangers, I've been seeing a lot of people just starting to get ready. Right. Well, what do we have to do?

What have to do to changes. Let's put those plans in the place now and start getting our, our budgets ready for this change. We're gonna have to. Yeah, that makes sense. Seeing a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. Preparing for the replacements. I've I've seen some of that too. Uh, now, so we have these systems. So what is the, how do we get these scope of works in our budgets to move away from low expansion foam systems or to retrofit for a different foam?

Um, there was a real, I read a decent article. I can't remember the name of the MADD magazine, but I think it was by so. Or a national foam and they were detailing the steps of what you need to do to analyze a, uh, suppression system and, um, try to retrofit it. But it's, it's pretty involved. It's not as simple as just swapping out the foam because each one of those, uh, foam devices are listed for a certain, uh, viscosity and type of, of foam solutions.

So. Yeah, depending on what your current system is, it could, you know, the, the design is gonna be different, you know, per FM, global data sheets, even. And so you may based on. What you have now, you might have to completely replace your pipe again and everything to, to, to make that change, you know, so basically could be to the point we're installing a whole new system almost.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, uh, pretty, usually pretty cost prohibitive. Um, yeah, for somebody who's doing it, um, uh, without being just forced to, by. Municipal code or federal law changes so well, and that's where that, luckily that's where that new edition of NFP for. And I can come into play, can start doing those risk based assessments and say, well, here's what, here's another alternative that we can use or, um, something else that we can do, or based on what we're doing this hanger, we actually don't even need this phone system anymore.

So hopefully that can, uh, people can use that when they're making these changes. Yeah. And I can guarantee you if in, uh, you know, whatever it is, 2, 3, 5 years from now, Um, we find a system that is, uh, more economic and provides, um, a safe solution that we're gonna be seeing that, uh, everywhere. Um, it's just a fact, it's just, yeah, for sure.

It's just, what's gonna happen. So, um, it's interesting for me, uh, to, to be like, well, things are changing better, figure it out, but. Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about, um, you're a pretty prolific writer. I mean, you've written a ton of books and a bunch of articles on fire and life safety, but yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to, uh, tell me a little about like a, a recent article that you've written or one that you have coming up that you're excited about, but always enjoy, um, catching your well, I liked the, the couple of the.

The R kind of like newsletters you'd done and some of your more blog type articles, but I always enjoy reading your, your writing, but yeah, I'd love to hear more about, what's been keeping you busy on that. Yeah, man. No, I'm I, um, since I'm doing auto on my own, I actually have a lot more time to do those things.

So I wanna be, um, starting up that a regular newsletter again, kind of like the, the one you mentioned before with RF and hanger type stuff, regular updates to that. But, um, definitely we starting to do that. Um, an article that I, that came out, it's got, um, uh, Become pretty popular is on. I wrote an article for EV toll.com, EVT l.com.

Um, it's all, it's a whole website dedicated to electric, vertical takeoff and Lyft aircraft, but it's all about, um, how to use current fire codes, um, to create a plan for fire protection for these new types of aircraft. Um, so we kind of put a plan. I kind of write about a plan forward in there for these aircraft.

They don't have there's no fire protection. That's that's. Directly related to how to protect electric vertical take off and left aircraft. And so, um, one of the things I do is I sit on a task group for NFP 14. It's a ver port task group. And so that's kind of what we're discussing and that's kind of our charge is to come up with the fire protection plan for these new types of emerging technologies and, and aircraft.

So I wrote an article about that, that talks about using what we already have. You know, we have codes like an FPA two and an FPA. Um, 8 55 that talk about energy storage systems and hyd and the hydrogen code. So it's, how do we apply those to these aircraft and to the infrastructure that's gonna, that these aircraft are gonna require.

Um, and then also looking at, uh, how to plan for the fire protection of these, you know, so we have things like an FPA four 40, which is the guide for aircraft rescue firefighting, about what we did on, on that committee. As we were able to put some stuff in the annex information that talks. Planning for those emergency at those sites and with those Aircrafts.

So that article talked all about that and that was on EV toll.com. So that was a, that was exciting for me to write. I enjoyed writing that. And then, um, probably one of the bigger things coming up is I have another book coming out in a couple weeks. It's called being chief leadership principles for the, a professionals.

So, um, and the fire service has lots of books on leadership and on being a fire chief. And they, they mainly pertain to municipal fire departments. And so there's never been one. Uh, directly for aircraft rescue and firefighting professionals. So, um, this book, uh, I interviewed over 40 different RF chiefs and leaders in the industry, and I kind of took, took their information and compiled it into this book.

So, um, we can actually, um, gain their gain from their wisdom and experience. So I'm excited about that coming out. That'll be out this week and it's, um, I think can pre-order it right now on Amazon already, too, so, oh, nice. Well, I'm definitely gonna drop some links, drop, drop some links to that article and drop some links to that book coming out.

That's some good stuff, man. I'm excited to hear that you got to interview all those people. I bet that was, uh, really neat experience to, to gain some wisdom from people. Yeah. I mean, um, you know, like the big, uh, I was reading a lot about the big consulting. Industries like, um, McKenzie and those kind of companies.

And they're really big on what they call knowledge management. Right? It's taken all the knowledge of the, the people that you work with and all their years. Right? All the people that came before you it's taken their knowledge and, and capturing it. Right. Whether that's in. Written documents or videos or whatever, it might be capture that knowledge that other people can use it and access it.

And that's one of the things that, you know, we, we have pro probably haven't been great at, in the fire services. You know, you have those, these guys that have worked in this field for 40 years or, or longer. Um, and when they leave, they kind of take a lot of that knowledge with him. So. This is a really cool opportunity to, to talk to some of those guys that have, you know, they've already, some of 'em have already been retired from the field and, um, other ones are, are on their way to doing that.

And then I also had the chance to interview some younger people that are just kind of stepping into those chief roles, but this is an awesome tool to, to be able to capture some of that knowledge before it, it leaves and has gone forever. That's so great, man. I love that sentiment. Uh, I, you know, I'm a, a fan of, um, kind of coding and, and the tech industry and that with how they've, uh, Categorized it as documentation or, you know, something that I've been pushing for in my role is how do we, how do we make decisions?

How do we, you know, establish how much of a job is done? You know, um, kind of documenting the steps and the knowledge base like you were talking about. So I really love that. I think that's so important. Um, there's, there's so much that. These, uh, I was talking about just this week, like how much the subconscious brain knows when you spent 30 years in the industry doing something, you know, there's things that people know and have, um, innate within them that are, you know, just.

Just baked in and, and are so strong. So when you talk to somebody who's a professional for 20 plus years in the industry, they have a lot to give. And so I, I really like that sentiment of trying to, to capture that, um, that knowledge base. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. No, I think it's important, important to do that.

So like you said, the knowledge is here and then it's, it's gone. Right. And traditionally in the fire service, especially, that's kind of how. The younger people learned. Right. We would go send them, go talk to the old, guy's been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years. And then that's how they would learn. Um, and so when those guys are gone and out, then what do we do?

Right. So now it's nice to have those, that institutional knowledge that we can kind of keep and refer back to and use. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Another, um, interesting issue you touched on was, uh, uh, this, um, Energy storage systems and hydrogen it's a topic that I've been hearing a lot lately about is how to, um, tackle the hazard of, uh, batteries, lithium ion batteries in specific, but.

Yeah, I don't know. Um, it's interesting hearing you talking about being a part of that EV toll task group and just kind of how they've started to address the hazards associated with hydrogen and these, um, battery associated, um, fire protection, specific hazards. But I'd love to hear more about that. If you have any other thoughts.

Yeah. I mean, well, from the EV toll and the urban air mobility side, the, the challenge that we have is, um, understanding and identifying what the risks are even gonna be. Right. Cause we don't really have any of these that are fully operational and functional. And we, we don't have a lot to point to, to say, oh, this is gonna be a big hazard.

So kind of our conversations are about that and kind of looking at the, the lithium eye on, or the energy storage system industry and saying, well, what are they doing now? To protect to protect these and to protect, um, fires and structure fires and to protect fires from these battery systems spreading.

So, um, and really, if you look a lot of them, don't have a great solution. You know, it's these, these fires. If you see the fires they burn for a long time and you know, all they're saying to do pretty much as you protect your exposures and, you know, try to cool 'em as much as possible. So what is that right?

We want to get better than that and find out what we can do. Do that quicker and, and better, and, and against that risk. So we have a lot of, we have a lot of good knowledge on the task group. Um, people from the, the, the aviation side, um, the EV toll side, people from the suppression system side, um, So it's kind of cool to just sit and think about, you know, what can we do?

How can we do it? Um, how can we control this hazard? So, you know, I think, um, we talked about some of the things already, like those Nove systems and the water miss systems, and, you know, maybe we'll see those as viable options. Um, sometime in, sometime in the near future. Yeah, that's all great stuff. Yeah. I think that there, I mean, like, you know, other than just some of the same common sense stuff I've seen before, you know, water based systems, um, I haven't seen really anything groundbreaking as far as like active protection for these, for these systems.

And so I, you know, I've been seeing these intense fires that break. As a component of these lithium ion batteries. And, um, I've heard of some. New detection systems for, um, kind of detecting the precursor to, um, the lithium eye on fires. Um, I think that one's, uh, I forget the company, but it's a proprietary one, but they kind of detect the, um, electrolytic vapors that are off gas before these things go to, uh, thermal runaway.

Oh, yeah, that, that's interesting. That'd be interesting to see. You have to send me something about that, man. I need to, I need to get you the presentation, cuz it was, uh, really interesting to hear about it's uh, was a central, it was a sensor and basically it detected the presence of the electrolytic off gas.

That is a precursor to thermal runway. Right. And it's, uh, so like the, the cycle of, um, basically fire for lithium ion battery is, um, mechanical, thermal or electrical damage. Leads to, um, an, an off gas and then the, which the off gas is not like a product of combustion. It's just, um, kind of a release of the, the, the inside of the, the battery.

And then as the separator, which is like the, the middle part of the battery that divides the, the positive and the negative juices, um, starts to degrade. That's when the fire happens and it, and it can happen fast. But, um, yeah, there, I had a S F P E uh, talk about, uh, just the fire science behind it and has pretty interesting, but been doing a lot of.

Work with industrial clients who are looking at, you know, battery storage rooms or battery management systems. So it's something that's not going away. It's, it's, uh, only gonna be more common. So, um, I have to find that, but, um, yeah, I guess, uh, just to round it out, you've already given some, some great tips and tricks for people in the fire service.

Um, but, uh, yeah. Do you have any thoughts for. Things you see as trends or any advice you would like to give anybody listening to this pod? Uh, I think you've been good about, you know, telling people to be, uh, a pro you've been a proponent of professional certifications and being involved in professional societies.

Yeah, for sure. Definitely. I, I definitely believe in that and being part of those organizations and taking, um, classes. I mean the one good one good thing from the pandemic is that a lot of people are able to move all their education to online. So you actually have the opportunity to learn a lot more stuff.

And it's cool. Cause maybe a class that you wouldn't have been able to travel to, you can actually you'd say, oh man, but I do have time to sit and take it online at my home. Right. So that's a great. Thing that came out of that. And it's a good opportunity to have and to continue to increase your knowledge and, and things you wanna learn about and wanna know about.

And I think that's important too, is, you know, sometimes we get fixed that mindset of, I I'm gonna gonna take class that gave a cert a certification and we shouldn't do that. You know, we should do things that we we're concerned about and we wanna learn about something, right. Whether it gives you a great.

A big certificate, that's suitable for framing or not. Right. We, we should take these classes cuz it's something we're we want to know about. We wanna learn about. And I always find it interesting to take classes and things online and, and go to conferences that are outside of my field too. Cause there's something you can gain from learning how another field does it.

My, uh, my wife owns a hair salon and so I went to a, a big management hair salon management seminar with her a few years ago. And. All the stuff that they do, there's stuff that I can actually implement and use. So it's always interesting to go outside of your own field and, and, and learn from others and see what they're doing and how, how, what they're doing can apply to, to your field.

So, yeah, that's a great piece of advice. It's easy to just hang out with, uh, people who are like-minded, but a lot of times, um, the hobby that is totally unrelated to what you're doing or the, the social gathering. You know, a professional society or a group that is sharing knowledge, but is not in the same sphere of, um, uh, work, as you are, can have a lot of great takeaways and you can see a perspective that's different.

So I think that's a great, that's a great, uh, piece of advice, Aaron. Um, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I think we covered a lot of stuff. I'll, I'll send you the link to that article. Um, the books coming out, um, you know, I always like to push codes and standards, like I said. So if you go to my website, Aaron j.org, there's a free guide that people can download.

It's called affecting change through codes and standards that kind of outlines the process of how to get involved and how, how the code and standards work. So, and that's free. So, um, definitely wanna make sure that, to give that to your listeners. Yeah, definitely. We'll put some links down in the, the show notes and people can go follow Aaron, Aaron frequently, uh, uh, shares, great stuff on LinkedIn and, uh, on Twitter.

And so you can catch him on either those places or just, just see his updates on his blog. So it's all good stuff, Aaron, I just wanna say thanks so much for coming on the pod and, and sharing your knowledge. It's, it's always a. Awesome. I know. I appreciate the opportunity and keep up the good. Will do, will do.

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

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

On this week of Fire Code Tech we are talking about how to analyze different life safety aspects of a new construction building. In episode 21 we talk about applicability of codes, structure of the building code and life safety topics from chapter three through six of the international building code. 

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 on this episode of fire code tech, we're talking about. Life safety analysis. Welcome to episode 21 of fire code tech, the solo cast series. So life safety is an interesting topic and I've not found too many, really good succinct, uh, webinars or articles online discussing how to go through the.

Motions of performing a life safety analysis. So this is something that I would've really wanted when I first got into the industry. So I want to try to, um, take this huge task and boil it down as much as I can so that those who are just getting into the process or maybe trying to refine their process for performing a life safety analysis, we'll be able to have some value and, um, get some takeaways from this discuss.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss an episode and follow us on social media, so you can see all the great fire and life safety topics we're posting about. So let's get into the episode. So again, we're talking about live safety, so I want to preface with some caveats about our discussion. first and foremost, you have to understand the applicability of the codes and standards you're working in.

Uh, I sure I sound like a broken record on this topic, but I don't want somebody to catch one of these solo casts or, um, just tune in for a certain, um, part of these episodes and not understand the sequence of operations for. um, how to specify and, or navigate codes and standards. So all this to say, um, you need to know which codes and standards are applicable for the jurisdiction you're doing work in.

It's different for every state in the us. It's different for many cities. Um, so, uh, if you want some more information about this subject, you can take a listen to the episode we did over the international building code or the episode we did over codes and standards. Both of these would be a great preface for this discussion.

Um, so yeah, just wanted to place. Little bullet point as an understanding of our discussion for the rest of this episode. That's episode 15 for international building code and episode number two for the solo cast on codes and standards. So we'll put some links down in the show notes. Those are some good solo cast to listen to.

In addition to this episode, if you are looking to continue your journey on the subject of how to navigate codes and standards effectively. So in this episode, I want to give a bit of a framework for doing a life safety analysis for a building. For the purposes of this episode, let's say that it is a new construction building using the international building code specifically, I'm using the 2015 version of the international building code.

And I want to give some concrete steps. And if you are so inclined, you could make a bit of a checklist about these steps in order to. Cover the analysis and feel confident in your ability to produce an analysis for our building. So this is something that I didn't have, um, being from a organization that, um, had the architects do more of the life safety analysis.

This wasn't in the, the purview of the fire protection engineering discipline, but I've learned over time, um, how to go through these steps. And really look at the most critical factors in regards to, um, life safety in a building, uh, over time through my career as a fire protection engineer. So we talked about this idea before, but the building code progresses from, um, really general issues like definitions and scope in the first couple chapters.

And then as it moves on. You can kind of use the progression of the chapters, uh, 3, 4, 5, 6, um, is what we're gonna be speaking about in this episode of a go by for looking at the buildings, fire and life safety systems. This is my piece of advice is use the structure of the building code, um, and kind of work your way through the different chapters in the salient points.

And, um, the most formative chapters of the building code, uh, for fire and life safety. There's a lot of pertinent ones for the discipline, but 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 are probably the biggest as it regards to. Fire and life safety system. So if you can take a look at each of those chapters and see how they apply to your building, um, this will give you a good starting place for, um, making sure that you're in compliance.

So let's talk about a couple of these chapters. Um, in specific chapter three of the international building code is titled use and occupancy. We talked about this chapter before, but this chapter works much in the same way that the hazard determination works in N FPA 13. There are some broad categories with levels of fire severity and combustible loading implied.

And you use these chapters in combination with the. Engineering judgment or the, um, design professional judgment in order to categorize different spaces of the building. And so I wanna look at, um, section 3 0 2 and chapter three as a bit of a talking point for, um, chapter three. So section 3 0 2 more specifically 3 0 2 0.1 general states.

Structures or portions of structures shall be classified with respect to occupancy in one or more of the groups listed in this section. So as a bit of, uh, explanation point on this first statement, um, buildings usually have multiple occupancy classifications. So if you have a, um, business building, you'll have portions of the building that are business, you might have a.

Janitors closet or a storage room that might be a storage occupancy. And so most buildings are amalgamations or combinations of different occupancy groups. So when you are looking at a building, um, if you're using a design software and you want to get. Graphical representation of occupancy classification.

Commonly you will see that, um, architects or fire protection engineers will use hatch patterns to diagram, which part of the buildings pertains to which occupancies. So this is a great way for you to. Um, get an idea of the square footage of the building. That is a certain occupancy, which we'll talk about is an important part of this exercise.

And it'll let you, um, just get a sense of what is the predominant occupancy and hazard moving on in section 3 0 2 0.1. This section says a room or space that is intended to be occupied at different times for different purposes shall comply with all of the requirements that are applicable to each of the purposes for which the room or space will be occupied.

The best example I can think of this statement would be a business building that would have, um, partitions. Separat able partitions. So you could use a space more for an assembly use. So you might have to design for the assembly use case and the business use case. Um, I'm sure there are other factory and industrial implications for this statement, but wanted to give a quick example.

Furthermore, it says structures with multiple occupancies or uses shall comply with section 5 0 8, section 5 0 8 is mixed use occupancies where a structure is proposed for a purpose that is not specifically provided for this code. Such structure shall be classified in the group that it in the group.

That the occupancy most nearly resembles according to the fire safety and relative hazards involved. So this is that thing that I was speaking about before you there's the engineering discretion or the design discretion to, um, fit occupancies into the category, um, in which they most nearly ResSem. So if you get a special situation or an occupancy that is not called out, um, chapter three gives some common examples of these occupancies in the different groups.

So let's run through the groups real quick assembly, which there is a one through a five. So there are a variety of different assembly groups. One example of an assembly group is like, uh, a basketball stadium. And another is example of an assembly group is like a theater. So there's a wide variety within assembly business business is kind of a catchall for commercial occupancies or kind of office buildings or, yeah, it's a pretty wide one.

Um, educational use that one's pretty self explanatory schools. Factory and, and industrial. So these are F1 and F two occupancies. Um, factory occupancies are a lot like storage occupancies in that there are two groups, um, low hazard factory, and low hazard storage and, and moderate hazard factory and moderate hazard storage.

So high hazard group H one through H five, we talked about high hazard. In our hazardous materials episodes, you can check those out. We have great interview episodes and also solo cast episodes about hazardous materials, institutional occupancies, which are places, um, where there are people who are detained or unable to, um, care for themselves.

So these are jails. These are assisted living. Um, occupancies like that. So as you can tell, there are some inherent fire safety challenges and combustible, loadings, and risk baked into how you use the building and what the occupancy is. So that's why they're grouped in this way in order to, um, define the, the hazards and implications of the.

Residential is another occupancy type. Um, this ranges from the house that you could live in to apartments and duplexes. So are there four residential occupancy groups, then we already talked about storage and utility. Which is a U occupancy, which is kinda like the dust bin for occupancy classifications.

Um, think about a storage shed is a U occupancy. So let's move on from occupancy classification and talk about chapter four, which is special occupancy requirements. So. Special occupancy requirements. You can think about these as specific building types or occupancies, which have greater implications for fire and life safety.

So I wrote down some of the most common examples of these, and I just want to go over them briefly. Um, and what that could mean for your life safety? 4 0, 2 is covered mall and open mall buildings. So a mall is a unique kind of structure. Um, it's different stores, different tenants, um, kind of a wide variety of uses for these tenant spaces.

So there's a greater life safety implication here because of. Added amount of people and the different uses for these spaces. Section 4 0 3 is high rises. Um, as you can imagine, uh, section 4 0 3 is high rises, section 4 0 5 is deep underground buildings. Any time where you put people in a situation, which it will make it harder for them to escape a building or, um, Be close to safety or egressing, you will have additional life safety implications.

So high rises come with, um, emergency power requirements, um, fire pump requirements, smoke control, and stairwell pressurization requirements. Section 4 0 4 is atriums. Atrium is a portion of the building that has more than. Two connecting floors. In this situation, you will need a smoke control system, which a smoke control system is a integrated system between the H V C units and the fire alarm system in order to create a tenable space for the occupants to evacuate.

Um, these are extremely costly and very complicated. So you need to be aware when providing analysis, the, the whole reason why we're talking about chapter four is because there are huge cost items in these specific, special occupancy requirements. So you need to understand when these are applicable and when you.

Are looking at them and you're looking at a building, you need to know what the use and function is gonna be because it's could dramatically change the level of fire and life safety that you need to provide. It could, um, extremely change your exit requirements or your systems required. You know, you could go.

um, not having a pump or a tank, um, to needing one. And you know, that that could be on the scale of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but also could be, um, millions of dollars. If you are looking at, uh, uh, occupancy, like an aircraft hanger, let's move on to chapter five, which is allowable Heights areas. In order to talk about how tall and how, um, much square footage your building can have.

You have to understand construction type construction type is what kind of materials and what fire resistance rating is your building. Um, I can speak for, it's interesting talking to people in the global community and fire and life safety. Building materials and the availability of building materials changes with a global perspective.

So in the us where, um, you get a variety of wood, framed wood frame construction, and, um, steel and metal buildings, as well as, um, concrete and kind of everything in between. But, you know, you might. Look at somewhere like Canada, where, um, wood and heavy timber construction is more prevalent because of local sourcing.

So there are five types of construction type one through five. Really we're talking about chapter six stuff right now, but this plays heavily into, um, how tall and how much square footage you're building is allowed to have. So. Um, what another big implication for, uh, fire and life safety and how tall and how much square footage your building can have is if the building is sprinkled or not, there are tables in chapter five, which dictate, um, based on your fully sprinkled application or.

Your building type, how big your building can be. So type one is described in section 6 0 2 0.2 as type one and two type one and two construction. Are those constructions with building elements listed in table 6 0 1 are of non combustible materials, except as permitted in section 6 0 3 and elsewhere in this code.

So, so type one, construction is, um, completely. Non combustible and type two construction, which is in the states is extremely common for commercial building is, um, mostly non, non combustible with some combustible materials. So these definitions are a little bit vague and it's kind of a, an area that's a little bit more difficult for FPE or at least in my experience because the architect is the.

So specifying and constructing the building type. So usually you have to work closely with the architect to determine exactly what construction type they are working with. Type three is defined as the type of construction in which the exterior walls are non combustible materials and the interior building elements are of any material permitted by this code, fire retard, entry and wood framing complying with section 23.

Oh. Point two shall be permitted with exterior wall assemblies of a two hour rating or less. So I don't have much experience with type three, um, construction, um, or type four. They are not super common in which the occupancies that I work in or at the firm that I work in, um, type four is heavy timber. Um, like I said, this is a lot of.

It's it's heavily based on the occupancies you work in and the, uh, region of the world that you work in. So, um, it varies greatly, but type five. Construction is type five. Construction is seen in many residential applications. Uh, for example, the walls and roofs are made of combustible materials. Uh, most commonly just wood, wood frame, construction, uh, wood packages.

So this is common in the us, but in other types, other parts of the world wood construction is not as common. So, uh, yeah, the lion share of the work that I've done has been either type I or type one or two type one buildings type one construction type is for high rise buildings. You have to use type one.

And so that's basically almost. Zero, not zero combustible furnishings or, um, parts of construction in the entire building, which is very costly. So you have to be aware of what construction type you're using because the building allowances between type one and type five are huge. You could be. Have a couple thousand square foot building or an unlimited size building.

So depending on the construction type, well, I think that's quite enough for one episode. Um, hope it wasn't too broad. I wanted to kind of talk about some of the factors pertaining to life safety and, and progressing through the chapters and looking at some of the common elements. Um, we can talk about more on how to analyze for life safety, but really I just wanted to state, you know, Hey, here are the chapters and what you wanna look at, you want to go through these chapters and kind of categorize all of these different elements of a building.

So. Generate a list of the salient life safety factors. So you have a business building that's type two B construction, and it has incidental or accessory uses in the form of storage occupancies, and, you know, start to build a list and you don't have any special use occupancies in your business building.

So you can take a look at your allowable, hide an area. You know, uh, and kind of build a list of the different fire and life safety factors. You do have sprinklers, but you don't have. A stand pipe system because your building's not over 35 feet. So really what a life safety analysis looks like is, um, addressing all the important factors for fire and life safety, kind of tabulating them and making sure that you are providing the code minimum requirements and making sure that is also in line with the building owners, um, need for their.

Um, function, hope you enjoyed and we'll see you 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.

This week we are talking to Steven Lewis who has had 30 years in the fire alarm industry in sales. Steven sits on the NFPA committee for NFPA 72 and has recently been appointed to NFPA 420. We speak about the how to get the next generation of fire protection professionals into the field, career development and much more.

Tell me about your early career?

Tell me about some of your project work?

Do you have an occupancy specialty?

What is your background on NFPA Technical committees?

Tell me about your involvement in the NFPA 72 technical committee?

What piece of advice do you have for professionals?

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 40 of fire code tech. On this episode, we have Steven Lewis. Steven is a fire alarm professional. Who's been in the industry over 30 years. In this episode, we talk about some of Steven's fascinating work in the field of technical design and sales. We get into some of his big success stories.

And later on in the interview, we talk about some of his great work in the area of, uh, volunteering on NFPA technical committees. Uh, most notably the, uh, NFPA 72 committee for notification appliances and the new NFPA technical document that's coming out, which is NFPA four 20, the standard for cannabis related facilities, tune in.

If you want to find out some great takeaways from Steven's career, as well as some really interesting information on the variety. Of facilities and systems that Steven has been a part of designing, including, um, some exposition about gas detection systems. Do us a big favor and subscribe. So you never miss an episode.

And also if you wouldn't mind, give us a rate and review on apple podcast, that would be a big help. Also, if you listen on YouTube, hit that like, and subscribe. All right. Let's dive into the episode, Steven. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm happy to have you. Thank you very much, GU I tell you it was such a surprise and pleasure to hear from you.

I, um, it, it's nice to get recognized and people, uh, appreciate what you do. And so, yeah, that was a pleasant surprise. I appreciate that. Awesome. Well, yeah, it's always, uh, gamble reaching out to people. So it's uh, it's a good thing. I'm glad you're interested in coming on. Yeah. And, and, and I will tell you too, GU that the second reason for me not only was a surprise and I, and I appreciate all that, but it's, you know, wanting to give back to, to the fire industry and hoping I can get some listeners that, that Mike find this fire industry industry and, and make career changes.

Um, you know, I, I just saw some interesting stats that just number of people in this, uh, in this industry are retiring and we're just looking for, for new people to, to kind of, you know, take the torch. Yeah, I agree. It seems like that has been a, um, emphasis recently in the field. Is this kind of, uh, how do we get the next generation informed that this is a, you know, an option and not just an option, but.

Um, a wonderful career path and, uh, with a lot of promise. So I agree with what you're saying any way that we can, um, get the word out and let people know about, uh, what a great career fire in life safety can be is, uh, it's a good deal. So I'm glad that you, uh, feel that way as well. Nice, nice. Yeah. So I like to get these, uh, podcasts kinda started and get people acclimated with you, Steven, and just talk about a little bit about your origin story and kind of how you found the field as a transition, um, from our topic of how others could find, um, their way to this field.

Yeah, no, uh, great question. I'll tell you, you know, back in the day, all I simply did was, was answer a newspaper ad, uh, back in the early nineties, uh, for a company named SIMPL and they were. Really looking outside of the company for people with sales experience that that wanted to explore the, you know, the fire life safety industry.

And, and it sounded exciting. It sounded rewarding. And it just sounded like something that, um, might sound cliche, but where, where I could make a difference, you know? And so I responded to the ad and interviewed with them and, uh, was hired, uh, not knowing a single and, and I think that's the important thing, not knowing a single thing about this industry, but understanding the importance and the need for the services, uh, that, that you can bring to the table.

And I was willing to invest in my, my time into the company and the industry to learn about it, cuz um, I just had a gut feeling about it, uh, not really knowing anything about it. And, and I think that that would be good for your listeners because it doesn't coming into this. It's just really having the right aptitude and enthusiasm to take on a challenge and, and learn something new.

And that was it for me. And, um, it was just the, the best career choice ever. Awesome. Yeah. I think that, uh, you know, I frequently talk about that. You don't have to have all the answers or any of the answers starting out, um, just to have a good, like you said, attitude and, and ambition to learn as the recipe for success.

Um, uh, but yeah, I like hearing about that. That's interesting. That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that they, uh, got their start in fire and line safety from a newspaper ad, but I've heard a variety of stories from family members to, um, you know, just people. Mutual contacts. And so I like hearing about that.

It's always interesting. I find how people, um, kind of stumbled their way in. It seems like that's a common theme for, uh, people in fire and life safety. Yeah. And, and another thing I too really knowing nothing about the industry, but, uh, I felt in my heart that this is a product, this is a service that all buildings, uh, all communities, all people, you know, rely on, might not really think about it initially in a building, but these type of things, uh, that are provided through fire life safety really in one sense might be thought of as a commodity, you know, like breathing air, but it's, it's essential, uh, uh, for buildings.

And I knew this was something that, um, would have no reflection on what the economy is doing at the time or. Or what the markets are doing or whatever. Uh, I just felt just, it was just the right, the right move for me. And, and, and, and I really lucked out on that. I really had nothing to go on, just what I felt the industry would bring and, um, yeah, heard that well.

Yeah, that's awesome. I feel, I feel similarly, you know, I kind of, uh, stumbled my way into the field as well. And, you know, I just, uh, had heard that it had good stability and like you were saying reliable, uh, work. And so that was honestly the biggest thing that drew me to the field. Um, so I resonate with that statement, but, um, yeah, yeah, too.

GU I tell you, I always remember this from a conference about six or seven years ago. Uh, I was at an AFAA conference and, and the chairman at that time said, you know, This is we're, we're not mowing lawns here. This, this is a higher calling to a certain degree. I mean, you're, you're entrusted with buildings and people and property, and I really feel the same way.

I, I was always looking for something where, where I felt in my heart. It, it, it would be kind of a higher calling. Um, you know, my mom probably wish I, I was a doctor, a lawyer, those kind of typical things, but, um, I really feel like it, it's a higher calling to a certain degree because, um, you know, I feel like I am making, um, a difference in, in these buildings.

Yeah. There is that Def definitely greater impetus on people in the field and, you know, the feeling that these are, um, you know, systems that protect property and lives. And it's not just, if you phone it in at your job, you're not just, um, You know, it's, uh, it has implications. So, and, um, if you can find a job that's meaningful or a career that's meaningful and also has, um, um, impact on society and the greater good, I think that it makes you feel even better at the end of the day.

And so, yeah, I definitely feel that, um, yes, but, uh, yeah, for, for context, you know, um, what kind of different, um, projects and different kind of work did you get involved with, um, at your first role, um, in sales and just a different fire alarm, um, equipment Steven. So GU there, there are a couple of projects that I like to talk about that had a huge impact on my career.

Uh, back in the days when I was with Simpla back in Kentucky, uh, There, there were two major accounts that, that really just launched my career and kept me in this industry. And, and I feel, you know, your listeners would, would, would learn from and, and, and maybe help them in career decisions. Um, you know, being from Kentucky, uh, the home of, you know, Kentucky fried chicken, uh, the parent brand is called gum brands and they own, uh, the KFC taco bells, pizza huts, all that.

And based in Louisville, of course, and I got involved with, uh, with their co-ops that, uh, that the, the co-ops, uh, provide, uh, catalogs, if you will, of, of all the things you would need in any of the, you know, the 10,000, 20,000. Restaurants that, that they serve around the world. Um, whether it's ice chicken or, or anything dealing with, with, with the stores.

And I was able to get in their catalogs, uh, the fire alarm package, uh, that would be needed for any of these restaurants. And pretty much they, they were what I would call duct detector. Uh, H V a C uh, systems. Uh, we provided duct detectors, uh, for three or four, depending upon the prototype of the store, put together these packages.

I got them put into these catalogs. Um, and, and then it was just a matter of the franchisees or, or the corporate stores. They, they would see these in the catalog and, um, We would then receive, you know, uh, orders for these, you know, from our office in Kentucky. And, and I ran a national account for them, uh, out of the Louisville branch, uh, for simplex at the time.

Um, and we were probably shipping out 10 to 15 stores a week all over the country. And what I found really interesting that it was eye-opening for me to learn that's that's when I first discovered, uh, how different jurisdictions around the country worked, uh, where I found that Florida and Texas and California and Connecticut, and some of the other, um, you know, what the codes were and what was involved in, in putting in these, these life safety systems in the restaurants.

So it was, it was really rewarding for me. We, we would ship these out of our office. We. We'd put together the plans and, and get these out, uh, for all these restaurants. And, and that was a real rewarding thing. I, uh, never my wildest dreams thought that I would be, you know, involved with, with, with the KFCs and the pizza hut and the taco bells back in the day, but that was extremely, uh, rewarding.

We're still in their catalogs. Um, you know, so franchisees, you know, they'd have to go around and shop around for these products. Um, just pick 'em out of the catalog. So I was, I was really blessed with that account. The, the other one that was even more rewarding, which was another national account. Uh, I was able to get in a chain of movie theaters at the time, national amusements showcase cinemas based outta Massachusetts and what was able to kind of seal the deal for me was.

At the time the, the engineer happened to be based, uh, just across the river from Kentucky. Uh, and, and we had a relationship and he was involved with this chain of movie theaters and, and what I was able to do that no one else seemed to be able to bring to the table was, was, was take the smoke detectors that were put in the theaters.

And it was in the neighborhood of a, you know, 200, 300 smoke detectors per theater chain. Uh, and we, we would electrostatic these smoke detectors black in order to, you know, to match the ceiling. And, and this was, this was really a challenge. I, I had to think out of the box, um, at the time. People were, you know, with their fridges that might be an almond or a green color in their homes.

They were, you know, the trend back then was to electrostatic paint the doors of these fridges, uh, in order to be, you know, updated color, if you will. And I found, uh, I found a guy in, in, in Louisville that, that electrostatic painted, uh, the smoke detectors for me. I would, I would get these shipped into our office.

I. Take them apart and, and take them over to this gentleman. And it would take him a couple weeks, but he would electrostatic these, uh, uh, these smoke detectors to, to a matte black color. Um, and, and what was interesting, you know, if you were able, you know, if, if you wanted to do this from a manufacturer, you know, to dye supplement, smoke detectors was very, is, is very expensive, you know, to get those in another color.

And it was, uh, prohibitive to, to do that at the time at, um, you know, for any particular theater. So I, I came up with many samples of these and took them over. Uh, the national amusements review, those and, and the engineer. And at the end of the day, uh, they, they came out great. You know, you know, the contractors weren't able to scratch paint off when you would Mount these.

And, and I had to get a letter, uh, uh, from, uh, that I put together. That would actually, it, it, it voided the UL listing on that because you cannot paint smoke detectors. But I explained to, you know, to the customer that while, while we did void the UL listing, these would be tested to all NPA 72 standards.

And we would ensure that they work properly. Um, but, uh, have them sign a letter, you know, uh, explain that they, they understood that, that this was a voided UL listed detector, but it, it worked. Perfect. We, we just didn't have that. And that ended up sealing the deal for me in order to get this account. Uh, so we probably did 20, 30 movie theater chains, uh, in, in the next two or three years and engineered those and put those together out of our office in Louisville.

And, and, you know, I had a second national account that we serviced, uh, throughout the Midwest and east. Um, and it was really exciting. I mean, I, I just, my wildest dreams, I, I just, um, couldn't believe that, that we were able to, to do this kinda work and, and the customer was happy and did, uh, a lot of traveling with, with these theaters and such.

But, um, to me, those, those are two, two of the most significant jobs that, that impacted my career in, in. Kept me interested and kept me involved in doing what I'm doing. Cuz I knew that, you know, it's something that you just, you know, at times need to think outside of the box, um, and, and provide the solution and, and, and it worked out and, um, I don't know, it, it just really, really impact me and energize me.

And I think people wanting to get into this business just realize that there is, you know, there's so many opportunities and so many different ways and it's so rewarding. Uh, I, I keep the black smoke detector. I have a couple extra, I keep one on my desk just as a reminder that, you know, you just need to think outside of the box at times and, and work with your customer and, and you can get things done.

So, yeah. So I just wanted to share those with you. Awesome. Yeah. I think that there are times where you just have to problem solve. That's something that. Paramount in our business and yeah. So that's, that's really neat stories about some big successes that you've had in your career. Um, getting creative.

Um, I think that's probably something that's, uh, across the board, you gotta be somebody who problem solves and, um, gets the job done. So that's interesting. Do you feel like you've had a specialty in one, uh, type of occupancy more than others? Um, I like what you're saying about, you know, the variety is such a nice, um, change of pace for work and different, you know, every day is kind of different.

Every project's kind of different, even if it's the same type of system, but yeah. Do you have an, any, uh, specialty, would you say with any in regards to any occupancy? I, I would say high rise buildings. Um, I, I. Really enjoy, you know, uh, I, I would say in, in the high rise building, it's just, you know, the amount of people that potentially can go in these large 20, 30 story buildings and be able to provide, uh, protection where, you know, you, you, you can evacuate people safely from, from the top of the building down to the bottom and, and, and understand.

And, and I think I got the best perspective on that from, from just seeing what, what occurred during nine 11 and, and how we rely on, on, on the fire command center, uh, on the equipment and, and being able to, to, you know, I spent a lot of time, uh, with fire departments, helping them understand what these fire alarm panels could do.

And, and when you go into an Highrise building and the things you look for and. And you know, how to acknowledge and reset alarms and such, but, but, you know, the codes are very specific, very, very strong in regards to high rise buildings. Uh, when we get into, uh, you know, intelligibility, uh, you know, area of refuge, uh, you know, proper way to do elevator control, you know, how you manage, uh, a smoke management or a smoke control system, you know, how are you venting things out?

Um, you know, what what's involved with with a two hour rated corridor, you know, there, there's so many things involved, uh, with high rise buildings. Um, and, and, uh, yeah, I really, really enjoy those because it, it, it, it just takes, takes a little more work and, and, and I, I have the ability to. When I'm designing these buildings to kind of look in these buildings, kind of like in a 3d perspective where I can, from the plans, I can look at these and, and really see how someone, you know, if myself was, was on the 50th floor, you know, in a corner office, you know, what, what would I do if the fire alarm system went out, went off, you know, what, what type of messages and what are the things you need, need to do to be able to evacuate safely?

So, uh, yeah, high rise buildings for me. Um, give me probably the most satisfaction because I know how complicated they can be. And, and what's involved in something as simple as just trying to, you know, evacuate and, and it's no easy thing. Yeah, definitely. I have a, I've been, uh, had the first couple high rise designs of my career fairly recently and yeah, it's extremely complicated.

Uh, You know, uh, as it relates to fire alarm systems, knowing all of the different components that you need to provide specifically for Highrise buildings, you know? Um, so just like trying to understand all the requirements of a fire command room. And, you know, stairwell pressurization systems and smoke control systems, um, that are more common in Highrise buildings.

So there's definitely a greater level of complexity and, um, a higher, uh, level of just detail required to, you know, shafts that need combination, fire, smoke, dampers. Um, there's so many different fire alarm components and Highrise buildings. Uh, it's one of those high complexity, high hazard occupancy where fire protection really gets more of a seat at the table.

So, um, I like hearing about that. Yeah. I like to get involved early on in these risk analysis and get, and get all the players to the table and, you know, um, if need be, have meetings with, with those fire departments on the front end to understand. You know, what, what the intent is. You know, one of the questions I ask a lot of my clients is, is, you know, if there was a fire in your high rise building, where you tell me, where, where do you want to be?

You know, in the newspaper, do, do you wanna be on page one or you wanna be back on page 10, where we were able to take care of that? You know, tell me what your, what your thoughts are. I mean, minimum code or the, the things we need to do that, you know, might, might save, you know, you know, the 10 or 15 extra seconds to evacuate people.

I, I tell you, that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to serve on NPA 72 chapter 18 and NX a because that chapter deals with notification appliances for, for, for, for firearm systems and buildings. And for me, again, that's, that's the important aspect is, is, you know, what is the protocol and, and the things that we need to do.

In order to evacuate people, you know, you know, should, should the fire system say where I am in San Francisco. Um, the, the, we, we have a, a section of the city. We have a lot of, uh, Chinese businesses and Highrise buildings that predominantly, probably 80, 90% or Chinese should, should those evacuation messages be, you know, in Chinese, um, for those buildings.

And in some cases they are. Um, so there there's a lot of things to consider. I, I, um, really enjoy that. Uh, I've gotten a lot of satisfaction out of that. And, and really when you get into these notification appliances, you know, it just gets really complex in, in designing these and, you know, um, and location of devices and, and the things there's so much going on now with, with the development in this chapter, um, You know, L E D devices, indirect devices, you know, I see all types of devices out there and you know, these high profile speakers that are now, I mean, these are, these are quality speakers that you, you could put in Carnegie hall, you know, it's, uh, where intelligibility, it's not so much just making the noise, but people being able to understand the noise, understand the messages and, and, uh, you know, in a lot of jurisdictions around the country, I find that, that they prefer that these messages be from a female voice versus a male voice, because it's more soothing.

So there's so many things that, that go into this because we, we, you know, we never wanna be in that situation, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting about having the, um, you know, thinking about. It is a more complex problem than just meeting the minimum requirements of code, really trying to provide, not just a fire and line safety system, but a holistic view of the building and an assessment of how is this building gonna be used?

Uh, I think that's a, uh, look at the greater picture of fire protection and life safety that sometimes we lose sight of in the, um, architecture, engineering and construction industry. So fascinat brings up a good point us cuz nowadays I'm seeing it, especially in a lot of the high tech buildings and all the buildings where, where we have so many different names for, for rooms with, within a building, whether it's a, a cell room, you know, a lactation room, you know, a quiet room.

Um, you know, I, I just, you know, I could be with the examples. These type rooms. And what type of coverage do you provide in that? Do you, you know, if you have an office that has two desks versus one desk and you know, what the different fire departments require for that and, you know, and, and, and so, yeah, it's, uh, every day these, these buildings are evolving and, and growing and, and the technology and the things that that we're doing, um, is really, uh, challenging at times.

Yeah. That's always such a very, I feel like, uh, kind of nebulous, um, or like just a point of the, in the code where it's at the, uh, designer or engineer's discretion, um, of the application of that notification device. Um, you know, I've seen, like, if you're looking at, uh, department of defense jobs, it's a little bit more clear, you know, counting the chairs in the room, if there's over.

I forget what it is, uh, three or four chairs on the furniture plan, then you're putting a device in that room. So you kind of have that as some sort of a guideline, but as a young professional, I found that as something that was very hard to understand, um, you know, as a code nerded, sometimes I just would rather it was more prescriptive.

Um, but as you get, um, more years of experience, you can kind of understand where that line is for, um, you know, those appliances. Yeah. I, I was at an NPA conference several years ago when you, you know, you talk about prescriptive, but I see more and more countries doing, uh, performance based. Um, I heard a engineer from New Zealand talk about how they really use the performance base and.

you know, uh, that's really worked for them very well. So, you know, you see that, uh, too, where people, you know, what methods are they choosing the prescriptive or performance base or those kind of things. Uh, you know, other things, uh, that I'm seeing too. I tell you just when, when you just talk about an office with, with, with two desks in it, well, let's say that they have a, a window in that office looking out well, you know, depending on whether they put a shade or, or a bookcase or something in there, you know, things can change, change just based upon, uh, you know, the windows in an office and, and you know, how things can change over time and, you know, will, will that window be blocked with, with a blind that, you know, you can't see out of or different things.

So it's, you, you really have to, to kind of dive into it and, and. And sort things out. You, you, you just, um, there's just too much at stake. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So, Steven, you talked a little bit about your involvement in professional societies. Um, I saw on your, or your LinkedIn that you've had a longstanding relationship with with N E yeah.

I'd love to hear about how you stayed involved with N E and kind of some of the different roles that you've held if you wouldn't mind. Yeah. So I have to say early on in my career simp had, uh, was really wanting and encouraging, you know, their employees to get involved at NCI. And, you know, I chose early on to, to take this on in my career and learn about NCI.

I tell you it's, um, you know, if you're not an F PE or an electrical engineer, You know, these certifications and, and the different programs out there, you, you, you just want people to know that you're engaged and that you're spending time to learn about this industry mindset. I feel, you know, for me, uh, has been the best learning out there.

I, um, when I got involved with N it took me, it took me probably a good six or seven years to, to, to get to a level three. And then testing for level four, um, was challenging. It took me several times and it, it took me to, to get the level four, reaching out to the board of directors of to explain to them that one of the test questions really had a couple of answers versus the one answer they thought, and they reversed the decision and, and gave me N at level four, um, which was amazing.

I, um, And from that I, um, you know, I offered my services to, to EK. Uh, they were up in Virginia, uh, to, to be a subject matter expert and, and help them develop, um, test questions for level four in level three. So I've gone up to Virginia one time and I've typically every other year, you know, I get involved in workshops and in writing questions to keep things, you know, keep things fresh and relevant in the market.

You know, back in the day, everything was, was, uh, the paper test. And I remember going in there with seemed like 20, 30 pounds of, of books, uh, to prepare for this. But, you know, going through, through the evolution of that and, you know, getting involved with the test writing workshops and then, um, you know, they presented me an opportunity, uh, to be an ambassador for ICI because.

Quite honestly, um, you know, the marketing in general, they, they don't have a lot of resources, a lot of money available to, to, to, to get that out there to the community. And so being an ambassador, what I do is, is I go there and work with, with fire departments, the a and E community, and, and really contractors there, anyone involved in the fire life safety industry and, and try to tell them, you know, this is, um, something that, that you should, you should go after you, you should get your certifications, you know, with this in my, you know, in my mind, like I said earlier, is, is a higher calling.

So, uh, I think that the ambassador program that I've been involved with for over 10 years has given me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that, that I'm getting people new in the industry involved and getting them the, you know, uh, firearm level one and level two. And. And encourage them to, to stay with it.

And, um, and also, um, you know, I, I have my level one level two and in the test and inspect with NSU. So, uh, you know, it's it it's for me to, to, to maintain these systems, to maintain 'em properly and exercise the systems. Uh, there's a lot of importance in that certification as well, to know how to test and inspect systems correctly in, in the right things to do.

And, you know, so it nice. It is, is invaluable. I, um, I see these guys at all the conferences and, and I just encourage everyone. To, to get involved with Isaac. Um, that's been the most rewarding thing for me. Yeah, that's great. I love hearing about people getting involved and encouraging professionals to become, um, certified and that way they can be, have a greater level of knowledge about the industry and the systems that they're providing and also having a way to advance themselves in their career, um, and networking the networking and organizations like this, um, are great and invaluable for your career.

So those are all great points, Steven. I like hearing about that. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I, I really encourage everyone. I mean, nice. It is just, you know, in so many companies now I encourage all companies that, you know, if, if your employees take this on and do this on their own time and. Wanna improve themselves, then they, they, they, they should get a, a salary bump.

Um, you're doing it for, for yourselves, but you're doing it for your company and protecting your, your company's liability. And, and in a sense, you know, you should be rewarded. Um, but my, uh, N does a really good job. I, I tell you, I, I, um, worked very closely with him and, and involved with him in developing other other courses and other things.

Um, but yeah, that, that, that's a big one for me. N he's very close to me. So, uh, moving on to a little bit about, um, where you're working now, Steven, and what kind of, uh, I, uh, what kind of projects and work that you're, um, in now for context about kind of this stage of your career, Yeah. So, so, um, from, from Louisville moved down to, to the bay area and, uh, I, I found a company that is a, a regional, uh, family owned company based in, in San Jose, uh, with offices in Seattle, uh, Sacramento, uh, Reno, and, and, and again, it's, it's, uh, it's a low voltage integrator probably does probably 70% in, in, in the security business, but RFI does boy, they do, uh, a fair amount in the fire life safety industry.

I I'll tell you it's, you know, working, uh, for a company like, like RFIs, give me a they've I'll tell you more than anything. They they've been so supportive of. All the things I'm involved in, whether it's NFPA or N or my CF P S certification or, or getting involved with a AA or S F P E they've been so supportive.

Uh, and, and that's made a huge difference because you, you know, the company, you know, RFI, uh, has invested a lot of, uh, money and resources and supported me to, to go to these conferences and be involved with these organizations. What, not only has it given them visibility, but for me, the networking and being out there, um, you know, just, just you have to stay relevant and you have to stay visible.

Um, for me, I, I will say that out here that these projects I'm involved in, it's so many high tech companies where, where the needs are, are, are a little more, um, uh, I feel a little more pressure, a lot more going on. I I'm involved. several very, you know, very, very large companies that you know, where we're monitoring, where they're making, um, you know, these clean labs, these claimers where, you know, they're, they're making chips and the, you know, wafers and, and all the things involved with, uh, machinery needed to process the, you know, uh, these things and where, where we're monitoring, you know, two, three, 4,000 gas, gas points in these systems.

Wow. Um, and, and, and, and, and these, these type of high tech companies is one in particular. Um, you know, if, if, if the building was to dump or we had to evacuate the building, I I'm told they, they would lose over a million dollars per hour in production. Um, and it's just, yeah. When, when you're monitoring, you know, 10, 15, 20 types of gas is coming into a facility.

Through, uh, you know what I call these gas monitoring panels on top of the fire alarm panels. Uh, it, it's been really interesting for me. I, you know, I've, I've learned a lot about these industries and it's just, it's, it's just overwhelming, uh, the stuff that you do on top of, you know, providing the early warning, uh, uh, aspir systems.

Um, I enjoy working with the high tech companies a lot. I, I enjoy working with, with, with the many school district I'm involved in, in colleges out here. Um, it's just, um, you know, the, the economy's been pretty good out here. We've been blessed. I, um, the product that, that we primarily lead with is, is, is Siemens.

And we, we get great support, great resources, you know, a lot of white papers, a lot of, you know, seminars, a lot of different things, you know, right now we're. Thus we're involved in these, these energy storage facilities, which are up and coming now. Yes. Uh, doing a number of those, uh, in different types of, uh, uh, technology used for detection and those types of facilities with flame detectors and different types of things.

Um, so it's been, uh, you know, you, it's just been really interesting. I, I tell you, I just learned so much from these different facilities that we're in. Yeah. I'd like to pick your brand more. You talked about some really, uh, complex and interesting topics. Haven't had too many opportunities in my career to work on gas detection systems because of, uh, they're just, well, at least in the occupancies that I've dealt with in my career, they're not as common.

And they're very complex and sensitive and you know, these sensors, um, you know, they, uh, like all sensors, they can go bad. So it's hard to design these systems, um, for thousands of points. That's pretty remarkable. And then, uh, another issue I'd, I'd love to hear more from you about is I just sat through a great presentation last week about, um, lithium ion, uh, batteries and their failure methods and the fire safety around, um, sensing the off gassing, um, uh, electrolytic, uh, chemicals within the batteries and how that can be a precursor to like a flaming fire.

But, uh, maybe that's too in the weeds, but if you have any thoughts on either of those subjects, I think they're very fascinating. Yeah. Um, those facilities, the lithium island facilities and storage facilities, you know, it's, you know, it, it's a lot of physics and understanding these gases and the vapors and how they come off.

Um, Siemens had just developed, uh, a new detection, uh, for these types of gases and fumes and, and, and, and that, that can spark in, in these storage facilities. Um, so I'm just learning that myself. I, I tell you, you know, the other thing out here too, being out here in Northern California and the central valley area is, you know, the, the agriculture, um, I was just, uh, elected, um, to, to serve on a new standard, which is fire protection of cannabis growing and processing facilities.

And, and while it is focused on cannabis, it could be really. Any type of grow processing facility, where, where you don't see a lot of codes, you know, out here there's all types of ag facilities, but you know, the one that, that I felt that, that I could have an impact that, that, you know, I've just, you know, her horror stories from, from fire departments and, you know, different jurisdictions.

Um, you know, when I saw a presentation about four or five years ago at an NPA conference, and you know how these type of facilities are, are, are showing up in communities and, and, and really, you know, the, the, the, the fire departments, aren't really sure, not really knowing what is the right thing to do to protect your community.

You know, what, what are the things you need to put in here? How, you know, what do you need to do to, you know, to, to make these places. And, and so, and you can imagine these, these cannabis facilities are, are going up all over the country. They, they project in five years that, that this cannabis industry will, will be a 20, $25 billion legitimate business.

And, and, you know, it's just, it it's really about time for, for, you know, the codes to develop in this area and provide guidance really, you know, not only to, for, for these facilities to be built safely, but how to maintain them. How do you continue to, to make sure that, you know, these places are saved five years down the road and, you know, uh, so I, I'm just starting to learn a lot about this industry.

You know, some of the things that came to my mind, you know, was. , you know, just the amount of H V a C equipment or the electrical power that's required in these facilities or, or the types of, uh, uh, of machines that are involved, that, that have no listings, uh, for these things. Um, you know, fire exits, you know, I've seen video, I, I, I've seen a number of photos when you go in these facilities and, and there, there are no fire exits, you know, um, and, and really the type of gases that, that come out of these, the type of solvents that are involved in these, it, it's just something that, that, um, certainly here that, um, needs to be addressed.

And, and we, we have to be, uh, responsible. We have to be responsible in, in protecting these things and, and, and start doing it right to, to save lives. Uh, not only for the people working in there, but for the communities and. Fire. Department's trying to enforce these things and trying to understand what are the things that need to be done.

So that that's been a big thing for me out here lately, uh, after being involved in a number of these seminars. Wow. Yeah, that's very interesting to hear about, that's been a topic that has been getting a lot of, uh, discussion, um, in Oklahoma's past legislation where these facilities have become more common.

So I think that's really neat that you are gonna be on the forefront of, um, people in the fire and life safety community who are trying to evaluate the best way to, uh, protect these kind of occupancies. In, in my estimation, the hazardous materials in general is, uh, extremely difficult area of. The, you know, the building code and, and systems design.

And there is a lot of instances in which, uh, I think the whole community misses the mark on protecting these kind of, um, hazards. So I think that's awesome that you are getting a real, uh, insider look at, uh, how we're going to respond to this, um, burgeoning industry. Um, I don't think it's going anywhere.

Um, definitely, uh, not for you, but I would say likely the, the whole nation. So, um, yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah. And what I like, what N F P a does is they make the committees, I think there's 16, maybe 20 members on, on this committee, but they make it balanced. So there there's, you know, a small percentage of people that are involved in, you know, that with integrators, people that are.

Actually out there, uh, you know, installing these systems, maintaining these systems, making sure, you know, they're installed correctly. So I'm a I'm, you know, that, that I would say is my special inter screwed, just, but, but I've noticed on there that they have a balance of, you know, fire officials from over the country, uh, a and E community is represented, represented.

I find, um, I found that, you know, on there it was interesting mix cause and they had this on the NFPA site, there was, uh, a gentleman with the butane industry and the people providing these type of, you know, chemicals involved in, you know, extracting, uh, you know, uh, the cannabis and such. So it's, it's well represented.

It's well balanced, you know? Um, so, um, really looking forward to, to providing my input. And helping make these facilities secure and safe. Yeah. You know, and I've also found too. It's interesting. I I've, you know, these facilities, you don't even know in most cases that these are in, even in your communities, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're not something that, you know, you have a billboard or, and, and, you know, to me that's a little disturbing, you know, Uhhuh , you know, where, where I have seen some of these located, matter of fact, uh, one of these were, you know, is relatively close to, to one of our offices.

Um, so yeah. Uh, I'm looking forward to, to, to help him develop this standard. Yeah, I think, uh, I don't know if you heard about that, um, that tragedy that was in the LA with, uh, one of these, um, processing facilities that ended up, um, I believed, uh, taken some, uh, firefighters lives. Um, but I think that we need to have a focus on these facilities so that we can prevent events like that.

And, you know, the, the fact that they might have been in a business building or, you know, not in a facility design for this sort of thing. Interesting enough. You know, I, I was driving on the highway with the group of coworkers to a job site visit and they were saying, well, you can probably surmise it.

That's a, uh, grow facility because look at the, the huge H V a C units for this warehouse building that's out in the middle, uh, you know, kind of nowhere off the side of the highway. And we're like, well, yeah, that, that makes sense. You know, that large H V a C capacity that you were talking about. Right.

Right. And, and where I've seen inside for just. Things that I would never think of lighting where, where I've seen pictures, where they're running extension cords throughout the facility for lighting and, and different things that require power, uh, on top of the H V a C um, yeah. It's um, it's, uh, it's just, it's just kind of the wild, wild west, you know, right now.

Um, you can find a little bit in NFPA one under the, in the fire code there, but yeah. Not, not enough. Um, so this is, uh, you know, well, well needed. Um, um, so yeah, without a doubt. So yeah, I'd like to talk more about, you know, we spoke a little bit about your involvement with NFPA 72 and you know, your focus in NFPA 72 and your work on that technical committee, but.

Yeah, I, I hear people. I have people and I've felt this way at times. Um, the NFPA 72 is so diverse and such a, a document that brings together, uh, litany of different, uh, systems and components. Uh, yeah. I'd like to hear more about your work on NFP 72, cuz I think that, um, people can be confused by the document at times and it's, it's got of a bit of a learning curve, which, um, maybe that's coming me coming from a fire suppression background.

My first job outta college was fire suppression. So I got NFPA 13 drilled in my head, but NFPA 72 was a little bit more difficult. Yeah. I. You know, with NFPA with lately, I've noticed in the evolution of, of the codes that come out every three years, is there there're, there're been slowly getting away from using the, the word firearm, you know, even though it is, you know, primarily a firearm code, it, it's more about emergency communication systems, you know, bringing in the voice area of refuge, you know, all the other system components.

And of course, firearm is the major component of that, but it it's just evolving, you know, especially with the technology where, you know, we can, you know, we can, we can network these systems, you know, through, through the infrastructure of, of the buildings, you know, with, with ethernet and, and, and all the different ways that we connect these buildings and wireless systems it's, you know, anymore, um, Gosh, you know, the firearm code and, and serving on, on, on chapter 18.

Um, I've learned so much about all the different components, you know, from, from, you know, the proper ways to, to test systems. I mean, it, it covers the gamut, uh, uh, you know, it's not, you know, N a PA, um, doesn't tell you the type of occupancies to put in the building, but it tells you, you know, once that is determined where you need to, to put things, you know, in the building.

Um, and, and it's, um, yeah, I, um, I remember the day when, when, when, you know, 72 was broken up in, in a number of publications, number of code standard books. Um, but you know, they're, they're trying to make it more user friendly where, where people can, you know, that need to use this code can find things.

easier. And they're trying to, to, to make it a little more updated with taking out, uh, more negative type, um, uh, contacts in there where, where you don't need it to, to say where you do need to provide a pool station or a smoke detector and, you know, the development of performance based versus prescriptive and, and the different things.

I, I, um, it really is a good resource. I, I tell you, I, uh, I refer back to it, you know, all the time, uh, during the course of a week, you know, um, you know, there's always something I can learn, but, but it really is the best standard we have out there on, on top of, you know, the, the IBC or the I C or the life safety code.

It, it really is the foundation for the fire life safety code, you know, you know, you can look at so many other documents out there, you know, Elevator code, but, but things seem to reference back to, to 72 in one sense. And I, I get more of a clear direction in a lot of ways, you know, starting with that and, and, and, and, you know, adding other things where I need to.

Yeah, definitely without a doubt. So I like to kind of wrap up interviews and in the conclusion of these discussions with some just broader questions about, um, the industry, I think we talked about a lot of good trending topics and things on the horizon for fire and life safety. But I always like to ask when I get knowledgeable professionals on the show, um, what kind of advice you would have for, uh, any sort of professional in the industry?

You know, somebody just getting into the industry or somebody who wants. Um, gain an edge. Um, what, what would you add to say to somebody like that? You know, I would say to them, um, post COVID that understanding that, but there's a, there's a lot of, when you look at, you know, the complete kind of food chain of what it takes to, to put these systems in and maintain 'em, you have to understand that fire departments in general, everyone's cutting resources.

And you're bringing in a lot of third party consultants to design these systems. They're, they're, they're bringing in third party, uh, inspectors and different consultants to inspect these and maintain these. But I'm finding lately that, uh, remote video testing is, is gonna be a big thing, right? You know, where, where these fire departments can, can, we can get on a zoom call and we can take them around and, and show them that we've tested.

Know, whether it's 10% or a hundred percent of the system and, and do things remotely, we, we can provide there's software applications out there now that, you know, the, the reports are sent through, uh, what's called the compliance engine and to these fire departments, cuz they don't have the resources and letters did become generated automatically when, if you have a deficiency in how you correct these and you know, it, you know, I'll tell you things changed quite a bit.

Uh, several years ago when, when there was, uh, the huge tragedy in Oakland with the ghost fire and, and were, were building officials, aren't always able to get out to the buildings and, and, and, and check up on these buildings. And, you know, uh, the, you know, what I find in this industry, the only change comes through tragedy, you know, when, uh, insurance companies and FM global and all these organizations.

You know, I find the biggest change, unfortunately comes from tragedy and learning from these things. But, you know, I see post COVID where, where we're looking for just better, smarter ways to be able to maintain these buildings and exercise these buildings, um, you know, without the resources that we had years ago.

Um, and, and I find now that, that these buildings are, you know, we're just looking for, for ways to do these and, and, and a better way for, for you. I will say, you know, green buildings in different ways to do this, where, where we can do this in a way that that is, you know, best for, for the world, you know, um, L E D technology.

Um, and, and just the ways that, you know, things are. Our our, you know, with, with the resources that we use in the buildings, you know, the, the, the technology, and you're probably aware of this guys has changed in the buildings where these, the fires nowadays, these fires, you know, with, with the materials we're using the combustible materials.

To me, that that is the biggest thing going on. You know, these buildings go up, you know, that UL put out a, a, a, a, a video showing, you know, the materials that we had in buildings 10 years ago versus today, and, and what what's involved in, in, in building these buildings and the materials used in the buildings.

And, and, you know, in, in the example that, that I saw in the video, you know, the, these, these newer buildings will go up probably 45%, uh, quicker, uh, than buildings that for me, even 10, 15 years ago, So it's just amazing the technology anymore. I I'm seeing where, where buildings are being constructed out here, where they're bringing in floors at a time and, and it's like Legos.

Right. And you know, just more economical, faster, better ways to, to construct these buildings. Uh, I've seen that in numerous cases where they've been able to, to build a, a four story dorm building in the course of the summer, , you know, you know, where trucks bringing in, uh, floors of a building and sections of a building and constructing them like, like Legos.

So, yeah, it's, it's fascinating. Uh, and we're doing fire alarm design from the factories, you know, versus, you know, at the actual place where the building's gonna be instructed, uh, to be constructed. So to me, uh, there's just, it's, it's exciting. I tell you it's, um, I've never been busier my life, uh, through these COVID times.

I, uh, you know, it's, it's an essential service. Um, you know, um, and it's something that, you know, especially, you know, think about this GU when, during, when these billings were shut down and then all of a sudden, you know, buildings start to open up these buildings haven't, you know, really been used in the course of the year.

And then, you know, you need to inspect and test these buildings in order to bring employees back and the fire departments to be, to feel safe, to go back into these buildings and such. So it's, you know, from, from this COVID, um, I see a lot of changes in this industry where we can do more things remote and we can do things that, you know, this make these buildings better.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of great points there. You know, I've seen that big, uh, push for remote inspection and, you know, some testing as well. And yeah, I've, I've been extremely busy during COVID times. I've felt so bad for people who weren't able to, you know, um, be employed or, uh, you know, have the job opportunities that they wanted cuz of COVID because I feel like fire and knife safety is, has had a big push for the industry to, um, stay on top of things or it's just kind of been charging forward and yeah, we're adapting to new technologies, adapting to the future in fire and life safety and what that entails and you know, trying to stay on top of it all ISS very intriguing.

But, uh, yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent, Steven. Yeah. But anyways, well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Steven. Um, if people want to find you and reach out, or if there's anything that you would like to, to plug, please feel free. Yeah, I,

by LinkedIn, uh, site, uh, for information, um, for, for anything, they just finally underst Steven Lewis, um, you know, out in the, the bay area with RFI. Um, but certainly, uh, I like to engage in, in any type of discussion that involves the fire life safety industry. Um, so, um, I'm available to, you know, I, I'm always excited just to talk to people in this industry to get them involved, you know, mentor to young people and, and.

Just bring my experience. My, my 30 years of experience out here in the field where I've seen virtually every, every type of building, um, I, I would love to, you know, share that with people. Wow. That's awesome. Well, thank you again so much, Steven, and, uh, yeah, I appreciate it. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Gus, for reaching out, you're doing a great thing, uh, for this fire life safety industry and look forward to, you know, uh, really have enjoyed listening, uh, to your podcast. And there's several more that, that I'm gonna listen to. But yeah, you know, we, you know, the key is I think we all wanna make a difference in our own way and you, you're doing a great service out there and thank you without a doubt.

I appreciate that. That means a lot. Awesome. 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 we are talking about water storage tanks for fire suppression. We go over NFPA 22 the standard for private fire protection water storage tanks as well as some common components of this system. The question of how to determine if a fire protection water storage tank is required is discussed at length. 

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 episode 20 of fire code tech. In this episode, we're talking about fire protection, water storage tanks. Yes. Last week we talked about water supply piping for underground Firemans. And this week I wanted to talk about another crucial component of fire protection, water supplies, which is storage tanks.

Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media. Oh, and if you could do me a huge favor and give us a five star review on apple podcasts, that would help out so much. In this episode, I wanted to talk about fire protection, water storage tanks, because it's a complicated part of fire protection to understand.

We talked about fire pumps in episode number nine of the solo cast. And this is another big complicated component. Providing a water supply for, um, municipality that cannot supply the fire protection system in which you're designing. So one of the most critical pieces of determining if you need a fire protection water, uh, storage tank is by performing a preliminary hydraulic calc.

And we've talked a little bit about, um, the steps of that, what that looks like. And so this episode is going to expand on, um, after you've determined that you don't have the flow or the duration of water supply you need. Um, and you have decided that, uh, fire protection, water storage tank is necessary. Um, then what next, what code.

What standards, what are the pieces of equipment that are involved and, uh, much more so let's dive in. So unlike other fire protection systems, where you would take a look in chapter nine of the international building code, if you were trying to determine. The applicability of one of these systems to your building, um, fire pumps and fire protection, water storage tanks are a bit different in that they are required when the water supply of your municipality cannot sustain the, uh, fire suppression demand that is necessary for your facility.

So if you're working for a rural municipality, That has a four inch line with, you know, um, not much water supply and you're constructing a Highrise, or if you're constructing a building with high pile storage that is gonna have some significant, um, fire suppression demand, you might be in a situation in which you need a fire protection, water storage.

And so the codes and standards around this subject is, um, N FPA 22 is the standard that tells you the installation requirements of fire protection, water storage tanks. So there's not much in the way of the codes, the fire code, or the building code for fire protection, water storage tanks. At least not to my knowledge, I've done some research and tried to dig it up, but I couldn't find.

Um, any applicable sections? I'm sure there are some but nothing substantial. So NFPA 22 is the standard for water tanks for private fire protection. So this doesn't apply to the. Elevated municipal, uh, water tanks that are, uh, generally associated with public water supplies. These are fire protection storage tanks that are specifically for a suppression system on the premises.

Usually, sometimes these systems can also be utilized for hydrant loops. Um, if you're in that situation where you were referencing before. Where you have a very rural jurisdiction. Um, you might not have the underground fireman, um, size to sustain a hydrant loop either. So, um, that's a real possibility. So the majority of this conversation is gonna be around NFP 22.

There is no, um, there is not much building code and fire code information around fire protection, water storage tanks. It's all calculation driven. There are a variety of different methods for providing a fire protection water storage tank. You can, uh, not provide the entire fire suppression duration. Um, if you have the ability to.

If your municipal water supply has the ability to provide makeup, water, to accommodate the rest of the fire suppression demand. So say your total system demand is 400,000 gallons and you only provide, um, 300,000 gallons, but you've sized a, um, makeup, water supplies. So what that would look like is. A backflow preventer with an altitude valve that would have the ability to initiate when the water started to be utilized by the fire pump and then would make up that extra a hundred thousand gallons.

Um, you know, and that's not concrete numbers or a real example, but that is a common practice. So the size of year fire protection. tank is based on the fire suppression demand of your system tank sizes can range anywhere from 30, 40,000 gallons all the way up to I've seen million gallon tanks, the scope of NFPA 22 reads as the following.

This standard provides minimum requirement for the design, construction, installation, and maintenance of tanks and accessory equipment that supply water for fire protection, including the following gravity tanks, suction tanks, pressure tanks, embankment supported coded fabric, suction tanks, towers, foundations, pipe connections, and fittings, valve enclosures tank filling protection against freezing.

So this will give you a big picture of what N F P a tells you about the water supply for your fire suppression system. So this could be a storage tank for a sprinkler system or for a foam system or a water mist system. It really doesn't matter if this fire suppression system needs water. And your public water supply cannot, uh, sustain the demand that is required to install that system for the building and the hazard you have, then you need a fire protection water storage tank.

So what are some of the common components for a fire protection water storage tank? Well, you're gonna need control valves, a water level, gauge an overflow line. That is a line to where if the tank accidentally fills more than it's supposed to, the water will discharge a fill line. There's a variety of ways that you can design a fill line.

You can have an automatic fill line or a manual fill line, and that will impact your inspection, testing, and maintenance procedures. Depending on what part of the world that you're in. You might need a tank heater. There are a couple different ways that you can heat your tank. Some parts of the world. You might be able to just get away with insulating your tank, um, depending on the climate that you're in.

Otherwise, you will have to use a circulating, uh, or immersion. I forget what the two types of immersion are circulating type heaters. There's probably a good dozen steps in determining the volume of a fire protection water storage tank. And I don't plan on going over those in. Conversation, but I will try to write them out and go over them in a future lesson.

Um, you have to take into account the net positive suction head. You have to take into account the elevation differential between where your fire pump is and where your fire protection water storage tank is. You have to determine the, um, system demand. You have to take into account, uh, fill level and also where the overflow is.

And, you know, your monitoring points for your fire alarm system will correspond to, um, that minimum level in your tank that you need to have in order to supply your fire expression system with the duration of water that it needs. There are a variety of different materials that you can construct your tank out of.

Um, you could have a tank that is made out of steel and is welded together or bolted together. There are fiberglass tanks or, um, plastic tanks. If you will made out of composites, the layout of NFPA 22. Is similar to many other NFPAs, as we always talk about the first four chapters introduction, reference publications definitions in general information.

Um, and then as you move on through the standard, there are different chapters for the different construction types and, um, types of water storage tanks, uh, welded steel. Bolted steel pressure tanks, wood tanks. Um, this is a one that I, chapter nine is one I'm not real aware of embankment supported, coded fabrics, suction tanks, concrete tanks, fiberglass tanks.

And then when you get to chapter 12, um, it talks about foundations. Usually the foundations a is. Either determined by a structural engineer or a delegated design from a structural engineer. Chapter 14 is pipe connections and fittings, chapter 15, valve enclosures and frost protection. There are different configurations that you can have.

You can have your tank, um, not attached to your pump building. You can have your tank effectively, um, adjacent or connected to your fire pump building. Um, you need to be careful because there's gonna need to be some kind of freezing protection. If you have your, uh, fire protection, water storage tank, um, remote from your pump building, cuz those valves are gonna need to, before they can go underground, have a place to come out of the side of the fire protection, water storage PLA tank.

So you'll have to heat that enclosure that wrap up our first conversation about fire protection, water storage tank. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes 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.

Hello All! Welcome to episode 39 of Fire Code Tech. In this episode we are speaking with Joseph Cervantes. In this episode we talk about the perspective shift from a technician in the field to an individual who manages business development on a national level. Joseph gives a charismatic account of lessons learned along his career in fire alarm and low voltage systems.

Show Me the Code

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhOo18E2zQE

How did you get started in fire and life safety?

Tell me about some of your early projects in the fire alarm industry?

How did working with titans in the industry like Siemens and JCI help you in your career?

What are your goals and challenges now at Space Age Electronics?

Speak to me about Show Me the Code?

What advice would you have for professionals?

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 39 of fire code tech. On this episode, we have Joseph Cervantes .This episode's really interesting because we get to talk about the perspective shift from Joseph, making his way from a technician to somebody who has managed operations and, you know, national business development.

I really enjoyed talking with Joseph. He has a infectious, uh, motivational tone, um, that I really enjoyed and some really big charisma and some awesome takeaways for any professional. If you need a dose of get up and go get him on your Monday morning, this episode is gonna be just right for you. Joseph also runs a online YouTube show.

Show me the code, where he talks with professionals about different, uh, fire alarm and technology topics such as fire service, access, elevators, and bidirectional. Amplifi. Um, you can check out some links in the show notes. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media own.

If you wouldn't mind, give us a review on apple podcast that helps out the show so much. Let's get into the show. Well, Joseph, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Welcome to fire code tech. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so we were, uh, kicking around a couple topics before we got started, but yeah, I, you know, I were just kind of getting to know each other and um, I always kind of liked to start off these podcasts with, you know, how you got into fire and life safety.

And I feel like you. About to, you know, um, dive into that bit of exposition about your career, but I realized that we hadn't hit record yet. So, yeah. Would you tell me a little bit about that, Joseph? Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, the, the interesting thing is we kind of don't know when we're coming outta high school, in my opinion, a lot of us, at least, uh, what direction we want to go in.

Right. We're we're thinking, uh, you know, there's a lot of different opportunities out there. I could follow in pathways of some of my mentors, or I could really just develop who I want to be. Right. And, and, and you can do that every day. I've, I've found over my life that you can kind of rediscover yourself every day and recreate who you wanna be at any given time.

You you're, you're never stagnant, right. Continual learning, continual education and continuous improvement on yourself. Um, so, so. You know, I, I started, uh, really young working. Uh, I did flooring. I used to help out my brother-in-law who owned his own company. And, uh, we would do that stuff on the weekends.

And then I grew a little bit and, you know, became of working age. We're talking 16 here. And, uh, I would work for longer periods. We'd work, weekends, work over the weekend, uh, you know, at schools and things like that, uh, installing cafeterias and doing, you know, toys, arrests and stuff. And it really led to me understanding craftsmanship.

And I thought, you know, this is a fun career, but it's hard. It's LA you know, it's pretty laborious. You you're lifting a lot of weight and stuff with carpet and tile and all that stuff. And, and as I got into high school, I wanted to hang out more with my friends, but I still wanted to earn an income. Um, and so I had started working at Disneyland and I was there as a cast member at Disneyland for about a year and a half, just finishing up high school.

Uh, and it, funny enough, man, my car broke down and I didn't have anything to fall back on. Disneyland was about a half hour away, 35, 40 minutes away. And so I had to, you know, figure it out or get something local as a, as an opportunity until I can get my car back up and run. And I get a call from my brother-in-law and he says, Hey man, I went down to this company out in long beach.

You need to go check 'em out. He said, they're, uh, they're, uh, low voltage installation company. And he said, you love working with electronics and stuff. And I've known that about you. So why don't you go check 'em out? So I knew how to hook up car stereos and, uh, you know, that was the gist of it. Maybe some VCRs, that was the guy that took apart stuff at home and put it all back together.

Right. Electronics and all that good stuff. So, um, I went down and I interviewed and within about an hour, I had the job and. That's where it started, man. and, uh, you know, it, it, uh, it kind of just like what you were saying, you know, you, you, you have this mentality where you just want more. And for me coming in as a technician, um, I didn't know anything, but I had a hunger.

And every day I would show up, I'd have my tool bags the first day. I remember going out and getting some tools and stuff, some hand tools and, uh, uh, looked around, you know, the industry wasn't really, we didn't have the internet like that. Right. It was still dial up, but I knew how to search around for things.

I'd go to home Depot and stuff and look for tools. And, um, I'd also ask some of the guys, Hey, what are some of the common tools that you use on a regular basis? So asking questions, I was able to emulate what the senior guys were doing, and I would learn how to work with a multi-meter or work with, uh, you know, hand tools day to day.

But then I would also in the morning before, when everybody was standing around there, out smoking a cigarette or having drink coffee or something, I'm asking a senior guy to put a trouble on a. Saying, Hey, put a ground fault or put a shorter or, or put a trouble on that system so I could figure it out.

Right. And there was a method to my madness because what they didn't see was that when I was at home, I was reading the code book and I was opening up drawings. And I was looking at all the general notes sections of the drawings to understand what the heck I was doing. I'm out there. Uh, I know how to read schematics, right?

I, I installed car stereos. I did electronics. Like this is just a little bit bigger scale, but everything circuits. And so, um, you know, I just, I had to, I had to move in that direction to really apply myself and say, if you're here for eight hours a day to learn this thing, learn how to do it. And you're in a really fast paced environment.

You get left behind pretty quick, if you don't move. And I saw what my lead guys had put up with and I kind of learned from them and, uh, yeah, within, you know, six months. I was already seeking out. Nice. A so I, I was just really aggressive young. Yeah. That's, that's probably like the best thing you could be as a young professional, getting into the industry, you know, you're never gonna know everything that you need to, so I love hearing about, uh, you know, people's stories and people's ambition and drive, uh, cuz I think it's infectious, this, this hustle and this thought of, you know, uh, continual development, which is something that we've already touched on a couple times now.

But yeah, I love that story of like having some knowledge of, you know, AV and a little bit of, you know, the component architecture of electronics and just kind of seeking out this first role and diving head in. That's awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. I I, like I said, I'm here for eight hours. Of my life. And I, I, I don't know about everybody that listens to your podcast, but I look at my life very seriously from a perspective of every moment has to matter, right?

It doesn't mean that I'm doing something every moment that may matter to somebody else, but it has to be, we have to live with intention. Like you have to live intentionally, everything that you do has to matter for something. And if you're not doing something that is being intentional, then you know, you're not, you're not respecting yourself.

And so when I came into that, you know, into that role, I said, look, I'm getting off of my knees doing carpet and flooring and stuff, and I'm gonna go install electronic systems in a building. And, you know, the, I knew a little bit about 'em, but it was fire alarm. And that seemed pretty serious to me. So I felt, well, you know, if I'm watching my, my senior guy open up drawings, he's reading something.

You know, he's talking to these building inspectors and talking to this guy, like these are serious things that they're doing. I need to know that because if I wanna be that I have to know what they know. Yeah. There's some definitely an added, like implication to fire and life safety work, uh, where you feel early on in your career that, you know, yes, you're learning, but there is this impetus to figure it out because these systems are not just, uh, ancillary to, um, the building, uh, they have impact on people's lives.

So yeah, yeah. Even us, even us. And I'll, I'll tell you some stories as we move through the conversation about how it even impacts us today, and we don't even realize it. So. Yeah, that's great. So I always like to get a sense of, you know, people's like kind of project work. We're still, you know, early on in your career in this part of the discussion, but you know, like moving forward, what are these kind of, uh, projects that become some of these formative experiences early on in your career?

Joseph? Yeah. So, so as a project technician, uh, I think through every phase of my career, I've had, uh, really dramatic experiences that have kind of opened my eyes and, and you know, it, it's, it's from a couple of different levels, right? It's not necessarily just a project itself, but it's the enormity of the responsibility that you have.

And when you realize that it creates a level of consciousness that you take and you're like, wow, okay. I matter. Right. So, so in my role at DC associates and fire co was interesting as a senior guy going out and installing my first system and, and my very first project that I went on by myself. It was a little company, Mary in Torrance, California, and I went and started their cup facility.

We were, we were the first integrator to go into this complex. They wanted to try out a new guy, uh, or a new gal in town. Right. And so we came in, I started that system out. The first time around ever installing wire by myself, all that stuff, trimming it out. And it turned green programmed perfectly. And all the devices tested because I went through meticulously and I like forced myself to say, don't make any mistakes.

Right? Uh, it's a life safety system. And my wiring was always really clean and, and all that kind of stuff. So that was very, uh, impactful for me. Cuz then I ended up getting, awarded myself a five story expansion of inpatient hospital stuff. They gave me the project and they said, well, you already have the relationships out there.

Go run the thing and we're gonna convert this thing from that vendor to us. That was huge, right. That hospital still stands today. It's got an emergency room, it's got a NICU unit, a, a L and D ward. Uh, we did all kinds of crazy stuff like w doors and infant abduction. And so, so it's like, it, it still a living breathing facility and it still serves people today saving people's lives even today.

Right. So that matters. Wow. And then as I continued on, as a project manager, for instance, um, I ended up managing almost about 9 million in fire alarm work, and that's pretty substantial in fire alarm when you're talking, you know, uh, little parts of smarts projects, as well as, you know, large construction jobs.

And that was a lot of Kaiser Permanente work in Los Angeles for Siemens. And it was just so, uh, uh, so great of an experience to understand P and L it helped me to understand, uh, the, the business side, um, how to manage people effectively. And how to take what I learned as a technician, and just translate that into a bigger mindset of delegation, because I can't succeed alone.

It takes my team in order to succeed at these projects, cuz these things are behemoth, right? We're talking smoke control, full active smoke control, uh, you know, 5,000 addressable points on fire alarm systems. And we're in, you know, we're integrating with mechanical contractors and elevator guys and all this stuff, but you're maintaining a business at 9 million.

It's just a large responsibility. And then, you know, the next level up from there was moving on to Johnson controls and becoming an operations manager. And again, turning that volume up, seeing it from the next level of, of visibility, which is more 30,000 foot perspective and understanding how each individual in a business.

Can maximize them, their, their can maximize their, their efficiencies and their potential. If you give people a good structure and you help them to understand their roles. And if they understand that leadership is there to be in the Fox hole with them and guide them through, it really helped me to learn business from a totally different perspective, standardization, making people good at what they do, cuz they're repeating the same process over and over again.

And then understanding that we can make these technologies plug and play. And so that was huge, huge, huge, from my perspective. Uh, moving on in my career into where I'm at today at space age, man, there's so much good stuff to unpack there. I love what you were talking about. Um, with that panel lighting up green the first time, I can only imagine like the emotion of that, uh, as somebody who's, you know, just got their first big project, uh, that I can like feel that as, as you're talking about it, you know, um, as a huge moment, and then, uh, you spend six months on some of these jobs there.

These are hours of your life that you're spending frustrated, tinkering, trying to figure this stuff out. And when you turn it on and it works. It it, yeah, it was, it was, uh, monumental for me mentally to say, I can do this. Yeah, man. That's awesome. And then, yeah, moving on to those large scale projects with, you know, thousands of points, those are, those are huge projects, you know, with the complexity is, is off the walls to deal with these com complicated systems, smoke control.

I mean, it doesn't get any more, um, hard to put together than smoke control for, for fire alarm. In my estimation, I mean, that's about as tricky as it gets. Uh, it really helped me to, to, to, uh, have respect for the fire alarm project managers. Um, because we, we, we are the quarterback between the local authority, the FPE, the architects, the engineers, the mechanical contractor, the sprinkler contractor, the door contractor, the ceiling tile contractor, the electrical contractor, um, Uh, and nowadays, obviously we're getting into concrete, we're getting into two, a communication systems.

Like there's so many of those different trades elevators, and they all have to integrate generators, fire pumps. Like they all communicate to this central core system. Yeah. That's so great. Yeah. Uh, integrated systems and something I really wanted to touch on that you covered in your quick recap on your career so far is like sure, this management development or this, like this focus on people and interaction with people, I think is like a very crucial step in the development of a career.

And like kind of this moving up is understanding how to motivate and how to interact with people and how to facilitate teamwork better. So I just, I love that theme cuz it's something I'm kind of feeling in my, in the position of, uh, you know, what I'm experiencing right now as a developing professional, like.

How to be a motivator, how to be a team player, how to be a, somebody who facilitates people to get things done. So I love hearing about that. Yeah. Nobody likes, nobody likes to be told what to do. They wanna be shown. Right. And, and the one thing that I always, uh, can stand behind for myself is I'm gonna be the first one in, and, and you're gonna see me walk through that.

You're gonna see me walk through that door and I need a band of people behind me that wanna follow. And, and not necessarily, they're not following me, but they're following in my direction. Right. And so, um, I can't inspire people if I don't know what I'm talking about. If I've never had the experience of doing it, I tell new sales professionals, please go out in the field and do the work, physically pull the wire, install the devices.

So you understand what it takes so that when you bid a job, you're bidding it from the perspective of, I have physical experience in doing that role, right. Um, uh, engineers go out and, and, and physically see a system work. Uh, I tell my, my partners, uh, and my coworkers here in the manufacturing world all the time, I send them pictures and say, look, our systems installed in the biggest Highrise out in this major.

This is you, you built these boxes and this wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for you for what you do. We all have to understand that role that we play. Right. As a technician, as a project manager, as an ops manager, we all play a certain role in a, in a, in a organization professionally, and even in our, in our personal lives.

But I'll go back to a book it's called good to great, you know, as an ops manager, I had to understand the right people in the right place on the bus, cuz it's a very packed bus and we're all going in that direction. And I'm driving the bus as an ops manager and I need to make sure that I have the right people on that bus first of all.

But then I wanna make sure that they're in the right positions to, to, to maximize their best, uh, characteristics and capabilities. Right? If they're analytical, I don't want them in a position that, um, an emotive person would succeed. because maybe they're more closed off and they want to think about what they have to say before.

You know, they approach a, a response, whereas that needs somebody that's more prompt to give a faster response. Right. Um, and I think that was my best. Under my best understanding in management was to really read people, understand who it is that I'm working with and lead by example, the same as being a parent lead by example, get in the Fox hole with people, make sure that they, that they understand what you're asking of them.

So you have to set good expectations up front, but you have to show them how to perform and how to be successful at what you're asking them to do. And when they see that and they can rep replicate that and repeat that process over and over again, cuz you've created a standard way to do it. Now people can succeed and it's like football.

You don't think when you're out there, you just do it. It's second nature. Yeah, that's all great stuff. Yeah. I think there's, there's so much to be said for, you know, the best leaders that I work with are all, uh, set good examples of being a team player, player set. Good examples of going beyond expectations.

Set good examples of, um, the facilitating teamwork and bringing a, a team together. You know, uh, like a team builder or somebody who knows how to have that emotional intelligence that you're talking about to right. Um, key into what's important to people and what's important to the business. Um, so I think that's all, uh, really, really great stuff.

Um, I wanted to, you know, break in a little bit more on, you know, you work for some really huge projects with really, you know, uh, big budgets and, um, some powerhouses in the industry, like, uh, JCI and Siemens. And I just, you know, like as somebody who's worked for predominantly smaller companies, like how did.

How did these, uh, roles like kind of shape you? I mean, it, it seems like, um, they were extremely influential, but, um, from your perspective, how did they shape you in your career? Yeah, no great question. I I'll, I'll tell you this. E every, every experience I've ever gone into in my life as a role or an opportunity, I'm always interviewing that company.

Believe it or not. When I walk into an interview, I'm not walking into an interview for them to just know about me. Like, I want you to put me in my position. I want you to show me what my day to day operation looks like, so that I can see if it fits good for my. Because I bring a lot to the table. Right.

I'm I, uh, and, and I think self-confidence is a good thing. That was the only way of going from a small company with less than 50 employees at DCA or fire call, uh, very, very small operations. Um, but knowing that. Like the, the installation was second nature to me. I, I was already nice at level two, so I understood the code.

I understood how to reference the code. I understand how to research the code. Uh, I knew how to have, uh, relationships with AJS, cuz I had sat through numerous certificate of occupancy, uh, inspections. Um, so going into the roles at, at Siemens particularly, I was very, very confident as a matter of fact, uh, I think in six months I went from being a senior level technician to be a project manager level one.

And then a year later I was a project manager level two, which is really, really high ranking. I was like in the president's club, um, uh, where they ranked me with all the project managers in the us. And, and, you know, they, they obviously Siemens took a very, very, uh, uh, critical role with me growing in my confidence in the industry.

And then Johnson controls was like, okay, what, what can I apply that I learned at Siemens? And, and the difference, I think between companies like Siemens and say an installation company, uh, smaller installation company, is that they invest in the employee. They want you to learn, they'll pay for you to continue ed, continue your education.

Um, I went and took my PMP exam. I missed it literally by I think, two percentage points. It was pretty, pretty, uh, pretty horrible. And I never retook the test. I don't know why, but I still remember the criteria and understand how to lay out how to lay out a project. So it was never about, um, uh, not being capable, going into those roles.

It was just about me trusting my intuition and myself and my capabilities and saying, listen, I know I'm a 30 year old kid. Because I still looked at myself at that. I, I knew I was a 30 year old kid going in and running a 35 million operations, uh, like Johnson controls, but it's nothing like I haven't done it before, just more volume.

So I have to be responsible for more, let me grow into the role, but don't be afraid of the role. Yeah. I think that that's a great point about that, that confidence and that, um, ambition to learn and kind of to grow, you know, you never have all the tools you need, uh, to, to succeed at a role when you get into it and kind being adaptive and getting in there and, and not being timid and just kind of grabbing the bull by the horns and going after it.

I think that's the mentality that I see. It's like a real entrepreneurial spirit and, um, just of the people who get things done. I, I see that very commonly. Well, I think a lot of the times when, when we take jobs, when we take jobs, right, we take a job and we think, oh, uh, I should already know what I'm doing.

Yeah. And, and when we don't know what we're doing, we have an option. we have a choice, either go learn about what you're doing, or try to fumble your way through it. And personally, it, it doesn't feel comfortable to not know what I'm doing. Yeah. And so I always try to prepare myself as much as possible before I take something on and engage it.

And I mean, I had what, 16 years of experience and fire alarm. So the fire alarm, wasn't the, wasn't the part that was the unknown. It was, how do I manage a company? Like you're putting a huge load on my shoulders and, and how do I manage that? And I'll tell you, I created standards. The same thing I do in my life.

You know, when you brush your teeth, Gus. What hand are you righthand or lefthanded? Right hand you're right hand. Right. Okay. So, so when you're brushing your teeth with your right hand, you're pretty good at it, right? Sure. Do you think about it when you're doing it? No. No, it's just, it's it's secondhand nature.

Right? I just go at it. I put the toothbrush on the same or the toothpaste on the same way. And, and, and I, you know, I brush my, whatever you get my point. Sure. So when we show up to any role or any responsibility that we have, we have to create standardization in the way that we approach that role. And when we create a standard way of doing things, I check my emails.

First I respond to 'em. I go to my phones, I check my voicemail. I do that. And then I do this, this, this, this, and this, but each one of those tasks has a particular way that I've set that I do it because it's the most efficient for me. It's similar to brushing my teeth. The more I repeat something, the better I get at it.

Right. Where I don't even have to think about it. Like I brush my teeth. Well, when it comes to fire alarm or managing a company or anything like that, the more you repeat what you're doing, the better you get at it. And at Johnson controls, the more I repeated what I was doing, which was creating a standard way for people to do their role and for us to look at the numbers every month and for us to review the month and for us to review continuous improvement, as we started to implement strategy in repetition, the financial side of the business grew, and we ended up going, uh, from, uh, like some, some numbers wise, uh, those that listened to you from a 17 to a 22% EBITDA over the course of four years.

It was just, it was, it was, it was focusing on not rigidity. Like I, I know some people may have called me the ethic police in that role. I was very responsible cuz I managed safety and yeah, so I was, I was kind of by the book, but when it came to managing projects and managing installation practices financially, we benefited from what I learned at Siemens and going through my PMP because it was very structured and we knew how to protect ourselves from the risks that we see on construction projects all the time with delays.

And we just got over some with COVID right? We're still dealing with delays now, but the encumbrances of what that brings onto an organization is huge. And some people don't realize that, but it costs an organization to still manage through these times when the manpower isn't being as productive. And so you, you, we had to know how to get through these sorts of events and still be profitable cuz we're in business to make a profit.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's great points about documentation, like documenting the role and having a playbook. You know, I think that in times when, you know, you falter or you don't know what to do to have a playbook to look back and say, no, this is how we do it. This is the process. And, you know, I don't think about how we, how far am I on this project?

You know, how done are we? Um, I think that is so important. And sometimes I think it's, it's easy to lose sight of having that playbook and that documentation. I think it makes it, it takes away the, that, uh, active brain and trying to figure it out and just makes it move forward. I think that's a great, right, right, right.

Absolutely. Dude, that is absolutely key. That is absolutely key to making a business profitable is you have to, you have to not think. And, and it takes experience, but how fast do you want to get there? Right. How, how much experience do you want to attain? And that's where these experts that you, that you can see out there in the industry.

They, they all say we all have the same 24 hours in the day, right? How much are you willing to put in of yourself so that you can become who you wanna be? And, and you see people that show up for eight hours a day, you sh you see people that show up for 12 hours a day. Maybe they put in eight hours in the field, but they're doing four hours at home.

Or like I used to do, I'd take out the code book and read the code book while I was using the restroom. Right. I mean, little things like that. And, and, you know, it's funny now that I say it, but it's true because I was 19 years old. I'd use restroom and I'd read the code book, cuz I wanted to have an. And I wanted to learn and I wanted to make more money while I was doing it.

Cuz if I'm doing this for eight hours a day, I better know what I'm doing and I wanna know what I'm doing. Yeah. I think that the people who get ahead, they they'll put in that extra. They'll put in that little bit of I to do more because I mean, if you're not, and I've talked about this before, but if you're not putting in.

More effort, you know, it doesn't always have to be more time, but it can be, and often is more caring, caring more about what you do. Yes. I think that you're gonna see the dividends in the return on your career. And like you've said numerous times, not just accepting the status quo, but looking to improve and looking to, to grow.

And putting in that extra effort, whether it's, you know, oh yeah. Nobody's holding your hand and saying that you have to know the code. No, you probably could have got your job done only knowing a little bit about the code, but you chose to focus on excellence and to not only know the code, but, you know, be able to be versatile and be able to, you know, speak about it with authority, which has been extremely influential in your career.

So, I mean, I think that's, that's awesome. Yeah. I really resonate with that. Um, I think thank you, man. I think every young professional should, should take a note and out of that book and say, you know, you gotta push forward and, and really focus on, um, not just punching a clock. Um, you know, it's, it's not for the company.

It's for yourself, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you don't, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you don't put that energy in. That's it coming out of operations. It's funny what I, I was told one thing, um, I always go back to football. I'm a big football fan, right. But I always go back to something about, uh, uh, that, that I was told and that, that I still continue to tell people, even after I learned it.

And I learned this pretty young continue, uh, consider a company, a five gallon bucket of water, and it's filled up right to below the brim. You take your fist and you shove it in that water. You raise the level of that water, right? The level of water in that bucket, rose just that much because you filled that space that we didn't know was there, but you filled the space.

Now you can pull your hand outta the water and that water level will rec reside just a little bit, but it, the hole that you left will fill itself in, you're never bigger than the organization. An organization is the sum of all the parts. And so we, we have to contribute our part to that organization.

Make sure you're in the right position on the bus and that you're put in a position to succeed. You, you have to any, any young professional getting into any position that they are given. If you show up to work and they're like, okay, just go over there in the corner and figure out what you're gonna do that that's not gonna inspire you.

Unless you're inspired to say, oh, that's how you do it. Well, you know what? I want to be a manager one day. So if that's how you do it, let me introduce to you what a system looks like. I have a system I can show you how to do after three weeks and it's gonna increase your efficiencies and then they hand you a manager's role, right?

So there's a couple of ways to look at it. You can look at it as a negative because they didn't give you a role and you're, you're identifying it for them. Or you could see it as you know, this company really doesn't have it together for me. Uh, I want to grow and this company seems to just want people to fall into an abyss.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. You can, you can either choose to be defeated or you can see it as an opportunity and say, Hey, I'm not neglected. I've just been given a blank slate to, um, show, you know, make my own roadmap and playbook for what success looks like. Um, I think that's a point that's a mindset choice.

You know, it's, it's funny cuz when I go back to installation, uh, you know, knowing how to install car stereos, my first job, I remember pulling wire. I remember, uh, going to projects five o'clock in the morning. You know, I was the guy that put the wire in the wire cart. I'd bring it into the building, I'd lift the ladders.

Like I was the new guy and I used to look at these senior guys and they would, you know, sit around for an hour, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, doing Asbuilt. And I'm like, I want that. Like, I, I want what he's doing. So how do I get there? And I knew that I had to know what he knew in order for me to get there.

So it was encouragement for me to put a little bit of effort from myself into wanting to learn that right. And it was a goal of wanting to be better. Um, but the more that I learned, the more that I understood that it translated financially for me too. So I was 21 years old making almost $25 an hour. And for that, you know, for that period of time, it was 19 97, 98.

That was pretty good money for my age. I mean, that's still good money now. It's still not bad money now. So , there's still a lot of, there's still a lot of entry level people getting into the industry, looking hoping to make that much money. I mean, but, uh, no, I think that's great. Um, I love that sentiment about, you know, it's, it's in your best interest to, to be excellent, man.

I agree. You know, like this, you do what you do for eight hours a day, man. You do what you do for eight hours a day. Why not be great at it? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So eight hours is a long time. Like eight hours is a long, long time when you actually focus on the minutes. Eight hours is a long time. Yeah. And it's your life, you know, it's your 40 hours a week.

It's your, you know, however many hours a year, you know? Yeah. You really just gonna phone it in from that whole time. So there's 2000, there's 2080 hours available of productive work every year. Right. But we only a lot for 1,640, I think it is because employees have vacation time. Plus they have, obviously, this is my operations management experience.

2080, you have 20, 80 hours of, of physical work time that you can have as an individual to work a year. Like that's a lot of time, uh, think of a, think of the amount of movies you can watch in 2000 hours. Right? Yeah. Think of how many books you could read in 2000 hours. Yeah. Like, like if we're doing this stuff for eight hours a day, at least I'm hoping everybody's doing it for eight hours a day, you should be really good at what you're doing.

Yeah. That's great. So yeah, I wanted to move on a little bit. I think that we've really covered. Some great pieces of your growth from technician and laying your foundations and fundamentals in the code and in the constructability of fire alarm systems. But I wanted to talk a bit about what you're doing now at space, age electronics, and, um, let people know about, uh, you know, what gets you excited today and the challenges that you're tackling now in your career.

But yeah, I'm, I'm interested as somebody who is, uh, continued to develop, you know, what, what are your challenges now? What are your things that you see as growth, you know, um, to contrasting to that, uh, management and some other things that we were talking about previously? Sure. So in my, in my, uh, in my previous life, I was a Tony Robbins.

I'm sure you can hear it in my voice. I'm very passionate about what I do. Um, I, I, I, let me ask you a question, Gus. Sure. You know, in, in your final days, even, even, even growing up before you knew what you were gonna do. Yeah. What was your ultimate goal with your career? Like, not from a role perspective, not to have a title.

Like what, what is your ultimate goal when they look back and they say this was Gus in this industry, what was your, what was your, what's your motivation? Yeah, I think, uh, to be successful, to be, you know, uh, independent, to be, um, a team player to be good, you know? Yeah. Um, broadly I think just to that's I think that's what winning looks like in my.

Sure, uh, to be good to be, uh, well regarded. Yeah. I, I consider my life like when, when we look back at my life, look at this dash, right? It's the dash that you're gonna see on my tombstone that says from 1978 dash this year, and in that dash is experiences like this. It, it, that dash means this what we're doing right now.

Right. And that dash to me is how I, I, and we all do this. I I've learned a lot about the brain. How can I go back and solve some of the problems that I had both as a child or as a teenager, or as an adult, or as a professional or as a father, as a mother or as a, a, you know, whatever. Like how can I fix something that I experienced in my.

So coming to space age, it was a very interesting situation that happened to me. Um, uh, I won't get into all the details of what had happened, but I, I, I became available and I made a phone call. I, I gave myself a pity party for about 30 minutes after I became available. Uh, like I threw a pity party and I was really angry and frustrated and not understanding why things happen the way that they do.

And I remember after that pity party, I looked at my, uh, he was four years old at that point, he looked at me, he said, dad, are you okay? And I said, I'm not okay right now, but I will be in a minute. And I picked up my phone and I made like seven or eight phone calls. And out of one of those phone calls, I had a random conversation with somebody and they said, Hey, we'll give you a call back.

Um, I gotta walk into a meeting and it was probably about a week later that I got a call from, uh, who was then my hiring manager and the national business development manager, Christian White. And he said, Hey, uh, you know, we wanted to talk to you about joining the teams. Is there any way we can come out and meet with you?

And it took about a week and a half for them to situate it. And I didn't understand why, but they were flying out from Massachusetts and Florida to come see me. And I thought, wow, these guys got on airplane and came out here to see me. Okay. And we went and had lunch and, and the conversation started around, you know, what do you want yourself to be like, who do you wanna be?

Because like I said, we could recreate ourselves every day in whatever image we wanna be today, you can decide to be a completely different person than you were yesterday. And I decided at that point that I wanted to be a change agent in this industry that I wanted to leave a legacy. I want that dash to mean legacy and here's who it touched.

And for me, working at space age is building a legacy is like you said, it's about yourself fitting a role within an organization. So I've always had the passion for life safety. I've always been very passionate about what I did as an installer, as a project manager, as a technician, you know, all that stuff.

I saw the debilitating factors of, uh, lack of resources, uh, product that just was not really good. Wasn't manufactured very well. That caused me time. Uh, one of my projects that I installed, uh, the electrician didn't install the conduit properly. And I was, it took me almost a month and a half to pull a garage that should have only took it.

Two or three days, um, it was just a really bad install. And I spent like 33 hours one day working overnight because I was troubleshooting installation that was done improperly and, and I remember falling asleep in the corridor and the fire marshal woke me up during our, during our inspection. And he's like, Hey man, what are you doing?

And I'm like, oh my God, I didn't sleep since Friday morning or that I woke up Friday morning and it's Saturday night, I missed my Christmas party. And, and from that day I had this conviction within myself to say, if there's something that I can do to fix this industry so that people don't have to do that anymore, I wanna be responsible for that.

So what I look at myself here at space age is I'm a liaison between that installation world that I cherish so much and all those installers of the project managers and superintendents, and formants that I treasure so much that put in that work every day to build buildings that we all use every day, malls and stores and grocery stores and Costcos and all that stuff.

Right. And a manufacturer who builds really, really cool stuff, cuz they, they understand what the industry needs and they're putting they're reinvesting money back into the industry by building new technology. And when they see that something's wrong, they fix it. They don't just let it continue to subside and think, oh, well, it'll be fixed down the road from a ceiling bracket to a document box where there's, as-builts missing on most, you know, installations that were done back in the eighties and nineties, nobody can find as-builts for those systems.

It's like, well, why not put a box in the fire com command center? Now it's in the code, right? Uh, uh, um, anyways, that conversation, it was about inspi inspiring this industry to have no excuses for wanting to be better. And, and it fit perfectly for me, it was, it was in my wheelhouse and life safety. I was talking to the people that I was working with my entire career, continuing to build relationships, but they mentioned one thing to me.

They said, we want you to be an influencer, and we want you to be a change agent in the industry. And I took that seriously. So LinkedIn has become my, uh, social media channel of choice. And I use it religiously to stay in contact with all of my connections, because there's, there's a huge effect that happens when I can create a story or show a story one time to 10,000 people then to have 10,000 conversations about that same story.

Now I can retell that story to five or 10 people down the road if they ask me about it. But if they see it and 10,000 of them see it, and it only took me 30 seconds to tell that story. I just told that same story, 10,000 times in 30 seconds. So from a business perspective, that makes a lot of sense from a connections perspective.

These people that I'm talking to are people like me as a technician and a project manager who need the technology that is gonna make their life better. So I'm trying to solve those problems that I couldn't solve as them in their. And I was like, wow, what a perfect relationship where I can come in and be that liaison.

But then I can start developing who I wanna be in the industry. And that's when I got involved in industry relations, became the secretary of the board for, uh, society of fire protection engineers. Dan in San Diego became a me, a board member. And now I'm the secretary of the board for the California automatic fire alarm association.

I've sat on the work group for, uh, uh, the I codes for, uh, chapter 33, uh, the 20, 21 edition. I'm now on a NFPA technical committee, nine 15 for, for remote testing. Um, I'm involved in a lot of associations across the us. I do education across the us, um, and I'm becoming an influencer just by educating people on the codes that they need to understand in order to be successful at what they do.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's great, man. That's, uh, you talked about some great points in, uh, getting involved with professional societies and communities. Um, what do you see as like the biggest impacts, uh, through this obviously a common theme throughout your career has been networking and, you know, having influential people and mentors, uh, how do these professional societies kind of play into that development we've been speaking about?

Well, so, so, uh, Napoleon hill, I'm reading one of his books right now, actually I'm surprised I never heard of it. Uh, he talks about the mastermind group. Um, uh, you know, Carnegie talked about the mastermind group, um, teams, all teams, your team, any team were only as strong as aureus link and, you know, as professionals.

In an organization. You know, if we, if we all wanna succeed as an organization, we have to pick up sometimes for the people that can't pick themselves up. Right. And I think as an industry, we also have to do the same and we're a very busy group of people. And we, we, uh, you know, we have a lot of things going on.

We all wear multiple hats and sometimes education. Isn't always the easiest thing for us to find time for. Right. But I think that when it comes to life safety systems, ultimately the builders are responsible to know the code and the installing contractors that they hire and bring in are responsible to know the code for the people that expect them to know the code.

So when you get involved in industry it's, I think what it, what it becomes more is knowing the people that know the code. And then learning it as you go, cuz you're influenced by them. They become your mentors and then you inevitably take their role and become a mentor for somebody else. So once you learn it, you can't just hold onto it and retain it.

You gotta pass it on. Um, but industry relations helps you to learn who the right people are, where they fit within your education and what you're gonna need from them. Cuz everybody comes into your, uh, there there's a reason or a season, right? And, and, and learning from those individuals, whether it's on a large scale basis where they're doing a, a presentation on a code or if it's, um, where you become a part of that membership and see them regularly and you interact with them regularly and then maybe you do business with one another, or maybe they help you to find a business partner that you work with.

Everybody has a role. In your professional environment when it comes to associations, they're either in the industry as a, as a connection, or they're gonna be a resource for you down the road, so never lose sight of that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I love the, you know, the big theme we've been talking about is continuous learning and understand that you have, uh, I watched, um, one of your, uh, show me the code episodes where you're talking about fire service, access elevators, and was really interesting, but yeah, I wanted, um, everybody who's listening to hear about what you're doing with, show me the code.

Would you speak on that? Yeah, so I actually didn't know anything about fire service, access elevators, uh, up until about a month and a half prior to recording that episode with Sigi. Um, but I have, you know, a lot of partners that we work with and I connect with a lot of people on LinkedIn. So. I get asked a lot of questions.

And when somebody asks me a question, I like to research it and follow through and know the answer. Right. And everything that we deal with in this industry is based on code. If it's not a code, like a security system or a CCTV system, that's more of a white canvas. You're designing something to protect the owner.

Fire alarm systems are health and safety. So they're mandated. It means that there's a standard way to install it. And you should know what you're doing. You do this for eight hours a day. You should know what you're doing. so show me the code is a way for me to give back to those individuals who don't always have the time or who may not have the confidence to call up a fire department official and say, what am I supposed to do about fire surface service access elevators, or I'll be honest with you.

A lot of the people that watch my stuff are actually in the fire service industry, they're fire protection, uh, fire prevention, and they will watch these things and say, Hey, look, I may not have had a chance to go watch, uh, a four hour course on it, but he gave me all of the groundwork that I needed to understand that.

And so I found industry experts in my career. SGI is one of em. I deal with him on a regular basis with KAA and also with my interactions in the industry, uh, Wayne Moore, uh, who is probably one of the pioneers of NFPA 70. You know, I interviewed on survivability and such a huge topic that goes over something that costs so much money.

If you don't get it right. Um, the purpose of that is in sales, if you don't sell a fire alarm or a fire installation or a fire protection system, if you don't sell it right, it can cost an organizational, a lot of money. And that costs a lot of people, a lot of sleep, it costs people, their jobs, and it can cost an organization, their business.

So I'm trying to promote education so that people understand there is a right methodology to approach this. I have a contractor's license in my state because I'm supposed to understand this and I may not have the time to do it, but you're providing me a repository that I can go back to watch over and over and over again until it drills into my head.

And now I can recite it like you. Yeah, that's great. I love that you've chosen to cover in your, you know, YouTube series, some of the, like most difficult pieces of fire alarm, you know, uh, I saw you had, um, uh, emergency responder, uh, amplification systems and these are some extremely difficult and nuanced and not very well covered areas of the, of the code and of standards and, you know, kind of burgeoning areas in the industry where people are still, um, if they're not just, uh, specialists trying to figure these out, you know, um, depending on your jurisdiction, you might not have a ton of these buildings with these systems.

And so it, this resource is invaluable for people who are trying to, uh, make buildings safer. Yeah, well, you know, the thing is keep in mind of something. A lot of what we're seeing with fire service, access elevators with bidirectional, amplifier, uh, you know, whatever you wanna call it, distributed antenna.

Um, two eight communication systems for area of refuge, um, occupant, evacuation elevators. All of these new requirements are part of what came out of the effects of nine 11. When the building code really started to be shaped around evacuation exits exit access and, and how do we protect individuals on opposing floors?

So that we can do something faster, right? So OES and FSAs came in because we wanna be able to access this, this fire occurrence faster. So we're gonna protect the elevators a little bit more. Um, but then, you know, there's individuals that can't get outta the building. We gotta provide them areas of refuge.

Um, and, and those systems have to be survivable. And so, so the codes remember we're on three year cycles. A lot of the time, a lot of the stuff is progressing from the west. So California's early adoption and it goes across to the east. There are some progressive jurisdictions throughout the us, but really California's just, you know, we, we just, we're going through our tri right now and we're adopting 20, 24, uh, approved language in the California building code in this next edition.

That'll be enforced in 2020. So we're gonna be a year ahead of the building coding, even becoming official because you know, California sees that if something's beneficial to the industry, we're gonna put it out there and make sure that that industry, the industry or the people, the civilization in that area knows that we're taking those proactive measures.

And so it's, it's being a part of that and helping to create awareness around those codes and standards and giving future information. For those that are getting up to speed with those building codes and standards, cuz the buildings we're putting up today are gonna be in the 20 12, 20 15 building code cycles.

And that's important cuz you gotta remember when your building permit was pulled that that's when the technology is gonna be based on. And there was a lot of changes that went into effect 20 12, 20 15. Um, and it's gonna be necessary, uh, for us to be able to go back and, and look at that and say, okay, now I see the differences.

Now I know how to apply the technology and not lose money as a business owner, man. Uh, yeah, I could go on for, uh, a good minute about the complexity of dealing with the code in California. I've never worked in a more difficult, uh, jurisdiction and I've worked in, you know, in New York city and, and, um, a bunch of other, uh, very, uh, rigorous, uh, areas for codes and standards.

But California is, uh, Man, um, LA and parts of California, without a doubt, the most difficult to, um, be accurate with codes and standards that I've ever dealt with. So it's, uh, remarkable that they're, that they're so proactive that they're on the, on the nice edge of code adoption like that. It's kind of wild.

Yeah. And, and that's why industry relations matters, you know, like on, I, I sit on the cafe board and I'm grateful for that opportunity, cuz it continues to call my attention every month when, when we're having our meetings and just talking as professionals. But like our, our, uh, our state agency meeting where we had the department of state architects, the, the office of the state fire marshal, the building, listing materials, uh, officials, uh, Oshpod, who's changing their name, um, like all of these different code entities and state agencies.

And they're talking about what to anticipate. I mean as a business owner, as a building owner, as a engineer, as an architect, as a whatever, EE, if you're involved in construction and an association is offering you free online time with these entities and saying, you can ask them questions about what you're anticipating or, Hey, how do you interpret this?

Get involved, you know, like there's nothing greater that you can do for your own education than to have a conversation with these people. Cause they're gonna tell you exactly what you need to do to be successful. Yeah, that's a great point. So, so yeah, continuous education, um, but ju just never see yourself as stagnant, especially in this industry, cuz technology's changing the code changes every three years and technology is staying far, far in advanced of even where the code is today.

I'm push I'm pushing early adoption of 20, 24, 20 27 language. Now. Wow, that's incredible. Well, I think that's a pretty good, uh, tip for people, but I just wanted to, um, uh, round out the conversation with, uh, if you were going to, um, think you've given a lot of good advice to professionals throughout this interview, but, um, as sort of, uh, an endpoint, um, for people who are looking to be competitive, uh, in the industry, uh, what advice would you have for somebody?

Um, maybe just any professional, but obviously you could make it, uh, fire alarm oriented as well. Absolutely. So I, I have a couple of different mediums that I've always expressed myself. Uh, uh, I have a couple of different YouTube channels. Uh, one of 'em, one of my business ventures that I did was, uh, meditation, uh, and, and motivation.

It's called your cup of Joe. Uh, no, you know, no, no play on my name. Right. but, uh, um, so I'm, I try to motivate people to understand, uh, the facts of, of just overall life. I, I feel like I'm an old soul, right? And I I've, I've learned this one adage that I take with me, and then I attribute to everything that I've either succeeded at or failed.

What, what people may consider failure. I don't consider a bad thing, but I'll tell you why. In a second, your thoughts become your actions and your actions become your reality. So your thoughts inspire intentional action. When you can be an observer of your thoughts and you can consciously focus on your thoughts and actually observe your thoughts, you can then control your actions because you decide what actions you want to take.

Now, those actions that you take depended on the quantity and the quality of those actions. If you have a plan and you execute a plan and you observe the plan to see what happened in the plan, if you failed, or would you consider failure or failure is actually showing you where you need to go in order to succeed, it's showing you what direction you need to go in based on the quantity of those actions that you take in that day, you will eventually experience that reality.

If you only take two actions in that day, your reality will get to you in a year and a half. If you take four actions in the day, that reality will come to you in nine months. If you take 50 actions a day, you'll see that reality in a month. If you take a hundred actions in a day, you'll see that reality in a week, your thoughts create your actions and your actions create your reality.

And it doesn't matter what you are trying to accomplish in your professional life, in your per personal life and being a better parent and being a better husband and being a better wife in trying to get through school, your thoughts and how you observe your thoughts and how you live intentionally through your actions that will eventually accomplish a goal or a reality.

And, and if you can, if you can document that, like we talked about having a plan, you will succeed. Don't lose faith in that, but when you're not consciously aware of your thoughts, you start to experience failure and not having a plan failure tends to stop people. We get paralysis by analysis, right? So I will go back to that.

You're doing what you do for eight hours a day, professionally learn how to be an expert at that study at it. Learn your craft. You're you're. If you wanna be a parent, you're gonna be that 24 7. Be good at it. Understand what your children need in order for you to be a good parent. You know, you wanna be in a good relationship, learn what it means to have a good relationship.

What you want to experience. You should be giving first. Like there are little things that we can do, but again, it's our thoughts that inspire action and it's how much action do we take in that day that we will experience the reality that we want. I, I will please put that, put that in big, bold letters over my name, your thoughts, create your actions and your actions create your reality.

Yeah, I'll leave you with that, Gus. That's great. That's great, Joseph, thank you so much for coming on the show for people who wanna find you, where can they go to find out more about Joseph Svante? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, look me up your cup of Joe. Um, I should start doing that more, uh, um, on YouTube and then you can also do show me the code.

If you're in fire protection, you can definitely find me there. Um, if you're on LinkedIn, look for me on there. Joseph R set OFTA senior and, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll all stay connected. You can become part of my network and learn some about what I do or ask questions if you have them. Awesome. Awesome.

Well, I'll throw some links down in the show notes, but yeah. Thanks again. Hey, thank you for what you do. Keep educating, keep doing what you do even on the days when you don't wanna show up. Just show up, man, cuz you're doing a good thing. Uh, I feel the same way after I have my, uh, my, my podcast or, or my videos.

And you know, it takes a lot of work to do to get there and people don't see the post production editing and all those hours that you put into it and searching for the experts and all that stuff. But congratulations for taking the steps necessary to make this dream that you've had a reality and just keep.

Keep going. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Right on, man. 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.

Welcome to episode 19 of Fire Code Tech. On this episode we are talking about underground fire protection mains and appurtenances! Codes and standards for private service mains as well as all systems covered by NFPA 24 are discussed in this solocast.

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 19, a fire code. In this episode, we're talking about underground Firemans. So specifically I wanted to talk about the provisions in codes and standards that pertain to, uh, Firemans for fire protection systems. I wanted to talk about the codes and standards around the underground piping for fire suppression systems.

This is a very frequently used piece of code in standards. So I think it's important that, um, we cover it in our journey on learning how to use codes in standards and evaluate all the different pieces and parts of the process of, uh, fire protection engineering. So I wanted to talk about the codes and standards around the subject.

So let's speak about NFPA 24, which is the installation of private service mains and their AURs. So NFPA 24, if we want to talk, talk about the scope of this document starts at about five feet outside of the building. So it's a bit of a strange topic, um, for fire protection engineering, because although it is a, uh, fire protection system, a fire main for a fire suppression system, uh, oftentimes, um, the majority of the time these systems are, uh, routed and, um, shown on civil sheets.

In most utilities for buildings. As soon as you get to about five feet outside of the building, it is in the scope of what a civil engineer does. So as a fire protection engineer, I would show in the Revit model where the lead in comes into the building and coordinate with the civil engineer, whether it.

um, at the company I work at or at a different company, um, where this lead in is coming and coordinate where that utility line is coming from. So, although N F P a 24. Um, really refers to the design of fire mains, um, how to locate them. Uh it's well, within the jurisdiction of a fire protection engineer, to understand the limitations in the common elements in this NFPA document, I'd say it's one of the more commonly used NFPA documents, even though it's not extremely dense.

So let's speak about what topics does in FPA 24 cover in the first section in the book, 1.1 scope. Uh, this is what N FPA 24, 2022 has to say. This standard shall provide the minimum requirements for installation of private fire service mains. And there are PS which include the supplying, which include supplying the following automatic sprinkler systems.

Open sprinkler systems, water spray, fixed systems, foam systems, private hydrants, monitor nozzles, or stand pipe systems with references to water supplies and hose houses. So as you can see, uh, if it is a water based, uh, fire suppression system or. And including hydrants then NFPA tells you how to route the, um, private fire service main, um, and their appurtenances, which basically just means, um, in my mind it means, um, the ancillary pieces or different pieces of these systems.

So probably the most common is. Probably the most common system is fire hydrants and sprinkler systems. So, uh, let's talk a little bit about the code around fire mains and where in the model codes it speaks about, um, fire mains and how it applies to. In FPA 24, so that I'm aware of, there's not a portion of the building code that applies directly to fire mains or private fire service mains, but in the international fire code, uh, in chapter five, which is fire service features, there is section 5, 0 7.

Which is fire protection, water supplies. And so in fire protection, water supplies, it talks about some of the common topics for, um, fire service mains. And it also references in FPA 24. And so here is where you can find the applicability of NFPA 24. You can also find N FPA 24 and the referenced standards.

so here's where the two documents link together. let's take a look at where it talks about the requirement. So it says 5 0 7 0.1 is a required water supply says an improved water supply, capable of supplying the required fire flow for the fire protection shall be provided to premises upon which facilities, buildings or portions of buildings are hereafter constructed or moved into within the jurisdiction.

So that's a very. Wordy statement for you need a water supply. That's going to be able to provide the fire flow and or system demand for the building that is being built. The next section 5 0 7 0.2 type of water supply goes on to state a water supply shall consist of reservoirs pressure tanks, elevated tanks, water mains, or other fixed systems capable of providing the required fire flow.

I'll be honest today. I wanted to talk about fire protection, water storage tanks, but I realized that we did not cover this important piece of the fire protection system that while it is a little bit more rudimentary, um, has not been covered in the solo cast series so far. Um, so this talks about pieces of the water supply that you may or may not.

Uh, usually municipal water supplies are fed by either, uh, pumped systems from a reservoir or more commonly, I would say, uh, elevated tanks that is generally where municipal water supplies, um, get their pressure and flow from is an elevated tank and all of that piping. And tanks follow within the jurisdiction of NFPA 24.

Another great portion of this section of the fire code. And I'm reading out of the 2015 version of the fire code is 5 0 7 0.5, which is fire hydrant systems. You might wonder how do you know when a fire hydrant is required or how to space. This is the portion of the fire code in which it describes when you need a fire hydrant and how to locate those fire hydrants.

5 0 7 0.5 0.1, where required under the section 5 0 7 0.55 systems says. Where a portion of the facility hereafter constructed or moved into within the jurisdiction is more than 400 feet from a hydrant on a fire apparatus access road as measured by the approved route to the exterior of the facility or building on site fire hydrants main shall be provided, were required by the fire code official.

And there are a couple exceptions here, but really what I want you to take away. the baseline requirement and the version of the fire code I'm looking at is 400 feet, um, from the, uh, access road around the building. So the way you measure the distance to, um, using fire hydrants is how you would lay out a hose.

But, uh, for a more approximate layout, you can use 400 foot diameter. Circles. So if you can lay out 400 foot diameter circles around a building, you can get some idea of how many fire hydrants you need for a facility. Also, if you have a standby system or a fire suppression system, you need a fire. H within, I believe it's 150 feet of the fire department connection.

Um, and that's found in NFPA 14. Let's talk about the layout of NFPA 24. So chapter one is administration. Chapter two is referenced publications, chapter three definitions in chapter four general requirements. If you've noticed it by now, there's a theme here. Um, we have the same for chapters that are extremely common in NFPA documents.

Moving on to speak about other chapters in NFPA 24, which again is the installation of private fire service mains and their PS. So chapter five is water supplies. And then there are a lot of, uh, good sections in here, um, pertaining to, uh, a lot of very common systems. Chapter five and six are probably gonna be.

Some of your most commonly used sections, chapter six is water supply connections. And so we talked about some of the different systems in the scoping of the document and in FPA 24 kind of breaks out different systems into different chapters. So we have chapter seven as hydrants. We had kind of had two categories of two categories of systems in these documents.

We had water supplies for fire suppression systems. And then we had other systems that could be fed by, um, a water supply. So by that, I mean, hydrants, hose houses, and master streams, which master stream is effectively just like a nozzle, um, where you might see these systems are. by, um, tank farms or, uh, maybe oil and gas equipment, Wells or industrial facilities.

Um, I don't know too much about these systems, but I have designed, uh, only, I think one application in my career with master streams and it was, um, O owner driven to put the system in. I don't believe it was a code requirement. Um, and we were working with the AJ to. Provide coverage, um, in order to, uh, appease the, uh, local fire departments requirements.

So to expand on what NFPA 24 does cover, um, NFPA does cover the piping valving and, um, elbows and connections that are required to, uh, provide. Fire suppression water supplies. So this is generally, um, the like post indicator valve and the, if, uh, some jurisdictions don't require the post indicator valve. I know Oklahoma city does not require post indicator valve, but for those of you who don't know a post indicator valve is.

A valve that is, um, meant to be a shutoff for a fire suppression system in the case of a catastrophic failure. So, um, it's usually located outside of the building. It can be located on the wall of the building or, um, remote. So maybe like 40 feet away from the building. Well, I think that concludes our first talk about NFPA 24 in the codes and standards around fire mains and private fire service mains.

Uh, thank you so much for listening. And we'll see you next time on fire code tech. Thanks for listening, everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes 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.

Welcome to episode 38 of Fire Code Tech! On this episode we are talking with Will Smith who is a fire protection engineer for nuclear facilities. Will gives insight from his career and we talk about lessons learned about early career success and growth from pain points. This was the first ever recorded episode of Fire Code Tech that was recorded almost two years ago.

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 38, a fire code tech. In this episode, we're talking to will Smith. Will is one of my very good friends from college. And in this episode, we talk about his career, which has been mostly in, um, nuclear fire protection. So he's worked for a variety of, um, companies that deal with fire protection and facilities, kind of maintenance and inspection, testing, and maintenance for nuclear facilities.

This was actually the first episode ever recorded of fire code tech. And I, uh, I waited for a while because, um, my initial thoughts were, uh, I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't, you know, have my interview flow down. And so will, was very kind in order to be Guinea pig and help me try this thing out that I had been wanting to do for about a year at this.

I hope you enjoyed this episode will has some great insight about his career. And he's a very smart guy. Also, don't forget to follow us on social media and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Let's dive into the show. Hello. How's it going, William, welcome to fire code tech. Hey, thanks for having me guys.

Cool. Well, uh, uh, just to, just to get into the podcast, I just wanted to. Well, how did you get into fire protection? I got into fire protection because my father is a fire protection engineer. Originally. I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer. And then I, uh, was browsing through some electrical engineering books one day and, uh, saw that they were full of math.

So I asked my dad how much math, electrical engineers had to do. And he said, all. I asked him how much math did he have to do? And he said, not as much. So I told him to help me more about fire protection. That's pretty good. I like that. I like that. It seems like people in fire protection, uh, oftentimes have, uh, An interest, interesting path of, of getting into the field.

And so I like to, I like to hear about that sort of stuff. So you said your, your dad was in fire protection. So, uh, what is, what did your dad do? He started his career in system design. And so he did that for a while. Back when it was all pipe schedule system kind of stuff. And then, uh, he ended up going over to the nuclear.

He got wind of some gig where they needed somebody who was proficient in design. And he jumped on that. And from there, uh, ended up working on, uh, department of energy nuke stuff at their, uh, national labs. And he ended up working straight forward the department of energy and spent his whole career in there and retired from that.

Cool. Very cool. That's. So I wanted to ask you, I saw that you've had a lot of internships and, um, I imagine some people who are listening to this will, uh, you know, be in school or, you know, working on getting into the fire protection industry. So I was wondering if you could just walk me through some of your internships and tell me a little bit about your, uh, essentially pre full-time job.

Uh, out of school experience. Sure. Yeah, I started off, I was working retail and stuff and then was starting to go to college and it locked down that I wanted to do this fire protection thing. And, uh, pretty quickly learned that a lot of stuff is connections. Uh, my dad knew some people. Who, uh, knew of a program that DWE ran for interns.

And he said, Hey, you should go throw your name in the hat. And so I did, and I ended up working in, uh, not in fire protection at all. I was in a facility management, uh, position ended up working in facility management group. And so even though that wasn't related fire protection, it was still kind of interesting.

I ended up working for them when they ended up discovering asbestos in one of their primary building. And so I got my whole summer got turned into this as best as abatement program, but kind of seeing that whole side of stuff, uh, for the whole summer. So that was ended up being an interesting experience, even though it wasn't fire protection.

And then after that, I, there was, uh, I was near the Oak Ridge national laboratory, and so learned that they were doing internships. And again, just kind of threw my name in that and. They had, they ended up putting me in their fire department and I spent one summer and then stayed on after the summer and, uh, came, uh, through the fall and they came back the next summer, I guess they liked me or something.

And so I ended up working in the fire department as an doing, just kind of shadowing some it and M stuff, uh, inspection, testing, maintenance, and, uh, that kind of side of things. And then my last internship very cool was, uh, actually again, not quite even fire protection related. I ended up going to a career fair at school and just kind of talking to a lot of people, doing some interviews and got asked by Valero to go do, uh, a safety internship.

And so that all was actually safety and industrial hygiene related. So I never actually ended up having a straight fire protection engineering kind of internship. That's funny. That's funny. And for, and for the people who don't know, uh, well, where where'd you end up going to school? I got my degree in fire protection at Oklahoma state university.

Cool. Yeah. And that's where, and that's where we met and that's where we were lab partners and, and that's kind of all where it began, but college . Yeah. No, no, no way you were the smart one, for sure. Um, so like in our program, there's kids who lean towards the safety side of things, and then there's students who are more interested in sort of the fire protection side of things.

So when you were in school, What did you, what was your, you know, experience? Where did you see yourself ending up after school? So, yeah, that's a great question because there was definitely a lot of different, uh, ideas that different students had about what they wanted to do. Um, I know where we went, Oklahoma state university, there was plenty of students that.

Just wanna be a firefighter. You know, they were getting a degree, uh, a lot of, you know, fire departments want you to have a degree in something nowadays. And so for a lot of them, that was the goal. Uh, some wanted, you know, fire, marshal kind of things. And then you definitely had the groups of people that wanted to go into design out there in Oklahoma.

I think there was a lot of people that wanted to go into oil and gas. I knew I always wanted to end up in the nuclear industry. Mm-hmm cause that's what my dad had spent his whole career in. We'd ended up out in east Tennessee, uh, where there is a lot. DOE nuke stuff, um, in that kind of half the United States.

And so I thought that would be a good niche to get into. I didn't end up getting into like DOE new right away. I ended up going into commercial Nu right outta college and working at nuclear power plant. So I, it just kind of what I knew. And so I guess I just kind ended up going that direction, but I remember being the only kid when people talk about where they wanted to end.

you know, you'd hear oil and gas, you know, insurance design, you know, whatever it was. And, uh, I think I was the one person that was like, oh, I wanna go into new. That's really interesting. Yeah. I think that's, that's funny because yeah, most kids are, you know, they, the large majority of jobs are in safety or, and insurance or, you know, fire protection.

Um, so it's, it's, you know, people only know what, uh, what you grew up with. I mean, uh, I think it's funny. I, you know, I ended up being an engineer, but my dad was, uh, an engineer. And so I think it's interesting that, you know, yeah. Like I said, it's kind of that. Connections thing that helps when you're finding a job, but even just knowing where to look and what's out there a lot of the times, I mean, you don't know what you don't know.

And a lot of times you're not gonna know these things unless somebody tells you. And so why does anyone become an engineer? Why does in such a small field is fire protection, kind of a niche field? How does anybody end up in that? Almost everybody had a story of how they ended up even hearing about it in the first place?

Yeah, for sure. It's definitely, uh, extremely niche and, uh, extremely, uh, tight knit as far as it all goes. So, you know, um, so when you started in the fire protection industry, what's like, what's one of the more difficult things about. You started learning about your job or what was one of the more difficult, um, parts of getting into fire protection as a professional?

Was there anything you struggled with or, you know, I can think of some specific design related tasks that were hard for me starting out. Was there anything that you remember thinking when you were first getting into the industry? Oh, man, this is really hard or difficult or I don't quite get this yet. Um, I think there was kind of a general sense of getting outta college and kind of having that anxiety of, uh, of, you know, thinking I was gonna land in a professional field and somebody was gonna expect me to know something, you know, you just spent four years in college, you're gonna show up at this job and, and they were gonna expect you to know something.

I was kind of relieved to find that right out the gate, everybody kind of typically expects you to know nothing. You know, I, I think past four years in school, uh, proving that you can learn. um, and then once you've kind of proven you can learn, and especially in you, these engineering fields, you know, they want to know that you can, uh, learn quickly, adapt quickly, um, process stuff quickly, and then kind of got out and, uh, you know, how to base in fire protection, but as for something in particular that was, uh, difficult to learn.

It takes some time to kind of get your feet planted in the codes. And if PA and I B C you know, you kind of, you kind of get a, an overview in college, um, of some of them, and then kind of coming out, you end up having to dig through a lot of these things. And so, I don't know, I just, I I've spent a lot of my, uh, few years here out of college.

In kind of co compliance, uh, positions, running fire protection programs, doing a lot of kind of co compliance sort of stuff. And, uh, and so we're in the code a lot and just kinda learning to navigate that and such, it just took some time. Okay, for sure. Yeah. I definitely, I definitely can, uh, resonate with that.

You know, um, we had experience with, you know, codes and standards in school, but there's nothing like the reps and the, you know, sets that you get. In, uh, being a professional and just going through the motions on a day to day basis, looking at, you know, nobody's gonna know the code better than the sprinkler designer, the fire alarm designer that looks at that book every day.

So there's definitely some tips and tricks in there. And, uh, yeah, I feel like that one of the big ones for me was learning, um, Just how the format of the NFPA standards, you know, how there's consistency in them and how that's something easy to fall back on. Anytime you're looking at, 'em like go into the introduction and reading, does this standard even apply or.

Going into, you know, the building codes and seeing is this standard even adopted by the building codes and that sort of thing. So I definitely resonate with that, with what you're saying. So absolutely there, yeah, there is, uh, there is reason to the madness in, in the code books. Yeah. Yeah. It seems daunting at first, for sure.

It seems like their, uh, their own language. So. Cool. So can you take me through what a normal, um, day at your job looks like? You know, like what is that? I mean, you know, people here, you know, uh, facilities, engineer, or for, uh, you know, Campus of, uh, buildings that you know, are involved with, uh, nuclear facilities.

What does that, what does that mean? What does that functionally look like? So, you know, everywhere you're gonna end up in fire protection, you know, there's a lot of places that you can end up, you know, like we've kind of mentioned you. I mean, some of these. Some people go into the safety side, some people in the design side and, and even the different industries you end up and are all gonna be different in my little niche of the world, this kind of, uh, department of energy, uh, nuclear facility kind of world.

Um, and what I also did in commercial new. Comes down to running a fire protection program. So there's regulations in place to say, you've gotta run fire protection program. You've gotta do the, you've gotta do it this way. And you've gotta, you know, do these things. And, and, uh, for my particular position now, uh, in kind of this DOE new position, um, There's a set of, uh, regulations that flow down to orders that kind of flow down to deal standards.

And, and they end up basically telling us, you've gotta run a program like this, and you've gotta do these things. So one of those big things is you've gotta get into all your facilities and you've gotta do fire protection engineering assessments. They call them arm the facilities where you kind of go through.

It's not a line by line code review, but it is a assessment to make sure that a, that the building is in compliance, uh, with your program, with your fire protection program at your site. And so I spend a lot of my time, uh, doing that. We are on a rather large campus with, uh, mini buildings and. So I'm always kind of prepping for an assessment and, uh, working in my report, doing a lot of my research in this facility and then doing a walk down, get out into the field, putting eyes on everything, and then coming back and kind of finishing up a report.

and, uh, getting it reviewed and moving on to the next one. And then beyond that, I also support just a, a, a part of the facility as kind of a point of contact in fire protection engineering. So that if they have any questions, they, uh, always have somebody they can contact. And, you know, that's kind of a.

Revolving door on my office of, of other fun things that come up. Cool. So you, you talk about a report a little bit. What kind of, what kind of things is this a hazard assessment? Is this, are you looking at annual maintenance? What kind of things are you looking at on this, uh, report, uh, starts with, uh, you know, a description of the bus of the building at the facility.

Works through the water supply, available to the facility, the fire protection systems, uh, both suppression and alarm that are in there. It touches on, uh, the fire department response. It, uh, goes through all the it and M that's, uh, needed for the systems if it's in compliance. And it goes through all the life safety stuff from emergency lights, exits, um, and, uh, you know, the walkthrough confirms that a lot of that stuff is, you know, in action.

Uh, In compliance in the field. Um, it, it's very comprehensive. Uh, just kind of making sure that every element of our program is actually being carried out in the facility. I'm sure that fire sprinkler. Yeah. And fire alarm are very common for your facilities. Are there, are there other types of fire protection systems that well, we've got a whole host of systems.

And so we have a lot of, uh, in some cases we have really unique, uh, kind of applications and, you know, we end up ha having a whole gamut of systems, everything from, you know, we, we've got your standing kind of, we pipe dry pipe and, and, uh, a lot of it kind of antifreeze loops, even though we're trying to get away from that.

Oh, wow. And. Yeah, cool. Just kinda a little bit of everything. Um, just with kind of the size of facility and we end up just kind of being a whole small city and manufacturing and kind of everything all in one. Uh, and, and so for a lot of the, sorry, go on old. And so you can be dealing with, you know, stuff from back in the forties, all the way up to stuff that was installed yesterday.

So you end up seeing kinda wide gambit of. Cool. Very cool. That's always, that's always one of the things that I brag about when I talk about fire protection to people in other jobs or industries is how varied the work we get to do is with the, you know, new construction and existing construction. And.

You know, different system types and all that sort of thing. So I always find that that's the, the spice that makes the job, uh, interesting and meaningful to come back to. Absolutely. You can see a lot of history, uh, as you go out and look at some of these old systems and, and, uh, stuff that's in place.

That's super neat. That's super neat. So, um, so, oh yeah. I remember what I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask you about. So you were talking about antifreeze systems. Have you seen any of this? Uh, I forget who the company is, but they just released a, a UL listed antifreeze. Uh, have you seen anything about that? I thought that was interesting.

I haven't you'd have to tell me about it. Oh, it's uh, it's not a big deal, but the, before there was not a, a listed anti-free solution due to, you know, all the trouble they've had with the oh. People mixing the antifreeze on site and, you know, charging these systems. But now I, I can't quite remember who I'm sure I could look it up real quick, but, um, yeah, they have a listed antifreeze now, which I feel like could be a game changer for keeping some of these more antiquated systems in service.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause you know, I know as far as the, for us, we end. Trying to remove a lot of 'em, that's kind of the goal when the opportunity arises, we'd rather just, uh, you know, re well, remove it, get it out of place. And I think there's even some, uh, isn't there kind of a deadline for getting some of these systems out.

I think there is, but, uh, it's shows that Tyco has a, has a UL listed antifreeze. So that's kind of interesting. But yeah, I imagine that people are still hesitant to use the systems. You know, if there's only one person who's manufacturing, a listed antifreeze, I'm sure it's still not ideal. Yeah. Um, especially so.

Especially in what we have other options. Definitely. Definitely. So, in talking to you before you were telling me that you work with, uh, you guys have a rather large fire protection division. Can you tell me about that a little bit? Uh, we do, we have probably, uh, about a half a dozen guys who work on these far pick engineering assessments.

And then we have probably two or three guys that are dedicated to writing FHAs um, And so, I mean, it's, it's a pretty large group and, uh, we definitely have enough work to keep everybody lazy, but it's definitely the largest, uh, group of fire protection engineers I've ever worked in. That's awesome. That's really cool.

It's always nice to have, uh, people who are knowledgeable around you and helping you learn and mentorship and that sort of thing. So, um, I, I benefit from the youngest member of the group. I get. Not worry about being the smartest person in the room. And instead get to just, uh, ask these guys for their wisdom.

That's super nice. That's always very meaningful. I know that, uh, I know that when we were in school, we had teachers telling us to pick a job for your, for your mentors and don't just be locked in on how much money you can make. So I always found that to be solid advice. Yeah. Um, Cool. Well, to give people some, uh, idea of the magnitude of the campus that you work on, like approximately how many buildings do you guys take a look at in a year?

Do you have to evaluate all the buildings on your campus in like in one year's time? So buildings that are, uh, nuclear facilities, they have to be evaluated every. But facilities that aren't and we have a lot as there's a lot of support buildings for these. Um, they get an evaluation every three years, uh, falls out from, uh, yeah, the D we orders on how to run and manage a fire protection program, uh, for their facilities.

So I, I mean, if I had to guess, I'd say we probably end up about. 30 or 40 assessments a year that kind of gets wow. The group. Um, if 30 might be a good number, I'll go with that. That's awesome. That's a lot of buildings. That's a lot of buildings to be typically, you know, part of a program. Yeah. Typically most guys have one a month and so you just kind of start the month working through it and, uh, one a month or one every other month.

So you've talked to me before about, uh, kind of your relationship with the as, or would you consider yourself an authority having jurisdiction or I, I remember speaking with you before you telling me that you kind of function as a pseudo HJ, but not really an a J. Uh, yeah, so our group, um, we don't do any of the design work.

We have a separate group that does the fire protection design stuff. And, uh, so we are kind of in that code authority, uh, position. And so for this part of the site that I oversee, I become kind of this pseudo AJ. I am out there in the field. I answer the questions and whatnot, and, uh, how that role kind of falls out for us is, uh, DWE has a person on.

D we official on site, who is the AJ and, uh, but then. The contractor for the site, the whole site is run by, uh, under a contract and there's just a handful of DWE people there. And so then within the contract, you have, uh, our contractor authority having jurisdiction, and there's kind of a, uh, a world of things that he's allowed to just kind of give his approval on.

And if it kind of goes above that line, then he has to touch base with the DOE HJ. And so we're then, uh, Fire protection engineers like myself, we're out in the field and we, uh, get involved in those situations. And if we need a AJ approval, then we would just go to, to the AJ or our staff and ask, uh, him to look something over.

So he kind cool. So it's just kind of a, you know, flow down like that. Interesting. That's an interesting structure, how you guys are kind of tight knit, but also you, you use. Structure of command or, you know, kind of, uh, chain of command type of thing to working with the onsite, AJ and working as a AJ yourself.

Very cool. So are there any like, uh, trends or themes in the industry that you see right now for your job where, you know, uh, like for my industry, Architecture and engineering field and, you know, design side of things. I can see that the way that contracts are handled are shifting more towards the design build side of things, uh, away from the design bid build process.

And that's kind of a trend in our industry. And, uh, but I didn't know if you could think of anything specifically that you feel is trending. In your job position or, or something that's, uh, yeah. Of that nature, you know, I really can't think of anything. That's really kind of trending in my corner of the world, but could also just be because I'm relatively new.

I feel like, you know, everything just seems new to me. I'm sure. If you asked somebody who was older on the staff, they would tell you how everything's wildly changing these days. sure. Sure. So what's, uh, what's one thing that you wish you would've known, um, getting into the fire protection field that you know now, but you didn't know when you got into the field.

You know, I, it's kind of hard for me to say I had a pretty good base with my father being, you know, in the very similar field to me where I'm at now. So I always had somebody I can balance things off of. Um, sure. I,

I haven't had anything that I really felt like, you know, it was. Something that I really wish I knew beforehand that I missed out on. Yeah. Um, just probably what I mentioned earlier that, that kind of stress of when I first kind of stepped outta college and feeling like, you know, I needed to be this productive member of society right away.

And while you should always strive to be that, I think most people understand that for your first two years, you're pretty much in training. They're teaching you what they want you to know. Sure. Definitely. Yeah, I think it's so hard, especially for a young professional guys starting to work, um, in the field and you get into the job and you and your gungho and you want to, you know, charge into, uh, the problems and start really, you know, getting into the mix.

And the reality of it is it's gonna take, you know, days and weeks and months before you get properly integrated. The way that your company does business and the workflow of how things get done. So it's a very, uh, it's, uh, you know, it's stressful, but honestly, it's one of the more easier parts of your career, but it's very stressful because you don't understand how you fit in the equation yet.

And I, you know, I can see the struggle. Young professionals, young engineers that work at my company, you know, they, they wanna be involved. They wanna learn, they want to, you know, get into the problems, but they're just not, they're just not acclimated into how things are done yet. So yeah, I, that's something that I definitely think about.

Um, How can I help, you know, young professionals get acclimated? Or how could you, you know, what would you say to say to somebody, you know, getting into the field and, you know, get acclimated. And for me, it's, you know, understand where your resources are, understand your codes, understand your, you know, international building code or whatever your jurisdiction, um, is I important because.

Those are gonna be your bread and butter questions as a fire protection engineer. I, I would recommend that somebody, uh, you know, take the opportunity in their early career when, uh, they may have more time. It may not be as laid down with tasks to, to take every opportunity to learn. Um, no, uh, time you ever spend getting more familiar with your codes, getting more familiar with the, uh, the, the regulations that drive the work you do.

you know, whether that be, you know, uh, you know, like in my, uh, industry, the, the regulations and the DOE orders and the DOE standards and whatnot, um, no time ever spent learning that material and learning what drives your job position and learning your resources, uh, you know, your code and whatnot is ever going to be, uh, a waste.

Get, you know, definitely get into the procedures, get into the code, get into the regulations and whatnot, and kinda learn that document base. Uh, it's gonna always serve you. Yeah. Yeah. One of the more grueling things I, I ever had to do, you know, on the entry into a job is, you know, just have the, as my assignment be to just sit down and read the code book and, you know, it sounds, you know, unproductive or cruel or it's like, you know, just takes forever, but read a read NFPA 13 or N FPA 72 cover to cover.

Yeah. You know, sounds like. Torture, but you, you, like you said, there's not a moment you spend reading one of these code books that isn't helping you put a based layer of, you know, understanding on that will help you in your career for sure. Absolutely. for sure. So can you think of any, are you, uh, interested in any, uh, online resources or are there, is there anybody you follow in social media or anything like that for fire protection news or fire protection information?

No, I'm probably behind in keeping up with fire protection information, uh, you know, online resources that I use, uh, the CoBooks hosted, you know, theba has online their. Nice. We'll have access to all those and multiple additions of those. You kind of run into needing that sometimes. And, um, any other resources that I use?

Uh, not really, um, not online. It doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of stuff out there. It doesn't feel like that, you know, fire protection as an industry kind of has, um, a whole lot of resource and material online. Or, or spaces for people to kind of get together and, uh, balance ideas off of each other.

We have, uh, a local chapter of, uh, S F P E. um, and that's helpful where you can get to know more fire protection engineers and kind of develop those connections of people. Who've had different experiences that you can call up and, you know, bounce questions off of. Uh, so for me, that it's kind of the general resource I end up going to, we, we fortunately work with quite a few engineers and, uh, and then no, several more that I can always kind of take those questions too.

that's good. I mean, there's no better resource than a person who's done it before, but, um, yeah, I think one of my favorite ones that I like to use a lot is, uh, Myer fire, and, um, oh yeah. Have you, have you read much of his blog articles or anything like that? Yeah, I've, it's been in there from time to time and, uh, and been linked several his articles at least.

Yeah, he, he just had a new one come out. I think this week that, uh, he broke down all the requirements in the international building code that, uh, talk about when a sprinkler system was required and he put it all on a cheat sheet. So, I mean, if that would've existed, when I was first getting into the sprinkler industry, I would've been like, wow, this is so great.

You know? , but it's nice that people are just starting to, uh, you know, generate these things and kind of have these conversations and make it a little easier for us. Absolutely.

So will, can you think of any times where you've had like, uh, a failure or a pain point where you ended up learning from it or, you know, maybe something that, uh, one of your. Engineering, uh, coworkers caught or something where you thought, oh man, that's, you know, I can't believe I missed that. Or something like to that nature that helped you learn or something you always remember.

Yeah, that happens all the time. Um, one of my, one of my largest pain points so far, it was when I was in commercial new, we were, uh, Having our tri inspection, where our regulator comes in once every three years. And it kind of does a big program review, you know, and, and they're always looking for something to, to write you up on.

And we felt like we've been doing a pretty good job and we have 'em come in and they're, they're asking for information on, uh, uh, you know, all these specific areas and we're giving it to 'em, we're answering questions and we're like, yeah, this is gonna go pretty well. This is gonna go pretty well. And, uh, Without getting down into the details, we kind of had a, a grid system and we thought we had everything kind of tested the way we needed to.

We were testing all parts of it. And, uh, they ended up coming in and, uh, saying we were, we were missing something and, and we strongly disagreed. And so we kind of went back and forth and, uh, you know, we were able to point to the code and go look, here's what it says. Here's how we're meeting that. You know, we're not really seeing the.

and it kind of came down to a, to, to not a, a code issue, but a preference issue. And, mm. You know, we didn't feel like a, a preference issue should get written up as a violation. And so, or a finding wherever you wanna call it. And so, uh, regularly came through and they did, they, they wrote it up as a, as a finding.

And so we got pinned with that. And of course our management's coming going, why are we having this finding, you know, what's going on? And, and, uh, so we're explaining what's going on and our position and their position and, uh, This is just, you know, within the first year of me being outta school and I'm like, boom, we've got this, here's the code.

Here's, you know, the reality, this, you know, we, we got this one in the bag and, uh, and we were like, you know, we, we have to go, we have to go fight on this. And we, uh, we gave the whole pitch to our management and they said, nah, take it just shut up and take it. And I, I blown away. I was blown away. I was like, but we don't have, we are in the right.

And they said, we don't care, shut up and take it. This works, you know, if that, if that's gonna be the finding they're gonna walk away with or what, and, and in the end, you know, it's probably a good call. You know, if that's the finding, they're gonna walk away with not a big deal. We can resolve that really easily.

They felt like they came in and got us learn something and, and we all move on. But, uh, it was kind of a pain point, cuz I, I did a lot of the research. I did a lot of the leg. Arm putting this case together just knew I had put together just this watertight case, uh, that this was a preference issue, not a code issue.

And, uh, ended up being told that that's nice. That's nice. Just let 'em right. As a finding, we're not gonna fight him on it. It was, it was a bit of a pain point yeah, definitely. That's one of those things that you never forget and it's, and it always sticks with you in your career, but it probably makes you stronger.

Yeah. Yeah. All, every bit of it was a good learning experience. yeah, for me, I can think of, uh, more than a couple times where, uh, my design or, you know, my intent for a design is, you know, caused me some pain and you know, mostly, a lot of times, like you say, it stems from the authority having jurisdiction and, um, preferences or local ordinances, you know, something.

You know, a student out of school or, you know, maybe even some design professionals might not know is that, you know, each city, each state has their own local ordinances and they. Can be, uh, Dr. Uh, very impactful. So like for Oklahoma, their state fire marshal has an ordinance that essentially says that if you replace any major component of a antiquated or deficient fire alarm system that you have to upgrade, the entire facility is fire alarm system.

So. I've had that, uh, get me in trouble before, you know, oh, we're, you know, we're not touching this portion of the facility and the facility was renovated in 2012, you know, and then it ends up coming back that, uh, you know, depending on whoever reviewed it last time that, you know, they didn't see it last time or, or didn't go to that, you know, uh, state fire marshal last time.

And this time it's, uh, comes down the line. You know, that's something that they are want to happen and all you can do is just say, okay, and you're the authority to have in jurisdiction. And you have the last word and, you know, take care of it. Absolutely. Yeah.

Um, so that's always, uh, those can be, uh, hard pills to swallow though. It, even though when, you know, it's the, it's the right thing to. Yeah. Yeah. It, it can be, um, you know, we ran into that and, uh, especially my last job where we had the regulator, you know, and we had to, you know, when they said jump, we said how high?

And, and, uh, to some extent where we are now, you know, we have our, our customer, you know, department of energy and, you know, they're the authority having jurisdiction. And, you know, when they come in and, and they say, you know, Nope, we want done this way. Okay. We'll throw plan a out the window. How'd you want it done?

yep. That's interesting. That's very interesting. I like that. That's awesome, man. I can't tell you. It means a lot to me that, uh, you come on and talk to me about the podcast stuff. I've been spinning my wheels on this for a while. So it means a lot to me. I'm excited about it and I'm excited to, to help and assist or be a part of as much as I can or you want me to, or yeah.

Uh, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a fun thing. And I think it's great. Yeah. Thanks for listening everybody. Be sure to share the episode with a friend, if you enjoyed it, don't forget that fire protection and life safety is serious business. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are by no means a professional consultation or a codes and standards interpretation.

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

Welcome to solocast episode 18 of Fire Code Tech! On this episode we are talking Department of defense fire protection. This episode details some preliminary information about UFC 3-600-01 the Fire Protection Engineering for facilities criteria. Also we talk about how to determine whether a fire suppression or fire alarm system is required using these criteria. Don't forget to check out patreon.com/firecodetech if you would like to hear more episodes. 

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.

Hey, what's going on. Welcome to episode 18 fire code tech. On this episode, we were talking about U FFC 3, 600 0 1 or more specifically. How to design fire protection for department of defense facilities. So the reason why I wanted to talk about this subject is because, uh, D O D fire protection is special in pretty much every regard.

Uh, it follows different. Uh, rules and regulations and has a lot of complexity to it. Um, also there are extremely limited resources out there for people discussing fire protection for military occupancies. And so, yeah, I really wanted to speak about this topic because I had a heck of a time learning about it.

So we're gonna get into some of. Fundamentals of D O D criteria when you use them for what kind of facilities you use them, what are the baseline assumptions for fire alarm and fire suppression systems. Um, but we'll see how far we get. This is quite a dense subject. So. Uh, yeah, let's get into it. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on social media.

So you don't miss any episodes. Oh. And give us a review on apple podcasts so you can help out the show before the UFC, each branch of the military and the us had their own criteria. So the point of the UFC or the unified facilities criteria is to combine. All of the requirements from the Navy air force, army air national guard, et cetera.

Um, to a large extent under one set of documents. When we're talking about fire protection for military facilities, we're really talking about UFC 3, 600 0 1. Right now we're on change six, but the changes for the UFC criteria, uh, come out fairly frequently. So. When I first started in fire protection, I think we were on like change two.

And now we're on change six. So over the co course of four years, we've had, uh, about as many revisions to the unified. Facilities criteria for fire protection engineering. Interesting topic about UFC documents is that there is a hierarchy of applicability in order to them. The general building code document is UFC one, two hun one dash 200 0 1.

And so this document is kind of the broad overview of the building code. . And so the UFC uses a combination of the international building code and N FPA 1 0 1 for its fire protection and life safety documents and UFC 3, 600 0 1 clearly dictates, uh, when to use these different documents for hazardous materials, uh, DOD facilities use NFPA 400.

Um, in contrast to the international building code uses, uh, a combination of chapter three and other chapters within the I B C. So it's a little bit of a different scenario because there are jurisdictions or places in the world that use only an FPA documents or only international billing code with, you know, reference standards and the.

The military uses both. And what I was wanted to get to earlier about the hierarchy of these documents is, um, there are 1, 2, 3, and four series UFCs so 1, 200 0 1 is the DOD building code in 3, 600 0 1. And so. This is an example of one and a three series. And so they start out broad at the ones, and then they get more specific, a common four series document that I have experienced using is 4, 2 11 0 1, which is the, um, military standard for aircraft hangers.

And so if there is a. Uh, conflict in the information that's provided in the UFC documents. The one with the higher number takes precedence is more specific. So if there's fire protection, density criteria and 3, 600 0 1 and 4, 2 11 0 1. Then four to 1101 takes precedence. If you have a facility that is a military aircraft hanger.

So there are other UFC documents for mechanical engineering and other engineering disciplines. But for the purposes of this episode, we'll focus on, uh, UFC 3, 600 0 1. So the process of determining. Fire alarm and fire suppression systems for UFC documents is, uh, different than the I B C or, or NFPA, um, 1 0 1 or one.

So let's talk a little bit about how to determine. Um, if you need a fire alarm or a fire suppression system for DOD facilities. So there are similarities and differences from the way that the I B C specifies the sprinkler system and UFC 3, 600 0 1 specifies, uh, sprinkler system. So there's similar in the regard that there are specific occupancies that have specific requirements and UFC 3, 600 0 1 that say, if you have this occupancy or this set of criteria, then you need a sprinkler system.

but the way that they significantly differ from each other is when is the baseline building construction elements that require a sprinkler system. So in the international building code, we would have thresholds of building height and area, um, that are, you know, could be for five B construction. As much as 8,000 or more square feet before you start needing a sprinkler system, depending on your occupancy, of course, but for, um, UFC 3, 600 0 1 starting at about 5,000 square feet, or, uh, even if you're looking at, um, fairly non combustible construction types, you are still in territory that could have a sprinkler system.

So. Um, the military requires sprinkler systems for, uh, many of their buildings. And so for fire alarm and mass notification systems. So the difference between, uh, what the military requires and what the, uh, common building code requires is a fire alarm system for. Um, regular occupancies of this size, the military requires a mass notification system.

This is a voice communication system with a lot more rigorous, uh, messages. There are conditions for fire and, um, different events event. And so the, the criteria in which you would find. the requirements for fire alarm and mass notifications is four dash oh 21 dash oh one, the design and operation and maintenance of mass notification systems.

So the way you find out, if you need a fire alarm system is completely different than the international building code, cuz essentially almost every facility needs fire alarm and mass notification. If it is. A facility that, um, is using, um, for dash O 10 0 1, which is the minimum anti-terrorism standards for buildings.

And so only situations I've found that are, uh, excluding fire alarm and mass notification systems are the extremely small or the extremely remote the base can. Of course, uh, since they are the authority have having jurisdiction. Um, opt out if the base AJ says that it's not required. So unless you're dealing with a extremely, uh, unoccupied and small and remote building, you're going to most likely have a fire alarm and mass notification system.

So I've had this, uh, I've done this exercise many times for. um, buildings that are extremely small and unoccupied, but the criteria, uh, for if a fire alarm system is required or not is in four dash O 10 dash oh one. And then the requirements for the component architecture and the different, uh, pieces of the fire alarm and mass notification system and where those go are located in UFC dash four dash.

21 dash oh one. So if you, uh, an interesting additional portion of the fire alarm system that is in, um, uh, some military buildings, but not generally in commercial facilities is textual notification signs. So these are signs that are located, uh, very similarly. To manual pool stations in that you have them at exiting doors, um, generally above the doors or near the doors and they will display pieces and portions of the fire alarm and mass notification system messaging.

So say if you had a fire alarm, it might say, uh, fire or evacuate and, or they could be static or they could be scroll. . So this is an interesting different piece or portion of fire protection design for fire alarm and mass notification systems. UFC 3, 600 0 1 has a similar layout as the building code.

And that is a re reorganization that has come later on in the document's history. It starts off in broad terms with scope and administration applicability purpose criteria in general building requirements in the. um, one through one dash, one through one dash five. And so these are kind of the same beginning chapters, as you would find in the, uh, in the building code.

Chapter two is definitions and, uh, chapter three is use in occupancy. So these. Similar to the way the building code is laid out. And so this was part of that reorganization. The reason why, uh, it's interesting to work on DOD projects, or one of the reasons why it's interesting to work on DOD projects is cuz they oftentimes require a licensed fire protection engineer, not just an engineer that is qualified to practice fire protection engineer.

Um, so there are many requirements in UFC, 3, 600 0 1 that, uh, kind of reference, uh, uh, fire protection engineer who is, who has passed the NC Ws exam for, uh, professional engineering related to fire protection. There's been a recent trend in UFC 3, 600 0 1 to transition to the fire protection engineer, being the.

Kind of sole source for the fire protection systems and life safety for the building. This is a little bit different than how it works in commercial industries, because oftentimes architects are charged with a portion of the life safety design, namely egress and building configuration, as well as, uh, sometimes things like fire extinguishers will be designated by architects.

So when you. On a military project, especially it depends on which, uh, organization you're working with. Um, sometimes they will opt to have the fire protection engineer be the sole source for the fire protection and life safety. And you'll have to even, uh, seal the life safety drawings or the G sheets, um, with the fire protection engineer seal, which is a, is a difference for sure, from the commercial fire protection engineer.

So here's an interesting section, talking a little bit more about that fire suppression requirement that we were talking about earlier. And this is one dash 12.8 0.1 automatic sprinkler systems. It says. For facilities that do not require sprinkler protection as required in the special detailed requirements based on use or fire protection systems chapters.

So this is the equivalent of chapter four and chapter nine in the building code. So detailed, specific occupancy requirements and like the systems chapter of, of sprinkler systems. So. Says the design fire protection engineer must determine if the sprinkler system or other fire suppression system is required for the facility based on mission hazard of contents, value of contents or other criteria.

This determination must be included in the contract documents for design services or design build services. So. This is an interesting statement because there are a lot of factors here that don't play in civilian design services. So mission hazard of contents, value of contents. Um, generally, I mean, it would make sense that if a building was of a significant value or had significantly hazardous materials, that you would need the sprinkler system, but obviously there's a different flare to it because it's a department of defense.

Well, that's it for our first segment on DOD facilities and just dipping our toe into fire protection for, uh, facilities that use the unified facilities criteria. And I hope you enjoyed it. And if you'd like to hear some more exposition on UFC criteria and system determination and design, uh, check us out at patreon.com/fire code.

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

Welcome to episode 37 of Fire Code Tech! On this episode we are speaking to Virginia Charter the program coordinator for the Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology program at Oklahoma State University. On this episode we discus a myriad of topics ranging from career opportunities in fire protection to high-rise construction in Las Vegas Strip.

How did you find your way into the fire protection program?        

Would you speak more about your project work as an FPE?

What is the Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology program at Oklahoma State University?

What advice would you have for someone looking to find a job in this irregular climate?

Would you speak about your experience with professional societies?

What kind of research are you involved in at OSU?

Transcription

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

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

You're in the right place. Hello. All welcome to episode 37 of fire code tech. In this episode, we're speaking with Virginia charter. Virginia is the program coordinator of the Oklahoma state fire protection and safety engineering technology program. And this episode has been a real bucket list episode for me, Virginia is one of the people who inspired me to get into the career of fire protection engineering.

And so we talk on some of her very interesting project work in Clark county, um, dealing with high rises and a variety. Uh, large projects with the complex stakeholder groups. So I just am so excited to speak with, uh, one of the faculty members at Oklahoma state who was extremely influential in my career and, uh, someone who is, uh, uh, very bright and intelligent.

So yeah, I hope you enjoy this episode. It's a really, really good one. Also don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss an episode and follow us on social media so you can stay tuned on. What's happening. And if you wouldn't mind, you could give us a five star review on apple podcasts. It helps out well, Virginia, welcome to fire code tech.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Well thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm so excited. You've been, uh, somebody who I've wanted to have on for a long time. Probably. I was thinking about, uh, having you on when I was starting the podcast. Didn't reach out for a while after I started it, but I'm excited to get a chance to speak with you.

Yeah, I'm finally, I I'm glad that we were able to finally get it, get it set. I know, I know it took a while. This. The, the pandemic has sure. Shifted things in what we've been doing and, and made things a lot crazier. So yeah. I'm, I'm glad we've been able to do it. Yeah. It's definitely been a, a wild time. So now I understand lots of changes in shifting gears for you as a, just being in, um, higher ed.

It's been. Pretty much, uh, I don't know how many tropes I can fit in for unprecedented or times or different, different phrases like that, but it has been, um, pretty unique. That is definitely one way to put it for sure. So, but, um, so I kind of like to get started with these, uh, podcast, by asking people about how they found fire protection or how they found fire and life safety.

So I'd love to hear about. How you, uh, found your way into, um, fire and life safety and, uh, yeah, the, the, okay. State F PST program. Uh, sure. So I, um, going way back to at least, um, my schooling. So I went to OSU or Oklahoma state in fire protection and safety engineering technology. And, um, I had gotten interested in the program.

I grew up in Ohio. and, um, my older sister had a friend, um, that she graduated with that actually came to OSU, uh, for the same program. And that's kind of where it PED my interest. So I was interested in the program or the idea of fire protection, um, engineering and, and looking. That versus other engineering disciplines, um, from pretty early on like early in high school compared, and that's very different compared to a lot of other, um, students in the past, they TA they take, um, into our field.

Uh, and so that got me interested and, um, and so I ended up coming to OSU that's. Uh, the one school I applied to , um, because that's, uh, from everything I'd read about it with it being the oldest program and the, the amount of, um, curriculum and diversity that you go of the fields that you could go into really peaked my interest.

And, um, so that's where I started. Um, and then while I was at OSU, I had. A variety of internships. Um, everything from, I worked one summer in Indianapolis, uh, and lived in an extended stay hotel. I didn't have to pay for it. Uh, the company did, but I was doing, um, inspection testing and maintenance of fire alarm and sprinkler systems.

And then I also worked, um, for, um, Lockheed Martin for a summer in Fort worth, um, doing safety and health. And then I also interned at, um, the Stillwater fire department under the fire marshals office. And so I had a lot of different experiences. And even though those were all awesome internships and they were perfect for my growth in learning and developing in the field.

I still wasn't real sure what I wanted to do when I graduated. Uh, and so I had an opportunity, um, to work for, um, a company is formally named, uh, Ralph Jensen and associates. It's now known as Jensen Hughes. And, um, I took a position, um, out at their Las Vegas office after I graduated and. You know, kind of a little bit is the rest of the, his, the rest is history, if you will.

But I worked there for nine years. Um, that's where I got my PE license, um, in Nevada. And, um, I was also able to work on my master's degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, so WPI, um, and, uh, and then while I was there, um, and I was taking graduate classes and, and working full time. I really started to think about, you know, what do I wanna continue to do from a future perspective?

I loved consulting. Um, and you know, one of the things that I really enjoyed during my time in consulting and. You might be able to even vouch for this is just when you get younger employees that come in, um, and training 'em on or educating them on the ways of fire protection engineering and the different things that you go through, uh, based upon either maybe it's something that wasn't covered in the curriculum, or maybe you're dealing with a.

Graduate of a different engineering discipline. That was really common for us out on the west coast because, um, we didn't have a undergraduate program that we could pull from directly. So we would get, um, you know, uh, graduates from Arizona state, U N L V um, even some parts of Southern California that they maybe came from mechanical or electrical engineering, and we would work with them and, and teach them.

And educate them on all the different things, fire protection engineering. And that was one of the things I really enjoyed. And I also enjoyed working with architecture firms, doing kind of the, the lunch presentation of different aspects of code, um, and things like that. And so I kind of had an epiphany at one point and I thought, gosh, it would be great to go back to OSU and to be able to teach, um,

And so then I started looking into that and, you know, I was already working on my master's degree at the time, which was, which was good. And it just so happened that an opportunity came up and, uh, my husband and I talked about it. We, um, by the time we interviewed and we had two small children, uh, his family is based in Oklahoma, so I was like, let's apply and see what happens.

Um, and. So then, uh, I moved back to Oklahoma, uh, with our family in 2014. And I've been at OSU ever since I teach mostly on suppression systems, uh, fluid mechanics. And then, um, I work with senior design projects, risk control engineering class, as well as, um, an advanced, uh, building design class. And so it's been a lot of fun, um, to just work with all the students and see them progress from.

Freshman through seniors and all that kind of stuff. So, um, it's been an interesting career path so far. That's awesome. I appreciate the exposition on, uh, your early career. I definitely hear what you're saying about getting that opportunity to. Kind of explored the nuances of what it means to be an, an engineer and kind of walk somebody through that kind of process.

Uh, as we were talking about a little bit, uh, before we started recording, you know, uh, I had a intern this summer and it was, uh, a huge challenge and just like growth opportunity for me to be able to take somebody who didn't have. Um, there are not too many notions of the formal process of design and kind of take 'em through that.

So I definitely resonate with that, um, that piece, but yeah, I think it's interesting. You got so many good internships when you're in school. That must, uh, even with all those internships, it's, it's still hard to know what. what you wanna do when you get outta school. So that's awesome that you got to do so many different things.

Yeah, it's it, it's kind of the, the age old question of what do I wanna be when I grow up and, um, I think internships add such a value, um, to the student experience, even though they're not required. They're so good for students even to go out there and just see what things are like. Um, see what it's like to work with companies of different cultures or, um, you know, organizations in safety and health versus fire protection versus, you know, all of those different things are just so valuable to the students and helps validate some of the things that they're learning in the classroom.

Yeah. I think that it definitely adds a layer. Uh, understanding, you know, when you have this, um, in the field experience, coupled with the educational experience and probably even helps you, uh, gain more outta your educational time, if you have some, uh, hands on and, uh, intern experience. But yeah, I definitely, uh, felt that.

Um, even though I, the one internship I had, I didn't end up doing anything even remotely close to that. So, um, and that's okay too. Exactly. That's totally fine. But, um, I always like to ask, I know that, um, you've been out of consulting for a while, but. One of the big influences for me getting into fire protection engineering was hearing you talk about your experience as a professional.

Um, I really enjoyed, uh, hydraulics and, uh, sprinklers. I had 'em. In your first two years, I think in school. And you were one of my big influences for wanting to be a FPE. So another reason why I was really excited to talk to you on the podcast. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about some of the, the project work that you had the opportunity to work on, um, in your time as a consulting FPE, if you wouldn't mind.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so as you can imagine in Las Vegas, a lot of my stories and time, um, there. Have to do with the really large hospitality industry that services Las Vegas and looking, working on those, um, strip properties. Uh, we did work also on things like hospitals and military bases. Um, but that wasn't our bread and butter out there.

Um, we spent a significant amount of time and when I moved out there on those strip properties, there was just. At the time that I moved out there, there were multiple new projects going on, um, on the strip. And so, but of course, when I first started, you don't start, um, they don't hand you a several hundred thousand dollars project to manage.

We, I started on small things like tenant improvements. So building changeouts, um, or tenant change outs in malls or office buildings and starting to. Gain a depth of knowledge of how changes in a building can be impacted by, um, just a small tenant change out, um, uh, can impact the overall building life safety systems, everything from.

How you have to modify sprinkler and fire alarm, how you have to look at and make sure that they aren't impacting, um, any smoke control systems and making sure the egress system is still, um, appropriate and compliant. And so, you know, we started there, but you know, some of the big projects that I really worked on that would probably be recognizable to your audience.

Um, during the time of construction, we called it project city center. Uh, but when it opened the different hotel resort names were called aria. Um, there was the Vdara tower, the veer condo towers and the Mandarin, um, that were all associated with that property, as well as the Crystal's retail mall. Uh, and so a lot of my focus on that particular project.

Uh, I helped oversee the crystals retail mall, uh, project management, as well as the, uh, Vdara, which was like a combination of hotel and com um, and condos, uh, depending on like which floor level you might have been on, but it was an entire complex, um, that the original plan was to add something. Like 8,000 keys to the strip, which means that, you know, 8,000 different hotel or condo, um, spaces.

Uh, but it was integrated because everything on that building was tied together. Uh, there was a sub train garage that tied all of the building parts together. We had three different, um, architecture firms, um, working on the different portions of the building. and, um, but we, one of the things that the jurisdiction required as a part of that project due to the size is they wanted a single fire protection engineer firm to cover the design and, um, fire protection and life safety analysis reports, uh, to cover all of that.

Um, and so that's, uh, where we came in and so we helped do a lot of coordination across the site because there was a single, um, Fire alarm station, fire alarm system, in a sense like there was a central fire command center for the entire property. There was actually two of them. Um, there was a, the primary, and then there was a, a backup fire command center.

And then, um, the water supply loop served, um, the entire site. And so that included low zone and mid zone pumps. Um, and then each of the towers also had high zone pumps. Um, . And so there was a lot of coordination all the way across the site. Um, and that was a lot of fun to work on. Um, essentially when I started there, they were, they were in preliminary kind of design and I worked on that project and other projects, but that project took years.

Um, and by the time they, you know, opened, um, you know, I'd been with the company, I'm trying to remember when they actually opened. Maybe the 2009 timeframe. So I'd been there for at least four years. Um, but just all of that coordination, I, I can't imagine where else I could have learned that amount of or have that amount of experience on something elsewhere in, in the world.

Um, just because of how complex. That particular property was and how it tied together with just about everything else on that property. Wow. That's an incredible story. I can only imagine the meetings with three different architecture firms. Uh, you know, I've had small Highrise buildings only in my career and, uh, they pose such a great level of complexity.

Uh, you know, I have a, there's a fire protection designer working at my company now who used to work. In Clark county, uh, in fire suppression design and the way, uh, that the hydraulics work in the building of that height, you know, having to have, like you said, three, three levels of pumps. That's just, uh, bizarre the scale of that to me, um, all of the pressure, reducing valves and pumps within that building are, uh, really just, uh, kind of.

I don't know, it just, it sounds like a UFO to me, for most of the buildings that I work on, that kind of scale is, is really huge. Um, I don't know if like 8,000 units, I don't think it does it justice for the size and magnitude of this building that you're talking about, but I can kind of envision it and being in the industry.

uh, just a short time, like, you know, when, when so many people and, and I'm sure you experience this, but when you walk into a building and you think, wow, this is a really neat building. There's just so much engineering work that goes into that building to make sure it functions appropriately. Like, you know, everything from mechanical comfort air to, um, making sure the lights are on and all that kind of stuff to the far end of making sure that there are systems in.

That work, um, and are appropriately, you know, tested and installed that should something happen. It will be there. Um, and so that. One of the, my passions, especially with fire protection engineering, is that you're, you're working on a building and while you don't ever really want those systems to have to be used, I have a pride in the fact of that when we do these Texas systems or we work in these kind of buildings, people can go to those.

Uh, facilities and have that assumption that they are safe in those facilities and that, um, and that things are put in place that they can enjoy their time there and not have to worry about those types of things. And so I think that's one of the things is like it's a lot of background work of doing life safety and fire protection, but there is a pride in it because.

Sometimes you do get to have that experience where your system or something that you've worked on, does what it's supposed to and you know, that helps prevent injuries and saves lives. Yeah, that's a great point. It feels good to know that there are these really robust systems inside of this monolithic building that's being designed for, uh, thousands of people.

That's pretty, that's pretty wild. I like hearing about that, but, um, yeah, I don't know. I just, uh, it's really interesting to think about the complexity and, uh, the project stakeholders. It's, I'm sure that was a monumental task. It's it's hard to being in project groups with stakeholders of, you know, like a third or a quarter of that size.

So the. Hundreds of millions of dollars that go into something that complex, um, awe inducing, I guess maybe for me, I'm just kind of reeling here as a code nerd, but, um, anyways, well, I wanted to, uh, break into a little bit more on your time at OSU and just for people who aren't as familiar with the program, I just, um, Would love to, to hear, uh, a, you know, a high level description of some of the, the different aspects and, and facets of the, of the program.

Um, don't know if you would mind give us some exposition on that? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so. The program at OSU has been around since the nine late 1930s. And it has evolved heavily over that time, um, in the seventies. Uh, and this was real common, uh, in the United States and higher education. At that time, it became a four year program.

It was originally a two year program. And that's actually when the safety component was added into the program, um, to kind of make it a more robust, um, and all encompassing program. And we became accredited in the seventies and we are the, um, oldest existing program of that kind, uh, that has been accredited, uh, through ABET, um, And our program as it's evolved over time, um, we've kind of gone, you know, some of the original focus was very much on a little bit more of the fire service.

Uh, not necessarily training the fire service per se, but, you know, looking at those kind of fire protection aspects and as the field of fire protection engineering has grown. Um, the topics and things like that have grown, um, you know, an example of this is that when I took fire dynamics at OSU, that was a relatively new course in the early two thousands.

Um, and that. Um, fire dynamics now is really where we see a lot of, um, growth in the overall discipline and, and really understanding fire behavior and, and what happens, um, you know, on these high challenge areas and trying to protect those. And so the program itself, uh, four year program, um, we cover topic.

From the basics of suppression and detection systems and hazard analysis, uh, to the engineering science of fluid mechanics and sprinkler design. We also cover things like occupational safety and process safety, uh, hazardous materials, industrial hygiene, um, and in risk control. Um, that's kind of our senior level class.

It may have been called loss prevention when you were at school. Uh, and. Really what we've talked a lot about of what our graduates are all about is they, we call them risk control specialists regardless of what field they go into. And that's because there's so many things that tie so closely. If you go into the safety and health field, you're, you're looking at risk.

From one perspective. Um, if you go into the insurance industry, whether in safety and health or on the fire protection side, you're looking at risk from a different perspective. And then on the fire protection engineering side design side consulting side, you are again looking at risk, um, from a very different perspective.

And so we look at it that we kind of have this, you know, trifecta between safety, health, and fire protection, um, of risk control and really understanding, um, from. Big picture idea of risk. And then maybe the field you work in, you only work in one aspect of controlling that risk and, um, with my time at OSU, uh, so it goes back to 2014, uh, when I first started and, you know, I think you're right, you may have been in either my first or second semester of, of fluids and, um, Really trying to, um, instill in the students that the things that we learn in the, the classroom while sometimes you may not always do those calculations every day in the field, but how it can really relate to.

The safety, health and risk control that you can have as that engineer or what have you. Um, and so, uh, but like I said, I started in 2014, um, and my primary classes were fluid mechanics and then sprinkler design and I still teach those classes. They're some, they're some of my favorite classes to teach. I try to bring in a lot of real world examples, um, fluid mechanics, we have to get through a lot of engineering, science basis type things.

That's um, that can kind of be a little bit tough at the beginning, but by the end of the semester where we get to take the students out and do hydrant flow tests and then fire pump testing, the hands on aspect of, um, the program is still very important. Um, for those students, um, that when they come to campus, the kind of typical college student, that's an important experience for them to have, uh, before they graduate.

And so. Uh, and then in sprinkler design, I always try to bring in new, um, projects for them to work on to design sprinkler systems for, uh, and then I also have a lot of fun with our senior design projects, uh, because we can, we've kind of molded that, um, into projects that become very practical either. You know, some students are really driven in doing some sort of research project, which is fantastic.

And then we also have another. You know, kind of route with our senior design, where they're doing practical application projects, um, and things like that. And so our students, um, from what our, uh, employers mention is that what they think, um, of our graduates is that they are always ready to hit the ground running.

Um, and it's because they do have. A lot of practical experience, um, whether that be in the classroom or maybe even through an internship experience, but they are always ready to kind of just get going. Um, and that they pick up on things, um, really quickly. Uh, and so I, we pride ourselves in that and we pride ourselves that our program is while it's a lot of fun.

Um, while we think it's fun as faculty that, but we might be, you know, a bunch of. Academic dorks. Um, sometimes , but, um, you know, we, we think it's fun and, but at the same time, we, we keep it rigorous because we want the product, um, our graduates, um, to come out to always have that quality that our employers are looking for.

And so we really try to, to balance those types of things, um, within our curriculum. And our graduates just go everywhere. Um, it's really amazing what our graduates have done. And even, uh, just in the, you know, short time I'm in my eighth year at OSU. Um, but in the short time I've been there just seeing where some of those graduates, some of those early graduates, um, that I worked with have gone on to do, um, beyond there, um, some different opportunities that they've had and, and things like that is.

Absolutely. One of the best parts of my job is to see where they go afterwards. Yeah, that's so great. It's it's awesome. I think that the opportunity in the fire and life safety industry is so vast and it's such a great field to get into because of how healthy the job market is. Um, and just the opportunities and, and the chance to have a very meaningful role in, in, uh, the, uh, chance to, to choose where that'll take you and to have options.

I always, I have, uh, sister-in-laws that are in college now. And, you know, they're kind of that thing that we were talking about, knowing what you wanna do when you grow up. And that's a big piece of what I try to tell people. Think about something that'll give you options. Think about something. That'll give you the, the income and the availability to have the lifestyle that you wanna have.

So I think those are all great points about how OSU can help. Uh, and the F PSC program can help somebody have, uh, a lot of opportunity and a chance at a really neat profess. But yeah, exactly. I, I can't stress to our, you know, incoming students or, you know, potential students enough of, first of all, we can't produce enough graduates of what the market demands and that's just, you know, across the board between safety and health or, um, or even fire protection, you know, we just don't, we don't have enough graduates.

Um, no matter how much we try, um, and. You will get a great job. Um, and if you've got that, you know, no pun intended, but that little fire to want to Excel in that career path, um, the opportunities really are endless. Um, Because it's even one of those things, you know, um, oil and gas is a very kind of up and down type industry.

And we've had students before that we're really hoping to go into oil and gas. Uh, maybe they had an internship and then for some reason, whatever, it might be the oil and gas industry. Is not hiring as many students that year, or they may not be hiring any, uh, due to a variety of reasons in the market or, or what have you, but they are able to with our program and our degree easily shift into a different field, um, or kind of a, a parallel field, maybe it might not be an oil and gas, but it might be something similar, um, to be able to still.

Employment. Um, and they can still explore those careers, but then, you know, when the market picks back up, they could always go back and look, um, at that, you know, primary career that they were originally looking at. And so it just gives so much flexibility to our students and to our graduates. Yeah. That's a great point.

That's a great point. I also liked hearing you speak about, you know, kind of. Uh, curriculum evolution, you know, progressing more towards the fire science. I'll say that when I took the PE exam, I felt like there was a huge portion of the fire protection, PE exam over, uh, fire dynamics and fire science. And, you know, uh, we had the course in school, but I still, it wasn't my strong suit when I took the course either.

So, uh, I definitely felt like in preparation for. The FPE exam. I had to really buff up on that knowledge base. But it's interesting to hear you say that you see, uh, growth in that area. Um, and just as where the discipline is trending. Yeah, definitely. Like if you look at, um, the society of fire protection engineers and their kind of core competencies, uh, that is an entire area of competencies, you know, they talk a lot, there's kind of four key points that they talk about and, um, And that is one of those areas, uh, that will continue to be there and continue to grow.

But, and it's not even just that we need FPE that Excel in each of those areas. Um, someone that does a lot of work with fire dynamics and models, we still need somebody that understands, you know, fire alarm and sprinkler systems and passive fire protection and those types of things, because all of those combined are what help provide those facilities, um, with protect.

Yeah, I've always been, uh, had more of a, uh, proclivity for system side of things. Uh, just the fire suppression and fire alarms. I'm sure that's inherent to the, uh, trade that I'm in or the profession that I'm in. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I see some, uh, different schools like the, like the Marylands or the WPIs of the world really, um, leaning in super hard to.

Fire sciences. So I think it's just an interesting, uh, point about it all. Yeah. It, it definitely provides a good balance with all the graduates that come out of the programs is that there is you get variety. And I don't know if that's the right term, but you know, in the graduates of what, um, what their areas of specialty are, which, like I said, when, um, you know, when I worked in Las Vegas, it wasn't.

If we needed something to be modeled, it wasn't necessarily us that did it. We would work with one of the other offices that had experience in that, and that had expertise in that. And so you kind of need all of those pieces to put it together. And so it's, it's actually a pretty good balance between the different programs of, you know, their areas that are really emphasized and, and OSU does focus a lot.

Kind of the practical code based systems, um, as well as kind of getting those pieces and parts of fire behavior and fire dynamics. But, um, but I think it adds that adds to that balance of all the graduates that come out of the schools. Yeah, definitely. I think you're, I think you're right. It's each program has the, you know, a little bit of their specialty and, and that's fine.

And, you know, paired with master's degrees, you could, uh, you know, kind. Mix and match like you have in your career, those different influences and strengths. Um, but yeah, I wanted to ask you, um, just, you know, I know it's kind of like, uh, a strange time for people who are graduating and, um, you know, young professionals looking for jobs right now.

But, uh, it, it appears to me as somebody who is, uh, working for a firm. Is looking to hire a, uh, a couple people in the fire protection department. That it's a good time to find a job, but I just wanted to ask you, um, what kind of advice would you have for somebody who is, you know, looking to be competitive and get a job in this irregular climate that we have right now for, um, young professionals.

Yeah, absolutely. The first of all, I will say that in the, you know, it was a little bit, you know, when everything kind of shut down in 2020, um, in spring, there was a lot of, kind of shifting going on. Um, I know some internships had gotten canceled and whatnot. We still had a really good year of, um, all of our graduates getting hired and things like that.

And I've really seen an uptick in, um, and, and it's probably cuz we're getting ready to get into our fall career fair. , uh, but I've really seen an uptick in the number of companies that are starting to ask and say, we're looking to hire, we're looking to hire. So I, I do feel like there's some things picking up.

Um, what I always recommend to any incoming student, um, is to at least start in and don't be afraid to join an organization. Um, I always kind of recommend, like, try and do something that's associated with your. Um, and then also if there's something you're passionate about, um, don't be afraid to join a different organization, even if it's like a, a sports club or something like that.

I know we've had students that were a part of the, um, like the OSU volleyball club or the, um, I think we even had a wakeboarding club for a while, you know, like all sorts of different clubs, like, you know, pursue a little bit of your passion of what, you know, some of the fun things that you like to do. Uh, but also, um, Pursue the, um, the professional side.

And I, you know, get involved in that, um, be an active member, uh, because especially we really strive with our organizations, whether that's our students, society of fire protection engineers, or the American society of safety professionals, um, we really strive in those organizations that they get to have that professional contact, uh, the professional networking.

And the other thing that I always recommend to students is don't be afraid to kind of put yourself out there. Like don't go to a career fair and not stop at any booth. Um, you and start as a freshman, go there and, and just start talking to employers, you, you need to get used to being able to talk to other professionals.

Um, and even if you go as a freshman, not thinking that you will get any kind of internship, it doesn't hurt. And, and don't, don't be afraid to put yourself out there to. Sign up for an interview or, um, things like that. But you know, in this climate, I think a lot of employers are really gonna be looking for kind of that well rounded engineer.

Um, one of the things that when I was working on my PhD, I did a lot of work in, um, engineering and student learning, um, and those types of things. And one of the things that employers will always want. They don't want just the engineer necessarily anymore. That sits in a cubicle and doesn't have any outside contact.

They are looking for the engineers that can project manage that can interface with clients that can interface with jurisdictions. And so students really have to be able to hone those skills, um, you know, working on teams, uh, critical thinking, um, being able to go and research something yourself instead of automatically asking somebody else what the answer is, uh, you know, spend some time researching things before you go and say, Hey, what's the answer to this question?

Um, so we try to really work with our students in our classes to, to try and hone those skills. And so, um, And the other thing is, is don't, like I said, don't be afraid. You don't necessarily need to be perfect in all of your classes. Um, because sometimes a lot of the interview, if you've made it to an interview, um, your resume is already speaking for you, um, to get you to that interview.

And so at that point, they're gonna wanna know how well do you connect. The other technical staff, um, how well do you communicate, uh, you know, mostly verbally at that point with an interview, uh, most of our students now we are extremely used to, to meetings on zoom or Microsoft teams and being able to interface that way.

Uh, there's a lot of interviews that are happening that way, which is actually, it's been really G the, if you wanna say that, there's a good thing out of this pandemic is that it's actually allowed C. The capability to reach further than they normally would have. Um, and they can, you know, they can set up these virtual interviews first.

And so they could be interviewing from somewhere else in the United States or around the world to do these interviews versus having to fly someone in. And so there may be more opportunity there. So don't be afraid to, to do that. The other thing, um, This is more of a cautionary thing, but just also watch what you put on social media, because once it's out there, um, employers can see that.

And depending on which route you go, especially if you've got, you know, um, a chance to go work with like a, a DOE or a do D type, uh, facility, um, they will look at those types of things. Um, and so you have to think about even your personal Facebook or Instagram page is still. Public, um, in what you do. So, but it's really just being able to communicate and talk with other people.

And, um, also don't be afraid to ask questions. I, uh, that's a great point about, uh, go into the career fair and, and just being able to talk with people and building rapport at the career fair, even when you might not. Ready for an internship. I think that, like you were saying, if you get an, an interview you've already, you've already kind of made the statement that you need to, and it's kind of yours to lose at some point, based on your ability to communicate and express your interest to learn.

I mean, nobody expects, uh, an intern, an intern, or even a new hire. Understand everything. They just really want attitude, the ability to communicate and the intention to learn and grow. So, uh, I think that's a great point. And then also what you're saying about, you know, how a company wants somebody. Who's not just gonna sit in their cube, but somebody who's involved in the community and somebody who wants to collaborate and, and not just.

Waiting for somebody to bring them answers. That's probably one of the biggest ones, you know, have you tried to look for this? Have you, you know, you're responsible for, um, bringing solutions to the table. So I think those are all great points. I, uh, I always like to touch on, you know, the pros and cons. It appears to me that there are some pros, like you were saying from the pandemic, um, about.

You know, having the ability to connect. Um, I think if you were to asked me before the pandemic, if I would've thought that we're working remote full time would be okay. I would say, yeah, it's be fine. Sounds great. But then after doing it and dealing with the, uh, VPN and more teams meeting and, you know, always being on, I don't know, I think that, uh, I'm leaning towards in the office now.

I think that's an interesting point. You make about, uh, how it is kind of sped up the advance in, you know, being able to talk to people about jobs remote and just kind of open up opportunities and extend the reach of the program. So I think that's interesting. I've not heard that before. I know that. Um, yeah, I've heard some accounts of people doing those internships or, I mean, uh, interviews on.

Over teams and whatnot and the signing up and the scheduling of that. Yeah. I mean, last year, the entire career fair was virtual and, um, students had to sign up for, you know, just the time to meet with that initial HR person that may have been normally at the career fair. And, um, and I have to agree with you, uh, remote, uh, that, that could be work really well for some jobs and some things that you do, but in the engineering world, it's.

It's a much better space if you can collaborate in person. Um, and uh, not that you can't do it sometimes remotely. Uh, but I also think, you know, it's, we're a year and a half into this and we are a little bit over the, how many times do we need to get onto a, a zoom or a teams meeting and, um, But that's okay.

Um, we're, we're hopefully coming out of this, you know, right now all of our classes are in person. Um, we're working really hard to make sure that, uh, we, we do the best that we can and within our ability to keep the students, um, healthy and safe. Uh, and we also look at it that, you know, this while we are not in our field, you know, Uh, we are not people that study viruses and whatnot, but this is a real thing that, you know, if you are in safety and health, what are you doing for your company to help protect them?

Uh, and that type of thing, and understanding the different, um, you know, always the new, regular recommendations that are coming out from the CDC and stuff like that. And so it's, the pandemic has definitely added a spin to it. Um, it has actually shown a lot in higher education. And even with our program, the things that we can do virtually, uh, and that, you know, what are some different options that we have from a virtual or online aspect and to reach further, um, you know, our graduate program is offered both, um, on campus and online already.

Uh, but we're exploring options of, you know, what could we do from an undergraduate perspective? Um, online and, and that's the reason why we look at that is, you know, we have some, you know, students that are getting ready to graduate, or maybe, um, there's a student that is really passionate about the fire service.

And so they decide they're gonna go test for a department and they may have to, they may have to have that consideration of leaving a semester early. Um, and we want to make sure they finish their degrees. And so what could we do to help accommodate that? How could we. Um, help those types of professionals or, um, because our degree is so unique, you know, we get individuals that maybe they are career firefighters or they, and they've since moved into like the fire marshal's office and they wanna advance their career through a, um, a higher degree, you know, a bachelor's degree or something like that.

And this is really where some of this is going, like, how could we help service those individuals? Um, In their growth and, and to help continue to grow the field and the expertise in the field. Wow. That's a really interesting point. Yeah. I've had a couple people reach out since starting the podcast and say, you know, uh, from the us and from outside the us and say, Hey, what you know, opportunities are there, uh, for masters and undergraduate programs, uh, more frequent.

Strange enough. It's been master's programs, people reaching out and saying, Hey, what you know, opportunities are there in the us for fire protection, you know, for different roles, people coming from different roles. So looking for how to add a competitive edge or how to learn more in the field. So I think that's an interesting topic of how to accommodate people who wanna get at the program and some of the.

Technical and, um, educational resources that are involved in it. So, yeah, I think that's a, that's a great idea to explore how to provide more with the program. While keeping the integrity of, um, what we're trying to, what we can convey. Yeah. And that's, that's definitely an important piece that you mentioned is that the integrity and the rigor of the program.

Um, and that is something that all of the, our faculty do not take lightly. Um, and so that as we've, you know, explored different things or as we've worked, um, with our joint program, we have a joint program with Southwest it university in China. Unfortunately, those students, they were supposed to come here for their senior year, um, the different cohorts and they haven't been able to travel because of the pandemic and.

um, you know, how do we maintain the integrity and the rigor with those students? Um, still giving them some course offerings so that way they can still graduate, um, as a part of that program that they signed up for, you know, four years ago before a pandemic . Wow. So, so it's, it's been, it's been interesting, but all the faculty are on board to make sure that our program continues to.

Produce the graduates that our employers need, um, and the, to have that rigor and to hopefully instill those skills in them. So that way they can go out in the workforce and be successful, um, in everything that they are doing. Uh, and so. It's important to us, for sure. Yeah. That's really interesting about that program.

I was reading a little bit about it and I heard that you had taken some, some trips as a process of that program over to China. That's extremely fascinating to be, uh, doing something like that. Has that been, uh, uh, a very, uh, different, I imagine experience. Well, I my, my plans for travel, um, have not ever come to fruition at this point to go out there, but we've had several faculty that have gone out there.

Um, they've helped, uh, build. Some labs out there for them to get some hands on exercises and some of the, the lower division courses that they are taking over there. And, um, and they've helped teach some of those classes. Uh, and my plans for travel were going to be either later in 2020 or, um, this time in 2021, but we are.

Unfortunately, not at that point, um, to travel over there. And so everything has been done remotely, but thankfully with technology, we are able to continue to help work with that program and, and to, to help those students, um, succeed. And it's, um, it's a, a lot of these students are a great group of students.

They they've loved learning about it. Um, and it'll be really great to see how they can go. Um, either in China or elsewhere around the world to, to impact, you know, fire and life safety around the world. That's very cool. That's very cool. So I wanted to ask, you touched on it a little bit earlier, but about, um, your involvement in professional societies and, um, you know, what you think about professional societies.

I, I understand that just recently you were. I don't know what the right term is, but, uh, announced as, uh, being a fellow of SF P, which is a, which is a big deal. So I thought that was really. But yeah, I'd love to hear more about, uh, yeah. So first of all, I have been a part of S F P E. So the society, fire protection engineers ever since I was a student at OSU.

Um, and part of that was, you know, like I said, joining an organization that you're interested in as a part of your career and. And then I joined the local chapter when I was in Las Vegas. And, um, when I moved back here, I started overseeing the, um, student chapter and I got more and more involved in the international organization.

And I can't describe enough how much being a part of your professional organization. And again, stepping outside that comfort zone sometimes of. You know, taking on a little bit of a volunteer role. Um, I, I sit on, well, right now, I'm, I'm finishing up my second term on the, um, as the chair of the higher education subcommittee, which is underneath the professional qualifications group.

And. First of all the people that you get to meet from all across the United States and the world, sit on that committee. Um, we talk about, you know, what are the academic standards? What are the expectations? What are the topics that, um, we look at for a, um, a model curriculum of a fire protection engineering program.

And it also gives you a chance to advocate. Um, I get to advocate for OSU and for our students, um, within that organization, which is fantastic. Um, and because of my connections there, I was then appointed as one of the, the SFP foundations, uh, on their board of governors, which that organization, which is a little bit separate from the SFP organization, but that organiz.

Is all about what can we do to continue to grow in research, um, student scholarships, student grants, um, and looking at it from that perspective of the growth of that. Um, and, and then yes, recently I was, um, nominated and then my name was submitted to become a fellow member in the organiz. Which according to some of my peers, that means that I'm now old.

Uh, but , um, , uh, but that's okay. Um, it, it was something I knew I wanted to strive for at some point. Um, and I was, when I found out about it, I was a little bit taken aback. Um, and that's because. There's certain qualifications that you need to have. They want you to be, what's considered a professional member for a certain amount of time, and they want you to contribute to the society in certain ways.

And, and in probably in part of, uh, you know, living through this pandemic, it was just definitely not on my mind. So it was a, it was a very pleasant surprise during the summer when I found out. Um, and I take a lot of pride in it. Um, there's only a certain percentage of the membership that can be fellows at any given time.

And, um, I look at it as a way to, to show to others, the accomplishments that you can have, um, from being from, you know, Oklahoma state university, or maybe being female in the industry, that you can really do a lot of great things, um, and that professional organization can help you. Do some of those things, um, by just taking, you know, little roles, don't say yes to everything, but you know, do some little roles volunteer and give back to the society, um, that can help you professionally from a network perspective.

Um, and things like that. You know? So, I mean, it's a great networking opportunity, um, that, between that and our alumni network, uh, I, I just think you can't beat it on your growth professionally. that's awesome. Yeah, it's less than less than 8% of the members are, have the, are able to be a fellow. So that's a big deal.

I always get excited anytime. I see, uh, one of my professors or one of my, um, Uh, the, the students that I graduated with, um, and I get to see him in, uh, yeah, a PR release in the industry. Like I was excited for your fellow announcement. And then I saw, uh, Brian was in Brian Hoskins was, uh, in the S F P prep program.

And he was helping teach the segment on human factors or, or, you know, egress portions of it. So I don't know, I always enjoy. Seeing, uh, seeing people in the okay. State F PST program. Do good. Yeah. It's important. Well, I wanted to ask about your research, but I think we've, I think we've run out of time here.

Maybe we'll have to save that for. Your next episode of fire code tech, if that ever happens, but I wanted to, yeah, just, I know you've been involved in some interesting research, but I also want to be mindful of your time. I'm sure you got a busy day. Well, I can, you know, I can touch on it real briefly and we can always, um, circle back to it at some point.

Uh, my research is definitely more on the practical side. Um, one of the big things that I. Um, working on, um, is a long term corrosion, um, experiment, um, and research within, um, automatic sprinkler systems. And that could be a variety of, uh, wet systems and dry systems using nitrogen, not using nitrogen, the different types of pipe materials.

Um, and we are just monitoring that over time and doing the appropriate inspection testing, and maintenance of those systems that we have installed. And, um, It's a bit like watching paint dry, you know? Right. You can't, um, you can't, um, Uh, force it to happen too soon because we really wanted to look at the, the impact of, um, the inspection testing and maintenance of those systems as well.

Uh, but I know it's very relevant in the sprinkler industry of trying to help solve those problems, you know, increase the longevity of systems. So that's really one area that I look at. Um, I also do a lot of different things with codes and standards, uh, and the application of those, um, and the relevance.

And then I, I also, mostly because of my PhD research, I do a lot of things in, um, student learning, uh, in engineering fields as well as women in stem. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. I have a big interest in that. That piping is such a big, even though I know it's hard and not a lot of action, but the, I it's, what I deal with so frequently is, you know, how long can the piping sustain its integrity?

You know, different systems, wet and dry systems and how that affects system lifespan. So I definitely, uh, think that's a very interesting field, but anyways, I just wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Virginia. It's been an absolute pleasure and yeah. Thanks again. Well, I appreciate you having me on and, and of course, uh, anytime, um, we can, we can help advocate for the profession we're here for it.

Awesome. 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, or by no means a professional consultation or a code zone 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.

Hello All! Welcome to episode 17 of Fire Code Tech. In this episode we are discussing all things fire extinguishers. We take a deep dive into applicable codes/standards, fire extinguisher types and much more.  Don't forget if you want to here more episodes like this go check out patreon.com/firecodetech

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 17 of fire code. In this episode, we're talking about fire extinguishers. So this is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get about fire protection is how to install and determine when fire extinguishers are needed. So fire extinguishers is a very common topic.

I don't think it's, uh, extremely hard to grasp. The basics of fire extinguishers, but the problem is that they're so commonplace and, uh, generally applied that I don't think much scrutiny is given to them. Very frequent. So in this episode, we look to talk about the codes and standards, the application of fire extinguishers, the different types of fire extinguishers, and just a basic general overview on fire extinguishers.

So please don't forget to subscribe. Follow us on social media. Also, if you could give us a five star review on apple podcast, that would be a huge help. If you're a fan of these episodes and you would like to listen to more, you can go to patreon.com/fire code tech, and you can subscribe to get another two of these episodes a month.

There are, by the time this episode airs a total of 17 solo cast episodes, ready to listen to for a very low price. Let's dive into the show. So the first thing I want to talk about pertaining to fire extinguishers is the codes and standards around fire extinguishers. As always, I'll be speaking in reference to the codes and standards process in the United States.

So we'll be looking at the international building code for the application of fire extinguishers. So the two major codes that we're going to look at when determin. The application and specification of fire extinguishers are the international building code in the international fire code. The chapter in the building code that talks about fire extinguishers is section 9 0 6, portable fire extinguishers.

So the insulation standard for fire extinguishers is N F P 10. This standard is called the standard for portable fire extinguishers. So in true fire code tech fashion, let's talk about how we know when we need fire extinguishers. So there are two situations in which we need could need fire extinguishers.

There are general purpose, fire, extinguishers, and specific hazard or specific application fire extinguishers. So the building code starts off in section 9 0 6 with a list of. Uh, different situations in which you would need general purpose fire extinguishers. Let's take a look at some of the different situations in which you would need general purpose fire extinguishers, section 9 0 6 0.1, where required portable fire extinguishers shall be installed in all of the following locations.

Okay. Here's the big requirement that basically encapsulates almost every occupancy located in the building code. This is the first in a six item list. In group a, B E F H I M R one R two R four and S occupancies. So if you can't tell that's pretty much all of them. Uh, and then it has an exception that says in group R two occupancies portable fire extinguishers shall be required only in locations specified in items two through six, where each dwelling unit is provided with a portable fire extinguisher, having a minimum writing.

One a 10, B, C. So we'll talk about those ratings a little bit later, but, um, just understand for now that that is a capacity rating for fire extinguishers. So this first section in 9 0 6. Basically is an umbrella statement for all of these occupancies that they do in fact, need general purpose fire extinguishers.

So this is the requirement that basically requires your standard type a B and C fire extinguishers throughout a building. So I guess we should get into the types of fire extinguishers before I get too much further. I don't think I can keep referencing these different types of fire extinguishers without laying the foundation.

But before we move on, so the, the synopsis of this topic is when do we need fire extinguishers? We need fire extinguishers when section 9 0 6 0.1 of the building code tells us we need them. And then there's a list of six different, uh, instances in which you need a general purpose in specific hazard fire extinguishers in those.

Um, instances. So I guess we should discuss what is a fire extinguisher before I tell you what the types are. So let's look in N F P 10, section 3.4 0.3 in the 2018 edition. And this is the definition of portable fire extinguisher. A portable device carried or on wheels and operated by hand containing an extinguishing agent that can be expelled under pressure for the purpose of suppressing or extinguishing a fire.

So for the layman or for just somebody who wanted to know the formal definition, that's what a fire extinguisher is. Now. There are a variety of. Different types of fire extinguisher. And basically these types are catering to the different, um, fire that we're looking at. So when we are, uh, designing fire extinguishers, we are putting the proper suppressing agent with the, you know, combustible that we are trying to extinguish.

So it's think of it similar to, um, determining the hazard. Um, you need to understand what you're trying to put out and the goal for protection of property and life, um, in order to apply the, the right type of fire extinguisher. So let's talk about types of fire extinguisher and types of. Um, suppressing agent.

So the way the fire extinguishers are classified is by the type of fire they're looking to extinguish. So if we take a look at 5.2 in an FPA 10, 2018 edition, we can see information about the classification of fires. So we have class a, B, C, D, N K, fire. So class a is your general ordinary combustible, such as wood cloth, paper, rubber and mini plastics class BFIs are combustible liquids.

And think of these as petrochemical pro products. So petroleum greases, tars oils, um, paints, solvents, slackers. And so tech type C are fires that involve, uh, energized electrical equipment. So anytime where you're going to be using an extinguisher on, uh, on or around electrical equipment that is energized, uh, you'll need a type C um, fire extinguisher.

and so D and K are the last two types of, of fires. And these are a little bit more special case. So generally, uh, for general purpose fire extinguishers, we have, um, a combination of a, B and C fire extinguishers, or ABC fire extinguishers. And then. Class D and K fires have specific fire extinguishers with a different variety of, uh, suppressing agent.

So class D fires are combustible metals, such as magnesium titaniums or conium sodium, lithium and potassium. So if you don't know. They're with metal fires, you know, oftentimes, um, water and other common suppressing agents that work on, uh, more standard combustibles like wood and natural materials don't work on metal fires.

So, uh, this is why we have class D fire extinguishers to utilize some different suppressing suppressing mechanisms in order to, um, extinguish these fires. and then type K are, um, fires in cooking appliances for think of these as deep fat Frys or, uh, kitchens like commercial ranges and, um, just fires with, uh, involve, uh, it says class K fires are fires and cooking appliances that involve, uh, combustible cooking media, a vegetable or animal oils and fats.

So. There are, we'll talk about the specific application of, um, class D and, and K fires, but, uh, this is a big overview of the types of fire extinguishers. Okay. So just as a quick recap, the types of fire extinguishers are, uh, correspond to the types of different fires. So. there are class a, B, C, D, and K fires.

And so general purpose fire extinguishers are type a, B and C, and there are specific application fire extinguishers for class D and K fires. So those are metal fires and, um, deep fat fry. Uh, or just any cooking appliance with that utilizes, uh, the significant source of animal fat or oil. So let's go back to, uh, IBC 9 0 6 0.1, where we were talking about the general purpose and specific hazard fire extinguish.

So we talked about the first, uh, item on the list, which. Basically requires general purpose fire extinguishers for, um, most occupancies, but, uh, does not require 'em for our three occupancies and some are two occupancies. . And then we look at the second provision of this section and it talks about, says within 30 feet of commercial cooking equipment.

So this is that class K fire extinguisher we're talking about. So where you have commercial cooking equipment and there's gonna be a significant source of oils and fats and, you know, kind of, uh, high heat environment. Uh, you want to have, you are code required to have. A fire extinguisher within 30 feet of that area.

And so the third list on the item, I mean the third item on the list is, um, in areas where flammable or combustible liquids are stored, used or dispensed. So, uh, this could be those flammable combustible, liquid cabinets. This could be. Uh, you know, like, uh, the flammable combustible liquids are a pretty, that's a pretty wide umbrella.

I mean, this could be anything from greases or lubricants to paints and thinners. So ERs. I mean, uh, solvents, like, uh, think about where you're storing a hand sanitizer, you know, in the pandemic. So there's a huge variety of different flam boy combustible liquids that could be considered in this item on the list.

And then the fourth item on the list is on each floor structure under construction, except group R three occupancies in accordance with. 33, 15 0.1 of the international fire code. So this has to do with fire extinguishers for buildings under construction. So there's a whole NFPA for that. I'll look it up in a second, but can't remember it off the top of my head.

And then, so the fifth item on the list is where required by the international fire coach sections in table 9 0 6 point. so here in this table is a whole list of additional hazardous locations, which would require a fire extinguisher to be located in the room where this hazard is present. So think of the first couple provisions as, um, the first one is general purpose.

The second one, the second through the, you know, uh, other than four second through six. Uh, specific application, fire extinguisher, hazard provisions. So, um, let's give an example of a couple. So industrial ovens, um, combustible fibers, solvent, distillation units, uh, bulk plants and terminals for flamboyant combustibles LP gas, liquid petroleum gas.

Aircraft towing vehicles, welding apparatus, and Aircrafts. So these are just, um, hazardous operations in specific that require a fire extinguisher. So, um, number five is just linking to this table, which provides, um, I don't know, 30 or 40 different areas that require a fire extinguish. . And so number six, which is the last item on this list in the international building code, which talks about where required, where fire extinguishers are required.

Um, a, a lot of people are all, I will say that oftentimes fire extinguishers are just kind of, uh, put everywhere, but, um, fire extinguishers, Although I'm an advocate of fire extinguishers. Um, I'm not an advocate of putting fire line safety systems where, uh, there are, uh, not requirements for 'em. I believe.

There are requirements for a good reason, and we don't want to, um, not understand the application of these fire extinguishers, this application, uh, fire and life safety systems really just brings the whole trade down. So we wanna understand when we. Are applying a system and why it's required, especially cuz I've talked about before, uh, when conversation of VE comes up, which it frequently does you wanna be able to list out the criteria and uh, be extremely aware of why and when this system is required, that's it for this episode of fire code tech.

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

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