Q&A: Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Fire- and Life-Safety Systems

Q. Would someone who has completed your training courses be qualified to inspect his own facility to determine if it satisfies NFPA requirements?
A. Yes. We cover the NFPA requirements and how they relate to real-life situations, and we discuss how to interpret or understand what the NFPA says.

Q. What is new and what has changed over the past 5, 10 and 20 years?
A. Going back a little bit further, I would say 30 years ago, sprinkler protection was installed primarily to protect the property with no expectations or thoughts about life safety. In the ’80s with the adoption of ADA, the industry began to focus more on life safety in more applications. Ten years ago, sprinklers became important for protection of life and property. Smoke detection and fire alarms became more of a design criteria, specifically for evacuation.

Within the past five years, I think most of the building standards have been written with the assumption that fire sprinklers are in place. With fire sprinklers, you reduce the requirements for wider corridors and the number and size of exits.

A fully sprinkled building is much different than one that is not, which is good and bad alike, in my opinion.

Q. Why is that?
A. Sprinklers do not give early warning of a fire. If the sprinkler system is in operation, it’s typically too late to get people out of the building. A fire-alarm system is needed to work in tandem with a sprinkler system to give earlier notification. Then you will have quicker evacuation times to protect people, and you will have the sprinkler systems to protect the property. That seems to be the direction the industry is going and the way the standards are being written.

With the new NFPA Standard, 2007 edition, the direction has been modified again, but not many places have adopted it yet. The new standard is going in the direction of mass notification systems versus fire-alarm systems.

Mass notification is a voice system to annunciate that there is an emergency in the building. The system can override the fire alarm system to give evacuation instructions. You also have the ability to hit a tornado button or hurricane button that would give a voice instruction. I think this trend has been driven by the military because it had adopted and started moving in that direction on bases.

Q. How much influence does the military have to bring about that code change?
A. The NFPA has carried forward the military’s emphasis of mass notification to the private sector in the new NFPA 72, which was originally written to define a fire alarm system. Moving forward, when the new mass notification systems standard is adopted by a state or governmental agency, a resultant requirement in the private sector may be created, as compared to a standard fire alarm system.

What that means is that the industry is going to rely more heavily on speaker systems and voice evacuation systems.

Q. What effect will this have on a fire- and life-safety system?
A. I think future fire-alarm systems will require many more devices to achieve good voice clarity. The main issue with voice instruction is clarity and volume because you do not get the same decibel levels as you do from a horn or siren or any variation thereof. To get good clarity and to get good audible levels, you need to space the speakers closer together. Once you’ve done that, you have good clarity, but you still don’t have the same volume levels as you do with other audible devices.

Now, that’s not to say that I’m against voice evacuation systems — not at all. The reality is — and this is documented by studies — people respond better to voice evacuation systems. When people are told what to do during an emergency, they tend to follow the instructions. If it’s a voice evacuation system, people believe the threat is real.

Q. Do you think UL 864 opened up more possibilities for building owners in terms of adding to their current fire alarm systems?
A. I don’t think the UL or ANSI standards drive much in the field. Let’s face it. Design of fire alarm systems is driven primarily by enforcement of the local code. Generally speaking, a new fire alarm system is going to be coming from an engineer with a set of drawings, plans and specifications.

Retrofit projects generally use an engineer. Our goal is to bring the property up to a reasonable standard by upgrading the system to the necessary levels. Once again, this is code and authority driven. Some authorities having jurisdiction interpret the standard to mean that if you make any modifications whatsoever to the current system, you have to bring it up to the current standards. Other authorities interpret it as anything you add to the system must meet the current standard. Others just say anything is better than nothing. It’s all over the board, really.

Q. Do you recommend going to the Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) first to find out their point of view?
A. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, we typically try to talk to the AHJ up front. After we do some preliminary design, we’ll have them review the plans and then move forward with final drawings and the project.

Q. What other challenges do retrofit projects present?
A. If I were talking to a business owner, I would suggest that he demand a product that is distributed by multiple vendors. If he chooses a proprietary product, he will have fewer places to get service for that product.

One of the challenges that we face on a regular basis is trying to assist a potential customer who is unhappy with his current provider. However, we are unable to help because of proprietary software or the inability to get the product because of the limited sales organization that represents the product. A building owner should make sure that he has at least a couple of vendor choices locally, so that if he becomes unhappy or dissatisfied with his current vendor, he will have another option.

Q. How does the fire- and life-safety industry contribute to the green design movement?
A. It’s not specifically related to green design, but I will tell you that the number of notification appliances with low current draw on a circuit influences cost. Mass notification and voice evacuation systems are possibly impacted the most because of the need for amplification. Amplifiers are probably the most expensive piece of the puzzle. With a lower current draw, the number of notification appliances on a single loop can be increased. Anything having a lower current draw is advantageous.

Q. What should a building operator know about the importance of a life-safety system?
A. One of the reasons I think I have been successful in training is because I am so passionate about life safety. One of the things that I think the industry needs to get across to building owners is that they need to be more focused and concerned about life safety.

Most building owners are looking at fire alarms as a code driven requirement, not from a life-safety perspective for their personnel, and they need to change that concept. That’s not about sales for this company or anything thereabouts. It’s about things that I run into on a regular basis, like, “Do I have to do this?”How valuable are your employees, or associates, or the people that work for you? How much are their lives worth?

I don’t think the industry has done a good job of communicating that to the marketplace. This isn’t about somebody standing over you saying, “You have to do this.” It’s more about protecting your people and your property.