Hello Everyone,
Thanks for joining us for our second post about fire safety and fire prevention engineering.  Today, we are going to discuss the elements of property loss control; what goes into property loss control, how it is assessed, and how fire prevention engineers carry out such assessments.  Property loss control can be divided into six different sub-sections that qualify loss for a client, including the creation of loss procedures and audits of property loss for insurance claim reasons.  The easiest way to discuss the intricacies of property loss is to break down the ways in which fire prevention and safety engineers carry out all types of property loss control.
1) Audits: This is a physical survey of the property in question.  When an audit is done, it includes a risk assessment profile and data that insurance providers need in order to process, rate, and price insurance on a building.  Another factor that is addressed in an audit is ‘life safety features’ of a building, despite the fact that these factors are not an integral part of Property Loss Control, and are typically considered to be an entirely separate series of factors and specialty.
2) Alternative Solutions: One of the most important services that a fire engineering firm can provide to your family or business is to provide alternative solutions or recommendations from those provided by the in-house engineer for an insurance provider.  Often the recommendations made by these officials are standardized and are not accurately tailored to your building.  They are, therefore, not created to be of the best cost or benefit to the insured.  By having a fire engineer recommend solutions specific to your needs, you can both save money and ensure the safety of your property.  Moreover, this third party expert can often negotiate the alternative solutions so as to be of benefit to both you and the insurance company.  When shopping around for a fire suppression consultation expert, make sure to look into their track record of being able to negotiate such claims, as it is telling of their quality as a company.
3) Negotiation of Alternatives: Negotiation of Alternatives flows nicely from our last point.  This aspect of Property Loss Control, as mentioned about, typically pertains to negotiating with insurance companies, but could relate to governmental agencies as well.  These negotiations work well because the fire engineering specialist understands both the technical aspects of the issue in question and the objectives of local authorities.  Quite often, fire engineers are able to create, vouch for, and institute creative, exceptional, and cost-effective fire safety solutions for companies and families alike.

Stay posted for the remainder of our discussion of Property Loss Control

Hello everyone, we all know how important fire safety is, but how much do we know about fire safety mechanisms and how they work?  This is the initial post of a short series on fire safety and fire protection.  Its better to be safe than sorry!

When one designs any fire safety system, there are a few factors to take into account, such as: What should the performance objectives of the system be? How is this different from the needs of another building, or another client?  What is the smoke ventilation system protecting?  This is especially important with regards to buildings that are used for the storage of goods and food.  Smoke ventilation systems are vital to preserving the quality of food that might have gone through a fire.  The success of a smoke ventilation and fire engineering and prevention system is not only whether or not is keeps everyone safe and limits damage to the structure itself, but also the level at which is preserves any goods or food that may have been stored in the facility.  We like to think that, when our fire protection engineers design new custom systems, we are able to have companies thousands of potential dollars in lost goods, equipment and space.  Therefore, the performance objectives of any system rely on the end result in case of a fire.  But how do you measure the quality of a system before a fire?
The best way to ensure that the smoke ventilation and fire protection system that you have is up to code and is sophisticated enough to stop a fire from damaging stored goods is to have a professional fire protection engineer do a survey of your building’s system and analyze the places where the system could be improved.
Smoke ventilation serves multiple purposes depending on what other systems are in place within the building.  Without sprinklers, a smoke ventilation system is the only fire prevention and protection element of defense, at least until the fire department is able to arrive. However, with a sprinkler system in place, the smoke ventilation system plays quite another role.  Since a good sprinkler system can, in effect, do the work of both a sprinkler system and a smoke ventilation system.  Since the level of smoke in any fire is directly proportional to how hot the fire is burning, and the heat release rate, the sprinklers will decrease the amount of smoke produced by the fire, and then a smoke ventilation system is able to make the smoke leave the facility at a rapid rate.  The end result? Less damage to your goods and food stored in the facility, which means less of a hassle and (more importantly) less of a loss in damages.  In summary, it is vital to hire a fire protection engineer to develop a fire safety and protection program for you.  In the end, we all hope that our facilities won’t catch fire, but it is better to be safe if they do.