Chris,
What I am finding is that the building code official drives the review process
for tenant fit out projects. In the jurisdictions around here the building code
officials are requiring a tenant fit out plan, which requires a evaluation of
the existing sprinkler system against the type and configuration of the new
tenants operations and storage configurations, along with egress analysis,
emergency lighting and occupancy loads, signed and sealed by a FPE as part of
the Certificate of Occupancy process. If the tenant or landlord does not
comply, a person who drives a car with lights on top, and carries chrome
bracelets attaches a lock and sign noting that the building is not to be
occupied and the permit fees are tripled upon reapplication for a building
permit. After one good public hanging all of the other tenant/landlords begin
to follow the process. This process is required by the building code for
changes in occupancy and or tenant fit outs in these jurisdictions. When the
landlord/tenant lawyers meet with the township officials, the enabling
legislation is reviewed by all and the landlord/tenant then comply with the
legal authorities.
With regard to including in NFPA 25 I vote NO because it is covered by the
legal building code in most jurisdictions, it is up to the building code
official to enforce the requirements under the permitting requirements of the
jurisdiction for occupancy change or tenant fit out. Also by including the
system evaluation in NFPA 25 you will open all sprinkler contractors and
inspection contractors to untold liabilities by plaintiffs' legal teams by
placing the target of liability on the sprinkler/inspection contractor. The
plaintiffs' bar will use this as a new income stream by direct suits
representing a plaintiff or as a representative of the plaintiff property
insurance trying to subrogate against the sprinkler contractor, which is
relativity new since the 1980's when sprinklers were mandated by the building
codes. Before that time frame sprinkler systems were mandated by the property
insurance carriers; the sprinkler system design; shop drawing review;
inspection during installation; and compliance field review and acceptance
testing were done by the property insurance carriers engineers (FPE's), at that
time the property insurance carriers did not subrogate against the sprinkler
system contractor since the systems were installed because of the property
insurance carrier. Today most property insurance carriers consider subrogation
against a sprinkler contractor a given, some even have contingency contracts
with national law firms to subrogate against sprinkler and inspection
contractors on any loss involving a sprinkler system. IF you want to add to the
ammunition that the plaintiff's bar can use against the contractor or even the
NFPA committee process then add requirements to evaluate existing sprinkler
systems into NFPA.
Regards
Jim
DAVIDSON ASSOCIATES
Fire Protection Engineering P. O. Box 4010
Code Consultants Greenville, DE 19807-0010
Medical Gas Systems Engineering (302) 994-9500
Fax (302) 234-1781
CONFIDENTIALITY
This report and any attachments are confidential and also may be privileged.
If you are not the named recipient, or have otherwise received this report in
error, please destroy the report, notify the sender immediately, and do not
disclose its contents to any other person, use them for any purpose, or store
or copy them in any medium.
Thank you for your cooperation.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Cahill,
Christopher
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 5:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: NFPA25 scope
I think all would agree with what you said. I think the question asked was
woulda, coulda, shoulda NFPA add system evaluation?
Roland's question was 'One of the question is should verifying the adequacy of
the sprinkler system be part of an NFPA 25 inspection or some other NFPA
document?'
Chris Cahill, PE*
Senior Fire Protection Engineer
Burns & McDonnell
8201 Norman Center Drive
Bloomington, MN 55437
Phone: 952.656.3652
Fax: 952.229.2923
[email protected]
www.burnsmcd.com
Proud to be one of FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For *Registered in: MN
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jim
Davidson
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 3:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: NFPA25 scope
To all,
NFPA 25 is a document that defines what the committee has defined what is the
minimum level of testing, inspection and maintenance is required of water based
fire protection systems as defined in the scope of the document "1.1 Scope.
This document establishes the minimum requirements for the periodic inspection,
testing, and maintenance of water-based fire protection systems, including
land-based and marine applications." Paragraph 1.1.2 further defines scope
"The types of systems addressed by this standard include, but are not limited
to, sprinkler, standpipe and hose, fixed water spray, and foam water. Included
are the water supplies that are part of these systems, such as private fire
service mains and appurtenances, fire pumps and water storage tanks, and valves
that control system flow. The document also addresses impairment handling and
reporting. This standard applies to fire protection systems that have been
properly installed in accordance with generally accepted practices. Where a
system has not been installed in accordance with generally accepted practices,
the corrective action is beyond the scope of this standard. The corrective
action to ensure that the system performs in a satisfactory manner shall be in
accordance with the appropriate
installation standard."
There are no NFPA standards that require a legally (properly permitted and
properly designed to the legal standard at time of installation) installed
sprinkler system to be upgraded when the standards change. What are we trying
to do, make sprinkler contractor's and inspection contractor's liability
insurance unaffordable, and a new profit stream for the legal community. It is
not the job of the inspecting contractor to fix the problems of the original
sprinkler system approval process misadventures. Design problems should be pick
up during the approval process and system acceptance testing by the AHJ or
their representatives along with the Owners design team. The evaluation of
the sprinkler system design vs occupancy classification can be done legally at
time of building or tenant occupancy change by the AHJ in accordance with the
codes.
Your inspection reports are being sent to the owner, in a separate letter to
the Owner the contractor should note that there has been a reduction in the
pressure/flow of the water supply since the last flow test. The same applies to
fire pump test etc., the problems with changes in storage is a change in
occupancy classification and should be addressed by the AHJ at the time of
occupancy change.
The redrawing of the systems and recalculation of the system is the work of the
owner's fire protection engineer not a sprinkler contractor but if the
contractor wants to play engineer go ahead but do not say after the fact "I am
not an engineer but a contractor, I'm not liable."
The bad sprinkler systems installations are why more jurisdictions are looking
at contractor licensing laws.
Regards
Jim
DAVIDSON ASSOCIATES
Fire Protection Engineering P. O. Box 4010
Code Consultants Greenville, DE 19807-0010
Medical Gas Systems Engineering (302) 994-9500
Fax (302) 234-1781
CONFIDENTIALITY
This report and any attachments are confidential and also may be privileged.
If you are not the named recipient, or have otherwise received this report in
error, please destroy the report, notify the sender immediately, and do not
disclose its contents to any other person, use them for any purpose, or store
or copy them in any medium.
Thank you for your cooperation.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Cahill,
Christopher
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 2:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: NFPA25 scope
Absolutely, but I see a lot of issues that CLEARLY need to be spelled out in
GREAT detail. No place for wishy-washy language that lawyers will use against
contractors.
Some examples of issues to tackle:
Change in water flow tests. Well, do I even need a test? Current argument
about backflows and whether there needs to be measurements. Most AHJ's expect
hose monsters.
Change in codes that change the design even though the occupancy has not
changed. I have a hangar built for 2-747's to the 1967 NFPA 409. Guess what,
foam is not required but today not possible without foam. We've learned about
storage. We used to have 3 OH curves.
Speaking of storage I went through this as an AHJ a lot in the 90's. We asked
those with high-piled storage to prove they had not changed their height or
commodities from the original install and the original install met the codes at
the time. Because if you didn't change you were deemed compliant by the code
at least. Almost, none could prove they complied. Seemed up to about 16'
class III was ok but higher, tires or plastics seems to fail.
We all know there are a lot of deficient installations. What do we do with a
year old system that won't work for whatever reason?
How about obstruction issues?
And much of the original designs are lost about a week after occupancy. Are we
tracing pipe? Re-doing calcs for old system.
And we all know really bad installations put out a lot of fire as long as the
valve is open. My recollection is if the valve is open and no one interferes
in the operation during the fire NFPA stats are 97% successful? Sorry, been a
while since I read the report. If this effort would only deal with the
remaining 3% is it worth it? Perhaps this should start as a targeted approach,
hospitals, nursing homes and schools? Although, one of my kids just started
high school, building isn't that old. I've only been there a couple times and
each time I see a spacing or obstruction deficiencies. I can only imagine what
a review of the calc's and pipe size would reveal. Am I concerned, only a
little, see first sentence of this paragraph. Maybe storage? You'll note I
didn't say residential yet. IMHO it's even harder to screw those up such to
create a risk. Yes, I know it can be done!
Don't get me wrong I believe existing systems should get a good review at some
point. NFPA 25 is already felt to building owners to be a money grab for
contractors. Telling them I need to spend 100's of hours redrawing and
re-calc'ing a system will result in revolt. Then I tell them the original
installation didn't meet code, then they need a pump because water decayed.....
Chris Cahill, PE*
Senior Fire Protection Engineer
Burns & McDonnell
8201 Norman Center Drive
Bloomington, MN 55437
Phone: 952.656.3652
Fax: 952.229.2923
[email protected]
www.burnsmcd.com
Proud to be one of FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For *Registered in: MN
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roland
Huggins
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 9:13 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: NFPA25 scope
ACtually this issue is much broader than NFPA 25. NFPA is asking the question,
what if anything that it do to reduce the number of failures of the sprinkler
system to control the fire (due to changes of contents changes in the water
supply, etc where the water discharge is not enough to control the fire). One
of the question is should verifying the adequacy of the sprinkler system be
part of an NFPA 25 inspection or some other NFPA document?
That is the starting point for this thread. What do you gals and guys think?
Roland
Roland Huggins, PE - VP Engineering
American Fire Sprinkler Assn. --- Fire Sprinklers Saves Lives
Dallas, TX
http://www.firesprinkler.org
On Nov 5, 2013, at 10:09 PM, "Douglas Hicks" <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://www.nfpa.org/newsandpublications/nfpa-journal/2013/november-dec
> ember-2013/features/closer-look?order_src=C246
>
> More on 25 and the scope of 25.
> _______________________________________________
> Sprinklerforum mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkl
> er.org
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