Our firm will not allow anyone to work outside of their area of expertise, but some firms do. I received a call from a mechanical engineer a few years ago who was in desperate need of help; his boss appointed him as the company's FPE and he had no experience in any aspect of fire protection engineering (his previous responsibility was designing industrial valves).
Paul Pinigis, P.E. Life Safety Department Head -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Thom McMahon Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 3:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: another fire - this will be interesting Actually this is the engineering community's problem, not mine. You're the one's that allow incompetent work to be done by engineers that are neither qualified or trained to do it. Working "Outside their area of expertise" If all states licensed engineers by discipline or degree, or had some really effective bylaws and penalties for engineers that do work outside their knowledge or training it might help. Most states like Colorado allow the engineers to "Self Police" their brother engineers, and unless someone dies or a huge financial loss occurs, they rarely do more than send "censure notes" to fellow engineers.(Please don't be bad anymore, and take that 3 day NFPA 13 class, cause that's all the training you need to DESIGN fire sprinkler systems, because you already know everything else.) Just as there are good and bad contractors, there are good and bad engineers. To the good ones I apologize. To the good ones I say help your selves, do something about all the bad ones! For the good and bad contractors? Licensing doesn't work. But educating your AHj's can help ensure that shoddy work doesn't take place where you work. Raise the bar for everyone, don't stoop to the level of the competition. Thom McMahon, SET Firetech, Inc. 2560 Copper Ridge Dr P.O. Box 882136 Steamboat Springs, CO 80488 Tel: 970-879-7952 Fax: 970-879-7926 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Pinigis Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 12:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: another fire - this will be interesting There is your problem! You have electrical doing fire alarm and mechanical doing sprinkler!!! You just defined the need for a qualified FPE to perform those functions (and many more). Paul Pinigis, P.E. Life Safety Department Head _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field) _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum For Technical Assistance, send an email to: [email protected] To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[email protected] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
