I appreciate the thoughts. thank you very much. There was quite a leeway in ATCT design...but FP design seems to be converging in the last 10 years. FAA had a strong hand in writing some guidelines at 29 CFR 1960.20. But in it really, is nothing we did not know.
What would help, is the client saying what their performance objectives are. You said that as much yourselves. So, while I had done I bit of research before, upon prompting from this forum, I went back to the chore. http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/order/occ_safety/order3900/media/ch24.pdf not the most helpful read, as it is a politicized document. nonetheless, it does states what the primary object is: continuity of business operation such that all air traffic control is transferred prior to untenability. from that we can infer a heirarchy: 1. maintain guidance equipment and operations 2. get ATCT staff out. although their wording couches both in the same breath. Then the question of "how to get the job done..." becomes for me, a bit more interestin' the above doc is 1. big on pre-planning and operations management, which is an effective strategy in this highly regimented and controlled environment. They give their tower supervisors a good bit of leeway too, which makes use of common sense, if the supervisors have common sense. I can't see managing people whom juggle 7 airplanes in their brains, as a place where an absent-minded type would Peter Principal. 2. big on extinguishers, which makes sense too 3. given the mission critical function, I choose to tone down the fire alarm notification signal (something i favor in many non-sleeping occupancies) so as allow them to better focus on delivering the primary goal, "getting the planes down or redirected." 4. sprinklers are a shall, which makes sense for high fuel load areas underneath the Visual Control Room, but in mission critical rooms, I am still not convinced--unless that mirror-site takes the baton pass like a champion. And on that I just don't know squat. But where I am squeemish of mixing sprinkler water over ATC computer equipment, I am even less comfortable with pre-action. "Will it work?" is one question. "When will it fail from corrosion?" is another. 5. VESDA, is a winnah. 6. hand extinguishers? sure 7. I think they should have a tampered butterfly control valve in the VCR, just on the random-case of an unwanted discharge or if the fire is kaboshed. 8. standpipe hose connections WITH hose at each level. I know some VCRs that use Novec and leave out the water. I know some VCR's that use pre-action sprinkler and no other. I know some designers that won't talk specifics, which begs the question in the direction of do we really have a fire problem if we are not sharing information? Rather make a mistake here, than up there. thanks again for ALL the ideas, scot deal excelsior fire engineering _______________________________________________ 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)
