I know this is a touchy subject with a lot of people. I got my NICET 3 and even passed my level 4 in water based layout and design (I’m still waiting on the paperwork from NICET to get my level 4) before I got my level 2 in inspection of water based systems so I tend to look at inspections in a different light. Anyway, I had a boss who was a NICET 1 in water based inspections and he absolutely hated that I had several NICET certifications…especially since I licensed the company. I would write these areas up when I did inspections for the corporate company we both worked for. He would often take my inspection reports and rewrite them leaving out much of what I noted and then send them to the customer. A lot of times because he had inspected the property several times before and would miss these areas or even things like painted sprinkler heads (he was lazy and didn’t like to walk entire buildings to inspect the system). If my new reports brought up things he missed in the past he would get nasty calls from the customer wanting to know how his/her building had these issues and was never noted before. Why do I bring up my lazy ex boss? Because in one of the buildings we had both inspected I actually walked the entire property and found that years before the customer had built a big lean to on the side of the building. Under this addition the customer had added three big walk in coolers underneath it with zero fire sprinkler protection. I wrote it up and he took it off before sending the report to the customer. He claimed that the build could have been inspected by the AHJ when he got his C.O. and therefore it shouldn’t be noted on my inspection report. By that point I had become used to having bosses that would argue over or even would even get violent if they could be seen in a negative light in anyway so I just shut my mouth and went about my job as always. The problem is that part of the building caught fire and the customer lost all his coolers and the product that was in them. The sprinkler system in the building actually kept the fire from spreading into it before the fire department got there and put the fire out. The company got sued and my boss threw me under the bus. The owner called me into a meeting and wanted to know why he shouldn’t fire me. I produced my original report where I had wrote it up and I expected my boss to get fired. He didn’t. So what’s the moral of this long War and Peace sized email? I would mention it in my report. Even though it’s NFPA 13 Chapter 4 that brings up partially sprinklered buildings (and so does the IBC & IFC) and not NFPA 25; it’s a hazard that can drastically affect how the installed fire sprinkler system operates. I have seen NFPA 25 inspectors get pissed at me for saying these kind of things but it’s not only about protecting the building but about protecting the first responders. I was a volunteer fire fighter myself for years and I’m not sure if it’s still in the fire fighting handbook (being the edition that was out when I was a fire fighter was edition 4) but the handbook basically instructed fire fighters that they were allowed to enter a building, even if there was no potentially trapped individuals in it, “if” the building was protected by fire sprinklers. Having areas unprotected (no fire sprinklers) really wasn’t taken into consideration when they wrote the fire fighting handbook because when they wrote it they assumed that all fire sprinkler systems would be installed per NFPA 13. But take everything I say with a grain of salt. In my area and knowing what I know and even having 34 years of design and installation experience a guy like myself can’t even get paid enough to live in a single bedroom apartment anymore. I make considerably more money walking dogs a few times a day than a NICET 4 designer makes here 🤷♂️ Mike Stewart Dog Walker On Dec 20, 2024, at 12:50 PM, Josh McDonald <[email protected]> wrote:
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