Fire Science Show
Fire Science Show
209 - Updates from the SFPE with Chris Jelenewicz
In this podcast episode, I invited Chris Jelenewicz, the CEO of SFPE, to bring me up to date on the society. The SFPE Handbook on Fire Protection Engineering is undergoing a major revision with the sixth edition expected by summer's end, expanding to five volumes with significant new content on emerging topics like wildland fires and lithium-ion batteries. In this episode, we cover how the handbook is written, edited and when it will be released to the public.
Some highlights from the episode include:
• The new handbook will feature 11 sections, 104 chapters, and contributions from over 200 authors
• New innovative "living document" approach allowing updates without waiting for full revision cycles
• First-ever introductory chapter on the history and evolution of fire protection engineering
• Expanded content on wildland-urban interface fires, growing from one chapter to seven
• New chapters addressing lithium-ion batteries, fire safety during construction, and fire extinguishment fundamentals
• Multiple access options: print volumes, online subscription, and individual chapter purchases
• Available through university libraries via SpringerLink
• More global perspective with international contributions
We have also discussed the incoming SFPE events, including the Annual Conference in Vancouver (October 2025), celebrating SFPE's 75th anniversary, a Storage Symposium at UL in Chicago (August 2025), and a Battery Symposium in Lisbon (November 2025).
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Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. In today's episode we will be talking about one of the most important knowledge resources we have as fire protection engineers and that is the SFP Handbook on Fire Protection Engineering. I think every fire engineer knows it. I've learned about it pretty late in my professional educations but since I found it it has been perhaps one of the most influential knowledge resources I've ever found, truly. And the fifth handbook is a little bit dusty already. It was published almost 10 years ago so it really needs a revision and SFB knows that, and the revision has been cooking for many, many recent years.
Speaker 1:I had a podcast episode 100 episodes ago with Chris Silenowicz. We were talking a little bit about SFP and handbook. Back then he promised the handbook is coming. We know that it's closer and closer, so I've invited CJ once again to the podcast to discuss the state of the handbook. Where are we with the sixth revision? When can we expect it? And, of course, besides this one most important question, I've asked plenty more to CJ about how this handbook is actually built, how the editorial process looks like, because it's a little bit different than what you used from the conferences or publications like journals. I've also asked him about the innovations in the handbook. So what's new in this new book? Why should we be looking forward for that? And there's plenty, plenty of new content that's going to be very interesting in the handbook outside of the revised chapters. We've also had a chance to briefly talk about other SFP activities and, of course, Chris brought a lot of interesting, good bits of knowledge from the SFP universe. Let's call it like that. So, whether you are looking for the SFP handbook or not, I'm still sure this episode will be very interesting, because it's just fascinating to know how a book with more than 200 authors is produced and delivered to you. So let's not prolong this anymore. Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Firesize Show. My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host. The FireSense Show is into its third year of continued support from its sponsor, OFR Consultants, who are an independent, multi-award-winning fire engineering consultancy with a reputation for delivering innovative, safety-driven solutions. As the UK-leading independent fire risk consultancy, OFR's globally established team have developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and the plant Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business by two highly experienced fire engineering consultants. The business continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, with offices across the country in eight locations, from Edinburgh to Bath, and plans for future expansions. If you're keen to find out more or join OFR Consultants during this exciting period of growth, visit their website at ofrconsultantscom. And now back to the episode. Hello everybody. I am here joined today by Chris Jelanovic CJ. Hello, Chris.
Speaker 2:Hello Wichek, my friend, it's an honor to be on the Fireside Show and you know, before we get started here, I really want to start by congratulating you for receiving the SFPE European Fire Safety Engineering Award that you received at our recent conference in Edinburgh. I think it's a great honor. I think you're always second person to receive that award and it was a great conference. Dougal Drysdale was there. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award, so it was great to see you to get that award and it just was a topping for a great conference we had.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, man. I mean, it was such an honor and it was really a surprise. They really have not told me I'm technically the board member responsible for those and those items magically disappeared from the board at some point and I actually sat in the table with them looking like a fool and they gave me an award. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Well, they did a great job and I was well-referenced. It was very well-concealed.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's a huge honor and I appreciate it a lot. And you know, sfp has always been a big part of my life and I'm happy that SFP also sees some value in stuff that I'm doing. So, yeah, big thanks to the SFP, eurovan and SFP in general. I mean it's a good relationship we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think an important part of SFP is honoring our members that are doing great things, and you're doing some great things here with the Fireside Show, getting the word out about fire science and also fire protection or fire safety engineering throughout the world.
Speaker 1:Thanks man, Thanks man. Let's talk that exactly fire protection engineering. Around the world there's a lot of people practicing fire protection engineer and one thing that connects those people is a book that all of them are using, and you know exactly which book I'm talking about is one hell of a book, and its previous version does weigh exactly 9.4 kilograms if you put all three books on top of each other, CJ. Where is the handbook and when we're going to see it? We would love to see the handbook. It's a massive piece that the society is waiting. I brought you here to tell us what's the plan to release.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're working on the sixth edition of the Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering. We're looking to be publishing this by the end of summer, certainly before the end of the year. We're very excited about the next edition because there's going to be a lot of new cool content. Just like the last edition, it'll be available in print if you would like a book. This time you mentioned three books. This time it's going to be five books, wow.
Speaker 2:That's really showing how our profession is growing. So, yeah, it's gonna be five books, but you could also purchase you know, if you don't want five books, they have to carry around with you wherever you go. Uh, you have the opportunity to have purchased the handbook online, which you could do now too, through Springer, our publishing partner, springer. And you could also, if you wanted, to purchase individual chapters, which is very great for people, especially people like students, right, who don't need every single chapter. And another unique thing about this handbook that I don't think a lot of people know that it is available in many college libraries through what is called SpringerLink, so you could just go. If you were a student, you could just go to your college library and say I want to look at this chapter on human behavior and you could just pop it up.
Speaker 1:I have no idea about that. So it's like a system for academia that people, people.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting thing, yeah they'd have to be part of the springer lake. And the other thing about it is, for example, one of our most downloaded chapters in the whole handbook is the chapter on conduction. Nobody would believe that if they were just looking at virus, at the engineers. But when you think about it, colleges throughout the world you maybe a student in a mechanical engineering, heat transfer class had to do some work with conduction and they could just pull up that chapter pretty easily by just going to their library.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really good. Do you know how outstanding is that chapter versus other heat transfer modes? That would be an interesting comparison.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, the last I saw the data was about a year ago, but the heat transfer chapters were all very popular, with induction being the most popular. Oh, man.
Speaker 1:You need to exploit this as a business model, like fire protection engineering, providing the world with outstanding heat transfer chapters to fund key research for fire science.
Speaker 2:Hey, any way we could get the word out about fire protected or fire safety engineering is a great thing right, I'm looking into the handbook context.
Speaker 1:Yes, convection heat transfer, third chapter, arvind Atreya, student of Howard Emmons. I think that's a good chapter, that's a good, that's a good legacy of fire science and fire engineering. Good, chris. So five books, springerlink that's great. I also think Springer has some sort of subscription schemes or other ways where you could purchase actually parts of the books from the entire Springer ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's many ways. For example, sfp has a SFP series that's part of Springer ecosystem. Yeah, yeah, there's many ways. And, for example, sfpe has a SFPE series that's part of Springer. So all the SFPE guides are published on the SFPE series. The handbook is part of the SFPE series, but also there's a number of other books about fire protection topics, for example, fire Protection Environment by Brian Meacham. We're working on other books. There's a structural fire protection handbook that's available there. So there's many different ways that we work with Springer and, like I said, our goal is to get as much technical content out to the fire protection community as possible.
Speaker 1:But because of the Springer partnership I guess they run the distribution scheme. You're not planning something like an FBA link where there would be just you know, sfp subscription service where you could just log in and get all of that?
Speaker 2:No, everything will be through Springer. Everything will be through Springer. One good advantage of working with them is that we just get a greater global reach. Originally we were selling some of our guides right out of our office at SFPE. I'll use our human behavior engineering guide as an example. The first edition that we sold at SFPE we probably sold 300 to 500 copies. The first week we published the second edition through Springer we were already selling over a thousand copies. So to get that reach is really helpful for our profession. The show can give us visibility.
Speaker 1:I mean being in this kind of, you know, influencer space, let's say, or creator economy, or maybe that's the proper word for me being in a creator economy. A lot of people are discussing in here whether you should self publish your books, should you go with a classical publisher, and of course, every model has its pros and cons. Yeah, I've never seen this being an easy choice. It's usually extremely elaborate discussions and, whether you end up with one or another, there's usually some little key things that you simply cannot achieve the other way. Five books Tell me, how did you divide the books? What are the themes of the books? Or it's random. I dubbed this random.
Speaker 2:What are the themes?
Speaker 2:No, it's not actually random.
Speaker 2:What we did is is, before we started the work on the sixth edition, we put together a committee to look at how we distribute the handbook and what's the content in the handbook, and a committee included past editorial members, authors, people who were fire educators, who had no relationship with the handbook, and they brought together a few suggestions for the sixth edition, and one of the main suggestions was to bring back the sections, and what I mean by that is, you know, the last edition was just a listing of chapters, but the previous editions were divided into different sections, and what the recommendation came out to be is that they wanted to have 11 different sections and each one represents a significant topic in fire safety engineering.
Speaker 2:So we actually divided it up by 11 sections and, as we go along with the five different books, that doesn't really matter what book it's in. It's just that one book might have two sections, other books might have three sections. It's really based on the amount of content available, and then when you look at it online, you wouldn't even notice the five books. You just see 11 sections per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of makes sense. For some reason. I remember well Handbook version 3, I think when I was starting my university, version 3 was the one that was available, at least to us. I remember it had those sections. It was very convenient really. I think Handbook version 3, the last one there was a single book. I vaguely remember that. I think it was one book back. The last one. It was a single book. I vaguely remember that. I think it was one book back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, could be yes. So now we're going to 5. And, like I said, it's just some interesting stats. Actually, before this morning I wrote down some interesting stats that I think people might find interesting. First of all, we're going to have five books, 11 sections, and then there's 11 sections, there's 104 chapters, okay, plus an annex that has the material properties that people are probably familiar with. The annex content when we submitted the manuscript to Springer, it was almost exactly 5,000 pages of Word document.
Speaker 1:What kind? Of computer opens that.
Speaker 2:So you can imagine, today you had to send 5,000 pages.
Speaker 2:You need this supercomputer to open the Word manuscript we have 21 editorial board members, that each section has two section editors that are part of the editorial board and we have over 200 authors.
Speaker 2:Wow, of those 104 chapters.
Speaker 2:Uh, we this that the one new thing we're doing this time is we wanted to ensure that we had two authors for every chapter so we could have some kind of continuity when we go into future editions.
Speaker 2:So, or if you know, even during the process of some person you know retired or wasn't interested in walking in the Hamburg anymore, that we'd have more continuity at that. And then the other new thing we did this time is we had what we would call we called it a peer review, but it's not necessarily officially a peer review of the fifth edition, but we asked our members to review the fifth edition and offer suggestions for the sixth edition, and we had over 35 of our members participate in this peer review process that provided feedback on the different chapters of the handbook. So when the author started the sixth edition, you know there wasn't any mandate, like you would have in a journal review, that you follow these recommendations, but it was something to think about. Say, hey, we would like to see more information about this or we'd like to see less information about that topic, and it worked out very well, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how do you handle like legacy chapters, because there were chapters in SFP handbook that would be written, you know, by very well esteemed members of community who retired. There are their like successors right now. Did you keep the big names at the chapters or some of them are now a completely new set of peoples? For me, the important chapter is the visibility chapter and, yeah, that's fundamental for my research. It starts on page 2181 in Handbook version 5. You can check that. That's my relationship with that chapter.
Speaker 2:You know that's an interesting question you bring up, but that was something that we thought about early on. But that was something that we thought about early on and you know it's a very delicate situation where you know you want to give credit to the people who provided the majority of the content but at the same time you know there wasn't. You know those people were not even interested in working on it anymore for various reasons, and sometimes they recommended the people to take over your chapter. Sometimes, you know, we, as our editorial board, find the best people that we are and I would say almost everyone is a case-by-case basis depending on a chapter, depending on, you know, the content that's involved, on how you know you want to give credit to those people that worked on it before.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. You know that our field has matured, that you know there are already many generational fire safety engineers and a lot has progressed, and the fact that some knowledge has been superseded by a newer knowledge, it's just a sign of maturity of the profession. It's not that the previous knowledge was wrong or incorrect. By this definition, the entire science is wrong because it will be superseded by a better science one day. So, by default, everything we did will be overwritten one day. That's how the science develops. But again, the handbook is also not a museum. It's, uh, it's a working piece that that people are going to be using in their everyday's work and it's critically important for them to have access to the newest and, uh, best defined knowledge. Um, in terms of of the chapters, so there's 104, there used to be 90 ish. So can you tease like what? Did you remove some chapters? Did you add some, uh, completely new chapters from the scratch? The little, what can?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, well, there's a lot of new. Like you said, our own profession is always evolving and, uh, you know, I think the biggest thing we've been seeing in the last 10 years is, uh, emerging topics. A lot of them related to the environment, right. So, for example, section 11, a whole section. We'll have now a whole section on wildland open interface fires. Okay, where previously we had one chapter in the fifth edition, well, now I have seven chapters related to wildland interface fires, everything from human behavior and evacuation to health issues, to exposure threats to structures and, of course, you know how do we model wildland fires. So a lot of new content right there. Other, you know, emerging issues that we'll see. New stuff is lithium ion batteries. We never had a chapter, and a chapter like that is such a challenge because as soon as that chapter is drafted, the technology is changing already.
Speaker 1:I struggle to keep up with a podcast and I'm very, very responsive, so I can only imagine how hard it must be when you have a book.
Speaker 2:And then the other new topics that we're going to be seeing are. You know, sometimes we said, hey, how come we never had a chapter on firewalls and passive fire protection before we sat around and said, well, do we really need to have something on that? Fire safety during construction and demolition you know it was always an important topic but of course, in the last 10 years we're seeing we were seeing more fires in building and construction that we ever saw, so we'll now have a chapter in that they're also. I'm really you know one thing I was really excited about.
Speaker 2:The first chapter will be entitled Introduction to Fire Protection Engineering, which we never had a chapter on the profession itself. Like, hey, you know, back in the old days of ancient Rome they had the big, we burned to the ground and other cities were burning to the ground. That was like the first fire protection engineering. We saw where people were thinking about water supplies or distances between buildings or non-combustible construction, right. So how we've evolved from those days throughout the generations to where we are now today. And we have Jim Queter and Peter Johnson I think everybody knows those two names that wrote that chapter. To give us a background, and let me tell us what our profession is about.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's nice. I mean, yeah, like when you mention it, it feels like it was missing. I like when I was reading a a handbook or using the handbook, it was not something that would be something that I would immediately say, oh, we need that. But now that you mentioned it, I want that chapter. That sounds lovely.
Speaker 1:Another question I have about the handbook design is you know also the? The society is in a very different uh, by the side, I mean, sfp is in a very different position than in 2016. 2016, we were all enjoying beers in warsaw, I believe. Uh, well, I'm still, but the society is is global. Now, when we talk about fundamentals of fire science and there's, you know, heat transfer chapters, compartment fire dynamics, all of that is universal, but a lot of content in the handbook. When you move into the technology chapters, you know smoke controls, expression systems, sprinkler systems, those technical system designs. They were very US-centric, from my perspective at least. Is this something you've also addressed in this handbook, or you do not see that as an issue? I mean, I don't see that as a direct issue, but perhaps there's also an opportunity to introduce American designers to more international perspectives and globalize this a little bit together our editorial board and the authors of each of the chapters.
Speaker 2:You know we really wanted to have a more global look at some of these topics, so you'll see that just the fact that the editorial board has much more diversity as far as the global wire protection in the world consists of, so we have editors from all throughout the world, we have authors throughout the world and even on the sections on systems, of course a lot of these, especially the water-based systems, have a lot of US-centric stuff, but I could say that I think a lot of the world still looks at the United States when it comes to those kind of things, but we are seeing a lot more diversity in that.
Speaker 2:The section on fire protection systems is the largest section, where it's going to have 15 different chapters through everything from water-based systems, smoke control, the fire alarm. One area where we got a lot of uh participation from outside the united states is the area water mist systems that the water mist association actually contacted us and offered a peer review of that chapter and helped us guide us to having a more, you know, globalized chapter in that area. And then the one area that we didn't have a chapter on before was the fundamentals of fire extinguishment. You know the chemistry, the physics behind fire extinguishment. That is going to be a new chapter. The physics behind fire extinguishment that is going to be a new chapter and we had some great authors from FM provide us guidance on that. That was never before in the HEM.
Speaker 1:I mean it's kind of interesting. I wonder if it will ever evolve in such a way that the fundamentals part will separate themselves from the engineering parts. I mean, but on the other hand, it's not that you design a sprinkler system in accordance with SFP handbook, no, you use it to understand the fundamentals, the principles, the rules, the general. You know ideas behind the design and then you have to reach to your NFPA 13 or whatever to design the system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, Exactly. That's what's intended to be right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's in any section almost. Yeah, I mean it's like this philosophical thing, because the handbook is not going to replace the standards, the handbook is not going to replace the entirety of the technical knowledge, but then again, if a person gets the handbook chapter in their hand, it should kickstart them to a really good position in tackling the technical challenge that they're battling. I hope that's the philosophy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the other interesting thing you mentioned about the standards or the codes, right, is that one of our action items or our goals at SFPE is to not only, you know, publish these documents but to get our documents referenced in the international codes and standards. So that could be working with the ISO TC92 subcommittee for committee. It could be working with the NFPA committees. It could be working with the NFPA committees. It could be working with the International Billing Code.
Speaker 2:When you reference, you have a section on, for example, a lot of codes say, hey, you need to do a risk analysis for this right, but they don't really tell you how you do the risk analysis. So we joined the reference how you do the risk analysis. So we joined the reference. You know, when we see a section like that, hey, for mass notification system, we'd like you to do a risk analysis, Well, we like to look at these codes and go to the code making process and have the specific chapters of our handbook that would be applicable to this. You know reference somewhere in the code or standard itself. So after they say, you know, do a risk analysis, maybe an annex or a side note would say, well, check out the SFP handbook when you're doing this risk analysis.
Speaker 1:As your main reference technical background. That makes sense. And how do you mean like one challenging thing in such a book as SFP Handbook? So the previous edition was published in 2015,. 10 years has passed. Yeah, it's inevitable that it's not up to date with the newest codes and standards. Like, if you look at something like NFPA 502 and the critical velocity drama, it's changed like five times or four times in the last five editions of NFPA 502 and the critical velocity drama, it's changed like five times or four times in the last five editions of NFPA 502. So almost impossible to keep up with that. Do you even try? Do you even try to keep up with those changes? Or the handbook is not intended to provide technical nuances that are covered by standards and just end at the general philosophical concepts. Where do you put the line?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, going back to that committee I mentioned, that was asked to provide recommendations and one of their recommendations also was that once we get the sixth edition published, we get the sixth edition published. We work with Springer to make this more of a living document. So, as opposed to every seven or so years, we're going to publish a new version of a handbook. That this sixth edition will be the basis for moving forward where, if a new emerging technology does pop up and the editorial board feels there is a need for maybe a new chapter on something, we wouldn't wait that seven years. We could just have that written and approved by the editorial board and then hosted in the living addition that Springer has.
Speaker 2:Or maybe a certain topic is evolving, like the lithium ion batteries, that we need to make some changes that can last for the next five years, right to be applicable, so we could go right in and make those changes. So, of course, the people who have the horror bound book you know who bought it before would not see those changes, but anybody moving forward because the books are printed on demand would see those new changes. And then also, if you had an online access subscription to the handbook, you would also be able to see those changes in the handbook when they happen. So I think that was an important part of one of the recommendations that we implement this. So we will be. Once we get this part published, the sixth edition we will be working with our publishing partner to find a way to do this with living. Springer does have a few living documents that they work with already, so I think that would be a major change and an advancement that will make this much better by access to Springer event, the Springer link that we discussed previously, right.
Speaker 2:Well, it could be the Springer link, or it could be just through the subscription that you purchase through them okay, but the hardbook owners will not be eligible to just download the pdf of the update. Well, they will be, which they will be depending on when they order the book right, you ordered a book today, you wouldn't get it right yeah, of course say you ordered it next year, you would get the change because it is on-demand printing.
Speaker 1:So we've touched this briefly the last time 100 episodes ago when you were in the show. But how are you going to manage the version control of that? Like, how will people reference those chapters? Should they reference them with the date of publication? Will they have some specific identifiers? I guess the DOI numbers will be different for different versions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll start to work that out with Springer. Like I said, we'll probably start working on that the day we get this published.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess you have bigger things on your head now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we want to get this first part done and then move on to the other. But that is an important thing that we'll have to be able to show how we reference it because, of course, at Orlin Corp, the publication process right.
Speaker 1:Editing such a massive book. Can you share some background details, even if they're not pretty? How does it look like? How long ahead do you need to have those chapters from? Let's now assume that it is published by the end of the summer. Does it mean the printers are already running? How long does it take from the authors to deliver you the last, final, lastest draft to the print? And what's happening between?
Speaker 2:Yeah, surprisingly you. You know, once they get everything into the system, the first draft, what you know, we get to see those proofs and make comments, but after that it moves very quickly. The hard, I think the hardest part of the publication process is, you know them just entering in the initial data, getting the figures in, getting the equations in and all that. But after that, once they make the changes, it moves pretty quickly, surprisingly quick.
Speaker 1:The process is similar to submission of a journal paper. You get some sort of Word template document which you fill and there are guidance. Can you explain the process for those who never had a chance to publish a Springer or SFP handbook chapter? There's only 200 who did so. Majority of my listeners will be not SFP handbook authors.
Speaker 2:And the way the process works. You know the section editor will go to the author and say hey, we want to see a chapter on fire scenarios, right, and you get a certain amount of time to write this chapter. So the author will write the chapter, they'll submit it to the section editor and the section editor will have some comments.
Speaker 1:But is it like free form? I write whatever I like in a Word file.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we give a lot of free range to our authors. There's a certain amount of things we want to see, like not necessarily the way you do the references, because we could adjust that to our style, but this is how we'd like to see the equations for man this is like.
Speaker 2:We want to see a listing of the different acronyms in your chapter. Yeah, we would like to see it in this kind of this a, b and c. So there is some initial guidance there, but basically the content itself. It's really up to the author to work with the section editors to decide how that's going to turn out at the end. But I could say that the editors give a lot of free range to the authors to really discuss the things they want to discuss, because actually they're the people that are considered the experts in that chapter, so it should be really up to them.
Speaker 2:Um, once it goes through the section editors, it comes through me, the the editor-in-chief, and we send that off to springer. Like I said, we had a date and we sent 5 000 word document pages to them. They then it becomes kind of like a black hole where they take the documents, they put it into latex format latex format I mean. So some of our authors actually are very good with latex and submit. A few of the authors have submitted their documents in that. So that's part of the translation process from word document to a latex document and then comes out of the black hole back the black box, say back to us where we get some proofs.
Speaker 1:Uh once again, thousand pages of proofs.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so we divide it up to the authors and say, hey, you know. So you'll see two thing. One, this will be the last time for you to correct your content, if you want to add more content, but also to make sure that springer got the equations correctly. So you, the authors, will review that. But the other thing the author will see is springer will. The publisher will have questions that are going to say this doesn't look like this reference number lines up with the reference that you chose, or the number of equations got at a number you know, chapter 27, equation 8, and then there's the equation 10. Where did the other ones go? So they ask those kind of questions that the publisher really wants to know to make sure the book is formatted properly, or maybe a common question where he goes. That figure is not good enough to respond to new features. So then we have to respond to all their questions too.
Speaker 1:Do you have chapters cross-referencing themselves each other, Like chapter 7 referencing oh, you can find this in table 19, in chapter 11, for example?
Speaker 2:exactly. Yes, there's a lot of cross-referencing going on so we have to check all that. So, for example, the chapter on performance-based design, right, have a lot of cross-referencing where you know, do a risk analysis, we'll Go to this chapter on risk. Or if you want to do, say, a human behavior evacuation study or an ASET or RSET analysis, go to that chapter. So there's a lot of that in a chapter like the performance-based design chapter that relies on you know, it's kind of compilation of all the chapters. How do you work between that?
Speaker 1:yeah, that that's a mess. I mean I, I can only imagine how, how messy that is, not in terms it's bad, I mean in terms of how complicated and how much care has been done to to manage that. So, yeah, I mean I, I can just imagine how, what it takes to edit a book with 5 000 pages, as that that's a ridiculous task. Let's move to some other, because sfp is not just producing handbook, he's doing a lot of amazing stuff. Risk Guide Can we talk? Risk Guide Are you talking?
Speaker 2:about the performance-based design standard. I think you're talking about yeah, sorry, no problem. Going back to the Risk Guide, about three years ago we released the second edition of the risk guide. We're going to, probably by the end of this year, the start of 26, put together, bring the risk task group back together and working on the third edition of that guide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sorry. Of course I meant the performance-based guide, that's okay.
Speaker 2:I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:But the performance-based design guide. Greg Baker is the chair of that standard-making group and we have a pretty good first draft that the committee is going to be taking a look at as a whole. So when we work through these guides or standards, it's similar but a lower scale than the handbook, where we have different task groups looking at different chapters. So performance-based design, you know, we can have a fire scenario task group working on that chapter or we could have a documentation group working on the documentation. So we got all the content from all the different task groups and now Greg is kind of the chair, is kind of going through these different chapters and, like you said, just like in a handbook, we want to make sure it reads like one book. We want to make sure that the different sections are working with each other and referenced properly. So that's the stage we're in there. We're very close to getting a draft where the committee would review as a ballot and once you finish that ballot it would go to the public for general comments and because it's a standard as opposed to a guide, an engineering guide has one public comment period, where an engineering standard which we follow, the ANSI rules for a standard require two public comments. So we would do one public comment. Anybody who wants to make a comment would send us a comment. The committee would have to look at all those comments and vote on what they want to do with it. Do we want to accept it? Do we want to accept it with some changes? Do we want to reject it?
Speaker 2:And if you reject somebody's comment you have to provide documentation on why you rejected it. And then, once you finish that off, you have to do another round of public comments where the community will do a review of the changes between the first draft and the second draft. So, for example, if there was no comments on page one, paragraph one, the public could not come back and comment about that paragraph one. The public could not come back and comment about that. But if there was a change to that paragraph based on a recommendation or a comment, you can make a comment on that part of the document. So only the revisions get a second review and then it'll be published. So there's a lot of work to go into a standard for sure, and that's why it kind of takes a long time, and I think that's why the process is like this. So it does take a long time so people really think about the changes and make sure that it's just not one entity creating these documents.
Speaker 1:Good, good, good. I'm also excited for it being a standard. I think it opens a completely new chapter for SFP as an organization and I'm looking forward to what's going to come out of that. Chris, tell me also what you're cooking in terms of events coming up. I know there's Vancouver. There are some exciting things happening in Europe, so maybe let's tackle the future plans of SFP for conferences. So where can we meet each other and have a good time in the near future?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I can really say that this is one area that we're really growing in. We're definitely every year. So, almost like every event, we see more and more people that are interested in coming to our events. But our biggest event is the annual conference. This year will be starting on October 21st. It will be in Vancouver, british Columbia, and we're very excited about this conference. Not only is it our annual conference, but this will be the first time we have our new SFP Canada organization put in place. So we have an SFP Asia, we have an SFP Europe, where, of course, you're familiar with, you're on the board of directors, but we're going to have an SFP Canada organization that will be ringing in the start of that conference. So it'll be a big celebration for the fact that we have an SFP Canada group.
Speaker 1:When is this happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, october 21st.
Speaker 1:October 21st okay.
Speaker 2:And then the other important thing about the annual conference this year is this will be SFP's 75th anniversary. So we've been an organization for 75 years now. So we're going to have a big celebration there for the 75th anniversary. If you come, you'll get a challenge coin and we're going to have a nice event highlighting all the things that have gone on with SFP over the last 75 years. And after that event we're going to have a webinar and an article in our magazine where we're going to be talking to some of the past presidents of an organization and giving their perspective on what SFPE means to them, what it means to their profession over the last 75 years. So it's a big time.
Speaker 2:Vancouver come October. But we also have a lot of other events, important events On August 12th we're going to have a storage symposium in UL outside of Chicago, there, which we're going to have some of the great minds who work on protection of high-rec storage and we're going to also have a live fire test so participants could go witness a live fire test. I'm like you we checked. Everybody in the profession hasn't really seen a big fire test like this time they'll see a UL in person.
Speaker 1:I'd love to see the UL fire test. Indeed, even though I saw. I get bored of well, I never get bored of fire tests. Really, that's an awful lie. You just get excited for it. You see, you know them a hundredth time and you're excited for the hundredth time. That's an awful lie. You just get excited for it. You see, you know them a hundredth time and you're excited for the hundredth time. That's why people love this profession really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then coming this November, we're going to have a battery symposium in Lisbon, portugal. So we had a very successful energy storage lithium-ion battery symposium last year in Phoenix. But we're going to take this to the European community and we have a lot of people from Europe coming out. Guillermo Reyn is one of the co-chairs of that committee from. London. He's going to be there and it's going to be a great work.
Speaker 1:I'm on that committee. I can vouch. This one looks amazing really. Guillermo and Adam and adam barove, who's the other co-chair they're doing excellent work on organizing the speakers. It's like I mean I can stop here for a second because I must say I really, really liked the slovenia symposium that grunde held at frisbee was it a year ago or two years ago, not that long ago? And the reason why I liked it? Because it had such a well curated speaker list, like it was very well managed. It was a truly curated experience.
Speaker 1:When you're going to many of those conferences, what you end up having is an open call for papers, a few keynotes which you choose, but then an open call of papers and out of this scatter of papers that you receive, you choose your program, which usually is amazing. Of course, they're usually good and only the good papers get through, and usually it's a bunch of really good stuff. Usually it's a bunch of really good stuff, but when you have an invitation-only curated list of speakers, you can tie this line to the conference. Every presentation clicks with each other. It's like a crafted experience, and I think those types of events are also very important.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I agree with you because that is a great thing. But the other thing about our symposiums that I really like is it really gets us the opportunity to really focus on one topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and everybody who's coming there is going to be interested in that. One topic, absolutely yeah. One topic, absolutely yeah, and of course, it's always a smaller crowd, which is really nice to have that smaller crowd that's dedicated. So, for example, you mentioned sustainability. Suppose you have, you know, everybody there was experts and interested in sustainability. It's a smaller crowd so you could talk to everybody and learn about what's going on in different areas of the world. So to me, it's a very exciting way to get knowledge out about a topic, just one individual topic. That's an emerging topic that everybody's been talking about. Everybody's been talking about lithium-ion batteries, so it's going to be a great talk.
Speaker 1:And you already had one of those lithium-ion batteries in the US, I remember, and it was quite a successful one. Everyone said it was a great talk. And you already had one of those lithium-ion batteries in the US, I remember, and it was quite successful. Everyone said it was a great one. So I hope that Lisbon will be even better. And I heard rumors that Paulo Ramos will bring some green wine, which is technically illegal, but he said he's going to organize it for the. I don't know anything about that. I don't know anything about it. I just heard the rumors. No one mentioned anything. I'm just saying what I've heard.
Speaker 2:Man, Okay, I never heard that one. I don't know anything.
Speaker 1:No one knows anything. But that's November this year. What's coming next year, man?
Speaker 2:Next year. First, we're going to be going to Singapore for the Performance-Based Design Conference which we hold every two years. I know you know about that. You were a keynote speaker when we had the conference out there in Copenhagen.
Speaker 1:Pinnacle of my achievements, really.
Speaker 2:It was a great keynote presentation. I think the way I liked about your keynote presentation was you went outside the box, put yourself in a zone that wasn't really comfortable to you. Talking about fire testing and all those things that you do every day comes natural to you, but you go up to the stage to talk about communications in our profession. In our profession and I, you know, I'd like to see a keynote speaker get put in that position where they did it outside their comfort zone. Like Luke Bisbee, I was a keynote speaker at the Edinburgh conference. You know equated fire protection engineering to McDonald's and four-star restaurants.
Speaker 1:That was awesome.
Speaker 2:To the speaker, right, they're kind of saying, oh, I don't know if this is really gonna work, and I bet you, you felt the same way, but at the end I think they're the most interesting presentations, fantastic.
Speaker 1:So so, singapore, when is that happening in the year?
Speaker 2:yeah, that will that will be in spring. I'm getting my. It'll be in the spring.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Late winter or spring, yeah, of 2016. I think our first conference of the year, and then in November of that year we'll be going to Venice For Jeff Bezos' wedding. Yeah, no, we're going to miss that. I hope you all miss the wedding.
Speaker 1:We're going to make a bigger event than that, of course, yes, I think so.
Speaker 2:Historic properties, and it's going to be, you know what better place to talk about historic properties than Venice? Right, there's going to be a tour of the Dege Palace from some of our connections there in italy. Um, the location is the venice hilton, which is on this island, uh, called gudeca I probably didn't even pronounce that, right which is a lovely island that you take a five minute boat to the, the touristy side of ven. But this side of Venice is really like you're really in Italy. It's a really nice island, great restaurants. Like I said, we're going to get to see some of the historic buildings in Venice and, of course, venice is just an interesting city To see the fire department on a boat, see your buses on a boat, everything's on a boat right, and the theme of the conference is also historical buildings and preservation of culture.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:In those types of facilities. It's something that has been in plan for such a long time and we once almost got it as FFB Europe. Once we almost had it the conference but then the COVID outbreak happened and we had to postpone it because I think 2021 it was happening in Rome. It was a great shame, because they put a lot of effort on that conference already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of interest, but unfortunately we're seeing these things pop up. So, for example, we're going to Vancouver. When I told you about the october conference, well, that was planned for our annual conference. Vancouver was our plan when covid hit and we had to cancel it.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of like the makeup for the covid event that will be in vancouver. And then, talking about you know, 2026, our annual annual conference will be in Atlanta, which that's our COVID makeup location, because during COVID we were supposed to have our annual conference in Atlanta. So, and 2026 will be in Atlanta, and it's a great city for fire safety engineering.
Speaker 1:That's an easy flight actually.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of. You know there's a big fire protection community in Atlanta. They are one of our largest SAP chapters, so we really expect to see a big event in Atlanta.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and the last one that I know is 27 Geneva, if I'm not wrong.
Speaker 2:Yes, the SAP Europe Conference. We're looking forward to Geneva. Once again, we have a very strong Swiss chapter out there that I think it's going to be very exciting just because we have such a great Swiss chapter out there. But the other thing about this SFPE Europe conference is for the first time we had that conference in Copenhagen. You could really see how it's grown throughout the years. It really shows that not only is that conference growing, but it's really showing how the SAP Europe organization is growing and it's a really amazing scene. It's great to see the growth of this team in Europe. I know a lot of people worked really hard on that Jimmy Johnson, Brian Meacham, you know for years started in Brussels where we had our initial meeting about the idea of getting SFP Europe going, and now it's really becoming a huge entity and part of SFP for sure, huge entity and core of SFP for sure.
Speaker 1:We're very happy to hear that and we're very proud of what has been done through the SFP Europe, and it's all good things. I believe Geneva will be interesting. I think there's supposed to be a trip to CERN, and I don't know how they will fit 300 fire engineers in CERN, because I cannot't know how they will fit 300 fire engineers in CERN, because I cannot see anyone not wanting to go there. So, oriol and the good friends at CERN, you're going to have a busy, busy time then, but we will have amazing time in Geneva. Okay, wow, a lot happening, a lot of exciting things, and people should keep watching for calls for submissions, calls for participation, and just follow SFPE in all those good things. One last thing and any perhaps updates to the grand challenges or any other initiatives in SFPE that you would like to mention.
Speaker 2:Well, the grand challenges you know. I'm glad you mentioned that Our SFP foundation has put together the Grand Challenges project for people that don't know about it, but it focuses on some great topics such as energy and infrastructure resilience and sustainability. Energy and infrastructure, resilience and sustainability, digitalization, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity you know all the emerging issues that we're seeing coming before us and we're definitely moving the grand challenges forward. Where you know, we're putting out grants for research projects and each of these topics that I discuss. And if you haven't seen the initial reports and the strategy, you could go to the SFP Foundation website. You can see that through wwwsfporg and look at SFP Foundation, s&p Foundation. There's four great reports there. That puts together a very extensive strategy for how our profession should look at all these emerging issues that I discussed, and you'll be seeing a lot more grants awarded and calls for people to submit grants on these topics in the future. So it's definitely one area.
Speaker 1:at SAP we're very excited about you know what? I don't want to hear about that from you. I'll just invite Leslie to tell me all about it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1:And it's definitely an initiative worth highlighting in this podcast. So I'll take what you just said as an intro and I'll definitely follow up.
Speaker 2:We're going to have a whole show not only on that, but the student grants they're given to universities throughout the world, the university you probably never even heard about, right? We're giving them opportunities to occur in the fire protection engineering, which is great.
Speaker 1:I had three benefactors of those grants. Visit me in the ITB and I'm very open to host anyone who's willing to take a chance at those grants and support you with submitting, and perhaps you can end up in our lab doing some fun stuff with us. Anyway, cj, I told you we were going to run out of time. Time flies by when you're having fun and it was a lot of fun to catch up hey, this is fantastic.
Speaker 2:I always enjoy your show. I always enjoy the humor that's part of it, and it's always fun for me to do it, so anytime you want to have me on the show, please invite me, and thanks for your listeners out there. I'm glad that we could talk about SFPE and some of the things we're doing to advance our profession, and thank you, wojciech, once again for helping to promote SFPE in these matters.
Speaker 1:And we really need that handbook going. Man, I'm going to be nagging you. I mean, I know I don't want to put more stress on you, but uh now we're very close so I have a great time, so close, yeah okay, cheers man, I'll take care of my friend.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye and that's it. Thank you, cg, for updating us on the state of sfp handbook and all the hard work that your editorial team, that the author teams, have been doing to give us this important piece of resource. It seems that the handbook is really really near, and some things, interesting things that I captured during this interview that may miss your attention is one the handbook is going to be a living document. I still worry a little bit about the version control, because we are citing the handbook in scientific literature and if the chapters change, it's perhaps going to be a little problematic in the world of science. But for the world of engineering, I think this is a great news that the individual chapters or parts of the book can be updated without waiting another seven years for the revision of the entire thing. And because springer is printing the book on demand, if a chapter has updated and you order your printed copy, you will get the newest one, so so that's good. If you have online access, you always have the access to the newest ones. That's very good. I mean it sounds very promising. It's probably going to be hard to deliver, but I guess Springer is a big enough company to figure out things like that, so they're the masters of working in production of different scientific materials. So we'll see how that works out. It sounds really, really promising.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I captured 5 000 pages. Jesus christ, this is a big book. This is a ridiculously large archive. I think my podcast transcripts have reached something like 3 000, so I'm 60 into the size of a handbook. Of course, not with the with the same quality. It's not the same content, but it just shows how massively big this, this library, is. If it's larger than 200 episodes of a podcast, then wow, it is truly, truly a behemoth and I'm looking forward to it even more.
Speaker 1:We also heard updates on different other guides that are coming up. There is the performance-based design guide, which I am also participating in. That was a good effort. It is a good effort. It's still ongoing. So, as cg said, it's a standard. So it's going through this two-part public revision system, which we will hopefully see soon in the future. The risk guide will be restarting their operations pretty soon, so stay up for the opportunities to participate in sfp committees.
Speaker 1:I must say that participating in those was very, very rewarding and very interesting experience for me. So I highly recommend to get active in those and and participate in writing those awesome resources. You learn along you along, you build connections along and in the end you can be proud for delivering things that a big part of the society uses. So that would be it for the SFPE updates episode. Thanks, chris, for coming, and if you are looking more for protection, engineering, fire science, well, next Wednesday I'll have some more for you. I think next Wednesday I'm cooking a fire fundamentals episode and it's not going to some more for you. I think next Wednesday I'm cooking a Fire Fundamentals episode and it's not going to be an easy one, so you can especially expect that one. It's going to be a good one. Okay, thanks for being here with me. Cheers, bye, thank you.