Episode 24 | Career Paths and more...

 This episode features industry experts sharing their career journeys, the importance of training and certifications, and insights into NFPA 101 and NFPA 72 codes. Learn how continuous education and understanding codes can advance your fire alarm career.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Temporal Three Podcast. I'm joined today by my co-host, Charles Olner. Good morning, Charles. Hello. And my other co-host, Chris Godwin. Hello. Well, guys, today I'd like to start out talking about your career in this industry. I'd like to talk about how you started out in this industry, what your career path has been on your way to working for NTC, and what factor training played in your ability to advance in your career. Chris is the young guy, is the newest guy on the team. Let's start with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I started in inspection testing. I started as a helper and started learning as much as I could from every other tech that I was working with. When I got into the field, I had the same mentality as I did with like when I had my background in EMS. They did a national thing and then you had your local license. Well, I found out that there was a national thing for FIDER, and it was, you know, NISAT. I got NISET certified and everything first. And after a long time of working, they came up to me like, hey, we recognize that you have NISAT and that's cool and all, but you don't have your local licensing. So I was talking to them about it, and and uh they were like, Why'd you get that? You don't need it. And I kind of felt like uh that's a really weird way of saying congratulations on doing a really hard thing. Uh I eventually explained to them my mindset behind it, and after a while they realized that I understood the code. I understood how to do things because of all of the preparation for getting my NISAT certification, and that helped out a lot with the training and the understanding of code and the basics of everything fire alarm. And and within a short amount of time, I went from inspection and testing to service, and they finally recognized, like, you have an understanding of this stuff. You want to try design? And so because I understood everything from just training everything and going through the codes and learning more and more about everything for work and my misunderstanding of needing the needing to have the national certification. I actually got over to design really fast based upon just all of those factors. So training had a really big play into it, and getting the certification was the extra step that provided me with more necessity to do training. So absolutely. How about you, Charles?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

You have an interesting career path.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

When I started in this industry, I started an installation, and uh the company I worked for didn't send me to training at all for two years. So for two years, I was totally unaware that training even existed in our industry, let alone having attended it myself. So after two years, I was finally uh able to go to a training class, and it was eye-opening for me. I found out that there are codes that actually govern what we do in the industry. From that point forward, uh I really made it my mission to uh start investigating that. And at one point in my career, I encountered a gentleman named Brian McLean who said, Hey, NISAT certification. And when I found that out, I actually went for NISAT certification myself, thanks to the inspiration from you. So thank you for that. It made a tremendous difference in my career path.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Absolutely. Well, I know what you actually said in your head. You said, hell, if this idiot can pass the exam, I sure as heck can.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Well, and I think it's important that we take a look at it from a job or a career. And uh my perception was I'm in this for a career, not just a job. Brian, back to you.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Absolutely. And speaking of job and career, my position started out as a job. I worked the bulk of my career in distribution. I did everything from pack boxes to national sales manager. And when I was a warehouse guy, I um it was a job. It was something that I was intending on doing as a summer job and going back to school in the fall. Well, you know, things happen. I uh I found out I enjoyed it, I learned a lot about it and turned into a full-time position. But as a uh as a junior person, as a warehouse guy, as a counter sales person, I was very interested in the equipment. I was a lot of what I learned was self-taught, looking at uh installation manuals and data sheets and understanding the technology, talking to factory reps. And then as my career and distribution progressed, I was able to move in the systems with uh a distributor. And uh I've held systems positions for a couple of with a couple of different companies for different uh number of years. And I encountered NISAT certification, which I was not aware of previously, actually, through a project product manager at uh one of the distributors that I worked at who told me about it and I investigated, and it's funny because way back when, and Charles, you can attest to this, NISAT really didn't have a website. You had to call them and have them mail you a packet, and you had to do everything through the mail. It was kind of freaky. And uh, this is back in the 1990s, and I got NYSET certification, and it actually helped out tremendously in my the distributors that I've worked for, the distributors didn't really necessarily value NISET certification, but it also showed them, too, that I was interested in advancing myself and improving myself. It showed our customers that I was serious about what I did. And uh, I got NYSET Fire Alarm certified, I went on to get Sprinkler certified when NYSET offered the audio certification, I got that certification when they introduced the video certification, I got that certification. Those last two they don't do anymore, by the way. But I I pushed myself to get additional certifications and as a way to credential myself, as a way to prove to myself and the people I work with that I was serious, that this was a career for me, not just a job.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

I think that's really a key thing. Uh as professionals in the industry, when we make that switch from it's a job to it's a career, training becomes so much more important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I was gonna I was gonna say that's that is the one thing that I've noticed is people that look at this as a job, it's a job. People that look at this as a career, I need to have training, I need to have a deeper understanding, I need to do more and more and more. And that is a very big differentiator, is just the the want to do training to make this more than just a job.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Absolutely. I think that's a a key factor. And I think from an employer perspective, I think about the dealer perspective, yeah, you're gonna need guys who are wire pullers. You're always gonna need guys who are wire pullers, who are who can do the basic stuff, do the hard work. I guess like that old that old analogy goes, the world needs ditch diggers. But is being a ditch digger hard work? Does being a ditch digger pay very well? No, but there are also people going to be going to aspire for more. And those are the people that I want a certain number of on my team. I would want people who don't just want to be wire pullers the rest of their lives. They want to learn, that they want, as Chris said, your career path is an excellent example, that they chose to, you chose to improve yourself, and it resulted in your opportunity to advance and make more money. Excellent. Well, thanks, guys, on that. I'd like next to talk about code. Let's talk about NFPA 101. The uh much ignored code, uh, both in the real world and in the NISAT exam. It's a book that you're not gonna see until level three, and uh does cause a little bit of anxiety for our level three NYSET fire alarm students because a lot, for a lot of them, that is their first exposure to this book. You know, they've seen IBC at level two, they're gonna see it again at level three and level four. But uh 101 is a book that they're only gonna see in one exam and probably very infrequently in the real world. So, Chris, where do you generally hear or see 101 being used in the real world?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Um, so back in back in Vegas, the only place that uses or that was using NFPA 101 was uh what is was the college. Was uh the University of Never Leaving Las Vegas, as it is so lovingly dubbed. And my first experience with it, we were doing we were doing work on site, and I get on site with my boss, and I was like asking questions about things, and he goes, Look, they don't use the same book, code's different here. And I was like, What do you mean code's different just because we're on campus? That doesn't make sense. Uh that's because they use NFTA 101, and it's things are different with it. Um military bases and other places that I've seen it, um federal buildings, government facilities a lot of times will also go with it. So those are some of the places I've had in my experience that actually still use NFPA 101 from a field perspective. There are a few other places on the on the East Coast, and uh older, older towns might be using it, older cities.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Well, it is an older code, it's been around since 1920, and uh, you know, IBC is a lot younger than that. So, Charles, how is 101 organized? How um to understand how to use this code, you have to understand how the information is laid out. How is 101 generally organized?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Well, there's a story that goes with that.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Really?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Oh, yes. Back in the day when I first encountered 101, I was totally lost. I had no idea what was in it, how to use it, nothing. I was bewildered by the code. So based on that, I decided I really needed to investigate this thing, and I started digging into it. And from a fire alarm perspective, there are really two things that are very important. One is section 9.6. That's chapter 9, section six. That covers basic fire alarm requirements. The second part of it that's really important, and this is the key to understanding the code, is section 3.4 of the occupancy chapters. And I'll throw it back to you, Brian, to give a more detailed explanation of that.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So it'd be interesting that you mentioned that, and 3.4 really is important. First of all, the thing that throws a lot of people about 3.4 is the title of 3.4, which is Detection Alarm and Communication. Doesn't say fire alarm, it just says detection alarm and communication, which a lot of people look at and say, okay, well, I can kind of see how that relates to fire alarm, but I don't see the word fire alarm there, so that confuses people. And section 3.4, as Charles said, is within the individual occupancy chapters. So with 101, I like to call 101 an occupancy-centric book versus IBC, which is a system-centric book. Now we know about IBC that all fire alarm requirements are in section 907. Then we find the classification of the building, the use group, and within 907, all of them are in there, all of them that require a fire alarm are in that in 907. In 101, the information is spread out over the entire book. So now in 101, we have to identify the occupancy chapter. And then, as Charles said, go to 3.4, recognize that 3.4 is detection, alarm, and communication systems, and be able to get the information. The other thing that triggers a lot of people about 101, something that IBC doesn't do, is new and existing. Many chapters have new and existing, separate chapters. Now, generally the requirements are pretty much the same in new and existing, but the fact that there's a different chapter, and if there's a difference in requirements, you know Nyset's gonna pick up on that because they love minutia like that, and they love tripping people up. Chris, what what's your take on 101?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I don't like it. I don't like it. And and it it's a lot of just because it it is a it's an occupancy, you know, focused book. You gotta find your occupancy. Then once you have that, you have to have the understanding that fire alarms in 3.4. Then you go over to there and you start looking through it. And with a tabbed book, whether it's for an ISET exam or for you know personal use or work, that's a bit easier. An untabbed 101 is so difficult to navigate regardless of how you're using it. It's just such a frustration. Whereas with with the IBC, here's your section. This section is what you need. 101, where am I going? The whole book. I gotta the whole book. All right, let me see what I need to find. I'm I'm not a not a big fan. I don't like it. And we don't use it realistically out in the world, real world all that often.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

And you're right, it does uh the location of the information makes it intimidating. When you look at our tabs, our nice set fire alarm tabs on our website. There's uh probably three or four tabs for IBC, and there's over 20 for 101. And people look at that. Why do you have so many for 101? It says because the information is all over the book. It's it's not in one place like it is in IBC. Now, Charles, I don't know about you, but for me, 101 has a place in my heart because when I took the NICET exams back in the 1990s, 101 was the book. They didn't use IBC. So I had to get familiar with 101 and I had to learn about 3.4 and uh find information. I actually got a lot of that from you. You helped me with that. And you know, uh the joke we used to make with our students was you write 3.4 on your hand. Or uh because so you'll remember 3.4. You burn 3.4 into your brain. Charles, yeah. Do you have a uh a uh place in your heart for 101 as well? I do.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Um very important thing about 101, and this applies equally to the IBC. These books, you've heard us talking about them in this podcast almost interchangeably because they serve the same basic purpose. With 101, the language of the code is different than what we see in 72. So they'll say things like a manual fire alarm system is required. If these conditions are met, then you have to do this. So it's very different, and it's something that takes some getting used to, I found Chris. How about you? How do you deal with the language of that code?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Dealing with uh how 101 deals out its language, it it it it takes a second. And and a great example on that is with monitoring. They don't use the term monitoring, it's emergency forces notification, which feels overly aggressive. Overly aggressive. It's it's just talking about the fire department. We're we're alerting the emergency forces, the people that are gonna come. But it's the the language is not utilized in a way that's familiar. Once you get into it, it's you you're oh okay, that just means moderate. But yeah, it's it's I'm not a I don't like it. It's and as you mentioned, it's an older, it's an older book. The language has not really been updated. And um it it holds a it holds a place in my heart uh because I had to use it for for level three. I had to use it for level three exam. I had to use it for the bit of time I was on campus. And and outside of that, no, no, I'm I'm I'm like it.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Charles, I don't bring it around. Charles, I don't think Chris feels a love for 101 like you and I do. We have kind of that fond memory of it from her exam experiences. The IBC exists, Sal. There you go. Well, guys, from the field, we had a student ask about beam spacing adjustments for smoke detectors and had some difficulties, some challenges understanding beam adjustments for smokes. And one thing I want to say about smokes versus heats, the rules are different. So with heat detectors, the rules are a little bit more uh basically black and white, shall we say? They're stated. Look, if it's a beam, you do this, if it's a joist, you do that. Uh in 17.6, you know, the rules are pretty straightforward. There's some additional things for like uh deep beams and beams that are far apart as to as to where you place the detectors and stuff like that. It gets a little more complicated in uh 17.7 for smokes. Chris, where would you find information about uh heat uh detector adjustments for smokes in uh NFPA 72?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Uh as you mentioned, 177 uh 4242 is where you can find it. And code is written to be confusing, I feel like on purpose most of the time. Because you get there and it tells you for level ceilings, you do this. Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Uh, for level ceilings that may have beams that project down, here's what you gotta look at. And you gotta take into the factor of what is your beam depth. Okay, cool, what's that? Now do I do an adjustment? Well, hold on, hold on. You figured out that the beam depth, so what now we gotta look at the spacing. Um, okay. If your spacing is equal to this, now you gotta do that, and now the spacing's all what do I do? Just tell me, and you know that's the frustration with it. But it it is so different with with like you said, with heats, or you have beams, adjust. Oh, you have joists, adjust. Smokes, you have them, you have beams, that's cool. We're gonna make you do a bunch of math to figure out if you're doing an adjustment or filling up all the spaces. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

And it's all, I'm sorry, it's all in relationship to the ceiling height. And you're talking about the beam depth and the beam spacing are based on a factor compared to the ceiling height. And uh with heat detectors, yeah, there is an adjustment for ceiling height in 1763 and the table, but uh then you'll apply that you could turn possibly turn around and apply that to beam and joist rules, but with smokes, it's completely different because there is no table for ceiling height making an adjustment. Charles, those factors that we were talking about, where does where does the adjustment begin? At what point do we start considering uh the adjustments?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Well, I look at this subject is an old box of fire alarm wire. And I say that because the old box of fire alarm wire gets thrown around the truck, taken out, thrown back in, you finally pull it out to use it, you start pulling the wire and it's all tangled up. You have to open the box, untangle it so that you can actually install the wiring. With beams and smoke detectors, I look at the code requirements in a similar way. You can't keep it straight in your head. No. The only thing you can do is when you encounter a situation with beams of this type, you have to dig into the code and straighten it out, untangle it in your brain because it's all messed up in there. And not only that, the rules have changed from editions of the code. True. I've seen that over the years, Brian. I'm sure you have too.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

That's true. Yeah, this is I I'd say relatively recent. It's probably been a good 10 or 15 years, but yeah, the rules used to be different. And the newer editions, uh, 1774242 uh is where they set up those factors. And you're right. Uh old guys like you and I can remember when the rules were different. And then the engineers at NFTA said, nope, not good enough. We're gonna do something different.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

And then being able to identify is it greater than or equal to or greater than, less than, or equal to, or less than.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And then doing the math, as Chris said, because math sucks. No offense, Charles, our math major. So the whole the whole thing starts with 10. And if you have less than 10% beam depth that is less than 10% of the ceiling height, there's no impact. It's smooth ceiling spacing. Where it gets interesting, and as you said, Charles, that equal to or greater than, that's where people get tripped up in the nice it exam. You know, in the real world, you're gonna have an HJ look at it, and maybe the AHJ knows the code, maybe they don't, or somebody's gonna say, hey, that's not actually what it is. But uh in the NICET exam, you know there's no opportunity to get a second look at it. So when we hit that equal to or greater than 10%, now we have to look at the beams themselves, the spacing between the beams to determine any adjustments and where they're located. So, Chris, where does that kick in?

SPEAKER_01 21:51

After you've determined if you're equal to or greater than 10%, beam spacing, you got to look at are you equal to or greater than 40% of the ceiling height? If you are at forty percent, everything goes in the beam pockets because they're all separate spaces now. Yep. If it is less than that, you go with what the adjustment was, which is to reduce to 50% full spacing in the direction of the beams. Uh perpendicular. In the direction hitting the beams. Yeah. In perpendicular is absolutely something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Yeah. That perpendicular thing throws a lot of people because that is, you know, right angle, perpendicular is a right angle. And so what you end up with is basic rectangular uh coverage areas because you're adjusting in one direction, not two. And I know that throws a lot of people. Why adjust in both directions? No, you're only adjusting in the direction of the impediment to the flow of the smoke, which is basically every time it has to cross the beam.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

So, what was that hand signal for perpendicular again, Brian? Timeout sideways. Timeout sideways.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

I could have done it that way. Then you guys would think I was calling time out. Charles, that's a sports analogy. You're not a sports guy. I'm surprised you know that one. Common enough. Common enough. Well, gentlemen, as always, I appreciate the discussion and I appreciate our listeners joining us for this discussion. We will see you on the next edition of the Temporal 3 Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Bye, everyone.