Fires impact people, property and the environment in all countries around the world. In some cases, the resulting losses are extraordinary, causing hundreds of deaths, widespread damage to property and contents and significant impacts on the environment. More often, fires may cause a single casualty or affect a single home, though the effects are still highly significant to those affected and collectively are substantial. This course will provide an overview of the challenges posed by fire as well as the fire safety solutions that are available to meet those challenges.
About SFPE [11:34]
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Del curso dictado por University of Maryland, College Park
The Effect of Fires on People, Property and the Environment
109 calificaciones
University of Maryland, College Park
109 calificaciones
Conoce a los instructores
James Milke, PhDProfessor and Chair
Department of Fire Protection and Engineering
Hi, my name is Chris Jelenewicz.
And I'm the Engineering Program Manager with the Society of
Fire Protection Engineers, also known as SFPE.
Specifically, I'm gonna talk to you about how SFPE
is the Profession of Fire Protection Engineering.
And when we talk about the profession or
what is a profession, there's a couple of things to think about.
To establish yourself or call yourself a profession.
One, you need a way to educate the people in your profession.
And here, I'm gonnatalk about how SFPE helps their colleges and
our universities that will develop the curriculum for fire protection engineers.
I'm gonna talk to you about how we educate people
who are already out in the workforce and
provide them with continuing education that is needed to do their jobs.
Also to be part of a profession you need to be able to assess competence, how do
we determine that somebody has the minimum competence to do the job effectively?
In fire protection engineering, assessing competence is very important
because everything we do as a fire protection engineer
impacts the public's health, safety and welfare.
So making sure that we only allow competent fire protection engineers in
the work force is one of the most important things we do as a profession.
And one of the most important things we do at SFPE Additionally,
SFPE provides our body of knowledge.
I'm gonna talk about how we have different guidance documents so that engineers that
are practicing could do a better job of practicing in fire protection engineering.
And finally, for a profession we need the support of the community
not the entire community, but the profession's community.
In SFPE, that's what we are.
We are a community.
A community of fire protection engineers.
Our membership represents about over 4,000 fire protection
engineers across the globe.
We have about 70 chapters throughout the world.
And in these local chapters we really have over 70 different
organizations out there that are promoting our profession.
70 locations throughout the world where the people that practice
in fire protection engineering could get together every month and
talk about issues in their community.
Common things that they see in their jurisdictions.
We also see these chapters going out to the communities and telling
the communities about fire safety, and how we can make buildings safer from fire.
In that list of 70 chapters, we also have student chapters.
The colleges and universities that offer programs of fire protection engineering
often have these student chapters.
And it's another community where students can get together and
learn about the profession, learn about job opportunities,
learn about new things that are changing.
And it's another way that these students can get together Aad work together.
So when they have projects at school, it really is a great forum for
them to have a community of fellow students and
work together to accomplish their goals and get their degrees.
SFPE also supports the body of knowledge in our profession.
Most importantly, our body of knowledge can be found in what we call
the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering.
It's now in it's fourth edition.
And basically what this handbook is,
is a compilation of all the important fire research that has gone on.
All the important things you need to know to be a fire protection engineer are in
this one place and that is our body and knowledge.
Additionally, when newer concepts come up or things change, SFPE
creates design documents for people who currently practicing in the field today.
For example, you see here the SFPE engineering guide for
fire safety and tall buildings.
A lot of this work came after what happened on 9/11 and
the World Trade Center.
It really gave the fire protection community a way of looking at tall
buildings in a different way.
Also, we see around the world that their are a lot of countries that are out
there building taller buildings everyday.
So this guide document really gives the fire protection engineer
some information on how to design tall buildings better so that they're safer.
We also publish a quarterly magazine
called Fire Protection Engineering magazine.
You can get it in a hard copy or
you can see it online at magazine.sfpe.org.
And each of our issues really focuses on
practical applications of fire protector engineering.
We try to look at things that are new, exciting material, for
example we have an issue on sustainable design.
We also have an issue here on brush fires,
if you read the newspapers or watch your news, you'll see that
large brush fires are coming more and more common every day.
We also have a nice issue about colleges and how we protect
the kids that go to our college and make the college environment safer for fire.
Additionally, SFPE has continuing education opportunities for
its membership.
Once you get out in the profession, you have your degree and you're practicing
as a fire protection engineer, well there's still new things that go on.
Changes of technology, changes in the way we design buildings.
So SFPE has an annual conference every year,
where we bring in the top professionals in our society,
to talk about the latest advancements in fire protection engineering.
We also have global conferences and we also offer specific courses for
people who are interested in learning more about fire protection engineer.
In addition to continuing education, we also help promote the schools
that offer higher education programs in fire protection engineering.
For example, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers writes the criteria
for programs that have fire protection engineering programs.
This criteria is evaluated every six years through an organization called ABET.
It's the people of SFPE or volunteers from our society that go out to
these school and evaluate these programs to make sure that these higher
educations programs are meeting the mark and providing a good education.
So that when people come out of school, they'll have the knowledge and
the skills available to them to get out and work as fire protection engineers.
Additionally, the society promotes the profession.
We talk to news papers.
We talk to trade journals.
We go on TV.
We like to tell everybody about our exciting profession and
why you should go out and be fire protection engineers.
But we also like to go out to the community and
tell them about how fire's a noteworthy problem and
that each year in the United States, 3,000 people die as a result of fire.
And how fire can be very dangerous,
and how quickly a fire can spread through a building.
So that people know that if they hear a fire alarm or
if they smell smoke in the building,
the best thing that you should do is get out of the building quickly.
We also talk the trade journals in the different types of discipline, and
tell them about the work we do as fire protection engineers.
And how fire protection engineers,
the work we could do could complement the work that facility managers are doing.
Electrical engineers are doing it, mechanical engineers, project managers,
construction managers, hell we can help you do your job better.
And finally, one of the most important things we do as a society and
as a profession we assess competence and
we do that through the licensure program for fire protection engineers.
One of the major parts of becoming licensed as a fire protection engineer
are being called a professional engineer or
PE, is the fact that you have to take two tests.
The final test is the professional engineering exam and
fire protection engineering.
The society of fire protection engineers,
our members write the questions that are in that exam.
We also write the specification of this exam
based on what we see fire protection engineers doing in the workforce.
So without a doubt accessing competence,and making sure
that we have fire protection engineers out in the work force
is an important thing that we do as a profession.
So kind of to sum things up, SFPE is our profession.
Before you decide to go college,
we're out here telling you about fire protection engineer.
We're telling you why fire protection engineering is an exciting career
that everybody should get involved in.
You find that through our career guide, our websites, our Facebook page.
We go out to career fairs and
talk to college students, high school students, tell them about our profession.
When you get to college,
we provide you with guidance documents on how to do some of your coursework.
We also promote the establishment of SFPE student chapters.
So as a student you have friends that you can go to.
You have a place where we can get all of the fire protection engineering students
working together on common goals.
After you graduate, SFPE is there.
We're there we have a nice mentoring program for
people who are new fire protection engineers.
We also do licensure, and licensure is a very important part of the process.
So because we write the exam,
it's our profession where people need to take this exam to become licensed.
Additionally, we provide the body of knowledge you need to do your job.
After licensure,
you provide continuing education because our profession is changing so quickly,
you need to have the continuing education to continue your careers.
And finally, once you retire there's still a place for you at SFPE where you
could work in our committees and help make our profession even better.
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