Firequench
Enhancing Life Safety
by Bob Greenberg
As buildings are now undergoing a surge in change of ownership—a trend that may accelerate as the economy improves while at the same time some landlords are selling to address their debt obligations—many developers, landlords, and facility managers are now performing their due diligence on how to comply with the new International Fire Code for their properties. The recovery is also refueling efforts to reposition and upgrade buildings to attract new tenants and achieve higher rents. Addressing fire safety and infrastructure upgrades are vital issues required to achieve these goals.
One of the most important issues in fire safety is early fire detection. Unfortunately, fire protection is not often as high on the priority list of action steps for some landlords as it should be because, by itself, the subject has not necessarily been a major selling point, and was once seen as more of a ubiquitous requirement. Yet fire safety becomes the number one most important issue if and when an emergency arises and, in the aftermath of September 11th, has been brought to the forefront of the minds of many savvy building owners and informed occupants and tenants.
Experts In Fire Safety
Jim Burns, Director of Code Compliance at Firequench, Inc., served for 12 years as the State of New York Fire Administrator. Burns identified cigarette smoldering as one of the main sources of deaths in nursing homes, residential dwellings, homes and apartment houses. He helped to institute laws that cigarettes must be self-extinguishing, thereby reducing deaths across the State of New York. This law has now been adopted nationally. Upon joining Firequench, Burns promised to keep his commitment to assist in achieving fewer fatalities by constantly focusing on implementing additional technical advancements together with targeting the highest level of implementation of maintenance requirements.
Smart Technology Impacts Safety And Costs
Technology can reduce fire fatalities by the installation of sprinkler and fire alarm systems within all building types. The installation of early detection systems assists in the quick response to extinguishing and eliminating hazardous life threatening damage to humans and pets as well as costly damage and business interruptions to commercial properties. By implementing ‘smart’ technological designs to detect and quickly suppress fires in commercial buildings, institutional facilities and multi-family dwellings, the groundwork for ensuring safer, more efficient and reliable work and living spaces is achieved.
Commercial buildings that promote their safety programs and technology, along with contingencies for emergency backup power and business continuity programs, often prosper financially by attracting a better clientele, which in turn fuels the buildings’ revenue growth. In addition, these building owners can also enjoy the benefits of obtaining enhanced and lower cost insurance coverage packages when their buildings are placed in lower risk categories; savings that go straight to the bottom line.
The Firequench/En-Gauge System
One of the industry’s latest innovations is Firequench’s en-Gauge System. The system can be used to monitor critical life safety devices such as fire extinguishers, automatic electronic defibrillators (AEDs), emergency exits, and emergency lighting.
For example, fire extinguishers, life safety equipment, and AEDs can become blocked, vandalized or removed without the building owner’s knowledge. Upon receiving a fire extinguisher low pressure warning indicator removal or blockage of an extinguisher or any other fire protection device, the en-Gauge system can be programmed to notify security personnel instantly when the device(s) are called into use or compromised. The system will notify the supervisors in whatever manner they prefer—email, pager, website or phone. Faster response means better life safety and lower liability. The en-Gauge System’s fire extinguisher monitoring software tracks the movement of the extinguisher(s) via built-in encoded chips and online floor plans. The software additionally monitors the age, in-service date, manufacturer and complete incident history (including usage and inspections) of each and every fire extinguisher plus provides easily accessible reports.
One of the advantages of constant monitoring and instant notification is the likelihood of theft and vandalism is greatly reduced, therefore dramatically augmenting savings when other day-to-day issues are factored in—such as clean up costs, extinguisher replacement, liability exposure, and risk of business interruption due to fire damage.
Electronic monitoring of fire extinguishers also deters vandalism because the instant notification of removal means that authorities can respond quickly—perhaps even helping to catch the bad guys in the act. Electronic monitoring of fire extinguishers and annual inspections make properties safer as the real time monitoring can capture live movement of the fire protection unit.
New Opportunities For Building Owners And Tenants
Building owners and tenants now have the opportunity to provide the end users of the space with real time fire protection by utilizing Firequench’s information and monitoring services and providing them base building backbone technologies which the tenant can tie into. There are additional economies of scale when the same floor plans and same building backbone network are utilized and information is distributed over an entire building, as opposed to customizing each separate system for each individual tenant.
Towards A Safer Future
In February 2005, Firequench received Congressional Recognition in Washington DC for their involvement in enhancing fire protection in high-rise buildings, particularly for working with FDNY in the development of the Building Emergency Action Plan. As part of building redundancy protection, Firequench has commenced working on enhanced designs for additional backup redundancy power for fire alarm and fire communication systems to prevent against downtime.
Firequench is presently implementing a design for hardwired fire alarm central station transmitters to have an additional secondary source of transmission through cellular communications, which shall facilitate the transmission of a signal via cell service communication in case of compromised wiring to hard wired telephone lines.
The firm’s track record of innovation and vast experience in fire safety and prevention has made Firequench one of the industry’s leaders. Look toward Firequench to continue to be at the forefront of disaster preparedness, fire code enhancements, safety and security, and emerging technologies for many years to come.
External Testing
Firequench is currently in the testing and implementation stages (outside of the New York City area) of this product in various challenging applications, such as rooms
protected by lead covering and rooms below grade. Already, the NFPA, ICC and the Joint Commission now recognize en-Gauge’s technology as an equivalent to the manual 30-day fire extinguisher inspections. Healthcare facilities that adopt en-Gauge can reduce risk, stay code compliant and potentially reduce the cost of extinguisher ownership.
For additional information on any product or service please contact Firequench Inc. at (212) 966-9100 or email us at fquench@aol.com or visit our website at www.firequenchinc.com.
