προμηθέας 300

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προμηθέας 300

December 19, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Today we run through recent action in fire safety best practice literature.  Even though fire safety technologies comprise about 2-4 percent of a new building budget, the influence of the fire safety culture dominates all aspects campus safety; cybersecurity of public safety communication technology for example.

A small sample of the issues we have tracked in the past: (2002-2023).  Items in RED indicate success in reducing cost with no reduction in safety (i.e. successful rebuttal, typically market-making by incumbents)

  • Limiting vendor lock-in (promote interoperability) in building additions.
  • Limiting the tendency to lowball first cost in order to achieve vendor lock-in later in the facility life-cycle
  • Dormitory kitchen fire safety

Fire Safety of University Dormitory Based on Bayesian Network

  • Clarification of mixed-occupancy classifications (occupant loading)
  • Fixed interval (rather than risk-informed) inspection, testing and maintenance of fire alarm and protection system components
  • Fire alarm system upgrades during renovation

Gamification Teaching in School Fire Safety

  • Mixed zone and addressable alarm system wiring
  • Wireless initiation devices
  • Integrated fire protection systems (NFPA 3&4)
  • Portable fire extinguishers (NFPA 10)

Hospital Evacuation under Fire

  • Alarm system re-set procedures
  • Sprinkler system coverage for animals in research
  • Scalability of fire safety professional certification
  • Sprinklering of off-campus student housing
  • Advocating central (or campus district) fire pump systems

One of the newer issues to revisit over the past few years is the fire safety of tents.   Many colleges and universities are setting up large commercial tents outside buildings (within range of Wi-Fi) for students to congregate, study and dine.  We are also seeing back and forth on fire safety in theatrical performance venues in the International Code Council building safety catalog.

We approach these titles with an eye toward driving risk-informed, performance requirements that reduce risk and cost for the user interest; while recognizing the responsibility of competitor stakeholders.   It is not a friendly space for the user-interest who seeks to optimally resolve the competing requirements of safety and economy.   Vertical incumbents completely dominate this domain.

Prepared Hero Fire Blanket

Relevant NFPA Titles:

NFPA 10 Standard for Portable Fire Extinguishers

    • Public Input Closing Date: June 1, 2023

NFPA 13 Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems

NFPA 25 Standard for the Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance of Water-Based Fire Protection Systems

NFPA 72 National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code®

    • Public Comment Closing Date: May 31, 2023

NFPA 75 Standard for the Fire Protection of Information Technology Equipment

NFPA 76 Standard for the Fire Protection of Telecommunications Facilities

NFPA 92 Standard for Smoke Control Systems

    • Public Comment Closing Date: January 4, 2023

International Code Council Group A 2021/2022 Code Cycle

Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.


More

NFPA Report: Structure Fires in Dormitories, Fraternities, Sororities and Barracks 

ASTM Committee E0% on Fire Standards

Standing Agenda / Prometheus


Key Updates on Fire Safety Standards

Why do Humans Stare at Fire? : Scientific aspects of primal magic of fire

Fire Safety

December 19, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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“Creation of humanity by Prometheus as Athena looks on”

Fire safety leadership usually finds itself involved in nearly every dimension of risk on the #WiseCampus; not just the built environment but security of interior spaces with combustibles but along the perimeter and within the footprint of the education community overall.

The Campus Fire Marshal, for example, usually signs the certificate of occupancy for a new building but may be drawn into meetings where decisions about cybersecurity are made.   Fire protection systems coincide with evacuation systems when there is no risk and both may be at risk because of cyber-risk.

The job description of a campus fire safety official is linked below offers some insight into why fire safety technologies reach into every risk dimension:

University of California Santa Cruz Office of Emergency Services

University of Tennessee Emergency Service Training

The development of the highest level fire safety consensus product in the world is led by the British Standards Institute, under the administration of the International Standardization Organization, with Committee E05 on Fire Standards of  ASTM International as the US Technical Advisory Group Administrator.  The business plan and the map of global participants is linked below:

BUSINESS PLAN ISO/TC 92 Fire safety EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The consensus products developed by TC 92 are intended to save lives, reduce fire losses, reduce technical barriers to trade, provide for international harmonization of tests and methods and bring substantial cost savings in design. ISO/TC 92 standards are expected to be of special value to developing countries, which are less likely to have national standards.  As with all ISO standards, the TC 92 consensus product is a performance standard suitable for use in prescriptive regulations and provide for a proven route to increased fire safety.

We do not advocate in this standard at the moment; we only track it.  The International Fire Code and the Fire Code have been our priorities since 2006.  The fire safety space is well populated with knowledgeable facility professionals because conformity budgets in the fire safety world — i.e. the local or state fire marshal — usually has a budget.  When you have a budget you usually have people keeping pace with best practice.

We encourage our colleagues in the United States on either the business or academic side of the education facility industry to communicate directly with ANSI’s ISO Team and/or the ASTM Contact: Tom O’Toole, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, West Conshohocken, PA 19428-2959 Phone: (610) 832-9739, Email: totoole@astm.org

We maintain this title on the agenda of our periodic Global and Prometheus colloquia.  See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting;  open to everyone.

Issue: [19-104]

Category: Fire Safety, Fire Protection, International

Contact: Mike Anthony, Joe DeRosier, Alan Sactor, Joshua Elvove, Casey Grant

More:

The Challenges of Storage and Not Enough Space, Alan Sactor

Incredible snow removal

December 18, 2024
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Energy Standard for Sites & Buildings: Metering

December 17, 2024
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Section 8 Key points:

Metering for New Buildings: New buildings larger than 25,000 square feet must be equipped with metering to measure the electrical energy usage of the entire building.

Tenant Spaces: In buildings with tenant spaces, individual tenant spaces larger than 10,000 square feet must also be separately metered.

Subsystem Metering: Buildings with electrical loads exceeding specified thresholds must have additional metering to measure energy use for various subsystems, including:

HVAC systems
Lighting systems
Plug loads
Process loads

These metering requirements are intended to help building owners and operators monitor energy consumption, identify opportunities for energy savings, and comply with building energy codes and standards.

Despite best intentions a fair question to ask: What does over metering look like? (University of Alberta Research)

University of Michigan

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is an ANSI-accredited continuous-maintenance standards developer (a major contributor to what we call a regulatory product development “stream”).   Continuous maintenance means that changes to titles in its catalog can change in as little as 30-45 days.  This is meaningful to jurisdictions that require conformance to the “latest” version of ASHRAE 90.1

Among the leading titles in its catalog is ASHRAE 90.1 Energy Standard for Sites and Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.  Standard 90.1 has been a benchmark for commercial building energy codes in the United States and a key basis for codes and standards around the world for more than 35 years.  Free access to ASHRAE 90.1 version is available at the link below:

READ ONLY Version of 2022 ASHRAE 90.1

If you cannot access it with the link above, try the link below and select 90.1 from the title list:

Current Popular ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines

Chapter 9: Lighting, begins on Page 148, and therein lie the tables that are the most widely used metrics (lighting power densities) by electrical and illumination engineers for specifying luminaires and getting them wired and controlled “per code”.   Many jurisdictions provide access to this Chapter without charge.  Respecting ASHRAE’s copyright, we will not do so here but will use them during today’s Illumination Colloquium, 16:00 UTC.

Keep in mind that recently ASHRAE expanded the scope of 90.1 to include energy usage in the spaces between buildings:

25 January 2023: Newly Released ASHRAE 90.1-2022 Includes Expanded Scope For Building Sites

At this time, there are no redlines open for public comment

Online Standards Actions & Public Review Drafts

Education industry facility managers, energy conservation workgroups, sustainability officers, electric shop foreman, electricians and front-line maintenance professionals who change lighting fixtures, maintain environmental air systems are encouraged to participate directly in the ASHRAE consensus standard development process.

Univerzita Karlova

We also maintain ASHRAE best practice titles as standing items on our Mechanical, Water, Energy and Illumination colloquia.  See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.

Issue: [Various]

Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy Conservation, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy, #SmartCampus

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Larry Spielvogel, Richard Robben

Under Construction:  ASHRAE WORKSPACE

More:

US Department of Energy Codes Program: Power and Lighting

Rightsizing Electrical Power Systems

The De-Population Bomb

December 16, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com

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February 16, 2024: North Shore Medical Center abruptly closes neo-natal, labor and delivery units

United States National Institute of Health Gene Map

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a famous book, The Population Bomb, in which he described a disastrous future for humanity: 

‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.’

That prediction turned out to be very wrong, and in this interview American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt tells how we are in fact heading toward the opposite problem: not enough people. For decades now, many countries have been unable to sustain a #population replacement birth rate, including in Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, and, most ominously, China. The societal and social impacts of this phenomenon are vast. We discuss those with Eberstadt as well as some strategies to avoid them.”

Out take [35:22]:

“…All right this gets us right to the heart of of your essay and of the matter quoting you yet again the single best predictor for National fertility rates happens to be wanted family size as reported by women now you note there are polls that ask women how many children they’d like and you know that this doesn’t correlate perfectly with birth rates but it’s the best indicator in one sense this is a reassuring even heartening finding it highlights the agency at the very heart of our Humanity…

[“You’re talking about free will there people choosing their family size but if we permit the non-material realm of life to figure into our inquiry we may conclude that proposals to revive the American birth rate through subsidies vastly underestimate the challenge the challenge May ultimately prove to be civilizational in nature”] 

okay so I look at first of all that hits like a two by four — civilizational in nature — and on the one hand I think to myself wait a minute aren’t we all supposed to be delighted that in this modern world women are in a position to participate in the workforce they’re in a position to choose more carefully more explicitly more intentionally the number of children they’d like to have aren’t we supposed to believe that that’s a wonderful thing and that releasing that many women to the workforce should increase the dynamism and growth of our [economy]…and all that…good, good, good…”

Evensong “A Boy and A Girl”

University of Rochester New York

Day Care

Why Daycare Is So Expensive In America

Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care

Health 400 | OB-GYN

Healthcare Facilities Code

Design & Operation of Health Care Facilities

Evensong “Simple Gifts”

December 15, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Standards Maryland

University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra: “Appalachian Spring” Aaron Copland, 1944


 

Standards Maryland

Lively Arts 300

December 13, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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The term “lively arts” is attributed to American writer and poet James Thurber. It was popularized in the mid-20th century as a way to describe various forms of performing arts, such as theater, dance, music, and other creative expressions.

Standards Michigan Lively Art Catalog

Curtain for the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet

 

“What art is, in reality, is this missing link,  not the links which exist.

It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap”

— Marcel Duchamp

 

Today we refresh our understanding of the literature that guides the safety and sustainability goals of lively art events in educational settlements.  Consortia have evolved quickly in recent years, leading and lagging changes in the content creation and delivery domain.  With this evolution a professional discipline has emerged that requires training and certification in the electrotechnologies that contribute to “event safety”; among them:

 

ASHRAE International

Standard 62.1: This standard establishes minimum ventilation rates and indoor air quality requirements for commercial buildings, including theaters and auditoriums.

Standard 55: This standard specifies thermal comfort conditions for occupants in indoor environments, which can have an impact on air quality.

Audio Engineering Society

Audio Visual and Experience Association

Entertainment Services and Technology Association

Event Safety Alliance

International Code Council

International Building Code: Section 303.2 Assembly Group A-1

Illumination Engineering Society

RP-16-17 Lighting for Theatrical Productions: This standard provides guidance on the design and implementation of lighting systems for theatrical productions. It includes information on the use of color, light direction, and light intensity to create different moods and effects.

RP-30-15 Recommended Practice for the Design of Theatres and Auditoriums: This standard provides guidance on the design of theaters and auditoriums, including lighting systems. It covers topics such as seating layout, stage design, and acoustics, as well as lighting design considerations.

DG-24-19 Design Guide for Color and Illumination: This guide provides information on the use of color in lighting design, including color temperature, color rendering, and color mixing. It is relevant to theater lighting design as well as other applications.

National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security

National Fire Protection Association

Life Safety Code

Electrical Safety

National Electrical Code

Articles 518-540: Arenas, Lecture Halls & Theaters

Society of Motion Picture Technology Engineers

Professional Lighting and Sound Association

Dance and Athletic Floor Product Standards: ASTM F2118, EN 14904, DIN 18032-2

Incumbent standards-setting organizations such as ASHRAE, ASTM, ICC, IEEE, NFPA have also discovered, integrated and promulgated event safety and sustainability concepts into their catalog of best practice titles; many already incorporated by reference into public safety law.   We explore relevant research on crowd management and spectator safety.

Planning and Managing Security for Major Special Events

 

“Art is anything you can get away with” — Marshall McLuhan

 

More

International Code Council (N.B. Changes to its Code Development Process) 

International Building Code: Entertainment Occupancies

Section 410: Stages, Platforms and Technical Production Areas

National Electrical Code: Articles 518 – 540 

Code-Making Panel 15 (NEC-P15): Public Input Report 10/1/2020

Code-Making Panel 15 (NEC-P15): Public Comment Report  11/18/2021

ASHRAE 62.1 Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality

Princeton University: Set Design & Construction

Building the Virtual Stage: A System for Enabling Mixed Reality Theatre

University of California: Special Effects Safety and Loss Prevention

University of San Francisco Special Effects Safety

Dance Floors v. Sports Floors

Today in History

Acoustics

December 13, 2024
mike@standardsmichigan.com

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Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. Accordingly, the science of acoustics spreads across many facets of human society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production and more recently in off-site instructional facilities.  Join us today at 15:00 UTC when we review the best practice catalogs of the peak standards-setting organizations for titles relevant to education communities.

Acoustical Society of America

American National Standards Institute ANSI S12.18 – Determination of Occupational Noise Exposure and Estimation of Noise-Induced Hearing Impairment: This standard provides guidance on how to measure and assess occupational noise exposure.

ASTM International

Committee on Building and Environmental Acoustics

Audio Engineering Society

Entertainment Services and Technology Association

International Code Council: Guideline for Acoustics

Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

Standard for Acoustic Emissions from Transformers

Standard for Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise Measurement

International Electrotechnical Commission: TC 20 Electroacoustics

International Standardization Organization: TC/43 Acoustics

National Fire Protection Association: National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code

Underwriters Laboratories

Classified Acoustical Performance Summary (Ceiling tiles)

Readings:

National Bureau of Standards: Standards on Noise Measurements, Rating Schemes and Definitions

United States Department of Labor: Occupational Noise Exposure

IEEE: Design and Implementation of an Adaptive and Effective Audio System for Classroom

Why Acoustics Matter So Much in Medical Facilities

Syllabus: Acoustics 100

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