Abstract: Open kitchen design is becoming popular in small units in high-rise residential buildings. This design increases the possibility that fires originating in the cooking area would spread beyond its origin. Effect of cabinet properties and wind on the fire hazards of open kitchen is numerically studied. It is found that if there are combustible items adjacent to the cooking area it helps the fire to spread giving a big fire and the wind may cause the fire spread vertically along the building exterior wall.
Following the ICC Group A revision cycle public consultation on the 2024 International Fire Code will begin. The ICC will announce the development schedule sometime in 2022.
We limit our resources simply tracking the proposals that run through Group E (Educational) and Group I (Institutional) occupancies in the Group A suite with closer attention to the state they are adopted whole cloth or with local exceptions. In many cases, IFC adoption by state and local authorities is delayed by one or more previous code revisions. This delay in adoption may be necessary in order for jurisdictions to evaluate the impact of changes upon the region under their authority.
Public safety budgets historically support the local and state fire marshal and his or her staff. The revenue stream of many trade associations originates from membership, conference attendance, training and certification enterprises that service the public sector stakeholder. Manufacturer sponsorship of trade association conferences is noteworthy.
Unless there is an idea, or proposed regulation that has run off the rails (either in terms of rigor or cost increase) — we place fire safety in the middle of our ranking of priorities. With gathering pace, we find many fires safety goals being met with electrotechnologies where we place our highest priority.
Click on image for more information. The map is updated by expert agencies frequently so we recommend a web search for an update.
Significant code changes rarely happen within a 3-year cycle so it is wise to follow ideas as they travel through the agendas of technical committees through several cycles as administered by the Fire Code Action Committee.
The ICC posts the transcripts of public proposals, technical committee responses to public proposals, public response to the technical committee response and the final balloting in a fair and reasonable fashion as can be seen in the transcripts linked below:
A search on the terms “classroom” or “school” in any of the documents above offers granular insight into the trend of current thinking. We find fire extinguishers placement a perennial concern across several standards suites. You will note the careful consideration of proposals for use of the mass notification systems, now integrated into fire alarm systems and their deployment in active shooter situations.
The transcripts reveal detailed understanding and subtlety.
“The Country School” | Winslow Homer
There are many issues affecting the safety and sustainability of the education facility industry. We add value to the industry because of our cross-cutting perspective on the hundreds of “silos”created by the competition (and sometimes cooperation) among accredited, consortia and open-source standards developers. We have the door open every day at 11 AM Eastern time to enlighten understanding of them all. We also host a breakout teleconference every month to drill into the specifics of standards action on fire safety for the real assets of school districts, colleges and universities. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting.
Finally, we persist in encouraging education industry facility managers (especially those with operations and maintenance data) to participate in the ICC code development process. You may do so by CLICKING HERE.
The ICC Group B Code Meetings will be hosted soon and open to the public:
The Group B tranche is largely focused on energy, structural, residential and existing building concepts but all of the titles cross-reference the IFC in some way so it is wise to follow how the concepts re-arrange and cross-reference themselves with each cycle.
Issue: [16-169]
Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management, Space Planning
Left Panel Of George Julian Zolnay’s Allegorical “Academic, Business & Manual Education” Granite Frieze At Francis L. Cardozo High School (Washington, DC)
All fifty United States have their own “signature” disaster with which to reckon; some more than others. California has earthquakes, Florida has hurricanes, Missouri has floods; and so on, Life and property loss are preventable; but losses will persist because technical solutions notwithstanding, culture determines human behavior. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
FM Global is one of several organizations that curate privately developed consensus products that set the standard of care for many industries; education communities among them. These standards contribute to the reduction in the risk of property loss due to fire, weather conditions, and failure of electrical or mechanical equipment. They incorporate nearly 200 years of property loss experience, research and engineering results, as well as input from consensus standards committees, equipment manufacturers and others.
If you want FMGlobal as your insurance carrier, or to supplement your organization’s self-insurance program, then you will likely be assigned an FMGlobal conformity professional.
A scan of its list data sheets since January indicate a number of noteworthy updates of documents establishing minimum requirements for safety technologies common in education facilities:
Note that the bulk of the safety concepts in the foregoing titles incorporate by reference the safety concepts that cross our radar every day FM Global provides direct access to the full span of its documents at this link:
To respond to calls for public consultation you will need to set up (free) access credentials.
We keep FMGlobal titles — and the literature of other property insurers involved in standards setting — on the standing agenda of our Risk, Snow and Prometheus colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.
“Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance of its obligations under this agreement due to events beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, war, terrorism, civil commotion, labor strikes, and natural disasters. The affected party shall promptly notify the other party of the force majeure event and take reasonable steps to mitigate its impact on performance. During the continuance of such events, the obligations of the affected party shall be suspended, and the time for performance shall be extended.”
Example 2: Detailed Force Majeure Clause
“In the event that either party is unable to perform its obligations under this agreement due to a force majeure event, the affected party shall promptly notify the other party in writing, specifying the nature and anticipated duration of the force majeure event. Force majeure events shall include, but are not limited to, acts of God, strikes, lockouts, government action or inaction, war, terrorism, epidemics, and natural disasters. The affected party shall use reasonable efforts to overcome or mitigate the effects of the force majeure event. If the force majeure event continues for a period of [specified duration], either party may terminate this agreement by providing written notice to the other party.”
A conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and one of the foremost climate experts in the world today. His new book — “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” — is an argument for treating climate as a serious problem but not an extinction-level event requiring such severe and drastic steps as rewiring a large part of the culture and the economy.
The alarmist reddening of weather maps is a perfect visualisation of how 5th generational warfare works. We’re dealing with an information war and the battlefield is our mind. @RWMaloneMDpic.twitter.com/nTBv5yhYbS
Today we run a status check on the stream of technical and management standards evolving to assure the highest possible level of security for education communities. The literature expands significantly from an assortment of national standards-setting bodies, trade associations, ad hoc consortia and open source standards developers. CLICK HERE for a sample of our work in this domain.
School security is big business in the United States. A few years ago we could deal with physical security separately from cybersecurity. Not so much anymore. In today’s colloquium — essentially a survey module presenting a broad overview — we seek to understand product and interoperability standards for the following technologies:
Video surveillance: indoor and outdoor cameras, cameras with night vision and motion detection capabilities and cameras that can be integrated with other security systems for enhanced monitoring and control.
Access control:doors, remote locking, privacy and considerations for persons with disabilities.
As time permits, we will reckon with first cost and long-term maintenance cost, including software maintenance.
According to a report by Markets and Markets, the global school and campus security market size was valued at USD 14.0 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 21.7 billion by 2025, at a combined annual growth rate of 7.2% during the forecast period. Another report by Research And Markets estimates that the US school security market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 8% between 2020 and 2025, driven by factors such as increasing incidents of school violence, rising demand for access control and surveillance systems, and increasing government funding for school safety initiatives.
Noteworthy: The combined annual growth rate of the school and campus security market is greater than the growth rate of the education “industry” itself.
Education Community Safety catalog is one of the fast-growing catalogs of best practice literature. We link a small sample below and update ahead of every Security colloquium.
When your students love the school security guard- he gets flowers! Thanks, Steve! You are the BEST and we appreciate your hard work keeping us safe and building relationships! pic.twitter.com/VCJQ6y9S44
The federal requirement for a school safety plan is outlined in the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, commonly known as the Clery Act. The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal student financial aid programs to develop and publish an annual security report that includes certain safety-related policies, procedures, and crime statistics.
The Clery Act requires that schools include specific information in their security reports, including:
The school’s crime statistics for the previous three years.
Information about the school’s policies and procedures related to campus safety and security.
Information about crime prevention programs and services offered by the school.
Information about the school’s emergency response and evacuation procedures.
Information about the school’s policies and procedures for addressing and reporting incidents of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.
Information about the school’s drug and alcohol policies and prevention programs.
While the Clery Act only applies to colleges and universities that receive federal student financial aid, many states and school districts have adopted similar requirements for K-12 schools to develop and implement comprehensive safety plans. These plans may include many of the same elements as Clery Act-compliant security reports, such as emergency response protocols, crime prevention programs, and policies for addressing incidents of violence and harassment.
The most recent changes to the Clery Act were made in March 2020, when the Department of Education published the final rule amending the Clery Act regulations. The changes include:
Expanding the definition of sexual harassment to include quid pro quo and hostile environment harassment, which aligns with Title IX regulations.
Requiring institutions to report stalking and domestic violence in addition to existing crime categories.
Adding hazing as a reportable crime category.
Requiring institutions to compile and publish hate crime statistics for all categories of prejudice, including gender identity and national origin.
Requiring institutions to include specific policies and procedures in their annual security reports, such as those related to prevention and response to sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.
Requiring institutions to provide survivor-centered and trauma-informed services to individuals who report or experience sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, or stalking.
Requiring institutions to include information about prevention and response to cyberbullying and electronic harassment in their annual security reports.
Allowing institutions to provide annual security reports electronically and requiring institutions to make their crime statistics publicly available on their website.
These changes aim to strengthen the Clery Act’s requirements for campus safety and to better address sexual harassment and other forms of violence on college and university campuses.
Every new federal law involving paperwork creates an uncountable number of trade associations and compliance enterprises. A simple web search on “Cleary Act” will reveal half the internet full of pages for more information. Our focus is on the user-side — i.e. making inquiries and pushing back on the gaudy proliferation of regulatory requirements, the integrity of purpose of the law notwithstanding. We maintain this title on the standing agenda on all of our Security colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Center Grove Schools enters the 2022/2023 school year with a new high-tech safety partner — Centegix CrisisAlert — purchased in part with school safety grant money that pairs with their Emergency Operations Center that opened in January 2022. The CrisisAlert program puts security at the fingertips of all teachers and staff.
Both systems address what the district learned it had to work on from a school safety assessment back in 2018 – live monitoring and faster response times in an emergency. Seven-hundred cameras will scan every school in real-time from the district’s Emergency Operations Center. — More
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
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