|
See you at the NFPA Conference!
Drop us a line so we can give you a personal tour of Preplanning in the cloud with Blazemark.
|
How well do you know your buildings?
What you don't know could disable or kill. NIOSH often recommends pre-incident planning, and most codes require owners to develop preplans with their fire department according to NFPA 1620.
As fire company officers, we know how difficult it is to conduct comprehensive preplanning, despite the importance to first responders. This is why we created Blazemark. A proven "cloud based," easy-to-use solution to share critical building and infrastructure information across the first responder community.
Contact Us - 215-321-6260
|
Fire Planning Associates Participating in IAFC Conference
Beginning May, 31 FPA will be at the Eastern Division of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Conference in Trevose, PA.
|
Fire Planning Associates to Partner With Hopewell Twp. Fire District and Capital Health Systems at NFPA 2012 Conference
Fire Planning Associates is teaming up with the Hopewell Township Fire District (Mercer County, NJ) and Capital Health Systems to present "Pre-Incident Planning During Construction — Case Study of New Hospital Complex" at the 2012 NFPA Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. This is a case study of best practices for pre-incident planning for an almost 1 million square-foot hospital complex while it was being built from 2008-2011. The complex includes buildings up to seven stories in height in a suburban/rural community. Every two weeks, the site was toured to gather new information, which was then updated in Blazemark and shared with community responders in real-time. The process included a partnership with the municipality, the health care systems agency that will own/operate the hospital, and Blazemark professional services.
The presentation is slated for Wednesday, June 13th, at 08:00
|
Fire Planning Associates Develops Preplans for 24 Schools in Pennsylvania's 3rd Largest School District
Fire Planning Associates Completes Effort to Preplan 24 Schools for Emergency Responders in 9 Municipalities Press Release
The Warwick Township (Bucks County, PA) Police Department initiated a project to revise and enhance the Emergency Response Plans for all 23 schools in the Central Bucks District and the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology.
Fire Planning Associates (FPA), a Bucks County, Pa. technology firm, worked with Warwick Police and other local emergency services using their state-of-the-art Blazemark pre-planning system to deliver integrated incident response plans for both human and natural disasters.
|
Fire Planning Associates Writes Residential Sprinkler Report for Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition and Bucks County Fire Marshal's Assn
Nonprofit HFSC Releases Results of New Home Fire Sprinkler Study
Frankfort, IL – A report that sheds new light on the lifesaving value of installing home fire sprinkler systems has been prepared for the nonprofit Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition (HFSC) by Fire Planning Associates, Inc., a comprehensive preplanning organization in Washington Crossing, PA in collaboration with the Bucks County Fire Marshals Association.
The group studied life safety and property protection in homes with and without fire sprinkler systems and reviewed fire experience in nearly 7,000 sprinklered homes in Buckingham, New Britain, Warrington, Warwick and Wrightstown Townships as well as Ivyland Borough.
In Bucks County, there were 90 home fire fatalities in non-sprinklered one- and two-family homes during 1988-2010. Those deaths made up 88% of all County fire deaths during that time. There were zero fire fatalities in homes protected by fire sprinkler systems. The report details five reported fires in sprinklered homes documented as saving at least five lives.
The average property loss in sprinklered-home fire incidents in Bucks County was $14,000, compared to $179,896 in damages to homes that experienced fires without fire sprinklers. The report found that fires in sprinklered homes required an average of 340 gallons of water to extinguish the fires. Homes without sprinklers required an average of 5,974 gallons (or nearly 25 tons) of water.
|
Recent Fire Planning Associates Projects
July 2011
- FPA has been contracted to provide detailed preplans for 9 buildings, comprising over 1.2 million square feet of high-tech research and development space, at a major US pharmaceutical campus. FPA has already used our BLAZEMARK web-based proprietary software program to preplan 17 buildings at 3 of this company's campuses.
- FPA has been contracted by a major pharmaceutical company to conduct annual refresher training for the emergency response teams at 2 Philadelphia-area sites. This is the 2nd annual refresher training conducted for these sites, using a combination of classroom and hands-on training. Process-specific training has also been conducted for flammable liquids.
- FPA has completed a study of how residential sprinkler systems have been adopted, and their successes in the central portion of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This includes 6 different municipalities where almost 7000 homes are sprinklered. FPA worked with the Bucks County Fire Marshal's Association on the project, which was funded by a grant through the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition.
- FPA is working on a project to provide detailed preplans for 24 schools in our BLAZEMARK web-based proprietary software program. Information on these schools will be shared among 9 municipalities, their police and fire departments. The project was funded through a law enforcement technology grant.
- FPA conducted a tabletop emergency management drill for a large municipality in New Jersey. The drill will include virtual reality components to make it as realistic as possible through our partnership with CommandSim
- FPA is working on a firefighting water supply study for Hopewell Township, Mercer County, NJ. All water supplies in the Township are being evaluated for use, identified on GIS and in our BLAZEMARK preplaning software, along with identifying key target hazards also identified on GIS
|
Preplanning in the Sept/Oct 2009 Issue of "Campus Safety" Magazine
Read more here
|
Numerous NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Investigation Reports Recommend Preplanning - How Are You Doing With This?
Even in Large Single Family Dwellings - "Career Engineer Dies and Fire Fighter Injured After Falling Through Floor While Conducting a Primary Search at a Residential Structure Fire - Wisconsin"
"Recommendation #1: Fire departments should conduct pre-incident planning and inspections of buildings within their jurisdictions to facilitate development of safe fire ground strategies and tactics." http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/fire/reports/face200626.html
|
BLAZEMARK Preplans Over 500,000,000 sq. ft.
As of November, 2009 - BLAZEMARK has been used to preplan over 540,000,000 square feet of buildings. This does not include other, "unique" properties for which we have found it also works well--major highway interchanges, railyards, and similar facilities--that emergency responders need key information on.
|
Excellent Article on Fire Protection for Buildings During Construction
By Mat Chibbaro, P.E., Fire Protection Engineer - OSHA
Covers the steps necessary to provide proper fire protection to construction, renovation, and demolition projects - including pre-incident planning. Fire Planning Associates are experts in these areas. Click here.
|
October, 2008 - Fire Planning Associates Selected to Provide Software/Preplanning for Pharma Plant in Singapore
Fire Planning Associates has been selected by a major biotech corporation to conduct the preemergency planning effort for their new facility in the Tuas Biomedical Park. The preplanning effort will be conducted in our proprietary web-based Blazemark preplanning software and available to provide the latest facility information for response personnel.
|
October, 2008 - Fire Planning Associates Completes Preplan for I-76 (Schuylkill Expwy)/I-476 (Mid-County Expwy) Interchange
Fire Planning Associates recently completed a pre-emergency plan in our proprietary web-based preplanning software, BLAZEMARK, of the I-76/I-476 interchange for Montgomery County (PA) Public Safety. This interchange has been the scene of several hazardous materials incidents in the past several years. The plan includes numerous annotated photographs, and catalogs previously developed hard copy documents in a manner in which numerous responders to incidents here can access the latest information about the intersection. The plan also provides direct hotlinks to PennDOT traffic cameras that monitor the intersection, allowing personnel to view the situation on-scene while still enroute. The preplan was utilized for the June 30, 2009 hazardous materials truck accident at this intersection.
|
Dept. of Homeland Security-Unified Incident Command Decision Support
For Immediate Release:
Fire Planning Associate's, Inc., Blazemark Software
Integral To The Success Of Recent UICDS Information Sharing Demonstration
Washington Crossing, PA, April 2009: Pre-Incident planning technology developed by Fire Planning Associates, Inc played a critical role in the April 29th demonstration conducted at the Virginia Emergency Operations Center in Richmond, VA. Along with 22 other information technology providers, Fire Planning Associates' Blazemark internet-based software tool provided emergency responder access to preplans for different incident scenarios.
Mr. Bart Krauss, President of Fire Planning Associates, stated "we were proud to be chosen as one of the key participants in this demonstration and applaud the initiative of the Department of Homeland Security in creating the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) project and in conducting this key pilot demonstration in conjunction with the Virginia Emergency Center Operations."
Chip Mahoney, SAIC Project Manager for UICDS, said "The UICDS prototype demonstration illustrated how a wide variety of applications can share information through a diverse set of interfaces, data formats and networks using non-proprietary, open standards. From long-standing applications like computer-aided dispatch and asset management to more recent video surveillance and detection technologies to innovative new situational awareness tools, the UICDS Architecture Specification accommodates the information exchanges emergency managers and responders need to help save lives, protect property, and minimize economic loss."
UICDS is a middleware foundation that enables commercial and government incident management technologies to share information and support decisions for the National Response Framework and National Incident Management to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from natural, technological, and terrorist events. UICDS is sponsored by the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and is being executed through a contract with prime contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) [NYSE:SAI].
Fire Planning Associates, with offices in Bucks County, PA, and New York City, are the designers and developers of Blazemark preplans assisting emergency response and facility management personnel with quickly developing an incident action plan, maximizing firefighter effectiveness and safety and aiding in fire investigation. Blazemark also plays a critical role in helping corporations deal with emergencies as the front end to their business continuity plans and is used by major corporations on a global basis.
For More Information Contact:
Mr. Bart Krauss - President or Mr. Greg Jakubowski, Vice President, CSP, FSFPE
Address P.O. Box 446, Washington Crossing, PA., 18977
Phone number: 215-321-6260
Email
|
Press Release-Building Information Model
Building Information Models in New York City - A New Group is Formed
/PRZOOM - Newswire/ - New York City building industry professionals begin a formal organization of people interested in learning more about BIM (Building Information Models), a powerful new software tool set that radically alters business processes.
Chicago, IL, United States, 05/23/2008 - The kick-off meeting of New York City's ad hoc BIM interest group and buildingSMART alliance(tm) members would have been sold out if tickets were sold. More than 40 people registered to attend the meeting at Parsons Binckerhoff's Manhattan offices' 40-person conference room. Others from around the country joined the meeting on the web.
Presentations on buildingSMART Alliance(tm) initiatives, case studies clearly outlining benefits and a highly informed discussion signaled that New York City is taking a leadership role in outlining the societal and business benefits of BIM (Building Information Models) and the processes it enables.
With buildingSMART Alliance Executive(tm) Director, Deke Smith, FAIA phoning in from a West Coast conference supported by the Alliance and members on a national web conference, the event demonstrated the use of collaborative tools that improve consensus decision making.
Highlights of the evening included the use of BIM in fire fighter training, road replacement and high rise design and documentation.
Stephen Thomson and James Vandezande and Rachel Arulraj all spoke at the presentation in Parsons Binkerhoff's New York City offices.
Mr. Stephen Thomson, AIA Principal of Thomson Architects PC, started the formal presentation with a personal overview of the buildingSMART Alliance based on the PowerPoint available at MeetUp.com
Rachel Arulraj, PhD, Director of Virtual Design and Construction, Parsons Brinckerhoff, explained how BIM animations detailed precise tasks for a large road section that was cost-effectively replaced. The clear visuals assisted the consensus decision making required to achieve the cost savings.
James Vandezande, AIA, Associate, Digital Design Manager, SOM, New York, showed a road map for phased BIM implementation, which requires process changes along with tool set updates. While the map was specific to the firm's goals, obvious financial benefits realized by SOM, it's colleagues and clients were presented.
Case studies of SOM's BIM projects on Manhattan high rises including Freedom Tower were used to illustrate clash detection benefits, communication improvements, schedule reduction and cost savings.
Paul Seletsky, AIA Digital Design Director for SOM New York, opened the discussions emphasizing the business process improvements possible with BIM.
The positive applications of BIM in fire safety and emergency response were pointed out in Barton Krauss' description of advanced pre-incident planning software. Krauss is president of Fire Planning Associates, Inc.
Hosney Abdelgelil, Project Controls Director, Hill International, Inc., New York, noted the productivity lost when design models and construction models are not exchanged properly.
Web participants included buildingSMART Alliance members such as Hector Torres, Igor Starkov and "BIG BIM little bim" author, Finith Jernigan, who were among those networking online while the live New York networking session was occurring in the Parson Binkerhoff conference center.
Hosney Abdelgelil, who organized the event with Diaa Elmaddah, PE, Project Manager for Parsons Binkerhoff, added that interoperability of models, insurance and legal issues will be main threads through future discussions.
The second gathering is scheduled for Wednesday, June 18 at 5:30 pm. A meeting place that can accommodate more than 40 people and large-scale web links are being arranged to reduce carbon foot print in creating a large network.
Co-Founder
BIM Education Co-op(tm)
BIMeducation.com
Board of Directors Member
Friends of Downtown - Chicago
|
|
|
