ENGINEERING FIRE PROTECTION SYSTEMS ON LINKEDIN - BAD IDEA
I've seen dozens of discussions in groups requesting information on fire pump designs and problems. A lot of these discussions ended up with no response or a lot of inaccurate and irrelevant information in comments with no real support/ I saw a lot of what NFPA 20 says but no specific paragraph references for the poster to go to. My own personal choice for a response was an individual custom Pulse article with NFPA 20 drawing clips and links for more information and substantiation. I usually posted specific code paragraphs or the actual paragraph text itself. The Pulse articles also allowed UPDATES as more information was gathered for problem solving. Some of these problems resulted in a large amount of information being gathered that was collected in an online web drive all under one roof/
LINKEDIN MESSAGE CENTER RFIs
I've been receiving a lot of RFIs through LinkedIn's messaging center, leading to one long thread of disorganized text. I can no longer do any long, ongoing back and forth conversations this way for any decent response.
EMAIL ADDRESS
Any private RFI's requiring any engineering responses and details like many of these have turned into need to be done through my email address where they can be responded to by individually-organized subject matter, something not capable of with LinkedIn's message center. Any future RFIs from LinkedIn's message center will be responded to with an auto response to respond to my email address seen on my LinkedIn profile - [email protected].
FIRE PUMP TECH SUPPORT GROUP RFIs
Anyone wanting to share their RFIs publicly for others to see and comment on can post any RFI on the FIRE PUMP TECH SUPPORT GROUP. If you SEARCH for a particular topic, you may already find several discussions and Pulse articles already posted. The SEARCH INSTRUCTIONS are in the managers choice, They need to be revised for the new web page layout.
In closing, "engineering" is a precise industry requiring specific codes, details and drawings, not a bunch of loosed-lipped, unsubstantiated comments like I've seen here on LinkedIn. Providing someone with engineering resources is one thing. Trying to get someone to do your engineering for you here in some of these LinkedIn groups for free may prove to be a disaster in the making That is proving to be the most unprofessional excuse of "engineering" I've ever seen in any industry. I've been involved in pump industries much more sophisticated than fire pumps and they don't do their engineering this way and don't have the problems I've experienced with fire pumps seen in other articles I've written.
Without being facetious, most people will find their NFPA 20 answers in the book if they will take the time to read it and, in doing so, will learn where to find it and other information, starting with the Index in the back of the book. The PDF copy also allows searching a topic through a PDF reader, much easier than thumbing through a book and the PDF file can be loaded on mobile devices for field references and searches instead of dragging around a hard copy.
RETIRED
9 年I’ve likewise seen large fire pump engineering projects where the engineers read NFPA 20, and completely misinterpreted it, making a mess out of the project reinventing the wheel.
RETIRED
9 年Telling people they can’t do something that they can like the two examples below is bad enough. Telling someone they can do something they can’t or should not is a recipe for a disaster. If people want to know how to design a fire pump installation, they really need to get the info from NFPA 20’s paragraphs and related drawings and not a comment with no paragraph and/or drawing references.
RETIRED
9 年I’ve seen a lot of international RFIs on negative suction lifts on fire pumps. Everyone chimes in that NFPA 20 does not allow it as if it cannot be done legally and that’s that NFPA 20 is not the only fire pump standard in the world as the corresponding British standard typically used internationally allows it with a detailed priming system like I’ve done on retrofits here locally on older installations. See the article below as my response to this RFI. There have been other similar international negative suction lift discussion RFIs where this may apply subject to the AHJ. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fire-pump-negative-suction-lift-mike-trumbature?published=u
Creating Business Opportunities
9 年Mike, your findings are probably accurate however I'm not convinced that you're going to escape the "Dear Aunty Jane" syndrome where individuals will throw out random tripe and you're expected to do their work for them. Without wishing to offend, maybe the answer is to withhold comment until all is revealed. Have the enquirer show how they reached the point that they have reached which has led to the question/s, with calculations if required. In that manner, if the question has valid intrigue because the book is vague or open to interpretation then we all learn from the exercise plus others can contribute where their opinion differs or a variation to a known result is desirous.