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How well do you know the buildings
in your emergency response area?
What you don't know could disable or kill, which is why NIOSH often recommends pre-incident planning, and why most codes require owners to develop preplans with their fire department.
As fire company officers, we know how difficult it is for companies to conduct comprehensive preplanning, despite the importance to first responders. This is why we created Blazemark.
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Fire Planning Associates Presenting at Upcoming Conferences
April 13, 2010 - Philadelphia/Delaware Valley Fire Protection Networking Coalition Event, Montgomery County Public Safety Training Campus, Conshohocken, PA
June 8, 2010 - NFPA Conference, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV http://www.nfpa.org/categorylistconf.asp?categoryID=1600
June 25, 2010 - Southeastern Association of Fire Chiefs Annual Leadership Conference, Louisville, KY http://seafc.org/default.asp?pageid=41&deptid=1
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Fire Planning Associates in the News
"Preparing for Emergencies" feature in the Sept. 1, 2009 Intelligencer
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Preplanning in the Sept/Oct 2009 Issue of "Campus Safety" Magazine
Read more here
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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&trade, 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.
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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
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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
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