 |
| The High Volume/Low Speed Fans and Sprinkler Operation won the 2012 Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal |
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) presented four awards to recognize achievements in fire and life safety at the 2012 NFPA Conference & Expo.
The recipient of the 2012 Harry C. Bigglestone Award for Excellence in Communication of Fire Protection Concepts is Dr. Gregory T. Linteris for his paper, “Clean Agent Suppression of Energized Electrical Equipment Fires.” Linteris is a mechanical engineer in the Materials Flammability Group of the Fire Research Division of the Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He is project leader for research on material flammability in the Materials Flammability Group and also conducts research to understand the detailed mechanisms of chemically-acting fire suppressants.
The Harry C. Bigglestone award is presented annually, along with a $5,000 cash prize, to the author(s) of the most outstanding paper submitted to Fire Technology during the previous calendar year, as voted by the International Editorial Board. This award is named after the late Harry C. Bigglestone, a trustee of the Fire Protection Research Foundation, and fellow and president of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. The award will be formally presented at the General Section Reception at the NFPA Conference & Expo on Tuesday, June 12.
The recipient of this year’s Standards Medal is Edward K. Budnick, from Jefferson, Maryland, who retired from Hughes Associates, Inc. in 2011. This award is given out in recognition of outstanding contributions to fire safety and the development of codes and standards. It is the highest award given by the Standards Council.
Budnick was honored with this award for his longtime commitment and contribution to NFPA technical committees. He has served on many technical committees including Fixed Guideway Transit Systems; Alternative Approaches to Life Safety; Life Safety Code and Building Construction and Safety Code Technical Committees on Fire Protection Features and Residential Occupancies; Automatic Sprinkler Systems Technical Committees on Residential Sprinkler Systems, Sprinkler System Discharge, and Sprinkler System Installation Criteria. Budnick is also a member of the Technical Correlating Committee on Automatic Sprinkler Systems, where he served as chair from 2006-2011. He received the Committee Service Award in 2006 for his service.
The winner of the 2011 Industrial Fire Protection Section Fire Prevention Week Award is Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems of El Segundo, California. This award was created to recognize businesses that promote fire and related safety messages to employees and their communities during Fire Prevention Week of the previous calendar year.
Raytheon is receiving this award for the work done by David Hanson and his team for the best program to coincide with NFPA’s 2011 Fire Prevention Week Theme, “Protect your family from fire.” Using the 2011 NFPA Fire Prevention Week information, Hanson’s team sold at-cost fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and safety escape ladders. They also presented speeches to employees regarding fire prevention, in which they used original fire prevention songs that Hanson wrote.
The winning project of the 2012 Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal was High Volume/Low Speed Fans and Sprinkler Operation (PDF, 3 MB). The Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal recognizes a Foundation project completed in 2011 that best exemplifies the Foundation’s fire safety mission and the collaborative approach to execution that is the hallmark of all Foundation projects. The winner is recommended to the chair of the Foundation’s Board by an awards committee made up of members of the Board, Research Advisory Committee, and NFPA technical staff members.
The project focused on informing spacing and other installation requirements in NFPA 13, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems by initiating a comprehensive research program with two phases. The Phase II research activities involved the evaluation of the effect of the high volume low speed (HVLS) fans upon the performance of both ESFR (early suppression, fast response) and CMDA (control mode density area) sprinklers protecting both rack storage and palletized commodities. The fans provided a significant energy savings for industrial facilities and were quickly introduced into the market without an assessment of their impact on sprinkler effectiveness and no guidance in NFPA 13. The timeliness of this research provided direct input into NFPA 13, removing this barrier to the further use of the fans.
