3 minute read
President’s Message - IFE
Jason Hill, President of the Institution of Fire Engineers, NZ Branch, provides an update on the local activities of IFE, including the popular live fire programme held at the FENZ national training centre in Rotorua.
Formed in 1918, the IFE is a global professional membership body for those in the fire sector that seek to increase their knowledge, professional recognition and understanding of fire through a global discourse.
Comprising a diverse and professional membership base from fire services and the private sector, the IFE is focussed on improving fire safety through the gaining and sharing of knowledge, promoting the understanding of fire science and engineering, and promoting collaboration between government, industry and academia in advocating for best practice.
The Fire NZ Conference is a key platform for our organisation as we aim to serve fire industry professionals by focusing on current and relevant issues, promoting best practice, sharing of knowledge and providing networking opportunities.
IFE New Zealand continues to be actively involved in the fire industry including supporting a number of webinars, working with Engineering New Zealand and MBIE on various consultations impacting the industry as well as continued involvement with Standards and industry guidance documents.
Recognising some knowledge gaps within parts of the industry, IFE New Zealand offered free “teams events” on key and current topics of interest such as Lithium-Ion battery fires, Hydrogen safety’, compartment fires and big battery storage. These ran from November last year until July this year. These were hugely popular, and we will look to run the same format again from November this year. For those that missed the presentations, they can be viewed on our website www.ife.org.nz.
Following the tragic fire at Loafers lodge in Wellington, IFE joined with the Fire Protection Association (FPA) and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) to form a media response team. This team is now available and mandated to comment on behalf of our respective organisations, ensuring we can provide consistent messaging for events such as this, where we have common views.
Our popular one-day live fire programme event for fire engineers and people who work in fire related industries or who have an interest in the fire safety design of buildings was again held at the Fire and Emergency national training centre in Rotorua. We also welcomed students studying the NZDE (Fire) qualification at this event.
This programme was developed to give participants the opportunity to gain a better understanding of fire and smoke behaviour and firefighting techniques by involving them in a series of real fire simulations.
All participants can gain first-hand experience of real fires in building enclosures, including fire initiation and development, fire and smoke spread, flashover, the use of firefighting equipment, firefighting and search and rescue techniques and more. Our north island event was a great success, and we have a South Island event scheduled for early December.
We certainly look forward to connecting with you at FireNZ 2023 and sharing the latest updates from the fire industry both in New Zealand and worldwide.
