ENFORCEMENT IS COMING There’s good reason SMACNA and SMART are strongly encouraging the Fire Life Safety Certification By Natalie Bruckner Photos courtesy of Tony Kocurek
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Christopher Ruch, director of training for the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), distinctly recalls being a young apprentice and crawling into building spaces where few would enter. What he saw in those spaces shocked him. So much so that he decided to devote part of his career to becoming an advocate for HVAC fire life safety training and certification. “I can’t tell you the number of times I would encounter faulty fire dampers and tell the foreman, only to be told that this was an extremely common occurrence,” Ruch says. “To me, it didn’t make sense. My wife, my friends, my neighbors were working in these buildings, and just one weak link in the chain meant a wall was no longer fire resistant. Lives were at risk.” It’s an all too common scene for sheet metal workers, and yet to date, very few states require an inspection from an ICB-certified HVAC professional. However, this is about to change. “Increasingly, building operations managers are seeking to hire technicians who are certified to perform the inspection and testing of fire life safety systems,” says Duane Smith, director of certification
