Investigationg Loss Investigation: Part II

Hello Everyone,
This is the second post in our series on loss investigation in fire engineering.  The first post can be found here.  Our discussion is founded on the idea that fire engineers can support clients and find them settlements totaling millions of dollars.  They do so by studying the behavior of a fire, analyzing what could have prevented it, and how any fire safety and suppression systems that were in place may have failed.  They will support the client during subrogation and litigation, and prove that the party responsible for the system’s failure is help responsible, both criminally and civilly.
During a system failure analysis, a fire investigator will be able to tell a building owner or tenant about the cause and origin of a fire, by doing a cause and origin investigation.  However, this preliminary report may be a simplified version of what actually transpired.  It is useful here to use a theoretical example.
Say, for instance, that, a high school chemistry lab burns down.  A fire investigator might be able to tell you that the fire started from a faulty outlet.  However, a fire engineer would be able to develop a much more complex narrative.  In the high school chemistry lab, a student left a burner on.  The burner blew out, which allowed gas to leak into the room.  Because this school, like any American public high school, is short on supplies and storage, the teacher has stored the flammable chemicals in a cabinet in the room itself, as opposed to in storage.  The electrical system, which is about 50 years old, causes a classroom projector to short out and sparks fly out of the outlet.  When a small fire breaks out that ultimately burns down the whole science wing of the high school, a fire engineer can assess how well the sprinkler system worked.  Instead of the teacher or students being held responsible, the system that failed to do what it was supposed to would be held systematically responsible and the school would be able to collect enough insurance money to build a new (and better) science wing.

Ultimately, using a fire engineering firm will save an institution thousands of dollars after a disaster.

Investigating Loss Investigation: What goes into fire engineering?

Hello Everyone,
This is the first post in a series about how fire & fire suppression engineers preform loss investigation services.  As home improvement contractors, sometimes we like to expand our horizons by looking into what other people who work n the contracting and building industry do, however different their work may be.   Loss investigation is a technical field that is part detective work and part engineering.  Expert fire engineers who specialize in this field use the evidence collected after a fire to determine how the fire protection system that was in place might have malfunctioned.  More importantly, they discover the cause and origin of the fire and evaluate the performance (or lack there for) of the fire protection system, note and analyze the components of the hazard that lead to the spreading of the fire itself and, in doing so, make conclusions that can be used by insurance companies or businesses to decide how to settle after a disaster.
The first component of this service, cause and origin investigation, is firmly grounded in the scientific method, and is controlled and regulated by governmental organizations such as the National Fire Protection Association, who monitors the scientific veracity of all claims made by fire engineers in loss investigation cases.  This means that fire suppression and loss investigation consultations have to use scientific findings and research as the primary evidence, as opposed to the engineer’s professional experience.  This means that fire engineers and companies that provide fire engineering services have to well-versed in all elements of fire science: physics, theoretical mathematics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, etc.  Needless to say, studying the way in which fire behaves is a complex science, and one that requires objective, detail-oriented study.  Be sure that when you are located a fire engineering firm, their engineers are registered Fire Protection Engineers.
Forensic Engineering is a similar field, but one that exclusively examines the reasons behind the failure of a fire protection system.    They are then able to assign responsibility to the correct parties and support the damaged party during any litigation that might occur as a result of the failed system.
After a forensic engineer has identified the party responsible for a fire system’s failure, there is a period in which the subrogation potential is analyzed and debated, which is to say, the total insurance amount is debated.  A trained & qualified fire engineering firm is sometimes able to recover millions of dollars for a client simply by providing evidence of the behavior of the fire and how it could have been avoided.