All,
Welcome to this year’s third issue.
As always, you will find interesting articles, most of them with a direct implication on our day-to-day work as professionals in the fire safety industry. I would like to specially mention the one about modelling. The article describes, in a very direct and clear way, the problems of maintaining FDS and CFAST.
We as fire engineers often take these programs for granted, and simply expect them to work properly and produce reliable results. How many of you out there have really given some thought to the thousands of hours being put into these programs so we can use them in our projects? I highly recommend that you read this article by Kevin McGrattan at NIST. I can assure you that once you read it, you will have another view of this important aspect of our profession and may also start to think about how you as a fire engineer can aid in the development of these codes and, indirectly, our profession. I am confident that it will come as an eye-opener to most of you.
I would also like to the mention the memorial words about Margaret Law. She was instrumental in the development of our profession and the recognition of our engineering discipline. There is no doubt that without Margaret, we would not have been where we are today. I strongly recommend that you read her articles and papers on fire engineering and performance-based design—even though they were written a few decades ago, they are still valid, since they touch on the same issues and problems we encounter today.
If there is an important subject that you would like to share with the industry, do not hesitate to contact us. We can make that happen.
As always, a big thanks to the people who have put in a lot of time and effort to make this issue a reality.
Our next issue will come out in December.
Yours sincerely,
Jimmy Jönsson, Managing Editor