Seminars

Pre-Conference: Monday, October 5 (9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.)

Course Description

This one day seminar will explore a wide range of fire and life safety challenges associated with very tall buildings and strategies to address them. To enhance learning, attendees will review simple, qualitative hazard, risk or reliability analyses, fire and life safety strategy development for representative building configurations and fire scenarios, and fire safety management and evacuation planning exercises. Due to time constraints, there will be no quantitative or computational analyses.

The topics and sequence will generally follow those embodied in the SFPE Engineering Guide: Fire Safety for Very Tall Buildings. Content includes an overview of fire events in tall buildings, addressing building envelope concerns, highlighting unique characteristics for very tall buildings, and lessons learned. Emerging trends in very tall building design, which may have implications for fire and life safety performance, will be discussed.

It is appropriate for persons with diverse backgrounds and responsibilities associated with very tall buildings, including engineers, architects, insurers, fire safety managers, fire service personnel and others involved with fire and life safety design and management.

This is not an engineering analysis and design seminar.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this seminar, the participant will be able to:

• Identify applicable requirements that impact very tall buildings globally
• Identify the potential impacts of new and emerging technologies and design features on fire and life safety performance in very tall buildings (including energy storage systems)
• Explain how hazard, risk, and reliability analysis can help identify and assess scenarios of concern and potential mitigation options
• Explain the roles that occupant risk perception and situation awareness might have on the selection and operation of defend-in-place and evacuation strategies
• Distinguish the impact of building design decisions on factors such as smoke control, fire spread and structural fire resiliency
• Understand systems reliability and robustness issues
• Understand unique features of very tall buildings

Course Delivery

Dates: October 5th, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT (UTC-5)

Seminar registration also includes access to:

• James Milke's "Smoke Control in Large Atria" (Tuesday, October 6th, at 3:30 - 5:00 PM EDT)
• Welcome Reception and Expo Opening (Tuesday, October 6th, at 5:00 - 7:00 PM EDT)

Instructors

Carl F. Baldassarra, PE, FSFPE

Ray Grill, P.E., LEED AP, FSFPE

Materials

• SFPE Engineering Guide for Fire Safety for Very Tall Buildings (2021) (Recommended)
• Attendees will be asked to participate in exercises and encouraged to share experiences with fire and life safety issues and strategies in very tall buildings.

Professional Development Credit

7.5 PDH Credits

Fees

Pricing is in U.S. Dollars. Registration includes lunch and coffee breaks. Early Bird Registration pricing ends August 17, 2026. Payment is required at registration to reserve your seat. Each seminar is eligible for PDH credits and a Certificate of Completion will be awarded upon completion of online assessment. 

After you register for the conference, you will receive a confirmation email with a discount code for $50.00 OFF the seminar that you or your colleague can use to register via our learning management system. The separate registration enables SFPE to add course materials, course assessments, references, and links that the instructors want to share during the class. When you register, you will receive a confirmation email after your registration has been processed. Approximately two weeks before the conference, all seminar registrants will receive an email with onsite course details and logistics.

SFPE reserves the right to cancel a seminar up to two weeks prior to the event.

Learn More and Register >>