In 2018, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Standing Committee for Professional Qualifications, specifically the Subcommittee on Competency and Credentialing, set forth on an ambitious journey, seeking to establish the "Recommended Minimum Technical Core Competencies for the Practice of Fire Protection Engineering." This significant step represented the fruition of SFPE's mission to “define, develop, and advance engineering best practices; expand our scientific and technical knowledge base; and educate the global fire safety community to effectively reduce fire risk.”
A critical part of our endeavor was the comprehensive definition of core competencies deemed essential for the profession of fire protection engineering. These four areas of expertise, as outlined in the Minimum Technical Core Competencies document, are:
Fire Science: This competency entails a comprehensive understanding of the underlying physical principles of fire and its related mechanisms, including the principles of ignition, combustion, heat transfer, mass transfer, fire chemistry, and fire dynamics.
Human Behavior and Evacuation: This area requires a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and the principles of means of egress design. It includes knowledge about the behavior of people during an emergency, different design approaches, and tools and methods to perform egress, evacuation, and escape assessments.
Fire Protection Systems: This competency focuses on a comprehensive understanding of fire mitigation, including water- and non-water-based suppression; fire detection and alarm systems; smoke management systems; passive systems; fire testing; and code and standard concerns.
Fire Protection Analysis: This area necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the principles of technical analysis related to fire protection design. It includes identifying and quantifying fire-related risks and hazards, design approaches, concepts for evaluating design options, application of numerical methods and computer fire models, establishing boundary conditions, and the limits of analysis and design.
From this defining moment, a considerable challenge emerged. The SFPE Subcommittee on Competency and Credentialing was next tasked with identifying the vast landscape of fire protection engineering roles. The diversity of these roles underscores the global relevance and the potential impact of our discipline, offering opportunities to those dedicated to safeguarding life, property, and the environment from fire-related devastation.
In 2021, the seventeen roles were defined and published after incorporating feedback from a public comment review.
The Seventeen Defined Fire Protection Engineering Roles
These pathways demonstrate the wide-ranging opportunities in fire protection engineering, highlighting the discipline's inherent versatility and significance in today's complex and evolving world.
We're proud to share that we've made considerable progress in defining these seventeen roles more comprehensively by creating detailed scope documents. These documents have been a collaborative effort, echoing the collective expertise of many of our dedicated members.
Soon, we will be releasing the scope documents for Structural Fire Engineering, Performance-Based Design, and Smoke Control for public comment. This is a crucial juncture in our progress, and we can't stress enough the importance of your feedback. As members of SFPE, your insight and expertise are invaluable to ensuring that these documents reflect practical, applicable, and comprehensive definitions of each role.
We are grateful for your commitment to this significant endeavor. As we move forward, your participation will be pivotal in ensuring the success of this initiative. We eagerly anticipate your thoughts and feedback during the upcoming public comment phase. Together, we can shape the future of fire protection engineering.