Fire & Life Safety Systems Commissioning Essentials

David LeBlanc, PE, FSFPE, Jensen Hughes

The 2021 Edition of NFPA3, Standard for Commissioning Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems, provides the process, methods, and documents for commissioning fire protection and life safety systems. The speaker focuses on the difference between, and implementation of NFPA3 and the new NFPA 4 Standard, Integrated Testing of Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems: who’s involved, how this new process interfaces with commissioning providers, and the steps in the commissioning process as it relates to fire protection and life safety systems.
Learn about the fire safety roles of the Fire Commissioning Agent (FCxA), and the new Integrated Testing Agent (ITa) who is responsible for review, documentation, and testing the needed integration/ interfacing between fire protection and life safety systems across various systems. What are their qualifications and responsibilities, and how do they fit in into an overall full building commissioning team? The speaker discusses common misconceptions, misunderstanding, and standardized terminology of commissioning fire protection and life safety systems, and reviews EBCx subsets – re-commissioning (ReCx) and retro-commissioning (RCx) – and how they may differ from new construction commissioning.

Learning Objectives:
Describe the unique challenges with Commissioning Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems.
Articulate the NFPA 3 commissioning process for Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems.
Define the role of the Fire Commissioning provider and how they integrate with the full commissioning team.
Differentiate between Cx NFPA 3 and Integrated Testing NFPA 4 of Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems.