I'm going to go out on a limb here and do something I'm a bit apprehensive about as an engineer. #1 FLAWS IN THE ARMOR First - my number one fear of writing when I first started was that I was going to be wrong, and I was going to expose it for the world to see. After all - Engineers are never allowed to be wrong. And when we are, we're not allowed to openly admit it, right!? Anyone? Ok now that I've offended my friends, I should say that I'm flawed. I don't mean that facetiously. I've mostly gotten over the fact that I don't know everything; I have gaps in my knowledge. And even the things I do feel pretty adamant about, I'm still learning ways in which even those areas need improvement. I'm learning all the time. So acknowledging first that I am flawed and make mistakes is piece number one. #2 OPEN DISCORD Second - it's better for the world to bring discussions out into the open - where we can all learn from it. That's the entire point of the Forum, the point of writing as part of this blog, the point of MeyerFire altogether. What conversations can we start that everyone benefits from? In that line of logic, today I'm posting this detail that is a sketch I put together for open critique. Hopefully, if this is something we all learn a little from and gain some useful knowledge, maybe it's something we can do again with different situations. #3 IDEAS FOR CRITIQUE Before we fire away, remember that any detail is simply an approach, a concept. It's one possible solution. It's not a cure-all for every situation. It's simply one approach of many. I'd like to propose a few prompts to help the discussion related to this specific approach: USE CASES: What are good use cases for this? PROS: What benefits does an approach like this bring? CONS: What are the negatives with an approach like this? IMPROVE: What ways can this approach be improved? Here's the concept: So - what critique would you offer here?
What are good and bad use cases? Pros and cons with the approach? How could it be improved? Thanks, as always, for being a part of making the industry better. Earlier this week I needed to copy a four-unit apartment where I designed the 13R sprinkler system and simply roll it over into a new job.
It was a complete duplicate building, just in a different location (new jurisdiction, different water supply). Slam dunk. Easy, done. Right? Well sure, except then I looked at my prior layout. I couldn’t stand it. I looked at my own set of plans from just three years ago (2020!) and they look terrible. Now, the actual layout was fine. The sprinkler, locations, pipe are fine. Plans are OK. They were not at a stage that I think the average person would look at them and puke – but when I look at them I want to. Why? There are so many different tweaks and improvements on the presentation in three years that the work I do today simply looks very little like the work I was doing just 36 months ago. The titleblock is hard to read. When you look at the coversheet, it’s a mess of schedules and details and sections seemingly thrown around wherever they would fit. There’s no big bold title at the top, nor any kind of easy recognition on whether this project is on Main Street or Mars. It’s disjointed, doesn’t flow, isn’t what I would choose to do today. I get little goosebumps now having to stare at it now. IMPROVEMENT We don’t all stand on the shoulders of giants when we start out. We don’t hit perfection right off the bat. In reality, we should acknowledge that we’re very clearly never operating in a state of perfection. There is always room for improvement. And even if tradition says that our organization has done something the same way for 25 years, we need to be adapting to the needs of today and making use of the tools of today. One single big overhaul that changes a whole organization’s work style and work output simply never happens. OK – maybe somewhere for somebody, a big, conscious overhaul of standardization and workflow is theoretically possible. But if it actually has happened somewhere, then it had to be exceptionally painful and surely not quick. Improvement doesn’t happen ‘when we have time to take that on’. It happens in very very small increments. Micro improvements. A tweak here on this job. A nudge here on this job. A lightbulb on this job. What worked better? What worked worse? Adapt and move the chains forward. It’s far better in our world to take the 4-yard gain every single play than it is to throw 3 Hail Mary’s, fail, and then punt on the idea. NO LIGHTNING-STRIKE CHANGES If we tinker and tweak (surely I’m using some kind of Gen-Z curse word here or something?) things constantly, find what works, and adapt over time – that’s when we do actually make change happen. We also don’t get this lightning-strike ideas all at once. We get lots of little ideas over time, that, when executed, add up. It’s only after implementing all the constant little improvements that the big differences can start to show. That’s why my gut sinks when I look at the presentation from a 2020 project. It’s not one thing – it’s the 30 things that have all improved since then. THANKS, JOE. Yes, I’m somewhat embarrassed of the work that happened not even that long ago. But no, I didn’t come here today to brag about my own self-improvement. SPINNING IT FORWARD What I’m really interested in – is taking that look back and spinning it around. Where do we want to be, as an organization, in the next three years? Where do I want to be, as a person, in three years? Where do we want to take the industry, in three years? 3-YEARS TO TEN? Where is it that we can take things? For me as a person, for my team, but also – what about all of us? Three years seems hard enough to imagine. But carry out that thought – where can we all be, as an industry, in ten years? Let’s set aside the news network hysteria and world ending predictions for just a second and assume that things are going to be mostly around in 2033. That the fire protection industry will be growing and adapting just as it has for the last 120+ years. What do we want the industry to be in 2033? OVERESTIMATING THE SHORT GAME, UNDERESTIMATING THE LONG A famous person once said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” I find this to be slap-me-in-my-face true. And I find the evidence for that easily when I look back on the last ten years. What happened? Where was I? What did I know then? What did I not know then? (answer: it was much more than what I knew) What was I doing then? What am I doing now? 2033 In 2033, will we all be sitting around and griping about the same issues that we gripe about today? Are we going to fix the issues surrounding delegated design? The boilerplate specs from 1985? Bid drawings that themselves obstruct code? Or perhaps just as important, the apathy some people have towards fire protection? Is it still going to be a problem? If not – what must happen? How far away are we from changing the outcome? Even if it is big – or would take a lot of effort, or resources, or awareness – is it not something that we couldn’t completely change by 2033? THOUSAND SMALL INCREMENTS If we look back – see how all our small changes stack up – and then look back forward: it’s the thousand small increments that will make the big difference. What are the small actionable items, today, that move us all in the right direction? How do we break giant problems down so that we can hit the 4-yards of progress now instead of waiting for a Hail Mary in nine years? What is that? What does that look like? TIME + PRESSURE I’ve spoken with enough people I admire that I believe in my core that there are few things we can’t solve given enough pressure and enough time. I see a path where we can change the trajectory of the industry if we choose to do so, collectively. It all depends on what we choose to do today. What will we etch in a small way today that keeps us moving towards big change tomorrow? And without sounding like I’ve completely gone off the rails; I think about these things a lot. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to do so with the website and the content and community that hang around here. I am so thankful for that. I don’t mean taking on big challenges in a figurative sense – I mean it as an actionable challenge. If you’ve got a gripe with how our industry operates – what are you doing about it? What change can you make now that moves things in a better direction for all of us? Around here we’ve got “irons in the fire” so to speak to be making progress towards the areas we really care about. Some things maybe awareness. Others education. Maybe resources. Maybe advocacy. Maybe they’re slow burns – maybe they won’t come to life for some time – but after lots and lots and lots of little victories maybe they will make it out to the world and make some real tangible change. Ten years from now simply seems unfathomable for me to comprehend. Maybe it’s my age or my kids’ ages or that so much has changed in my world in the last decade. It’s difficult for me to picture it. I can only barely imagine what 2 years from now could look like. But if you assume that 2033 will happen, that it will hit us at some point: will we be looking back and be mildly embarrassed by how things used to be – because so much has changed? Or will we gripe about the same issues without doing anything about it? Big news in the Fire Protection PE Exam space - the Fire Protection PE Exam, which is offered once a year, is moving from October up to April. It will still only be offered once a year.
The Fire Protection exam has been held on a single date in October for at least the last decade (but likely much longer). This shift to move the exam away from October is rumored to alleviate the lack of available seats at the testing centers, as space has been harder to accommodate now that so many PE Exams have moved to the online version. This is somewhat of a surprising and short notice for those planning to take the PE Exam in 2024 as the study timeline moves up significantly. NCEES hasn't published the new date on the Fire Protection PE Exam website (yet), but this memo from NCEES from May 2023 documents the change: https://www.ncbels.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Spring-2024-Exam-Changes-Member-Board-Memo.pdf To accommodate the new date, the SFPE PE Course is changing dates to the spring and we'll be updating the PE Prep Guide for availability following this year's exam as well. If you know of someone interested in taking the Fire Protection PE Exam - let them know. Many state boards require applications to be submitted well in advance of the exam date - and this change will certainly affect that application timeline. To contact NCEES with questions or concerns, they can be reached here: ncees.org/about/contact/ For those studying for the PE Exam this year - first - hang in there! You may be in the thick of studying, or, if like just about everyone, studying but not feeling like it is enough. Hang in there and keep going! NCEES UPDATES REFERENCE HANDBOOK TO VERSION 1.3 In case you missed it, NCEES recently updated the Fire Protection PE Reference Handbook to Version 1.3. If you're taking the exam this year, you can access it by logging into NCEES here: account.ncees.org/reference-handbooks/ This was news to a few people I spoke with who are studying for the exam, so we looked for changes between the 1.2 and 1.3 editions and published them in a basic table below (click the image to download). This help syncs the latest PE Prep Guide (7th Edition, 2023) with these most recent changes: VERY LIMITED 7TH EDITION PE PREP GUIDES LEFT As of this writing, we have less than 12 copies of the PE Prep Guide (7th Edition) available, with only a handful of remaining 2021 editions as well. This guide has continued to sell well again this year - surpassing prior editions. If you've pushed off ordering the PE Prep Guide - don't wait any longer - these will go fast and will likely sell out prior to the exam in October. Are you going to AFSA next week? Be on the lookout for a nerdy looking guy with a MeyerFire logo on the arm, because we'll be at AFSA42 next week. If you're looking for a booth - we are very nearly at that stage! We (MeyerFire) will have our first official full-fledged booth at the SFPE Annual Conference & Expo in Bethesda, Maryland in October.
Look for us and some show-and-tell on MeyerFire University while there. For those that might have missed our post a couple weeks ago - we have an all-new app that's included for free for MeyerFire University users: The New website: www.meyerfireuniversity.com The New iOS App: MeyerFire on App Store The New Android App: MeyerFire on Google Play I'm happy to announce that our app, as of this writing, now has our entire Toolkit included in the app! Just close the app (if you still have it open), re-open and select the third icon at the bottom of the screen. We're getting a lot of great feedback about what we've created thus far - and honestly we're thrilled about it. The term "app" does nothing. What we can learn and use it for? That's where our impact lies. If you haven't read about all of our very recent updates - you can do so here: www.meyerfire.com/blog/major-update-to-meyerfire-university Thanks for reading! WHAT'S NEXT FOR MEYERFIRE In 2020, I asked many people about what's next. The question was - what do you need to be successful? What can I create to help that happen? I thought the answer was going to be cheatsheets (who doesn't love cheatsheets?). Or software tools. Or forum updates. It wasn't any of those things. THE FRUSTRATION What I kept hearing, over and over, from fire marshals, from contractors, and from engineers - was how much everyone was struggling to train their inexperienced staff. Covid changed a lot of things about the workforce. What we used to rely on for training where the new person gets the cube next to the senior-level person - those days are mostly gone. We don't 'overhear' conversations anymore. We don't pull people into the conference room to get a learning opportunity. The workforce now has different challenges than it did just four years ago. Remote work. A huge loss of experienced staff. A younger-generation coming in with higher expectations of being trained and supported. We know it's different. It's obvious. THE IDEAS So around here - we listened. It's really difficult to get new staff off-the-ground. We hire extra hands because we're busy, but because we're busy we can't dedicate experienced staff to train them up. It's "all-hands-on-deck." And, honestly, conventional training is difficult. It can be expensive. Untimely. Difficult to access. Maybe boring. Lacks daily learning. Lacks the extra resources. Isn't remote-work friendly. Maybe it's one or some or all of those things. So after hearing and talking around, we build the MeyerFire University platform out of that frustration. There has got to be a 2023 answer to the problem that honestly we've struggled with for a long time now. How do we create the resources right at the fingertips for those who need it? How do we create relevant content that actually helps make a difference? We structured the university content around being accessible, being visual, and hopefully engaging. We added workshops and exercises and simulations and puzzles to help develop skill. We're building and growing it all-the-time, and will be for years to come. There's a lot that we want to cover. We have a long way to go. THE BIG CHANGE We continued to listen. "Can we get individual tracking? Individual logins? Can we get this on mobile? Can you make it so we can just hit "continue watching" just like Netflix? Can we download courses and watch them on a plane? Can we get an app?" I'm extremely excited to share a major change in the experience. We now have all of that. 100%. We've worked our tails off to make this happen, and it's now live; today. We want this to be an uncompromised best-possible-way to help your team do great things in the fire protection industry. This is a big step in that direction. For those on MeyerFire University - here are three new links (all free - no extra cost): The New website: www.meyerfireuniversity.com The New iOS App: MeyerFire on App Store The New Android App: MeyerFire on Google Play Access the content anywhere using the new login - no additional cost for the app or new site. We're extremely excited about what this will allow us to create going forward, and my hope is that it will make a positive difference in helping you do great work. Here's some clips - full disclaimer: fake people, real app: (if you don't see images below, click here) If you're a MeyerFire University user, download now for free with the links above.
If you'd like to get live pricing for MeyerFire University, or see what courses we have today, visit: www.meyerfireuniversity.com. We could not be more excited to bring this to life. Thanks for reading and for being a part of the community here! - Joe
Are you going to be in Austin this week for the 2023 North American Sprinkler Expo & NFSA Annual Seminar? If so - check us out! Joe is speaking on Wednesday, May 3rd at 1:00 pm in the Lonestar Room A (sidenote: what could sound more Texas?) on "Design Efficiently: Lessons from a 2-Year Self-Study on Time Management in Fire Sprinkler Design". It'll be a one-hour talk on how to rethink time-management specifically within the fire protection industry. I'll share ways to get your time back and be more effective in your role today. If that sounds grandiose - well it is - except that we have the data to back it up: If you're around - come check it out!
That's Wednesday May 3 at the NFSA North American Expo & Annual Seminar. Have a great rest of your week! - Joe Hard to believe we've made it to that time of year again. Yes, baseball season. But also - the dreaded PE Exam Prep summer. It's fast approaching. We are carrying on our tradition of PE Exam Prep around here, with the hardcover 380+ page PE Prep Guide and our 20-week online PE Prep Series. If you're in the business of setting yourself up with as much content you can to pass the exam - you can get 25% off the online Prep Series by using coupon code BUNDLE when you checkout with both. THE NEW 7TH EDITION OF THE PE PREP GUIDE Our goal with all of our prep content is that it's the best possible resource to help you pass the Fire Protection PE Exam. We need more FPEs in the world, and we're serious about helping you make that happen. With that in mind, we've worked to incorporate a lot of feedback from users the past couple years to update the PE Prep Guide so that it's as realistic to the exam as possible. The 7th Edition includes question styles that better mirror today's PE exam questions, added feedback and advice for passing the exam, and updated all of our references to match the current exam. Now if you have the 2021 Edition, do you need to buy a new one? Nah - the 2021 Edition is more than capable of providing a lot of help in preparing for the exam - just know that the references (NCEES and required references) have since been changed and that the question styling has been updated. The 7th Edition is in-stock and shipping now. WANT MORE? We've partnering with Chris Campbell at the Building Code Blog once again where he provides explanations and worked-problems as part of the PE Roadmap Video Series over at the Building Code Blog website. If you're looking for a more personalized, 24/7 access to lots and lots of worked problems and the explanations behind them, Chris is the guy. The feedback has been very positive. HOW DOES IT COMPARE? The number one question we've been asked and wondered ourselves is how the prep content compares to the actual exam? What data is there to support how well those who use the prep material do on the actual exam? We spent a lot of time with this last fall and studied results from over a hundred users to compare how people performed on the actual exam versus our online PE Prep Series. If you're in the business of passing the exam this year - check out what the results were (click for the full detail): For all the feedback we have - as of this writing - many more people have scored better on the actual exam than the PE Prep Series. I'd invite you to read through the article for the full data breakout.
Cheers to a successful prep season! Any questions - let me know at joe@meyerfire.com. |
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+ Unsubscribe anytime AUTHORJoe Meyer, PE, is a Fire Protection Engineer out of St. Louis, Missouri who writes & develops resources for Fire Protection Professionals. See bio here: About FILTERS
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April 2024
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