Weaving the Fabric of Your Fire Protection Career

By Jocelyn Sarrantonio, PE | Technical Director at MeyerFire

Last week, I celebrated my 1-year anniversary at MeyerFire. Yay me! Joining MeyerFire was a career pivot for me, having worked almost exclusively in Fire Protection consulting before that. I’m happy I was fortunate enough to find the right opportunity at the right time, and am really enjoying my new role.

Recently, a lot of what I’ve been working on here was content to help students preparing to take the Fire Protection PE exam, and an introductory course (coming soon!) that’s meant to teach current engineering students about what Fire Protection is. The thought is, when we make contact with students via the Student Connector, we have information readily available for them to let them know all about fire protection. Both of these efforts have had me looking back a bit. First in reminiscing about my winding pathway to how I got here and my pathway to becoming a licensed Fire Protection Engineer. And also in revisiting the basics, the fundamental concepts in fire protection engineering, and helping young professionals achieve their goals and progress their careers.

I’ve been feeling a lot like a professional Mama Bear. I care a lot about helping people be successful and finding their own paths. Even people I haven’t met!
 
MY PATHWAY
My path to being an engineer followed the “normal” engineering pathway. I attended a four-year engineering school studying Mechanical Engineering. I was organized and really good at math, and I like the order and quantitative finality that engineering brings. I thought I knew what I was going to do, designing machines at The Gillette Company in Boston. That didn’t really work out, so I stayed for my Master's degree when I wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do. At the end of that tenure, I threw my resume on Monster.com (yes, it was still a thing back then) and ended up in Chicago for my first job. That part was a huge leap. I had lived in Massachusetts all my life, and I moved to a big city I hadn’t even visited before my job interview. The job offered me a bit of relief, though, when my first boss explained to me how people end up in Fire Protection from all over the place. I wasn’t starting out behind. 

Chicago flies the W for the greatest architectural city (in my opinion!!)

In fact, I was starting out kind of ahead! I spent some summers working at my Mom’s fire sprinkler contracting business that my grandfather started, but I would still consider myself to be starting off at square one. I knew what NFPA 13 was and could name some of the major pieces of equipment, but I certainly didn’t know what a building code was, and I probably couldn’t tell you the actual difference between a butterfly valve and an OS&Y valve. I recognize that it was quite a privilege to have family members in the business, and I definitely called my Mom for help a few times in those first few years. “Mom, they’re telling me they need a fire pump, are they just trying to bully me, or is that real?” (In hindsight, yeah, it probably could have used a fire pump.)

It was at the first job where I learned that I really like the codes. It feels like a treasure hunt for me, I like following the pathways and understanding what the code says, what they meant to say, and how things change over time. Love that stuff. Looking back, that makes sense! I’ve always loved puzzles, and NYTimes crossword and games are part of my daily routine. Figuring stuff out and getting to a final answer are things I’ve always enjoyed. 

At my next few jobs, I specialized in data centers, and I liked that I could be good at something. That’s where I really felt like I started to stand out, it was like a double specialty, both fire protection and mission-critical designs. Then I took a brief stint working for a government contractor. But then I got right back into mission-critical consulting and ended up managing a team at my last job.
 
THE CAREER FABRIC
Looking back at my (almost) 20 years in the industry, the pathway hasn’t really been a straight line, and if you spend some time talking to people in fire protection, you’ll learn that hardly anyone’s path is a straight line.  Managing a team also taught me that lesson; I encountered people from all different pathways that somehow ended up at similar spots, and I got to see people develop into engineers first-hand.

There’s no one way to do things, and over the years you pull in parts from different people, projects, and places to create the fabric of your career.
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Your career isn’t a ladder, it’s a tapestry. 

As a crafter, I'm always thinking about what I can make from what I have

There are project lessons that teach you something and always stick with you. Did I make that fire pump mistake again? Yes, absolutely, but I didn’t make it a third time. There is something to learn and carry with you in every situation.

Even my brief stint at a government contractor, I spent most of my time writing a fire protection manual instead of design work. But a lot of the way that business was conducted was through letters, and being amid people who really understood fire protection, and those who didn’t. That was a hidden gift of boring paperwork and bureaucracy. It taught me a lot about technical writing and presenting information for groups of people with varying knowledge of your subject matter.

Writing precisely the right thing, no more, no less, is really hard! The wrong number can result in a change order, and a missing word could be a safety failure. I write some detailed technical reports, and they have to be appropriate for different audiences. Enough detail for people who are looking for thorough answers, but broad and basic enough for people who don’t have time to get into the weeds. But the practice I had in that job forced me to be better, and the skills I learned stay with me.

I was once interviewing an intern with two coworkers and she asked us about our favorite projects. One said a project where he got to design the best systems, and the second named a project where the client listened to him. And me, I said the one where everything went wrong. Seriously, I picked up the project shortly after joining the company, after DD, and the design was missing so much. Some of it basic, and some of it was very specific AHJ requirements. It seemed like one thing after another, changes to our drawings, constant calls to walk through technical situations, and several technical memos and opinions to justify design decisions. But bit by bit we worked through it, and at the end of the day, that was the job I learned the most from, so it ended up being my favorite. I was pretty proud of how much ground was made up from when I started to where I ended up.

You take the things with you, make the best of the situation you’re in. And by “making the best of it” I don’t mean as a consolation prize, but seizing the opportunity that’s in front of you.

NAVIGATING THE SNAGS AND SPEED BUMPS
How do we do that? A lot of our jobs and careers are outside of our control. There will be rips or snags in the fabric. You won’t know when you move across the country for your first job that there will be a nationwide economic crisis. (Yikes, that was fun.) You can’t control if the small business you joined gets bought by a much larger company. But learning adaptability is a skill.

Recessions are more than just annoying, but slowdowns are a good time to take your time, enjoy the quiet, and squeeze as much as you can out of the role you’re in. It’s no secret that private equity is infiltrating a lot of sectors. Acquisitions are more than just annoying, but they’re a good opportunity to take advantage of corporate structure. When your company gets bought, it’s easy to feel like a number, but that’s a good time to master the business side of engineering. 

Put on the corporate persona so you can talk to The Bobs

When you look around and consider the people who you encounter that you deem to be successful, the common denominator is usually that they’ve found what they’re good at and they’ve made the best of the opportunities available to them and the situations they’re in. Things are constantly changing around us, whether it’s our company, technology, or codes. If we spend time learning our own strengths and weaknesses, that helps us make the most out of our experience.

I always tell people to squeeze as much as they can out of the position they’re in. If their company offers training or will reimburse for coursework or licensing prep courses, take advantage of it!

MAMA BEAR ADVICE
After all that contemplating, the career advice that didn’t end up in the course ended up here. If I had to give three pieces of advice it would be:

1. Don’t panic at the pivots. It’s hard in the moment (ask me how I know), but learn some good breathwork and consider how you can make the best of it. You can’t control your reaction, but you can control your response.
2. Your company, the economy, and the code will change. How you learn from it and choose to incorporate it into your career tapestry is what’s important. 
3. Every job (even the bad ones) gives you a tool for your toolbelt.

 
Have you had any unraveling or frays in your career that ended up being your biggest lesson?