What's Up with the New Interactive Simulations?

I’ve read that we tend to overestimate what we’re able to achieve in short time spans – days or weeks – but we tend to underestimate what we’re able to achieve in long time spans – years.

I absolutely believe that to be true. Very small but consistent steps of progress over years add up; and much of the direction has simply been from listening to our ongoing challenges and trying to think about novel ways of addressing those challenges.
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NFPA EXPO
Two weeks ago, we hosted our first MeyerFire booth at the NFPA Conference & Expo in Orlando. What a hit! I’m so thankful to those that stopped in and checked out the latest of what we’ve brought to life. I wanted to share a bit about that here.

SHORT ATTENTION SPANS?
While learning would be a lot more fun if it was all simply a video game – there’s a fair amount of data to back up that concept.

We dog on the youngest generation for short attention spans (side note: dogging on the youngest generation has been a documented tradition for over two millennia). We harp on the youngest generation for not wanting or being willing to learn the same way ‘we’ did (books, asking questions, mentoring, willing to get dirty, or insert-whatever-old-method-here).

Yet, that same cohort can spend hours without eating to hyper focus on video games. It’s not an attention span issue. It’s an engagement issue.

And before we criticize new learners for not being willing to pay attention, remember that new learners today are working from a completely different set of resources than was available even a decade ago.

We live today in a world of information abundance. 

INFORMATION ABUNDANCE
We have more information available in our pocket today than the President of the US did just 15 years ago.

There is a how-to on nearly everything online. Accessible, immediate, helpful, concise.

Then we get to training in our arena, and the delivery is still much the same that it was literally thirty years ago.

Maybe it’s not the new learners who aren’t taking to the same information as we did some time ago. Perhaps it’s those new learners today, rightfully, have a much higher level of expectation for learning than in years past. Maybe it’s the delivery, the content, the accessibility, and the engagement that really needs to step up and deliver in a way that’s relevant to today.
 
ENGAGED LEARNING TO MEET HIGHER EXPECTATIONS
It's that concept – engaged learning in an immediate, accessible way – that led us to create virtual interactive simulations. It was not easy in the least and is well into over a thousand hours and a major financial investment – but the result is a learning environment that’s always available, immediate, at your fingertips, and engaging.

At NFPA we debuted our new Fire Pump Room: an interactive environment with an incredible amount of detail. This is live at MeyerFire University today.
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The Fire Pump Room is a virtual space that runs a fully balanced supply-side hydraulic calculation in real time.

It has a working test header with hoses, an operable fire pump, both analog and digital pressure gauges, operable OS&Y and butterfly valves, inspector’s tests and main drains, LED indicators on monitor modules, working fire pump and maintenance pump controllers, and a functioning and controllable supervising fire alarm control unit.
There are over 1,900 dynamic elements in this space alone, that respond in real time.

Within this room, you have all the equipment and capability to run a complete fire pump acceptance test and backflow forward-flow test.

At the NFPA Expo, we hooked up an XBOX controller and played it live. It was awesome!

I’d like to share here a bit of the level of detail we included to make this as authentic as possible – so that it’s relevant and helpful for learning.
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Here are a few details that I found most interesting when building this –

OPERABLE OS&Y VALVES

The OS&Y valves are fully operable; note the movement of the stem, handle turning,
​the LED indicator light on the wall, and even plunger movement once it falls out of its groove.

​FLOWING WATER THROUGH HOSES

The test header features six different hoses with water that flows based on the position of the valve. Even the valve coefficient changes as it would in real life – and the trajectory of the water throw is based on the calculated physics of the fall of the water based on its velocity.

OPERABLE BUTTERFLY VALVES

Butterfly valves operate similarly to the OS&Ys; they handle movement, indicator paddle, and LED indicator light.
​We’ve even matched up audio (separately) for the piezo buzzer at the FACU.

INSPECTOR'S TEST & MAIN DRAIN

The combination inspector’s test and main drain are operable, and when they engage the waterflow switch for more than 30 seconds, it’ll push the fire alarm system into alarm.

GAUGES

With every operational change, each gauge updates based on the results of the real time, balanced hydraulic calculation results. We’re able to see city pressure, backflow downstream, suction, discharge, riser pressures, and sensing line pressure.

FIRE PUMP CONTROLLER

The pressure maintenance pump controller offers a digital gauge on the sensing line, but the main controller has a readout on amperage, voltage, RPMs, and sensing line pressure. Just don’t kill the power to it!

FIRE ALARM CONTROL UNIT

Finally, everything is monitored by the fire alarm control unit. Working strobes, horns, bypass mode, silencing features, and reset functions just like you’d expect from your favorite brand.

THE CHALLENGE

In this simulation, we’ve put in three different challenges for the user to operate, flow correctly, and readout. Our next step is to build upon these with various ITM situations.

THE MOST-COMMON QUESTION
One of the most-common questions I get is ‘what software did you use for this?’ Unfortunately, there is no magic software to bring this to life. This simulation alone has nearly 6,000 lines of HTML code to operate the 1,900 dynamic elements to bring this all to life. Many hours, creative hacks, and testing and retesting hydraulic loops until all the different scenarios balanced and responded correctly.

The feedback on it has been incredible, and I’m very excited to put more into researching and developing this side of what we do.

Will we build on these scenarios? Absolutely.

Will we be building new ones, with different types of systems? Absolutely.

Is it going to take another 1,200 hours to bring more of these to life? Absolutely.

That said, I think the usefulness of these for learners who don’t get out to the field, don’t travel to see the labs, or aren’t even allowed to operate the equipment (I’m looking at my former self for this one) – is palpable. This could be a great thing for our industry.
 
EDUCATION PROVIDERS
If you’re an educational institution with students who could benefit from this – please get in touch with us. We spoke with several universities at the Expo, and I think this (alongside the rest of MeyerFire University) could be a major boon for undergraduate students.
 
MANUFACTURERS
Same with manufacturers who may want to help develop ultra-realistic systems for better learning; please get in touch with us. There could be opportunities to build things for you that could help learners, your own staff, and your own customers in parallel.
 
THANK YOU
There has been a ton of work to make this happen over the last year. Other than a few people, much of it was under a rock until we knew that we could pull it off.

Thanks to those who have shared challenges, brainstormed with us, given feedback, and continue to support what we do. The better we can serve you – the better professionals in our industry will be able to operate.

Hope you have a great Fourth for those in the US (or Canada day if you’re our friends up north) – and have a great rest of your week!

​- Joe