Dee Davis (00:00)
Good morning and welcome to Management Under Construction. I'm Dee Davis.
Brad Wyant (00:04)
And I'm Brad Wyatt. We are joined today by Dee's friend, Sharron Halpert of Halpert Life Safety.
Dee Davis (00:10)
Sharron and I we're LinkedIn buddies. Anybody else here have some LinkedIn buddies? Sharron and I are fire stopping nerds. I've always considered myself a pretty big fire stopping nerd, but Sharron is the ultimate fire stopping nerd. That's what she does for a living. She loves the topic. She's always out there.
sharing knowledge she's very active in the LinkedIn community. So that's how we've met. We've been kind of going back and forth for a couple of years now. And I thought Sharron would be the perfect guest for management under construction to give us a little bit of information about fire stopping 101 for contractors. So Sharron, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Sharron Halpert (00:50)
sort of fell into the firestop industry. A lot of people ask me, how did you wind up doing this? I was a vagabond for like seven years and then I thought, well, I'm pushing 30. I should have one of those careers. And I had no idea what to do. So my brilliant idea was to go to graduate school, except I got to graduate school. And the reason I went to graduate school was because I was a boat builder, bartender, kindergarten teacher. And I thought, who's going to hire anyone for a real world job with that on their resume?
And then halfway through grad school, I realized, hey dummy, now you're gonna have a degree, like another degree, and you're still just gonna be a boat builder, bartender, kindergarten teacher. So I did a capstone course with Johnson and Johnson, only to realize, don't wanna do that. Then I did an internship with Hilti. My three month internship kept getting extended because they kept giving me such cool projects. Nine months later, I told them,
I need to go back and finish school." And they said, great, do that, but don't look for a job because we want you. So I started my career with an insanely passionate group of people. And since then, I've worked either for or with all of the major firestop manufacturers. And people always ask me, like, who's your favorite company? I don't have a favorite company. I have favorite products and I have favorite people. The people support me in really unique ways. That's why they land on my list of favorite people.
and the products support project teams in a really unique way. So that's a lot of the stuff that Dee is commenting on that you'll see on LinkedIn or even on our YouTube channel. You've probably seen those unboxing videos that kids do showing, hey, there's this really cool toy. I do those, except it's, hey, here's this really cool product. And usually it's firestop, but not always. So if you're curious to know what those are about, feel free to jump on to our YouTube channel.
Dee Davis (02:37)
see what I'm talking about with the excitement about fire stopping, right? She's a very, very passionate, excited fire stopping nerd. So I'm going to tell you really quickly about how I became a little bit of a fire stopping nerd. I was working for a long-term client in California and they are their own AHJ or authority having jurisdiction. So they had their own internal on-campus fire marshals.
And there was this one fire marshal that I worked with for many years who was so passionate about his job. And I was a very young project engineer and he would sit me down and teach me. He taught me how to read a UL. He taught me how it all works. Where do fire smoke dampers go? What are all the rules? he loved to talk. I used to always joke.
If you're going to go sit with fire marshal Don, you need to take a pee break and have a snack before you're meeting with him. And it was no joke. He, he, he would, you would be there for hours, but I learned so much from him. And I started becoming very passionate about fire life safety. And I am not a fire life safety expert. I'm a mechanical.
who happens to know a lot about fire life safety because of my experiences with Fire Marshal Don and many other Fire Marshals and inspectors and other people throughout my career. So that's my personal experience with how I became a fire stopping nerd. And that has transferred into every aspect of my career as I've gone on as a commissioning agent, as an owner's rep, as a project manager.
I will be the first one on the job that goes, wait a minute, where's the UL for that penetration? how are we installing that? has anybody looked at this? Do we have an expert to consult if we need something? we're not gonna get into deep weeds here in this episode because this is a 101, but we are going to talk about some basics. So before we go on anymore, Brad,
What is your personal experience with fire stopping
Brad Wyant (04:40)
My personal experience is much closer that 101 the precipice of which I dove into the nerddom was I was given my own projects to finish out for the last four or five weeks of job. I was asked to work on every factor of compliance and I was really excited to have that responsibility. I was working with all of the inspectors. I was working with my foreman and my Superintendent who had to leave the job with three weeks to go. I'm just scrambling around trying to make everything compliant.
make it so that the duck shut off when they're supposed to make it so that the lights are where they're supposed to be and they turn on when they're supposed to all the exit lighting and so on deep into all these great code things and the inspector finally walks and she says, yep, you got everything right. I was like, yay. And then she goes, except. I'm like, no. And it was okay. It was just one penetration in a data room that was common to the floor that we didn't even have any scope in. She said, just throw some fire stopping in that and I'll come back in a week and sign you off. And
that moment of the why do I just need to throw some like in this hole with a bunch of cables running through it? Is this really going to be the thing that burns the building down? That took me deep into what fire stopping means, how it's correctly applied, and the idea of just throw some pookie in it was a big like what that caused me to question what fire stopping is, how it works, how it's properly installed, and I learned a ton from that moment on.
Sharron's the expert here, so I'll let her talk about her reaction to that. Just throw some pooky in a comment and where that has led her in her career.
Sharron Halpert (06:08)
So you hit on the biggest problem we have in the industry. And I'm not gonna say anything disparaging against that fire marshal or that building inspector or that contractor that did that scope of work. But the biggest problem that we have is that when people are working on a project, if the building official doesn't say that's your problem, then people have that same reaction that you had, Brad. Yay, I did everything right.
But they may not have done everything right. They only identified the things that that inspector identified, which means the level of life safety of that project is contingent upon that inspector, which is why it's so important from a liability standpoint for everyone involved, for the general contractor, the owner's rep, to really have a good understanding of the requirements. Since the 2012 International Building Code, any project that is
high rise risk category three or risk category four requires special inspection of fire stop. With the adoption of the 2018 IBC, any group R with an occupancy over 250 requires special inspection of fire stop. The problem with that is if you have a special inspection agency that does everything under the sun and then they just throw fire stop in as something that they add to it, but they don't understand the ASTM standards related to that scope of work,
and they don't understand, as Dee said, the UL details, how to make sure that the field work matches the paperwork and all of those little tiny elements, if they go in with the level of understanding of that building official that you worked with, Brad, they're not gonna do the job right. And the problem is that if you have a contractor or someone like you, Brad, but let's say a plumber, right? And the plumber goes through and they're asked to do all the firestop on the plumbing scope, but then someone says, you know what?
the fire sprinkler contractor comes in, they run all their stuff, and then they just aren't gonna come back on project and finish the fire stopping. So they just tell the plumber, hey, just add that to your scope, we'll pay you for it, it's no big deal. But let's say they're running plastic sprinklers, right? Now the annular space around those sprinkler lines is critical. The product that they use is critical. And some of the materials they use could have chemical compatibility issues.
And so all of those little tiny things and pick a trade, could go, Dee said we're not gonna go into the weeds. So I'm not gonna go into all of them, but every single trade has something similar that these little tiny elements can have a massive impact on the level of life safety of that project. And if there is a fire, Brad, to your point, you said that little tiny hole really, is that gonna be a big deal? If anybody Googles MSY, which is the
code the airport code for New Orleans airport. If you Google MSY in a rush, you will see an amazing video and at one point in that video. I don't know off the top of my head. I'm thinking like 8 minutes, but that's probably wrong. But you watch that video and Bruce Johnson from UL has one line where he says even a small hole if unprotected can act like a blowtorch in a fire scenario. So that little hole Brad.
Yeah, it can have a massive impact on the level of life safety of a building.
Dee Davis (09:16)
That's awesome information. let's talk really quickly about why this is important. you did a perfect lead in. contractors, whether you're a GC or a specialty contractor, why is it important that you understand enough about fire stopping? Why is it important that it is a priority for you? Here's why. It's life safety.
Which means we have a legal responsibility as contractors to understand and apply that knowledge into the field correctly.
And as you kind of hinted there, Sharron, even if a fire marshal didn't say, you miss this or you need to do this, it's still our responsibility. We have a moral, ethical and legal responsibility to do the right thing. That fire might not take place tomorrow. It might take place 10 or 15 years down the road. you have to ask yourself, how would you feel?
If a fire happened in this building that you're building and you didn't do your job adequately, you didn't pay enough attention about that tiny little sub sub sub sub of a trade called fire stopping, right? The further down the chain it is in the contracting world, the less attention we tend to pay to it. That's really what happens out in the field. And so for a GC, most of them
They're going to put it on the trade to do the top of wall fire stopping, the penetration stopping. I've been a mechanical contractor, that is so far down the list. It is this much, a teeny, teeny bit of my scope compared to all the piping and the duct work and the equipment and all the things. Even the insulation is bigger than the fire stopping.
It is the tiniest thing I have on my list and it's so far down the list that we have a tendency to not pay attention. And this is from a liability standpoint is one of the biggest things that we can face in our career. You personally, as a project manager can be sued if you were responsible and you didn't do your due diligence. I'm not trying to scare everybody and freak them out. I'm just saying pay attention. Yeah. Pay attention.
because it is important. you literally have people's lives in your hands as much as the fire sprinkler guy does, as much as the placement of the fire smoke dampers and the functionality of that and the maintenance people that are responsible for those things. This is our responsibility as installing contractors and general contractors.
Sharron Halpert (11:51)
One thing I like to tell people is that the building code is the minimum allowed by law. So if you cannot conform with the requirements of the building code, you could, and in my opinion, should be held criminally negligent if there's any problems. So to that fire that you're talking about, Dee, that everybody thinks that'll never happen, not on my project, when it does, if it does,
then like you say, the liability lands with you. It does not lie with that inspector that Brad was talking about, assuming that that inspector is working for a jurisdiction, they can only be held liable for missing something if they falsify documents. Meaning, if they showed up to do an inspection and never got out of their car and somebody can document that they signed off on the electrical scope or the framing scope, but they never got out of the car. Or in some areas,
they have like lowjacks on people's cars and they can track and say, you signed off on the concrete pour, but your car was never within three blocks of that project site. In those cases, they can be held criminally responsible because they falsified documents. But if the inspector shows up and if the inspector doesn't see a hundred percent of everything and something gets missed, they're not liable. It falls back on
the design team to design it properly, the build team to build it properly, and the special inspection team, if one is required, to inspect it properly in accordance with the standards.
Brad Wyant (13:19)
I think there's a really interesting point there to be made about the attitude we often get into when we're rushing to meet a deadline when it feels like if we don't make this date, the world's going to fall apart and lives are going to end and chaos will reign.
The economics of choosing to only live and die by what the inspector says. Horrible for a company for use a project manager to understand that. The risk you take on is much costlier than that day that you might have to take to go double check all of your fire stopping the time you're add The numbers work out very readily that you should take that loss to avoid.
taking a much bigger loss in the future to make that argument. Once you start penciling out the math, it just, it makes itself. And we often find ourselves in positions where there's a lot of pressure to do things the way that our company needs them to be done, to meet the deadlines, to meet the earnings that we're expected to. But putting that argument in the foray, making that argument to somebody that you worked for,
and saying the risk of this is greater than the risk of this, this is more important, pay attention, we need to do the right thing here. Not the right thing because it's emotional reason, even though that's also part of it. Not because lives are at stake, but because this will cripple the company if it comes back on us. That kind of an argument is often what people need to hear to be able to do the right thing, to be able to justify doing the right thing.
Dee Davis (14:43)
And it is important to remember, although, fortunately, very few of us in our career have ever had to face any kind of a dire situation like this. But we are legally responsible for meeting code, understanding code, interpreting code and meeting code as contractors. It's part of the contracting license. We're responsible for that. So you as a project manager.
Regardless of your trade, regardless of your position on a project, that is your responsibility to understand and meet that code, whether the contract documents say it or not. And I've had this happen on many, many jobs I already know what the code says and I'm looking at the contract documents and they're silent on the topic. or incomplete.
I go back into the general contractor and I say you need to do this because the code says you need to do it and they go well it's not on the contract documents. It doesn't matter. Yep. Still your responsibility.
Brad Wyant (15:38)
now that we're all aligned on the importance of fire stopping, what are the things that everyone needs to know about fire stopping, whether they're the project manager on the job or the brand new PE coming straight out of college?
Sharron Halpert (15:50)
answering that will drive us straight into the weeds, what trade are you talking about? Are you talking about the drywall or and looking at the head of wall and having a conversation that very few project teams have, which is what is the movement requirements that's called out in the structural documents? Why would the fire stopper talk to the structural engineer? Because if they don't understand how much movement, how much deflection from that floor.
is required for the structural design, then you need to have a conversation with the drywall contractor and the Mason and whoever is doing the firestop, whether it's with that contract or if they have a specialty contractor. If they don't have that conversation, then the firestop product that they install has a risk of not being able to meet the movement requirements, which is, as Dee was saying, a code requirement. But when you read the code, it doesn't say anywhere in the code.
that you have to meet the movement requirements of the rated joints. That loops you back into, if you don't understand the standards that are written into the code, you don't understand the code. So if you don't understand the standards, you don't understand the code, how can you build a code compliant building? That question and so many others, right? You go into mechanical contractors. D, a lot of mechanical contractors, if they've got a duct that's larger than 24 inches,
and it's not dampered and it's not insulated and it runs through a rated floor or wall, they have to have a retaining angle on that duct because what happens in a fire scenario, the coefficient of lineal thermal dynamics, the duct is going to expand and then there's going to be one big gaping hole. So they have to put retaining angles stitched into the duct to control the gapes so that they're smaller
So the Firestop material can perform properly. all of these little things are going to be important. The most important thing that a project team can do is early in the project. So Brad, when you were dragged onto that project, you had a few weeks to finish up. Too late, sorry. This won't help you, but it will help every contractor before you start your project. As Dee said, look at your contract documents, understand how your contract documents and your building codes and those fire test standards
Align or don't align and write an RFI to validate that your understanding of the code impacts that document. But the number one most important thing is sit down and identify the firestop solutions. You're never going to get everything that you need at the beginning of a project, but the more closely you can get to everything early in the project, the more you can help the teams understand what needs to happen. Perfect example is with.
insulated pipes and ductwork or plastic pipes. The annular space that's provided might not be enough to install the fire stop properly. If you identify that early in a project, you can control that. Or anytime that you have ducts over a certain size or cable trays or conduit banks or all sorts of other things, the opening needs to be framed out, which means that your electrical contractor, your mechanical contractor needs to talk to your drywall contractor.
If there's a fire stop contractor involved, then that person needs to lead the charge in the conversation between the electrician and the drywall contractor. All of those things early on in a project can have a dramatic impact on how many hiccups you have down the road. And for anybody that's interested in figuring that out, we have a free training that goes over the ABCs of UL nomenclature. So it helps you identify
The alpha characters which represent the walls and floors, the fire rating, the construction type, the numerical elements that tell you about what you're penetrating the item is. Is it a metal pipe? Is it a plastic pipe? Is it duct work Then the last video, it's a short little 30 minute segment. The last one helps you take all of that information and filter it based on your project. It's free. And we even have it with Spanish subtitles that might suck.
because the Spanish subtitles are done through Google Translate, which means that it's better than if I tried to do it myself. But it's there. And if anybody speaks Spanish and wants to help me make it better, I'd love that.
Dee Davis (19:52)
Yeah, I remember when you were looking for a Spanish translator to help you with that. So it sounds like you weren't able to find one. many of our listeners are not on the level that you are Sharron. So I'm to ask you to bring it, bring it down a few levels there. I think what you were getting at was the basics of what is a UL and how to read it.
Sharron Halpert (20:12)
Well, that training doesn't go over that. However, it's kind of a crappy video, but it's still there. It's maybe an hour long, but it's walking through the UL directory because somebody asked me, hey, can you help me understand this? And I didn't want to charge them, but I did want to benefit from the time that I was doing it. So I was like, all right, I'll do it for you. I won't charge you anything, but we're going to record it and post it on YouTube in case anybody ever wants it. So it does go through how to identify systems in the UL directory.
Dee Davis (20:39)
Well, I'm not even talking about that level because in my opinion, contractors need to not be doing that themselves. They need to be having their fire stopper do it or having a fire stopping expert like you do it. So from a contractor standpoint, what a contractor needs to know, in my opinion, and you tell me if you think I'm right or wrong, I think every contractor needs to understand what is a UL exactly. not
like how many there are, which ones apply. I'm not talking about UL 181, UL blah, blah. I'm talking about what is a UL. When you look at that UL document, what is it that I'm looking at? What sections are in it and what do they mean? That was the most valuable information I ever gained in my career as an installing contractor was to understand what I'm looking at, not
choosing the right one, that's for the professionals. What am I looking at? How do I read and interpret what I'm looking at so that I can either go install it correctly or check to see if it's installed correctly? Yeah, does that make sense?
Sharron Halpert (21:46)
Yeah, so that's really easy and I used to teach kindergarten. So a lot of things that I do. I kind of love Einstein's idea that if you can't explain something simply, you simply don't understand it well enough. So everybody remembers from kindergarten class that song head, shoulders, knees and toes, right? So the anatomy of a UL directory is just the same as that. Every human being has a head in the same place.
Everyone has a heart in the same place some might have problems that you can't see unless you're a specialist. So you will the anatomy of a UL detail is very similar to the anatomy of a human body. The very top and now we're talking about penetrations, right? The penetration details. The very top will talk about the rated assembly you're penetrating. Item number one will always be talking about that.
Item number two will always be a sleeve, but only if a sleeve is required for that detail. Item number two is gonna be your penetrating item. Is it a duct? Is it an insulated pipe? Is it a cable? And then the very bottom is going to be the information about the firestop material that you're supposed to use. Is it a firestop device? Is it sealant? Is it spray? Do you need mineral wool? Can you use backer rod? that's the way every single detail is written.
So perfect.
Dee Davis (23:01)
Yeah, tell it to me like I'm five. Because when we're at a very basic level of understanding anything, especially that can get really deep, it can become a very deep well very quickly. As a contractor, the most common mistakes that I see contractors make is that number one, they're not even reading the detail. They're not reading the UL. Or they're reading it, but they're not reading all the details. There's a lot of words on there, guys. So you're going to have to read. Sorry.
There's a lot of words on there and you're going to have to read all of them because it's going to tell you this specific detail is only good for I'm just making this up. A poured in place deck, 5,000 PSI, two to four inches in depth, something like that, right? It's going to only be good for a wood framed wall with
a single layer of drywall or something like that. it's going to tell you those kinds of details. It's going to tell you what the materials are that you're penetrating. Is it wood? Is it metal? Is it concrete? whatever that is, how thick is it? What's the pressure rating of it? It's going to tell you all these different things. Is the pipe that you're using to penetrate
Is it schedule 40? Is it schedule 80? Is it metal? Is it plastic? Is it some kind of plastic material? There's very specific details in there about what that UL is good for. And if you don't meet that, it's no good.
Sharron Halpert (24:31)
And the industry is constantly coming out with new things. And I don't understand why they don't refer to the Firestop industry to make sure that there's details for it. Well, maybe because they don't care. They just want to bring their product to market. And I don't say they don't care in a disparaging way. I'll give you an example, Epic Deck. Not knocking Epic Deck, I've worked on a project that's really slick. You can have these long spans because those flutes are like seven inches deep.
The problem with that is there's no UL listed detail for a fluted metal deck with seven inch height flutes. Now that's not Epic Decks problem. It's not their problem to solve. It's the firestop industry's problem to solve. But when you look at a fire test and it's 30 to $50,000 a pop, are they really gonna spend that money to fire test something when they don't know is Epic Deck going to be hugely popular?
Am I going to get a return on my investment for fire testing that or are people just going to be allowed back to your building inspector again, Brad? Does the building inspector understand that that listing that Dee's talking about doesn't comply with that installation? Another thing you'll see is plastic pipes. The industry is coming out with all sorts of new plastic pipes. There's polypropylene, there's niron, not nylon, but niron.
And then the plumbing industry and the electrical industry has aluminum. And aluminum is such a difficult product to firestop. If anybody wants to know more about that, I will give Dee a bunch of links to some ASPE articles. That's the American Society of Plumbing Engineers. And we go into the weeds with each little topic a bit. So if you want that resource, then we'll make sure that you get that.
Brad Wyant (26:13)
There are two main takeaways I get from what we're talking about here. One of them is that on the spectrum of like cooking is an art, baking is a science, maybe finished carpentry and hanging wallpapers and art, fire stopping is deep into the science. That recipe is very specific. You cannot make it up as you go along. The UL requirements need to be adhered to. if you're a young project engineer or if you're a project manager,
Knowing what those details are, making sure that your trade partners comply with those details is paramount. Knowing that the recipe needs to be followed. A fun aside, a good friend of mine who I went to high school with works for UL, which stands for Underwriter Laboratories, and she gets to light stuff on fire all day. And it's the coolest job in the world. She loves it to death. the people that She'll appreciate this.
Sharron Halpert (27:01)
People often say, yeah, that's UL listed. My light bulb is UL listed. My toaster is UL listed. Is it UL listed for the application you're using it in?
Brad Wyant (27:11)
It's not just about whether. UL have done what they do with it. It's it. UL is not some deity at the top of the mountain upon which all things are sacred. It's it's it's a for application system, not a oh, as long as it says UL on it, I can run it 80 miles an hour. That's not how it works.
Sharron Halpert (27:32)
Yeah, and a lot of times people will say, well, you what we were just talking about these systems that don't exist because the industry hasn't created them. People are like, well, why doesn't you all test them? Keep in mind, you else job is when you manufacture a product and you need a UL listing, you go to UL and you say, here's my money. I would like you to conduct this particular fire test. So is it tested to ASTM E8 for ASTM E814 or 136 or
ASTME 119. Again, if you don't understand those, you don't understand the codes because those are written into the codes as things that you have to adhere to.
Dee Davis (28:07)
So overall message, you can get into the weeds really fast here, right? this topic is a deep, deep detailed well. speaking to the, the contractors and all the project managers and project engineers out there that have to deal with fire stopping, we view fire stopping as this little tiny
pesky thing. It's not a tiny pesky thing. It's a very big deal. And we need to talk to the experts because there is no way that we as GCs and even installing trade contractors are going to have everything we need. There's no way. And like you're saying, it's constantly changing all the time. There are certain things that we need to leave to the experts. And this is one of them.
So we need enough information to know that we don't know enough. And who to call.
Sharron Halpert (28:57)
trying to get on to a $2 billion hospital project and they have a fabulous, this particular project is going with STI, right? So not playing favorites. STI is in my backyard. I'm in New Jersey. They're like 45 minutes to an hour away. But again, I don't have a favorite company. I have favorite people and I have favorite products that those companies come out with. But this particular project, they've got a fabulous STI rep.
and they have a really good special inspector. And the special inspection company is trying to help me get onto the project and so is the STI rep, because they know that their lives will be a lot easier because what the owner is struggling to understand is this. The STI rep, if they're selling Firestop product and they show up and they say, hey, contractor A, you're not installing this product properly. If they make a big stink about it,
is that contractor going to use them on the next project? Not unless they're forced to, right? And not that I'm saying he would do anything that isn't ethically okay. I have every faith that this guy's got his ethics in check. He's a good guy. But as a salesperson, he has limitations. And then the special inspector, their job is to show up and say, there is a fire stop installation. Here's the paperwork. Do they match? So that troubleshooting that happens when a consultant like
me and I'm not the only one out there, but when a consultant like me comes on board, I can look at the plans and I've been on in the last what 16 years, 17, 18 years, I've been on $22 billion worth of projects, everything from wood framed to mega hospitality projects. So I've seen a lot. Have I seen everything? No, no, I haven't. But I learn every project and my favorite part is educating the team. If anybody's open minded about it,
I will pour into your vessel and you'll walk out going, I never knew I knew that much about Firestop. And you'll be a huge asset for every project that you land on in the future. So it's really interesting to see whether or not that particular hospital project, if they'll be able to convince the owner that having somebody who can support the MEP trades in finding solutions and how much of an asset that is to their project team. So we'll see.
Brad Wyant (31:09)
think you bring a really cool point about when you get to have the leverage in the fire stopping industry in any part of the construction industry on new build and you get to sit down and say, okay, we're going to make a plan to make this as efficient as possible for everybody. We're not going to be working in an existing environment. We have to play around existing stuff. We're going to get the chance to do this from the beginning in a special way that makes it more efficient, that makes it easier to build, but that's also right.
So one of the things that gets talked about a lot in our business is the integral fire stopping sleeves and those being a cost benefit winner because even though it's a expensive product, it's more efficient to work through it. I would love to gauge your response on how that works from a new build versus refit application, how that works from an efficiency standpoint based on labor. mean, we all want to make the building safe. That's the bare minimum. We're going to make it safe, but we also
want to do that profitably. So where do you engage with that?
Sharron Halpert (32:06)
if you're talking about a cast-in-place firestop device that's used on a floor, there is a huge benefit, in my opinion, on any project, especially when you're dealing with plastic pipes, and even more so when you're dealing with fluted metal deck. The challenge with the fluted metal deck and a plastic pipe is that if you're firestopping anything over two inches,
or in some cases, depending on what that plastic material is made out of, sometimes it's even smaller, then the challenge on a fluted metal deck is that unless that pipe lands dead center in the valley of the flute, right? So at the bottom of the flute, you can't install a collar around that plastic device. So you've got to go on the underside, you've got to shoot a metal plate to the underside,
You've got to stuff the flutes and firestop the ends of the flutes, and then you have to install a collar on the underside. If you use a cast in place firestop device, you attach that to the formwork, whether it's flat or fluted deck, and then you come through and you run your pipe. You're done. Now that's the sales pitch, right? The reality of it is you're done as long as the contractor running the product
doesn't mess with that rubber gasket, if they do, then you need to make sure that you do something to fix that problem because that product won't perform properly if that gasket's not in place. So the other challenge is if you don't locate them in the right place, now you've got to go back and core. And if the cast in place device is in point A and it should be two and a half inches to the side,
Now when you core it, you have a figure eight or a snowman sized opening and Now you've wasted all of the time and energy of placing that cast in place device because it can't be used anymore. Yes, it's still there and you don't have to take it out, thank goodness, because that would be a whole nother issue. But you have to ignore the fact that it's even there and you have to do a fire stop system that will accommodate both the
unused section of the hole and the now not properly firestop section. Then if you look at any of the cable management devices, there's basically a square tube that you could run any cable through. Those things are brilliant, absolutely brilliant. If you're doing quality control on those, check to make sure that the cables that are listed are the only ones that are running through the device.
and check with the salesperson, but my understanding is the majority of them, you can run pretty much anything and you can run it chock a block full. From a QC standpoint, there's a couple of things you want to look at. One, review the detail and see if the opening needs to be framed out over a certain size, almost always they will. So that needs to be coordinated early in the project so that the drywall contractor gets the framing in and gets it installed in the right location, right? That's going to be critical.
If they don't have that, there's some really unique cheats that you can do that will still meet the requirements. If you run into that, let me know. I'll help you with that. You also have to read the detail because many of them require the use of a bracket. And that bracket needs to be on both sides of the wall so that, if our wall were in the center and our bracket was on the left and the right-hand side of the wall, that's going to stop that from moving in and out of that wall.
overtime and if there's a fire there's a lot of pressure built up in that room of origin and it does insane things which could include pushing something like that out of the opening. So even though they make the installation much easier don't think that that means from a QC standpoint or from an inspection standpoint you don't have to do anything because that would be inaccurate.
Brad Wyant (35:46)
Gotcha, there's so much there. But the main thing is you can do those as long as you're right about where you put them and as long as you don't break them before you install them, sounds like. are the main takeaways. Those are the big things.
Sharron Halpert (35:58)
Exactly.
Brad Wyant (35:59)
one of the ways that I've learned to think about when I was trying to look at whether something was right, walking around the field, doing QC, you look at pipes and you think about the way a plumber would. What's running through that pipe? How hard is it going to hit that angle? Are there enough hangers? And you think about it and you can see, ooh, they're not done with this yet. There's hangers missing. When I think about fire stopping, I think about how I learned to check whether things were being done right. It's like.
You have to think like a pyromaniac a little bit. You have to think about, when this burns, when I light it on fire, what is going to happen? And if there isn't that mineral wool where it needs to be, then that red shiny stuff that looks safe melts away. All of a sudden there's going to be a huge hole and heat's going to come through that kind of thinking. If you had to prescribe like a general mindset to put yourself in, what is that pyromaniac mindset that somebody should carry with them?
onto a job site when they're looking at how details are being installed.
Sharron Halpert (36:51)
Interesting question.
for the details, would be annular space is critical, right? If you have too much annular space or not enough annular space, then you cannot install that installation according to a listed system. And the annular space requirements are going to be different for every application. It's going to be different if you're going through wood frame floor ceiling assembly than it would be if you're going through a concrete deck or a wall. And if you're dealing with a wall, is it a gypsum standard wall or is it a shaft wall?
If it's masonry, is it filled cells or not filled cells? So these are all questions that will drag you into the weeds, but they're critical to ask. And again, the earlier you ask these questions and make sure that you have all of the details that you need, the more successful your project can be. I'll give you a key thing. So there's a hospital down the road from my house and I was really hoping to get on and I was only able to get on
one day for free and I walked with the QC kid and I say kid, he probably wasn't a kid, right? But I'm 55 this summer. So sorry, Brad, you're a kid, right? Even if you've been in the industry for 20 years, you're still a kid. You've just started when you were 12, right? my goal was to overwhelm him to the point that he understood that he needed help. I think I overwhelmed him to the point that his head exploded.
But a couple of things that I was showing him was as you're walking your project, here's your means of egress corridor. If you see the hangars, you know there's gonna be a saddle coming behind it. If the saddles are attached, how close is that saddle to your rated gypsum wall? If it's too close, now the saddle is gonna be in that wall. You cannot fire stop a gypsum wall or masonry wall properly with a saddle running through it.
Because why do we have a saddle there? Because they're going to put insulation on it. If they aren't putting insulation on it, then they're just going to have a hanger. If there's a saddle, there's going to be insulation. If there's insulation, the fire stop needs to be able to squeeze down that insulation and prevent fire and toxic gases from getting through to the non-fire side. So that's a key thing. There's a lot of little things that you can do when you're walking your project early.
That would be one of them. Another thing, if you get in the habit of doing this, this will be a huge asset because if no one catches it until the end of the project, for example, Brad, when you were on your project, the fire marshal or the building official walked with you. And if all of a sudden they said, hey, you've got prohibited penetrations in your means of egress, fixing that problem is expensive. It's going to impact your budget and your schedule.
It is a code violation and it has been forever. So if anybody ever says, we've been doing that forever. Well, congratulations. You've been building code non-compliant forever and you have a massive liability. Not my problem. My problem is this project and making sure this project is compliant. So here is my silly little story. And if anybody needs it to share with other people, there is a YouTube video on this. as you're walking through any of your means of egress corridors or looking at any shafts,
You ask this stupid little question to every penetration. Hey, what are you doing here? What is your purpose in this space? So if it's a bank of conduit that runs from one side of the corridor through to the other side of the corridor, and that's all it's doing, it's not providing anything in that means of egress corridor, it is a prohibited penetration. Get it out early in the project, relocate it, or come up with a plan to install a horizontal rated lid in that location.
And then what you're doing is you're redrawing the lines that say, here's where our means of egress corridor is. So silly little question, what is your purpose in this space? If you serve no purpose, get out. Get out early so you can relocate it. Get out late and kill your budget and your schedule.
Dee Davis (40:31)
I see this happen in stairwells all the time. And as a mechanical contractor, I've done tons of design, assist design, build, all that kind of stuff. And this is something that comes up frequently is that you will see pipe duct conduit, whatever, passing through a stairwell. No, no, no.
You cannot do that. If it's serving it, okay. If it's not serving it and it's just waving as it goes through, that's a huge no-no. And you will get caught eventually. And you hit on one of my least favorite sayings in this industry, We've always done it that way. if I had a nickel for every time I caught somebody doing something wrong.
And they say, I've been doing it that way for 20 years, 30 years. Well, you've been doing it wrong for 30 years. I'm sorry.
Sharron Halpert (41:21)
every now and then the code changes. So yeah, you've been doing it that way, but on this year when this jurisdiction adopted this code, it's no longer code compliant. But most of the time it's what you said. They've been doing it forever. And back to Brad's point, the building inspector never told them that it was wrong. So they made the assumption that they were doing it right.
Dee Davis (41:31)
Well,
Sharron Halpert (41:43)
And scientifically, making an assumption based on something that didn't happen isn't the way science works.
Brad Wyant (41:50)
No, is not. Well put, well put. you brought up a really interesting point about design and about architecture and about the early stage of the process. often in the contracting space find ourselves where our guys are on the site, truck beds are down, we're getting the tools out, we're about to work, we're looking at the plans for the first time. Perhaps a foreman got reassigned, perhaps things got moved around, perhaps we're coming on late, whatever it is. And all of a sudden we're like,
Well, wait, none of this can be this way. And we're talking about taking things apart to do it the right way or covering things up and hoping people don't notice. I've been in those conversations and had to say, no, no, no, we need to do this right way or we're to be exposed to liability that we can't afford. It costs less to do it the right way than it does to do it the wrong way. That aside, when it comes to your profession and the specialization of it and all the other demands that designers have,
At the time of design, not to mention the cost crunch of being a low bidder. Do feel like there's a safety? Onus. That we're not recognizing that architects have that they need to become more responsible for designing with that kind of thinking in mind of not laying conduit in a corridor doesn't need to be in.
That's not the kind of thing that most engineering designers are going to think about when they go to put their plans down. Maybe some do, maybe a lot don't, I think. When it comes to that kind of specialization, how do we as an industry overcome that kind of challenge, do you think? Is it bringing more people into design conversation earlier or something else?
Sharron Halpert (43:17)
I can give you an answer with two letters. QC. Project teams that have solid QA, QC teams that understand Firestop and that work well with others. We're all in a sandbox. You can't start throwing sand and you can't pick up your shovel and go, I'm out of here. Doesn't work that way. And that is the entire project team. I've been on project teams.
where I've worked for the general contractor, I've worked for an owner. I've been on project teams where I worked for the owner and was told, oh no, you can't talk to the architect. Then how do we do this? Like I get it, you've got to write an RFI, but how much easier is it to walk up and say, and I'm so blessed, I'm on a $1.5 billion project and I have weekly meetings with the architect and we have conversations before we write an RFI so that
We're ready verify and we already know what be. So that helps expedite things. And we have problems and sometimes the architect missed something. It is a small team of people on this massive project. They, in my opinion, don't have enough staff. But I didn't write the content, that's not my thing to judge, right? Their team is awesome and they're human. They're gonna make mistakes just like I will, just like you will.
but I love working with them because they're so collaborative. So from a liability standpoint, what liability does that architectural team bear?
reality is it depends in great deal on how the contracts are written. So I never know the answer to that. If the contract excludes blah blah blah, well, maybe they're off the hook. But I do remember going into an architectural firm hoping that I would start getting work with them. Nothing ever happened. when I brought up that conversation about like, hey, look, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what your contracts look like. But in my opinion,
The code says this. You're responsible for designing a code compliant building. So in my again, not a lawyer in my mind, you are responsible for designing a code compliant building. And if you don't, aren't you legally responsible now if we take that to court? And I could be wrong again. I'm not a lawyer. I haven't been to court or anything like that. Thank God knock on wood and I literally knocked on a piece of.
cross laminate timber that my laptop is sitting on. yeah, cool stuff. Some people are drinking the Kool-Aid and the Kool-Aid scares me. But in certain applications, I'm like, that's really awesome. But yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot that goes into answering that question, I suppose, is the short way of saying it. It depends on how the contracts are written. And in reality,
Brad Wyant (45:34)
I'm gonna see you later.
Sharron Halpert (45:54)
I would expect that it would depend on does the case go to court or is it adjudicated?
Dee Davis (45:59)
can tell you for sure that they will be named in the lawsuit.
Sharron Halpert (46:02)
Yeah.
Dee Davis (46:03)
So designers, you are responsible for designing a code compliant. division one specifications puts the onus on the contractor. says, regardless of what the contract documents say, the contractor is responsible for building a code compliant building and complying with all building codes and standards and da da da.
the design team is also responsible and everybody's getting named in the lawsuit folks. Okay, if something goes sideways, that's really the crux of it is that everybody's going to get drug into court. Everybody's going to get named in the lawsuit. Nobody wants to be there. We need to do our part as contractors to make sure that we don't end up in this situation or,
forbid you get into that situation, you've done your due diligence and you've done your part. So I want to talk about something that comes up on jobs more often than I would like to see. And that is an EJ. And the EJ for anybody who doesn't know is an engineering judgment. So I have been on
Small jobs, mostly large jobs in my career, and this just happened to me recently on a project where I was helping out with some of the architectural scope and I was looking at a fire stopping detail. And I'm looking at it and I said, you know what you guys, I don't think this detail applies to our project. This happens all the time in the design world where standard details get put on the plans.
Everybody just likes to take that UL number and go, OK, that's what we're doing. Well, here's the reality is that standard details get put on drawings all the time. They may or may not apply to your building, which again goes right back to you need to understand how to read a UL detail to make sure that you are complying with it, but also to understand whether or not it even applies to what you're doing.
So what happened was there was a standard detail put on the architectural plans, probably left over from some other job. And the general contractor just took it and ran. And we were sitting in this design meeting and I'm looking at it and I said, you guys, if I'm not mistaken, this is not our situation here. The UL says blah, blah, blah. And our situation is this other thing.
they said, well, we know, but it's pretty close. And I said, well, pretty close doesn't cut it. That's like horseshoes and hand grenades, you know, pretty close is not enough. has to be.
Sharron Halpert (48:23)
I think they you the right way.
Dee Davis (48:24)
Yeah, so I said that that's not enough. We can't do that. We can't just take this you well. That's pretty close and go apply it and say we've done our job. I said did anybody get an EJ? It got really quiet and I got a blank stare. And finally, one of the young project engineers was brave enough to say what is an EJ? and I.
commend them for being brave enough to say that. I think they're young enough in their career that they come across the kinds of things they don't understand all the time. It's okay to not know folks. It truly, it's okay to not know lots of stuff. I have been doing this forever. I still don't know tons of stuff. learn constantly. So an EJ is an engineering judgment. So I would like to just kind of briefly touch on this. So when we use EJs in the industry,
when there is no UL out there that applies to our specific situation. It could be the seven inch fluted deck that you're talking about. It could be that I have a pipe penetration that that particular material doesn't have a UL because it hasn't been tested yet. It could be lots of situations. I've seen crazy things out in the field. I've seen stuff half in and half out of walls. I've seen...
And I know Sharron and I talked about this before. My pet peeve is things going through at an angle when it's a straight wall and it goes through at an angle like that launches me. There's all these situations that come up and not every one of them is going to already have a UL for it. and to make things a little bit more complicated, manufacturer A has a certain series of ULs. Manufacturer B has a certain series of ULs.
And because each UL is tested with that particular material, that manufacturer's material. So if you're using company A, they may not have a UL for your situation, but company B does. So you have a choice potentially of saying, I'm going to go with company B's. I'm going to mix their material in here and use it for this penetration because they already have a UL or you can get an EJ from company A.
when EJs come up, I'm contractor Joe Blow and I'm out there and I have this situation come up, what do I do Sharron? How do I get an EJ?
Sharron Halpert (50:33)
So the answer to that question varies depending on what Firestop manufacturer you're dealing with. If you're dealing with one of the major companies, Hilti, 3M, STI, then they have an 800 number or you call your local sales rep and they can get you an EJ. If you're using some of the other companies that don't have as big a presence, then sometimes they have staff that can write an engineering judgment.
Sometimes they outsource engineering judgments to a third party, in which case they may charge you. it'll vary depending on how many are you gonna use? Is this the one-off? They're probably not gonna spend money to get an engineering judgment for a one-off. However, the big manufacturers, they do it they don't charge you anything. Now you touched on something really important is using materials interchangeably.
There's a liability element to you don't do that because the UL detail says you've got to use product A and you're using product B. So there's a liability because you're making an assumption that they're going to work interchangeably. Not saying that that's not important, but I want you to understand that it's so much more than just that piece of paper and you're not following the piece of paper. There is a massive difference in products. Some products expand when they're exposed to heat, some products don't. Some products expand a little bit.
Some products expand 600 times. So if you're looking at a detail for a intumescent, it's the magic word we use in Firestop, it just means that something expands when it's exposed to this thermal reaction, this chemical reaction that's the heat causes it to expand. What temperature does it expand at? Do you know the answer to that? How much does it expand? Do you know the answer to that?
If you don't know the answer to that, you cannot use them interchangeably. And guess what? Nobody in the field knows the answer to that question. Even the salespeople probably don't have access to that data. That's why getting an engineering judgment from that manufacturer is so important. Because we learn more from our failures.
Everybody knows that who's had a failure and been able to get over that failure and learn from it. Firestop is no different. You know the limitations of your Firestop product if you know when it fails. And if you do not work for that manufacturer, you do not know the limitations because the UL directory, the Intertech directory, they only tell you the successes. So engineering judgments, back to your original question, whether they needed
They're needed whenever an installation deviates from a listed system. So historically, EJs have been used to fix construction defects. The plans say this, we did something different. Whoops, now we're in the field. Time is of the essence. Give me an EJ for this. Manufacturers won't write EJs unless they have the documentation to support it. Sometimes that documentation can be found in a UL directory.
Sometimes it's on internal testing that they know of. So there's a lot that goes into engineering judgments, and that's a historical comment that would be accurate now with changes that are happening in UL. That's an even bigger challenge because UL has now developed this program where a manufacturer can buy into this program and then UL will come and evaluate the engineering judgments. Because the big risk is that if somebody just
writes an engineering judgment and they're doing it because they want to sell more product, that's a liability. Now, most of the firestop manufacturers don't have salespeople writing the engineering judgments and the salespeople will fight with the people writing engineering judgments because they want to sell their product. But because the engineers are not bonused off of sales goals, they have
In theory, right, their best interest is to make sure that they're protecting the liability of the company. so in some jurisdictions you may find that engineering judgments have to be approved by a third party entity. So Clark County, which is Las Vegas, Mecklenburg County, possibly Colorado from what I hear, but other jurisdictions will require a third party PE stamp engineering judgments. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
It's a good thing in that somebody has their license on the line, but it's a bad thing because, you know, there's the Jahari window, there's the stuff you know, you know, there's the stuff you know, you don't know, like mechanical stuff, don't know a whole lot about it. I know that I need to go ask questions, right? So there's the stuff you know, you know, there's the stuff you know that you don't know. There's the stuff that you know that you don't know.
And there's a stuff that you don't even know that you don't know. So too often, PEs are completely unaware of that information in that last quadrant. There's stuff that you don't even know that you don't know that impacts the work that you're doing when you write an engineering judgment. That's my problem with third party people doing engineering judgments. However, my understanding is in Mecklenburg County, they want a third party person writing an engineering judgment. if let's say,
3M writes in EJ, a third party person in Mecklenburg County has to review it, evaluate it, and inspect it. Because EJs often have some convoluted stuff in them, and that person is responsible for all of that. That idea, baby, I love that idea. Because now someone is responsible for evaluating someone else's stuff, and if they are following the requirements of the PE, that ethical guidelines,
They're not writing engineering judgments when they don't know what they don't know. If that bucket is really big, that's a problem.
Brad Wyant (55:56)
you bring up a really interesting point there about ownership and that's the topic of the next question that we have on our list here which is to do with who owns fire stopping and what the best thing for a contractor to do strategically speaking is. Do you hire fire stopping as a separate entity? Do you make each penetrating contractor do their own fire stopping or do you try and have your own carpenters and foremen do it themselves and
Based on your experiences, which of these works best or is there not one solution? It's just about how you set it up to succeed. What are your thoughts on that?
Sharron Halpert (56:29)
That's a great question.
A lot of it depends on who you bring on the team, right? And that's the same about when you're looking at your plumbing contractor, if they show up and they haven't even looked at the plans, or have they written a bunch of RFIs before the project even starts, right? Big difference to who you're gonna get and the quality of workmanship that you're gonna get and the level of problems that you're gonna encounter. So with that in mind, let's say that the project goes with
a really good specialty contractor. In my mind, that really good specialty contractor would review all of the plans, have conversations with all of the trades that are impacted by their scope of work. They've had conversations about the annular space, who's going to be making the whole of the drywall contractor or the trade. You're limited to this size for this application and this size for that application. And maybe they can just say, based on this project, if everybody leaves the annular space,
between a quarter inch and a half inch, we're good to go with everything, right? Maybe that's answer in most cases, but not in these three cases. Are they having those conversations? And are the trades held accountable by the GC to meet those requirements? If that's happening, you've got a goldmine of a specialty installer. However, if the specialty installer shows up and they're just slapping pookie in the hole.
Maybe it's the wrong annular space. If your inspector, let's say it's a special inspector or a jurisdictional inspector knows enough to say you've got a problem. Now you've got a problem that impacts your schedule. If they don't know enough to say that you've got a problem. Now you have a problem that nobody will ever know about unless there's a fire. That's an issue. So. Those are the pros and cons of using a specialty contractor. The pros and cons of having your.
trades do it by themselves is that they have more control over the communication with does the opening need to be framed out? What is the annular space if they run their own openings, then they're responsible for that. But do they know enough to coordinate it? If they do great self performing is a great way to go for that contractor. But it's the answer to question, I guess, leads to
What's your level of knowledge when it comes to Firestop? If it's low and you want to keep it low, sub it out. Because if I'm a mechanical contractor and I sub it out, now my liability for communicating what's required in order to install it or communicating that we don't have the right annular space lies with that Firestop installer and not with that mechanical contractor or other trade. However, the general contractor still owns all the liability.
Dee Davis (59:02)
I have a strong opinion on this particular topic based on previous experience. So again, my background is mechanical contracting was one for a very long time. I learned a valuable lesson in this little piece of the war. And this is part of also contributes to my being a fire stopping nerd. I had a wood building.
I don't do a lot of wood buildings in my career. mostly do port and place or steel buildings. This was a existing wood building that we were redoing part of it, adding onto it, doing some different things. And wood buildings are construction-wise are very different than doing concrete or steel. And
where they had the fire ratings in this building was we had a rated ceiling in this particular building. So the fire rating was at the ceiling level it was like a tunnel construction. I had a foreman, I was mechanical, so I had three trades. I duct work, mechanical piping and plumbing as the scope. one of the foremen talked me into
letting them self-perform the fire stopping. And again, I was young, it was one of my first projects on my own as a project manager. I had very little experience with this type of construction and I didn't appreciate how different it was and the kind of trouble that we could get in as a contractor. By letting trades people who are not
not trained. almost every fire stopping specification I've ever seen says specifically that you have to have a training certificate and five years experience installing fire stopping. Well, 99.9 % of tradespeople do not have that. They cannot comply with that. We got approved to self-perform it. We went in and self-perform it. And what we did not grasp or appreciate
was that there was two layers of drywall in this tunnel construction. as you come down and you have your rods hanging down, you had a layer of drywall that the rod went through that needed to be fire stopped. So think about this. You've got all this duct work and conduit and plumbing and all these things that are coming through the layer of drywall that now needs to be fire stopped.
Sharron Halpert (1:01:04)
Yep.
Dee Davis (1:01:18)
thousands and thousands and thousands of penetrations. Not big penetrations because it's all thread rod, you know, not a big deal, but it is a big deal when you don't know what you're doing. It cost me 10 times more to do that work, to self-perform that because you here's here's the things that from a contractor side you need to think about. Union labor.
Sharron Halpert (1:01:30)
IT
Dee Davis (1:01:40)
So my guys were union laborers. They make good money. Their hourly rate is not low.
Even for an apprentice, the hourly rate is not low. And it shouldn't be. We have no idea what we're doing. So there's a massive learning curve. It is not just squirting some pookie in a hole. I don't care what anybody says. We didn't do a great job coordinating with drywall, which we should have done. And we would have known to do better if we had a better idea of what we were doing.
And as a not fire stopping specialist, we're paying retail essentially for the material. Fire stopping contractors, they buy this stuff all day. yes, I can go to job site supply or wherever and I can go buy the material and I can go buy the sausages and I can go buy the caulking guns and all that kind of stuff. But I'm paying max.
price for this stuff because I don't buy this stuff all day. So I'm paying through the nose for these materials, paying through the nose for the labor. Now, my fire stopping specialty contractor, are they union? Sure they are, but their rates are lower.
than the mechanic or the plumber because it's a different skill set. My advice to installing contractors is leave it to the professionals. They are going to know what they need. They're going to understand how to read the UL. They're going to be able to go buy the material wholesale. And yes, you're going to pay a markup, but it's not going to be what you're going to pay on your own if you go out and buy it yourself.
they're going to be able to coordinate when they need to be there, all of the things. And if you're a GC, I was very skeptical the first job I was ever on where the GC hired one fire stopper for the entire job. As a mechanical contractor, I took that a little personally. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny. I highly recommend it. As long as GCs, take this job seriously. one head to knock,
There's something to be said for that. Having one fire stopping contractor that's handling everything from your top of wall to your through penetrations is a good idea. if you just bid it out that way, just start it that way. When you try to go back and you say, okay, I'm to put it in everybody's contract. And then I'm going to try to get that credit back out and go hire somebody. I would say most of the time it doesn't work.
Sharron Halpert (1:03:54)
You never get it back.
Dee Davis (1:03:56)
You never really get it back and then you don't want to pay out of pocket. Now you've got four different companies out there with all these different materials and it's a submittal nightmare. And it's a coordination nightmare for you in the field. So just plan on doing that from the beginning, especially on a sizable job. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches. So that's my two cents on the topic.
Brad Wyant (1:04:13)
And to give a bit of a business school answer to the reasoning behind why I think that works based on the coursework I've done here, I think that it comes back to that specialization idea. The idea that having somebody who both is great at being a mechanical installer, a great journeyman mechanical guy, and asking him to also know fire stopping and to be great at that is not as efficient as.
having there be one guy who's at the best there is at this and another person who's the best there is at this guy's gender term. I shouldn't used it. Here we go. The. Onus then falls on the general contractor to coordinate between those professionals to create an environment in which their incentives align so that they can do great work together. We often find that the fire stopping person doesn't want to do their work at the same pace that the mechanical subcontractor does and they're
that that's the job of the general contractors to find ways to facilitate them working at their best together. It's challenging. It's a huge challenge, especially on high pressure, projects which are driven significantly by schedule pressure, but
It's going to create a better outcome. And if you have those conversations up front, if you get people in the room together to work as a team, they're going to recognize that finding a solution now is going to be easier than fighting about it later. Nobody wants to fight about later, even though there's a lot of bluster and there's a lot of confrontation in the construction industry. We all prefer to build the time into our lives to get it right the first time.
Sharron Halpert (1:05:39)
The one thing I'll add to Dee's comment is vet your team. And this isn't just for your Firestop contractor, right? But ask them questions about what are some of your challenges that you've run into and what are you doing on future projects to reduce or eliminate those challenges? If they're not actively looking at how to fix problems in their own company, do you think they're actively looking at how to solve problems on your project? Or are they just going to show up for a paycheck?
Ask them questions about, tell me how you had like a clash of personality with a building official and how you worked around it. Like ask them questions to make sure that they are good for your project team. And you find somebody that's good like that, hold on tight, take good care of them, pay them efficiently and they will take care of you.
Dee Davis (1:06:25)
Cheaper is not always better. I think we all know that. But we have a terrible time in this industry and I work on the owner side a lot. I see it on the owner side. I see it on the contractor side. I see it in every seat in the industry. We fall victim to that. Oh, I could get a deal. I might save a little bit of money over here. I might increase my profit margin. You're never gonna win. And I spent many, many, many years working in the public sector where we had to take the low bid.
It's rough stuff and trying to make low bid contractors perform at high levels. There's a trick to it. and it doesn't always work. It very much depends on your team and your ability as it takes a lot more as a leader to get low bidding contractors to perform at a high level. It's, it's a huge investment.
Sharron Halpert (1:07:14)
You've seen that image where there's this giant yacht. And the name of the yacht is change order and their dinghy is original contract. There's that game that's played too. which. Icky.
Brad Wyant (1:07:24)
The allure of a lowest bidder is so attractive. It's like, oh, but they say they're going to do it for this number. And why would I ever pay for some? It's all the same, right? It's such a. Especially for owners, especially if you're trying to counsel somebody who's making a financial decision, who's responsible. we talk about fiduciary responsibility all the time in business school as a manager, as a leader of company. There's this pressure to get the low number to do it as cheap as possible.
to do what feels like the right thing. But we've all been around, I mean, I have been around the block even at my very young age enough to know that that is not the story.
Dee Davis (1:08:00)
a good, cheap circle, right? Yes, yes. can have any two, but not all three. And I learned that when I was in the Navy. I've never found it to not be true.
Brad Wyant (1:08:10)
How is it that that's a lesson that we can only learn after having learned it the hard way? That's one of my...
Dee Davis (1:08:15)
to learn it over and over though. That's the problem I feel like every job we have to relearn it and we keep trying to remind ourselves and others around us, good, fast, cheap. You can only have two of those things. you can say you're going to get all three, but at the end of the day, you're not going to get all three. You have to choose.
And people don't want to choose. They want all three. And I get that. But as contractors, whether you're a GC and you're hiring 30 to 50 subs, or you're a specialty contractor and you've only got maybe a handful of sub trades under you, we have to remember good, fast, cheap, right? We need to hire the right partners to help us do the job right. To limit our liability.
to make our lives better, I mean, come on, we all gotta go to work every day. Why make it suck, right? Nobody wants to go to work when it sucks every day. Like, come on.
Brad Wyant (1:09:08)
And not only that, when it sucks to go to work every day, your work quality changes. If you are dreading walking onto a certain job site as a fire-proofing subcontractor, and it's because the GC is just beating you upside the head with something every time you do, you're going to be trying to get off that job site. You're going to be trying to do whatever you can to not be in that environment. If you create a better environment for people to work in, where everyone wants to collaborate, everyone wants to work together, they're going to do better work.
Sharron Halpert (1:09:35)
And the suicide rate in construction is so insanely high that fixing that problem that you guys are talking about will fix the other problem. Maybe not fix it, but it'll certainly, you know, if you show up to work and you hate your work.
Dee Davis (1:09:48)
Yeah, we have a whole episode of the podcast about mental health and construction. And we talk about the drug and alcohol abuse rates and the suicide rates are so alarming in our industry, many, many times higher than normal. So we definitely want to make this less stressful. So looking at wrapping things up here, Sharron, tell us a little bit about who your clients are typically.
and what kind of services Halpert Life Safety offers.
Sharron Halpert (1:10:18)
So we've worked with anyone who wants to build better. We've worked on the owner's side. We've worked on the general contractor side. Two of the big special inspection firms have hired me on projects to train their people on how to do special inspection. And it's really funny, the first time that I got hired, it sort of morphed into so much more because I had this, I don't know, he was probably six foot two. I'm five foot four. So every time I would do a site walk with this guy,
I would have to take two steps back and my neck would hurt at the end of the day, because I'd always be looking up. But this guy was two years out of college. And when we walked the site the first time and I pointed at some random metal pipe, I said, what material is that? Because he needs to know for the fire stop UL detail. And what service is it? Because he needs to know in order to identify which trade to talk to. He couldn't identify a fire sprinkler line. He couldn't identify cast iron steel conduit.
what belonged to the electrician. He was green and I loved it because that meant I had just this ball of clay that I could shape and morph. And he was so sharp and so cared about his quality of work. That's the critical thing. I always say, if you don't know, I can teach you. If you don't care, I can't help you. I can't make you care. I can't do anything with apathy, but I can do a whole lot with ignorance.
give me an ignorant person and I can fix it. So he was awesome. I wound up teaching him to the point where he was answering questions from the design team and they finally said, hey, we have a problem. Can you help us fix it? And he said, number one is a special inspector. I'm not allowed to do that. Number two, I don't have a clue. I only know what Sharron taught me. So if you want to know how to build better, we have free resources, we have paid resources. I can come in and consult. Anything that you need.
I'd be happy to help you. So we do consulting like we have on lots of projects. We do training like we do in New Jersey. The building officials. I'm one of the trainers that they have. I go to Educode in Las Vegas the end of February, early March for that session every year. So if you're in either of those locations, join me. We have loads of fun. We animate the building codes. We turn the fire test standards into stories and we help you learn how to apply that information when you're
in the office, looking at plans when you're in the field, looking at the work. So we do training consulting and we also do third party special inspection of fire stop within a two hour radius of our little office in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Dee Davis (1:12:46)
Excellent. So how can people connect with you?
Sharron Halpert (1:12:49)
through our website on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, but I don't really respond a whole lot on that just because those two things are wormholes that I go down and I'm stuck and I'm like, I just wasted an hour. So I don't do a whole lot there. But I mean, you're welcome to get my phone number. It's 201-250-4193. Text me a photo of a challenge and let's hop on a call. If I can fix a problem for you in 30 minutes, you totally made my day.
And I know that sounds really weird and you would think, who would do that? You're going to have your phone winging off the hook. I don't. But every time that somebody calls me, I totally geek out and I will often connect you to some of my favorite people because they can help you get everything that you need from products to details and all of that. So anyone who wants to build better, just let me know. I'd love to help you.
Dee Davis (1:13:38)
So there you go, Sharron Halpert, ultimate fire life safety geek, fire stopping geek.
Sharron, when you and I were originally talking about you coming on the cast, we talked about offering a discount for students, people listening to this podcast that wanna get some education from Halpert Life Safety. So what code can they use for that?
Sharron Halpert (1:14:00)
All you have to do is go onto our website and I'll give you the link so you can put it in your show notes any of the classes that you have to pay for, if you use the coupon code HEYDEE and that'll all be caps, then you'll get 20 percent off and we'll donate a portion of the proceeds back to NAWIC.
Dee Davis (1:14:18)
a portion of the proceeds will go to the NAWIC, National Association of Women in Construction, NEF fund, which stands for NAWIC Education Foundation. NAWIC, if you don't already know, is a wonderful organization for women in construction. It is a national organization that I belong to. I've been trying to coerce Sharron into joining her local chapter.
but I'm on the board for the Education Foundation. It's so important that we provide as much education to the construction industry as we possibly can. It's something I'm very passionate about. Of course, at Yellowstone Professional Education, we offer tons of education to the industry. Sharron offers education to the industry. NAWIC offers education. That's what we do here. So for a 20 % discount from Halpert Life Safety,
Use coupon code HEYDEE and a portion of the proceeds will go to the NAWIC NEF fund.
Sharron Halpert (1:15:17)
One of them is going to be on special inspection. So it helps you understand when special inspection of Firestop is required. There's another one that would be great for design teams and jurisdictional inspectors to help them understand how to vet the special inspector to make sure that they're capable and qualified. There's a 101 training for fire sprinkler contractors.
There's a 101 training for fire resistance rated joints. So that would be head of wall, that sort of application. We have one that is awesome for anybody specifically to plumbing. It's called the Plumbers Path to Perfect Firestop, the membrane penetration version. And we started with that because the plumbers often have the most membrane penetration challenges. And if you're working in residential construction, then that is a huge
valuable class people that's in there and that it will dramatically improve the level of life safety on their projects and we're adding new classes. I'd like to say on the regular, but lately things have been so hectic and busy that we haven't. But we'd love to have you then the last class that we have is called the build better crew. So it's a regular meetup where you get to ask whatever questions you want and we give you answers. And the key the key thing to this is every session is recorded so.
Ultimately, as the years go on, we will have this library of content. So some people that are part of the Build Better crew actually start up a video every day on their way to work and they just listen to it. So they turn their commute into a university so they can learn more about Firestop. And the thing I love about construction is like Dee says, every single project you can learn something new. Education is never ending. I am a Firestop geek, but I have this amazing guy that does fire sprinklers.
And every time I go to him, like, hey, I know this, the educating me is not part of your contract, but I have a question that's related to what you do. Any chance you could take 10 minutes and talk to me? And he's as much of a geek about his stuff as I am about my stuff. So he's always making time for me. So I love people like that. And I would like to be that person for you. Thank you, Dee, so much for having me on this. And Brad, you're fabulous as well. Thank you.
Brad Wyant (1:17:21)
Pleasure's all mine. This was such a great cast. Thank you for being on with us.
Dee Davis (1:17:24)
Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Sharron Halpert (1:17:27)
Thanks, bye bye.
