Opportunities
Fire protection engineers are employed at the present time largely by insurance companies, either individually as company field engineers or collectively in the inspection and rating organizations. Every important geographical section in the country has somewhere within it an insurance organization consisting either of an insurance exchange or rating board for making insurance rates and specifying requirements for improvements, and an engineering or inspection bureau for making surveys, inspections, and reports to its members. Large municipalities are cared for by local rating boards. Many large corporations are employing engineers, often with the title of “Fire marshal,” and others combine their fire insurance affairs, both business and engineering, in the office of a “Superintendent of insurance.”
Insurance engineers are frequently called to a company home office, after having had a good field experience, to take charge of the underwriting or passing upon the business offered in special departments, for the business requiring a technical or engineering knowledge. These are variously known as “Improved risk departments,” “Sprinklered risk departments,” etc., because the use of automatic sprinklers is fundamental in fire protection and required in risks accepted by such departments. One of the best avenues of approach to good home office positions is through the field experience of a fire protection engineer, employed by an inspection bureau or by an individual company.
There is a marked tendency among the larger insurance agencies and brokerage offices, in striving to render service to their customers, to employ fire protection engineers as a means of obtaining and holding business by reason of their superior technical knowledge.
Training obtained as an insurance or fire protection engineer is one of the best means of acquiring the technical knowledge requisite for success as a broker, by one who would become an expert buyer of insurance, able to study the needs of his clients, advise with regard to the kind of insurance to purchase, work out satisfactory contracts, and negotiate with the rating authorities to secure the lowest cost.
The agency end of the business offers the greatest financial inducements, since one may develop a clientele of his own, receiving commission on the amount of business he can bring into the office, and may perhaps become a partner in the business.
Trained inspectors are rarely employed for less than $1,200, and salaries run up to $2,400 for field men. Chief engineers of organizations, engineers in agencies, and company executives obtain much more.
The following excerpts from letters received from prominent men in the fire insurance and engineering field show the opportunities in this profession:
“The opportunities in the field of fire protection engineering were never greater that at the present time, as the public now seems to be in a receptive mood as regards conservation of all resources.”
“There is a constant demand among fire insurance companies for practical fire protection engineers. The number employed by any one company is not great but the number is growing now that insurance companies as a whole are getting to appreciate the constant dangers of conflagration areas, poor water supply, poor fire equipment, and other kindred effects.”
“There is a splendid opportunity in what is called the inspection or rating bureau service, as even prior to our country entering the war there was always a shortage of competent help.”
“In the inspection and engineering branch of fire insurance a wide field can be readily opened to disabled soldiers and sailors as well as to other discharged service men.”
“Several months ago one inspection bureau formulated tentatively its own employment plan, which in brief was, ‘first, to re-employ its former men now with the colors, and to thereafter give preference to disabled soldiers and sailors.’”
“In the field of fire protection there are comparatively so few trained men in this vocation to-day that the opportunity is unlimited. Where yesterday the idea was the protection of property by fire departments, water supply, etc., to-day it is one of fire prevention, i. e., checking the cause of fire before it may have an opportunity to do any damage. Fire prevention to-day is confined mainly to organizations covering wide fields. There is no question but what in the future each industrial plant of any size will have their own fire protection or fire prevention engineer, and probably the same will be extended to each city of any considerable size.”
“Graduates of the Armour Institute of Technology and former students who have not graduated have been in demand. In most cases the employment entered into immediately after graduation has been moderately remunerative, but advancement has been much more rapid than in the case of untrained men. A few graduates have been employed by companies manufacturing and installing automatic sprinkler equipments. The typical case is that of a man who enters an inspection bureau, and after three or four years assumes work of responsibility with a fire insurance company. Recently several companies have shown a tendency to depart from the traditional plan of looking to the bureaus as training schools, and have engaged men with the Institute’s degree, but without field experience. A large proportion of the classes of 1917 and 1918, who entered military or naval service upon leaving school, will probably be employed by insurance companies immediately after discharge from the service. There are now, as at all times, in the history of the department, applications for more graduates than are available.”