Fire protection engineering, or fire insurance engineering, is a well-established line of effort which has been raised to the dignity of a profession during the past 20 years of its development. The fire insurance inspector belongs to this profession, as do inspectors in municipal fire prevention bureaus such as the large cities are organizing as an auxiliary to their fire departments. There are certain institutions in which instruction is given, and ways whereby a disabled man discharged from the military and naval forces of the United States may be trained for this vocation. In order to benefit by the training and be assured of good opportunities, certain facts should be considered.
Education
Primarily it may be conceded that the man who has had a technical education can generally get on in the profession more rapidly than one who has not. When technical knowledge and scientific attainments are secured in the hard school of experience the graduate has paid dearly for his lack of earlier training.
A distinction may be made between the requirements for fire protection engineering proper and those for routine inspection work.
A well-equipped fire protection engineer should have the equivalent of a sound engineering course, with a knowledge of the fundamentals or basic principles involved in civil, architectural, mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and chemical engineering. These principles can be utilized in the problems of plan drafting, proper building construction, occupancy equipment, public and private fire protection, and common and manufacturing hazards. Experience has demonstrated, however, that such foundation is not absolutely essential, and that many possessing the requisite personal qualifications have succeeded without it. For instance, many industrial occupations provide valuable experience as a foundation for development of the necessary technical ability. Men who have had experience as building inspectors, construction or factory engineers, piping foremen, estimators for automatic sprinkler concerns, and men who have been employed in municipal fire departments or in fire-alarm and signal work have been successful in routine inspection work and have risen to places of eminence in the world of fire protection engineering.
Graduates of engineering departments other than fire protection engineering have repeatedly shown themselves to be readily adaptable to work in this field, after a period of readjustment to enable them to acquire the point of view necessary to a man to whom the causes and prevention of fire, rather than other phases of engineering problems are significant.
Personal Qualifications
Whether technical qualifications be founded on training in a technical school or be the result of later effort the aspirant for success as an insurance inspector should be familiar with insurance practice, and should be endowed with a broad complement of common sense. He should have an inquisitive and observant mind, coupled with a desire to investigate the “why and how” of every problem, a constantly receptive brain, a retentive memory, and should be competent as a teacher of those less thoughtful or less well informed than he.
Above all a successful fire protection engineer must not minimize the importance of accurate observation and faithful reporting of small details which may have most vital import in determining the conditions of a plant.
Finally he should be resourceful and capable in planning and carrying out to a successful issue the details of technical propositions.