Fire/Life Safety

Syska Hennessy Group’s dedicated fire/life safety team brings over 90 years of collective fire/life safety engineering experience, including staff with practical firefighting experience.

We provide fire/life safety system engineering design and consulting services for a wide variety of clients and occupancy types, including commercial, institutional, stadiums, laboratories, critical facilities, higher education, government, historical landmarks, and high-rise and super high-rise buildings. With professional engineer (PE) licenses in fire protection engineering in multiple states, our team provides every client with a cost-effective and code-compliant engineering design to protect life and property.

Services include:

• Fire alarm and fire protection system consulting engineering and design.
• Fire safety evaluations and system assessments.
• Due diligence reports and assessments.
• Preparation of fire safety/emergency action and fire protection plans.
• Commissioning of fire/life safety systems.
• Statement of Conditions (SOC) surveys for healthcare.
• Fire safety evaluation system (FSES) assessments for healthcare.
• Building-code variances and equivalencies.
• Building features reports.
• Peer review/third-party agent.
• Site survey and documentation.
• Campus fire alarm design and master planning.
• Representation with Local Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ).
• Emergency responder radio systems.
• Air-sampling smoke detection systems.
• Standpipe systems.
• Smoke control systems.
• Protected premises fire alarm systems.
• Mass notification systems.
• Sprinkler systems.
• Clean agent fire extinguishing systems.

NewYork-Presbyterian’s Columbia University Medical Center
Syska was selected to perform a facility assessment study of all fire and life safety systems serving this 3.4 million-sf multi-building institutional medical campus. This assessment developed into a 15-year fire alarm system infrastructure upgrade, for which Syska served as the primary consulting engineer for all 14 occupied buildings on site. These state-of-the-art systems incorporate addressable technology and emergency voice communications in addition to fire responder radio systems.

All fire alarm system designs meet National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), New York State, Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and New York City Building Code requirements, and have been approved by the New York State Department of Health.

Fire/Life Safety in High-Rise Buildings
Syska and the Fire Department of the City of New York co-authored and presented a paper on the history of notable high-rise building fires, a history of the New York City Building Code and an overview of the 2014 New York City Building Code. We also provided an overview of the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force, detailing specific code updates for resilient high-rise buildings.