Fire Protection
PDC offers a wide range of fire protection engineering services that fall into five major categories: Suppression; Detection; Life Safety; Commissioning and Retro-Commissioning; and Alarm and Mass Notification. Our experience includes traditional water-phased suppression and special suppression for sensitive environments and equipment. We provide design for fire pumps, storage tanks, fire/heat/flame detection, and smoke control. Mass notification and associated audibility analyses can also be provided by our skilled professionals.
Our Fire Protection Group provides functional solutions that meet strict code requirements and helps achieve our client’s project goals. We bring feasible, cost-effective design to both simple and complex projects in urban and remote cold regions locations. PDC’s fire protection engineers can assist you at any phase of your project. Services range from life-safety or property protection analyses; code surveys; planning; RFP development; or traditional design and construction phase services (including commissioning and testing).
Suppression
Suppression systems protect our buildings and their occupants, providing emergency control of fire until the occupants can get out of the building and the fire department arrives. PDC has expertise in the planning and design of suppression systems for many types of projects from common residential sites to remote, special hazard sites. Our fire protection engineers will assure that the systems you need are protecting your facility in a safe, reliable, easy to maintain, and practical way. Our registered fire protection engineers specialize in design and installation analysis of wet and dry sprinkler systems, clean agent gaseous systems for local and total flooding, misting systems, solid sodium aerosol suppression, and foam suppression systems to meet your site design needs.
Detection
PDC’s fire protection engineers are well versed in all forms of fire detection technologies. This includes linear heat, beam smoke detection, air sampling smoke detection, volatile gas detection, infrared flame detection, and video flame detection for residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional sites. We have specialized experience in petroleum pumping sites and aircraft hangar design, including triple infrared flame and gas detection. We design fire detection systems for any type of facility or application.
Life Safety
Life safety and building code analysis is the study of a building and its systems to verify that the expected occupant load can get out quickly in an emergency, and also to ensure that you are safe until you can get out. Life safety and fire protection engineering is a balance of robust building construction (passive protection), suppression (active protection), and emergency notification. The cardinal rule in correct life safety system design is that the system must not be overly complicated. The more complicated a system is, the more likely it is to fail. PDC takes a conservative approach in balancing the project budget with a required level of safety in building design. PDC’s Alaska-registered fire protection engineers have experience with a broad range of facility types. This level of experience supports an efficient and innovative, yet simple, combination of life safety systems for your building.
Commissioning & Retro Commissioning
The Commissioning and Retro-Commissioning processes ensure that systems operate to meet their life safety system requirements. They also reduce warranty calls after construction, which can be a significant issue for remote installations. Due to the complexity of the advanced fire suppression, detection, and alarm systems available, Owners should rely on the specialized expertise of professional consultants to serve as the Commissioning Agent on their projects. PDC’s certified, experienced, and knowledgeable Commissioning Agents will take on the role of Commissioning Agent, or act as your Representative, during the commissioning process. PDC will not only check the systems during construction, but we will also be a key advocate during the design stage. Project delivery services can include condition surveys, running charrettes at the beginning of a project to rapidly reach consensus, reviewing the design and providing fresh input, field verifying construction conformance with the design documents, and – of course – validating that the buildings automated systems operate as designed and intended. Whatever your commissioning needs are, PDC’s team of certified commissioning agents are ready to help.
Alarm & Mass Notification
Whether you are in the comfort of your home or out and about, fire alarm and mass notification systems use smoke, heat, and fire detection to give you the earliest emergency information possible, and call fire department and police support. It is a critical part of the functionality of a building for life safety. PDC’s fire protection engineers are experts in fire detection and mass notification system design, specializing in all types of facilities and industrial applications, so building occupants can be safer in emergency situations. Our designs focus on coordination with facility security systems and emergency responder protocols to support an efficient and precise communication of emergency conditions at your site. PDC’s experienced team can provide you with systems in any building type you can imagine, in all regions of Alaska. Let our engineers develop an alarm and mass notification solution that meets your needs.
