About
Christopher J. Naum,SFPE Executive Producer of Buildingsonfire.com
Welcome to Buildingsonfire.com.
The authoritative and informational site that provides leading insights on fire service issues related to Building Construction for the Fire Service, Firefighting Operations and Command Risk Management for Operational Excellence and Firefighter Safety.
If you don’t fully understand how a building truly performs or reacts under fire conditions and the variables that can influence its stability and degradation, movement of fire and products of combustion and the resource requirements for fire suppression in terms of staffing, apparatus and required fire flows, then you will be functioning and operating in a reactionary manner.
This places higher risk to your personnel and lessens the likelihood for effective, efficient and safe operations. You’re just not doing your job effectively and you’re at RISK. These risks can equate into insurmountable operational challenges and could lead to adverse incident outcomes. Someone could get hurt, someone could die, it’s that simple, it’s that obvious.
The axiom of Building Knowledge = Firefighter Safety (2008) continues to form the basis for effective operations, for it’s the knowledge of the building and it’s anatomy that defines the level of operational safety and incident success share by all personnel and operating companies at the incident. Without understanding the building-occupancy relationships and integrating; construction, occupancies, fire dynamics and fire behavior, risk, analysis, the art and science of firefighting, safety conscious work environment concepts and effective and well-informed incident command management, company level supervision and task level competencies…You are derelict and negligent and “not “everyone may be going home”. Our current generation of buildings, construction and occupancies are not as predictable as past conventional construction; risk assessment, strategies and tactics must change to address these new rules of structural fire engagement.
There is a need to gain the building construction knowledge and insights and to change and adjust operating profiles in order to safe guard companies, personnel and team compositions. It’s all about understanding the building-occupancy relationships and the art and science of firefighting, integrating effective incident and command decison-making, dynamic risk assessment and management, coupled with streaming situational awareness and measured firefighting; Building Knowledge = Firefighter Safety, its all about going home after that call.
The traditional attitudes and beliefs of equating aggressive firefighting operations in all occupancy types coupled with the correlating, established and pragmatic operational strategies and tactics must be adjusted and modified to include intelligent risk assessment, calculated risk analysis, safety and survivability profiling, and strategic operational and tactical value. The demands and requirements of modern firefighting will continue to require the placement of personnel within situations and buildings that carry risk, uncertainty and inherent danger. As a result, risk management must become fluid and integrated with intelligent tactical deployments and operations recognizing the risk problematically and not fatalistically, resulting in safety conscious strategies and tactics. We need to think about the Predicative Strategic Process, refined Tactical Deployment Models integrating intelligent Structural Anatomy, and Predictive Occupancy Profiling, Effectively Reading the Building and Tactical Patience.
Buildingsonfire.com coupled with it’s companion sites CommandSafety.com and TheCompanyofficer.com will continue to provide prominent and timely information to support the continuing traditions and missions of the Fire and Emergency Services.
Christopher J. Naum, SFPE
Profile
Christopher J. Naum, SFPE is a 36-year fire service veteran and a former Fire Chief/ Fire & Safety Coordinator and previously served as a commanding company officer for over twenty years in field operations with a fire department in New York and is the Chief of Training for the Command Institute. A nationally recognized authority on building construction, structural collapse and command management, he has traveled throughout the United States and internationally delivering training programs on building construction, command risk management and firefighter safety.
In addition to his fire service career, he is a former architect and fire protection engineer and is actively involved in researching and developing emerging and cutting edge strategic and tactical operational methodologies, concepts and practices based in current fire research to improved fireground operations and firefighter safety.
As a highly regarded national instructor, author, lecturer, visionary and fire officer, he is a distinguished authority on building construction issues affecting the fire and emergency services related to fire suppression preparedness, planning and response operations, incident command & risk management, deployment preparedness and firefighter safety. He has served as an adjunct instructor with the National Fire Academy and specialized in training courses for Structural Collapse, Building Construction and Firefighter Safety & Health.
A Contributing Editor with Firehouse Magazine since 1988 and Firehouse.com since 2002, he has authored numerous articles on building construction, firefighting operations, command, leadership and special technical rescue operations. He authors the periodic column on Firehouse.com entitled- Structural Anatomy and also authors the Firehouse.com blog, Structural Anatomy of Buildingsonfire that focuses on building construction, command risk management and firefighter safety.He advocates and writes extensively within various fire service eMedia training forums and groups including Firehouse.com, Fire Engineering.com, FireRescue1.com and Firefighter Nation.com where he authors the Building Construction & Firefighter Safety Groups and Command Safety forum.
His popular interactive scenario based series; Ten Minutes in the Street are a regular feature on FirefighterNation.com, Buildingsofire.com and TheCompanyofficer.com.
The Second Vice President with the International Society of Fire Service Instructors, he is an active supporter and participant of the NFFF The Everyone Goes Home Initiatives, a State Firefighter Safety Advocate and a resource contributor to National Near-Miss Reporting System. A longtime member of the IAFC, he served over ten years as a charter member of the IAFC Urban Rescue Structural Collapse Committee and is a member of the Safety, Health & Survival Section and the Volunteer Chief Officers Section. He served as an organizational liaison on the Board of Directors with the IAFC Safety, Health & Survival Section from 2006-2011 and currently holds appointment to the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs Education and Training Committee.
He is a technical reviewer to the NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, Firefighter LODD Reports & Investigations and is the Chairperson of the Onondaga County (NY) Fire Advisory Board comprised of key county fire service stakeholders and organizational representatives. He is active in numerous national fire service agenda programs, committees and initiatives and continues to contribute to the emerging body of research and development that will define the fire and emergency services in training and operations in the years ahead.
He continues to present his popular the anatomy of building construction training series throughout the United States and is the Executive Producer of the informational portal Buildingsonfire.com dedicated to building construction and firefighter safety. Buildingsonfire informational insights are also now being posted on Facebook . He is authoring a new text book integrating building construction, risk management and firefighter safety and provides insightful firefighter safety commentary on his CommandSafety website at http://commandsafety.com/ and thru two Twitter accounts at Commandsafety and Buildingsonfire .
His newest blog web site Thecompanyofficer.com is dedicated to Company Officer Leadership, Development, Training can be found at TheCompanyOfficer.com. In addition, you can listen or download radio program podcasts from the growing family of Buildingsonfire.com productions; Taking it to the Streets hosted by Christopher Naum on Firefighternetcast.com.
Contact: Christopher.naum@gmail.com
Additionally, follow him on the following eMedia sites:
New Monthly radio program; Taking it to the Streets on Fire Fighter netcast.com
