A Fire Protection Engineer is an individual who, by formal training and professional experience, carries the necessary competency and has the skills to provide guidance and direction to protect life, property and environment from threats posed by fire and its related mechanism.
To this end, SFPE has identified four areas of knowledge that are the core of the profession, beyond general engineering knowledge. While minimum competency in each area is essential, most individuals will not be able to achieve expertise in all of these areas, nor would it be practical to attempt.
If you would like to learn more about core competencies, please review Recommended Minimum Technical Core Competencies for the Practice of Fire Protection Engineering
The four core competencies have been listed below. Use the link to find a short description of the competency and relevant courses available through SFPE Education.
Fire Science
A comprehensive understanding of the underlying physical principles of fire and its related mechanisms. This would include the principles of ignition, combustion, heat transfer, mass transfer, fire chemistry and fire dynamics.
Courses related to this competency:
Human Behavior and Evacuation
A comprehensive understanding of human behavior and the principles of means of egress design. This would include the behavior of people during an emergency, different design approaches, tools, and methods to perform egress, evacuation, and escape assessments.
Courses related to this competency:
Fire Protection Systems
A comprehensive understanding of fire mitigation, including water- and non-water-based suppression; fire detection and alarm systems; smoke management systems; passive systems; fire testing; and code and standard concerns.
Courses related to this competency:
Fire Protection Analysis
A comprehensive understanding of the principles of technical analysis related to fire protection design. This would include means of identifying and quantifying fire-related risks and hazards, design approaches, concepts for evaluating design options, application of numerical methods and computer fire models, establishing boundary conditions, and limits of analysis and design.
Courses related to this competency:
Foundational
Outside of the core competencies, there are several other areas that are considered essential to the fire protection engineering profession, such as Learning Skills, General Academics, Workplace Skills, and Technical Knowledge.
SFPE offers a variety of courses that fall into this category. Various topics covered include General Engineering, Design, Professional Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy.
Courses related to this category:
Courses sorted by Job Role:
*Not officially one of the listed roles, but we set aside these two categories previously when defining the roles so that we could have content listed here where it didn’t perfectly fit elsewhere.