The Fire Protection Podcast: Episode #38 – Fire Suppression Systems Association (FSSA) 2022 Show Recap

iser:

Been, yes. You invited me on; margarita fueled Yes. <laugh>, uh, discussion about sprinkler system pros. Yeah,

Drew Slocum:

Yeah, yeah. I was hoping it would get a little heated, but the funny part is everybody came together at the end and agreed <laugh>, right?

Lee Kaiser:

Yeah. It’s a problem. Right. Still is.

Drew Slocum:

And there’s still a problem—nothing to solve from that. I wanted to get the compressor guys, the air compressor guys to fight with the nitrogen guys, but you know.

Lee Kaiser:

I think they were way too well-behaved.

Drew Slocum:

I know. Right?  So, yeah, I tried. But, so what, you know, FSSA, how long have you been involved? What, what’s your experience over the years?

Lee Kaiser:

You know,  I came into working for my employer fire protection in 2011, and I started immediately,  coming cuz my role at the time. Yeah. Started immediately coming to these meetings and specifically the technical committee meetings. Right. And my company’s been installed, you know, involved in it. We’re sort of like inaugural members Yeah. Of FSSA back in the eighties. Oh, wow. Back in ‘82, when it started. Right. Yeah. So we’ve had, a few people hold the president’s slot.

Drew Slocum:

Oh, wow.

Lee Kaiser:

We maintain a  platinum membership, which needs to pay more money. Yeah. <laugh> We’re sponsors and, those types of things. I think probably more than anything besides our dollars, we support it with our time. Yep. So my, you know, my time is some among that. Yeah. We’ve got people who have been involved in the technical committees. Sure. we’ve got people involved in the membership committee, people involved in the marketing committee. Yep.  and people that have, I mean, early on, in 2012 when we were writing our current training program Sure. For the industry. Yeah,

Drew Slocum:

That’s a great one.

Lee Kaiser:

You know, I’ve written, and several others wrote classes for that. Right. And so our, our content is there, it lives on, you know, it’s been modified and updated since then, but we wrote some of the original classes along with a lot of other stuff.

Drew Slocum:

People. Yeah. I mean, people ask us all the time, where can we find training for specialty suppression? And we’re like, pretty much FSSA, it’s like the only group. Yes. It’s the best one, but there are not many others.

Lee Kaiser:

Right. No, there are not a lot of others. There’s really no trade schools that focus specifically on that because it’s, it’s a blend of, of disciplines. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It’s, you know, you kind of gotta be a fire alarm guy. You’ve kind of gotta be some parts about the sprinkler discipline. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Sprinkler discipline with the piping and all. Yep. And then you gotta know the hardware itself and what the age does. Right. It’s definitely a specialty, but it draws from our other skill sets and the overall fire protection industry.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. So, yeah. And I know just a mix of people. This is our second event being here. We’ve been members for three years, but just the echelon of service providers, just contractors and manufacturers here. I feel, you know, I’m gonna be a little biased, but it feels like you’re speaking to some really brilliant people at, FSSA. You get a lot of collaboration between different companies, and what I’ve seen over the last three years, it’s been awesome.

Lee Kaiser:

So, special hazards is unique. You kind of gotta want to do it. Yeah. Because, the thing I say in my company all the time, just thinking about density,  it’s not a dense industry as far as systems. There are only so many special hazard systems on every block. Right. There may be a handful of them in a city. Yep. And, if your technicians are on the road a little bit more travel site sales people, who put a lot of miles on their car going to see customers and see opportunities. They can’t just go and take over one block at a time. They’ve gotta travel. You’ve gotta like it. Yeah. And then, and then people seek us out because, you know, they may not have, a company that they just either don’t know about it or they don’t know a company they can trust right in their area. They have to reach out to find specialists and

Drew Slocum:

Special hazards. Yeah. I tell you a lot of provider people that are on our, our platform, they want to get into clean agent. I’m like, well, just don’t take one job, like work with another provider or start getting some of the training credentials through the FSSA and don’t just jump into a job, learn about it. You know?

Lee Kaiser:

Yeah. I mean, I worry that situation is starting to arise. More and more Yeah. Where, you know, we think we can pick this up too. Right. A lot of the secret to our success is being really good at detection and control. Yeah, yeah. Along with the special hazards piece of it. I think that is the more artful piece of what we do in special hazards, ensuring that the system goes off appropriately Right. At the right time. Yeah. In the right timeline of the fire. Like, you know, sometimes we set up detection so that we’ve got a big fire before we put it out. Oh, right. Um, sometimes we know that the condition, the environment of the hazard won’t tolerate that.

And we need to have more sensitive detection that keeps the fire small before we discharge it so there’s minimal damage from the fire. Right. Well, that’s a little bit of an art and, it is not prescriptive. It’s very performance-based in our methodology. Yep. And, so that we focus on that. And if you’re just a, you know, no offense to any sprinkler companies do it. But if you’re just a straight up sprinkler company, you’re gonna try to sling some pipe and put some cylinders in there every once in a while. Yeah. There’s more to it than that. I mean the manufacturers know it, like they’ve got their distributors or integrators that are good at this and they don’t get questions. And then they’ve got the ones that are just getting into it and they’re asking, well, what, what do we do for detection? What kind of family do we buy? Right. And, you know, that’s, that’s not the same logo performance. They know it. Sure. And, um, you know, being from that other side, we, we take a lot of pride in Yeah. Knowing that, that piece of it, and the only thing that we really have to spend time traveling or figuring out is what’s the right product? Right. What’s the right, uh, suppression agent. Yep. Um, and different attributes about those things. And then, you know, what, what detection methodology

Drew Slocum: (10:29):

That you’re gonna use. Yeah. Um, last question here, and I’ll go back to all the meetings, uh, top three issues, and I’m gonna ask everybody the same question. What are the top three issues in fire protection from your point of view? What are the top three issues that need to, you know, need some resolution in the next few years?

Lee Kaiser:

Well I’d definitely say labor. Labor, you know. Yeah. We have an aging workforce across the board. All of the companies are facing that. There’s a high demand. Oh yeah. Um, we are somewhat, you know, we rob Peter to pay Paul by going to other companies and taking people, and that’s not sustainable. That’s not great. Yeah. It’s not sustainable. So labor’s a big issue. Yep. as a solution to that, I personally am really in, you know, you and I are both on NFP, 915. Yep. Um, and because that standard is dealing with remote inspections Yeah. And if we have our way, it’s also remote testing. Right.

Drew Slocum:

Exactly.

Lee Kaiser:

Well to me to able to do remote inspections and testing of systems overall takes the pressure, well starts to take the pressure off the labor process. Agreed. Yeah. And so I think that there’s so much opportunity for innovation and technology growth in our product space that help us do that. And then, you know, people don’t like to, well, we’ve got a problem. I don’t know if this is a top problem, but you asked for three and I’ll give three.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lee Kaiser:

So, another problem, we’ve got a lot of people with aging systems out there, aging technology, and they’re really unreluctant to make another investment in upgrading it to the newer stuff. Oh, great. I can just tell you, all of the panel manufacturers from anything in fire are going after some sort of planned obsolescence scheme really? And, Yeah. We gotta get system owners on board.

Yeah. Like they’ve gotta know,  it’s hard to service their old stuff. Right. Integrators, service companies do their best, but, you know, one thing we’ve got with old systems we may not have a computer running the right operating system.

Drew Slocum:

Right, exactly.

Lee Kaiser:

Anymore that still runs the software to talk to that panel. Yeah. Like it’s that, that’s a problem. That’s, that’s kind of build in plans. Obsolesces, it may not be as bad as your washer and dryer, and that’s right. And plan to break fast, but it’s there. And, you know, just getting people, system owners ready to reinvest.

Drew Slocum:

To be aware of it. Right. You know, and that’s a great point on it, definitely on fire alarm systems.

Lee Kaiser:

Affect all of our suppression systems cuz they’re Yeah. They’re attached, largely driven by a releasing panelist. Right. Which is a fire alarm panel.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. And those manufacturers might not even be around anymore to get parts.

Lee Kaiser:

Oh, they get into the panels. They’re getting more aggressive in not providing parts once they’ve moved on to their next generation of panels. They interestingly enough want to stop providing those old parts because they wanna force that upgrade.

Drew Slocum:

Wow. Yeah. That’s interesting because it’s supposed to last the life of the building, but probably not that.

Lee Kaiser:

Oh no. Not in that scenario, it’s not. It’s, I would, no offense. Yeah. I would disagree with that. I don’t, think systems,in a lot of higher quality buildings Sure. Are meant to last 50 years plus. Right. That, you know, fire detection and the control side of fire alarm systems are really, you know, 20 years max, maybe 15.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Yeah. With the components and everything. Yeah. That wasn’t my point. It was more that’s what they say. That’s what, you know, when a building owner goes into it, that’s what they think, but,

Lee Kaiser:

Right. Yeah. I don’t think that’s true.

Drew Slocum:

And probably even with Sprinkler, you know, that the piping is starting to get upgraded and, you know,

Lee Kaiser:

Oh, pipe, I mean, metal pipes Oh yeah. Fail eventually, you know, they, they may need to Right. Re-pipe your building at some point.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. So, well, thanks Lee for coming on. This is a short little clip. We’re gonna have some more guests here in a little bit, but thanks for your efforts, this has been awesome,  and we’ll see you on some NFPA committees here.

Lee Kaiser:

Yeah. We’re really glad you came.

Drew Slocum:

Thank you. Thanks, Lee. Take care. All right. We’re back. This is the second day. Day two here with, Jared Ryan the incoming president. When, does that happen?

Jared Ryan:

Actually, tomorrow night.

Drew Slocum:

Oh, really?

Jared Ryan:

Tomorrow night. Yeah. Get to give the big speech.

Drew Slocum: (15:38):

Wow. Yeah.

Jared Ryan:

Get the big speech, get the gavel, get to do the whole nine yards. All the pomp and circumstance around it. <laugh>. Yeah, exactly.

Drew Slocum:

Well, it’s cool. Um, I guess you roll it prestigious and

Jared Ryan:

Yeah. So, at Prestigious,  I’m the Vice President of sales and national accounts, so I oversee all of our sales activities in two of our three business lines. As well as run the operations, and P&L responsibility for our national accounts group. Sure, sure. So, it gets me around to our different branches Yeah. And, to our headquarters, national accounts headquarters in Louisville. So, okay. I’m always on the go which is something I love to do, and to get around and visit with customers in different areas and visit with different team members that are utselling and doing their jobs. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

I’m still acting VP of sales at Inspect Point, but, kind of moving out of that role a little bit. Do you have a sales methodology or, do you have any methodology that you kind of go by? You

Jared Ryan:

You know, because we do so many different things Yeah. We have so many different channels. One of the things we did a couple of years ago is made the decision because of that to create a playbook. Yeah. So we developed an 80-page playbook of all the different aspects of what we sell Sure. How to message them, how to present them, how to overcome objections.  You know, the intel on the competition Yeah. All those types of things. And when we did that and put it in place, it was amazing how fast the team adopted it. How well we saw sales pick up. Interesting. We saw immediate improvement for new sales reps coming in, being able to grow, right. And be productive much quicker. Yeah. Yeah. So taking all those kind of thoughts and strategies and, putting it together, documenting it and, and teaching.

And then one thing too, we don’t want the playbook to become a coffee table book. Sure, sure, It’s always something we’re adapting  – the sales managers get in there and make sure we stay up to date Yeah. With what’s going on, what our strategies are, and the team,  is communicated with that. So yeah I would say our philosoph  is professionalizing the sales approach in this industry, which it’s not always been the most professionally sold industry, over the years, but, to educate our customer, educate our sales reps, so we’re providing the best service to our customer. Yeah, exactly. That’s what it’s all about. Yeah. all about, you know, what, making sure we’re the, we’re, you know, we have, we have three tenants at, Prestigious. We want to do it right. We’re there 24 7 for our customers, and we make it easy. And that’s what we’re trying to drive through our team to make sure we’re communicating that to the customer.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know.  I checked out your guys’ website the other day. I’m like, man, that just the website alone, like if I’m a billing order or whatever, it’s a lot easier to kinda get around and access and all. The portals in there. So,  so FSSA, how, What’s been your history with FSSA? How long have you guys been members?

Jared Ryan:

Yeah, so I, so this is our, my 12th,  12th, event I’ve gone to. So I’ve caught everyone since,  2000  so 2011 Okay. Was the first one. So, no, it’s been great in the organization. You know  when I  joined Prestigious and the predecessor, which was Apco Fire Protection.  And I went to the owner and I said, you know, I want to get involved in some industry networking groups. And he was not a guy that did it himself. So he is like, absolutely, go do it.  And,  so I went to the first FSSA, I enjoyed it. You know, just seeing what was going on and how active  in promoting the industry. The association was kind of going through a little bit of transition of kind of first generation now to the second generation.

Yeah. So after a couple years,  we were struggling a little bit to get volunteers. Yeah. And this is a hundred percent volunteer driven organization. So, you know, I put myself out there and said, Hey, I’m glad to participate on committees. So I started participating in a marketing committee and then,  within, you know, I think it was my fourth, fourth or fifth one, I was, uh, voted onto the board of directors. So I’ve been on the board ever since. Yeah. a little longer than typical, but there’s some stuff going on. But, I’ve also chaired the marketing committee for a period of time. So, you know, it’s what  this association does, is so reliant on the,volunteers, but we have so many great people and really now that this next generation is really starting to kick in, we have a lot of talent.

Yeah. And, and it’s not only the folks that are coming to these shows, but we’re now appealing to members that are here to bring in their best and brightest from within their organization to participate. And the hope is we can draw more of them here and, and draw more of them to the live events, but we understand there’s economic conditions Things that prevent that from happening. But how do we continue to engage them throughout the years. So that’s really, as we look forward, and it’s fortunate for me being able to come in as the incoming president, that’s one thing I want to continue is the outreach and the appeal. To continue to draw more members into the association, even from the AHJs and the specifying community, getting them more involved, and then obviously the next layers within our member base already. Sure. And getting them participating in our committees and within our different programs, and we have to continue to get their input and engagement.

Drew Slocum:

Well, we have a lot of users on, you know, our platform. So we see a lot of different contractors and service providers out there. So they’re always asking me, you, I was telling you this, how do I get into marine systems? Cuz they’re being asked. And I’m like, well, you gotta really kind of like start. And they’re like, where do we get training? I’m like, go to FSSA, become a member. It’s great. And I wasn’t even on the membership committee at the time! I’m like, go there because they’re gonna be able to handle a lot of that. And, I think you guys provide a lot of things in such a niche part of fighter protection. That you know, there’s not many other places to go.

Jared Ryan:

No, there isn’t. You know, and when you check out the website, you know, obviously the training program, which there was a lot talk about the talent, a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went in multiple years. And again, these are volunteers. They’re not getting paid to do this type of work. They developed the curriculum, put it into action. You know, the guides have been around for 15 plus years now. Again, volunteers putting their time and energy into writing them, but they’re some of the most professional publications you find they have been adopted, and referenced in most of the NFPA standards.  Yeah. So it’s very well respected in the fire protection community. And,  we have a new committee called the Global Outreach Committee, and that’s really driving to connect with different associations internationally but also to continue to drive better collaboration within all the different splinter associations within our industry. Cuz we are niche at all levels, but if we can work together as one, you know, it’s, it’s gonna promote the common good of the entire industry, which we all benefit from.

Drew Slocum:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody benefits. Yeah. I actually met a contractor from Aruba, I forgot who it was, but it was a great conversation, and you know,  I thought it was more, you know, kind of us, but there’s more.

Jared Ryan:

Yeah. We have some international members; obviously, Canada is represented. Yeah. Yeah. and we do have some that generally don’t attend just because of the travel parts. Yeah, right. Especially, but, they’re participating in the training programs and things like that. Which is a great benefit, as to why to become a member, to have access to those things.

Drew Slocum:

Everybody’s coming out right now, but any top initiatives for your presidency?

Jared Ryan:

Yeah, it’s to continue to engage and grow the membership and engage, engage, again, engage the next kind of the other layers of our industry that aren’t necessarily directly installing or manufacturing things. But can influence and can benefit from learning and understanding. You know, the AHJ community is one that I would say a vast majority doesn’t understand special hazards.  And the more we can try to engage them and pull them into the understanding of it we’re a resource for them. And this is a place to come and there’s a lot of great details that will help educate them and help them. And what they do is something important. So we’re gonna and you’ll see from the association this year more continuing outreach. You know, we participate with the  SFPE and doing some presentations on special hazards.

I’m personally doing one in March with the Ohio Fire Code Academy promoting special hazards and the efforts. So those are the type of things we’re gonna continue to do. You know, and what I hope to continue and grow and it’s hard for just the association to do it. So we really need to rally the membership to continue to help drive that message home when they get an opportunity to contact us at the association, let us help support them with information and details that will help better promote not only their business but the association and what we do as a whole.

Drew Slocum:

That just spurred up a bunch of ideas in my head that I’ll talk to you about offline.

Jared Ryan:

Absolutely.

Drew Slocum: (25:00):

Thanks for coming on, Jared. Yeah,

Jared Ryan:

Absolutely. Glad to do it. Appreciate it. Please. Thanks.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. All right, we’re back. Yeah!. Final interview for the day.  Great gracious so far here at the FSSA here in Bonita Springs, Florida here, with Todd Stevens, with Industrial Fire Protection. He’s the ops manager as well. He’s the immediate past president, right? That’s correct, yeah. As of today and tomorrow you won’t be.

Todd Stevens:

I won’t be, I’ll be nothing <laugh>, I’ll just be a past president.

Drew Slocum:

But, you know, Todd’s done a great job through the pandemic times with FSSA; a lot of associations had trouble. So, Todd was lucky enough to endure that. And, I love where the association’s at now, so thanks.

Todd Stevens:

Thanks. I appreciate that.

Drew Slocum:

What are you’re doing something with Global?

Todd Stevens:

Yeah. So, you know, wanna stay as involved as I possibly can with FSSA. Yeah. So, stepping away and no longer president, I wanted to make sure that I still had a role, which I can engage myself, on a normal basis. And like any good president, what I did is I started a brand new committee, <laugh>, and just as I rolled off as president, I appointed myself as chair ah, of that new committee. All right. So that new committee is the global outreach committee. And really the goal of that committee is to help FSSA expand beyond the borders. It’s a nationwide association, but we really have the ability to expand those opportunities in Europe and Australia and, India all over the place.

So what we’ve done is created this new committee, there are about six of us that are active on the committee currently. And we started to lay out what the different associations are that we could find. We did some basic research. Yeah. What other similar associations to FSSA are there throughout the world. There are a lot <laugh>. Yeah. And then it was narrowing down to which ones can we partner with that make sense to share ideas and work with and help globally expand the FSSA’S name. Right now we’re analyzing about seven different associations, a bunch in Europe, a couple in India, a couple down in Australia, actually, which is a really a big association,  as well as in Canada. So I’ll throw them in mix as well because obviously fire protection  is a global international subject and it’s a matter of teaming up with them to see what we can do to help us expand globally.

So part of that process for the committee has been just reviewing these different associations, then we’re taking that step of reaching out to those associations and having that initial discussion. Yep. Some of the collaborative ideas span from sharing webinars mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, we can do a webinar on them and they can do a webinar on FSSA Right. And kind of do those things. The next step would be to share FSSA’s great set of design guides. They’re phenomenal within our industry. And, it’s almost like a best-kept secret. Right. In my opinion for the suppression industry. We want to be able to globally expand on those as well. Yeah. So advertising, marketing our guides to other associations worldwide and if they have guides or papers and that sort of thing that we can market for them as well. Right. So those are just a couple key things out of the gate that we’ve had some success talking with these different associations about. I’m pretty excited about it.

Drew Slocum:

It’s good. And it’s good you’re still active, you know. Was it like being a president of an association during the pandemic?

Todd Stevens:

<laugh>?, It was interesting. Yeah. Because I became president in February 2020. Right when the shutdown started. Yeah. Yeah.  two weeks later. And,  I think a lot of us were saying here at this event  that was like the last trip that we made. Yeah. Yeah. And then two weeks later, you know, the world shut down. So, I’m not gonna lie, initially it was immediate panic, like, crap, what am I gonna do? How are we gonna get through this process without the normal flow of the association? But I really think we took it and were forced to reach out to more of our members mm-hmm. <affirmative>  to make sure that we stayed engaged, because of the pandemic. So it forced us to do things like town hall meetings, virtually, and doing more webinars and that sort of thing to make sure that our membership didn’t think that we forgot about ’em. So I think all the committees worked even that much harder, to be honest with you, during that year  to make sure that we were doing the job that we needed to and continue to expand our market, you know, to our memberships.

Drew Slocum:

And you planned the Purple Live event as well, right?

Todd Stevens:

Yes, we did. And that, you know, it’s funny cuz I think when we first started thinking about, I don’t think anybody else has done anything like that since.

No. And, we didn’t. I don’t know that we even knew it was gonna work. <laugh>. Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, it was a virtual world. You did it. I did it.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. It was pretty cool.

Todd Stevens:

Yeah. So you created a little avatar, and you went into this world. You walked around and walked into the hall where we had presenters and so forth. And, they had some fun things like, you know, basketball courts and boats you could jump in and take off into the water. Right. So we had quite a bit of membership that wouldn’t normally come to the annual forum because they can’t travel or the company doesn’ allow them to do events like this. They were able to get involved, and that was the other exciting thing because they were able to do it right from the comfort of their office or home.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I think I got to speak at that one too, which was interesting. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Cause you’re speaking to this big group of people, kind of like webinar style, but you’re still like hanging out afterward, like a regular meeting. So it was like, my sales guy at the time hated it cuz he didn’t get to, I don’t know, didn’t get to travel I guess. I don’t know. But Right. I loved it cuz it was like  I was doing it from South Carolina, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I could still meet and see people. It’s not being in person –  in person’s the best, but,

Todd Stevens:

It works.

Drew Slocum:

For this, you know, it was good for what we had.

Todd Stevens:

Nothing beats you, uh, face-to-face obviously. And one of the things that we’ve always prioritized and prided ourselves on at FSSA is in networking at these events. And that was the one fear we had with that purple world is how do we do this and still allow that networking to occur. And I think we did as best as we could. I mean, it’s still not the same as in person, but we had a lot of great comments back cuz there were networking opportunities virtually.  You can go up and just start talking to somebody and have a conversation, which was really, really cool. <laugh>. So, yeah, all in all, if we don’t have to do it again, we’ll be thrilled, right. Because we want to be here in person, but I think, under the circumstances it worked out well. So it was fun.

Drew Slocum:

Well, thanks for letting the podcast do this. I know you were integral to that and Becca and her team.

Todd Stevens:

Yeah, thanks for being here. This is great. Appreciate it. All right. Take care.

Drew Slocum:

I hope you enjoyed the live from the FSSA 40th annual Forum in Bonita Springs, Florida. We did some of this last year at the NAFED events as well as at AFSA in San Antonio. Gonna continue this for people that can’t make the conferences and try to get leaders and professionals within the industry on the podcast to talk about themselves, the industry, and where they see the future going. So, again, we appreciate everybody, FSSA, for letting us do this and check us out again soon. Thanks.