The Fire Protection Podcast: Episode #44 – Sustainable Fire Suppression with Peter Hallinan of SSi

nadian Fire Protection Market. You’ve worked for a lot of big names. Um, I, I, I really wanted to focus on some of the new products you’re bringing into the market within Canada and even North America, and even beyond that. But, um, I guess give a, give us the listenership, uh, little synopsis or who you are.

Peter Hallinan:
Awesome. Uh, thanks, Drew. So I’ve been in the fire alarm, fire sprinkler industry, I guess over just over 20 years now. Uh, started obviously, uh, with VPO, uh, in sales where everybody starts, you know, if you’re not a technician. <laugh> started in sales, moved it, you know, project management, focused a lot on the fire alarm, uh, special hazard. Uh, had an opportunity a few years later, to start my own, with a partner fire alarm sprinkler company from scratch. So we built that up; it was a lot of fun, a big learning experience. Sure. Uh, part of that, I got involved, like I said, in CFAA. I’ve been, uh, king Fire Alarm Association. Been involved for 15, to 16 years now in different capacities as a volunteer. Um, actually, partners and I sold, sold the company to him. It’s still Golding my shares and Nice. Then I actually served as executive director for the Canadian Fire Alarm Association. Wow.

Drew Slocum:
Wow.

Peter Hallinan:
For a while. Uh, love that job. But, uh, I’m an Ottawa boy through and through. I love the river and love living in the country. So I, uh, I left that and then, uh, worked as a sales manager for Johnson Controls until Covid happened, uh, still in Ottawa. And then, uh, the new company, we, uh, got approached in, uh, February. We started this up, um, SSi Canada, the parent company, was very large into telecom and energy in the Arctic remote. Yep. Remote area. Uh, Jeff, the founder and owner, was looking for a fire protection solution for our unique needs in our telecommunications. So he, uh, found Greens Saw and Fire Pass, uh, but three years ago, Got it. For our own use. And he basically sat on it for two years. And then, I came in in February and saw that this is a future, the next generation. Sure. Um, so we’ve started a whole standalone company. We’re now, uh, uh, we’re bringing FPAs Greens, saw FST, and other new technologies and fire suppression to the market. And we’re gonna be, uh, doing that, uh, through distribution. So we won’t be selling directly. We’ll be partnering very much on, on the, uh, their Honeywell AutoCall model.

Drew Slocum:
Gotcha. Gotcha. So, SSi was a, uh, is there like a telecom company?

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah, so Jeff started as, um, funny story. Jeff started when he, uh, he wanted a gateway computer back in the eighties, nineties. And his dad couldn’t get him one. So he got Canadian distributorship, and from there, he grew in the, uh, outta yellow knife in Northwest Territories. He grew into the internet. Wow. And then in telecommunications. So we have a number of, uh, partnerships with, uh, indigenous bands and indigenous councils. Oh, no way. We partner with them in northern Quebec. And, uh, none of that Northwest Territories provide, uh, so it’s a partnership. Literally, they’re indigenous companies. Um, outta that, again, we’re looking at, uh, uh, energy solutions, water purification. We got a couple of other things. So I’m helping a little bit on that side of things. We got a really interesting water purification solution we’re looking at as well as, uh, next, uh, next, uh, phase change material batteries such as graphene. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, uh, the solar, wind, all that we use. Most of these things we use in ourselves, because our telecommunication location, uh, locations in North have to be self-supporting. So,

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I guess there’s, uh, no one up there. So, or, or, or limited, you know, access. So you have to protect them somehow if they’re critical facilities or nobody’s there. Right,

Peter Hallinan:
Right. And that, which is, um, a lot of our solutions we’re gonna talk about for greens saw, especially, it’s, you know, work down to minus 40. It doesn’t require piping. It’s, uh, oh, wow.

Drew Slocum:
Uh,

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. Uh, it can be heat detection. It works with, uh, they basically, uh, it’s low voltage. So, you know, uh, not to offend my friends in the sprinkler union, but, um, you know, a spring, a fire alarm technician can basically install this Yeah. Uh, inside a sea container, inside anything. So it’s, it’s really interesting that way. And we can go right down to like a half cubic meter u storage unit. We can, like a paint locker, we can put the fire

Drew Slocum:
Protection Oh, wow.

Peter Hallinan:
<inaudible> inside that. So the very unique and wide-ranging applications for

Drew Slocum:
It. So Greens saw, that’s the, that’s the brand. Is that the, is that agent, or is that the brand name with the agent in it?

Peter Hallinan:
That’s the brand name. So it’s a potassium nitrate, so it’s an encapsulated mineral material. Okay. It’s in a solid form inside the green saw units. Uh, they come in eight different sizes. Uh, we can com we can actually, um, protect up to 50,000 cubic meters of volume with these, uh, these spaces. And it’s, oh, wow. It, it’s a, it’s a, so it’s a snap approved, um, uh, alter hydro ha alternative non re no residue, uh, you know, when clean rooms, um, we, that’s what we, we use inter telecommunication rooms. If it goes off, there’s no residue. There’s no damage. Sure. Uh, you know, we can install it with our own, we have our own, uh, heat unit, but I prefer to go with a fire alarm panel that’s, that’s monitored, obviously a full engineer fire alarm system, uh, with, um, you know, SDA, if you want a very early warning, we can partner with, uh, we can install SDA Sure. System in there. Anything from that, uh, air sampling, uh, heat trace. If you want heat, you can use heat, heat, cable, or any of those applications. And it’s all got UL and ULC listings for and as well as its NFPA, uh, listing as well.

Drew Slocum:
Gotcha. So that’s, uh, so NFP eight, it’s, it’s, it’s 2010, right?

Peter Hallinan:

2010. 2010, correct. Yeah,

Drew Slocum:

2010. So is that it, is the agent, or I guess, the suppression, are they similar to the other ones out in the market now? Or is it, is it different agent, or is it similar? So

Peter Hallinan:
It’s an, it’s, it’s actually an aero. So it’s not a clean agent. It’s not a gas, it’s an aerosol.

Drew Slocum:
Right. So it’s like the other, I know the other manufacturers like, you know, out there for, for aerosols.

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. There. And it’s apparently, from my understanding, like there’s not really much of it out there. I’ve been dealing with talking to a lot of engineers lately, and there’s, it’s very limited. There’s a, uh, we have a portable fire suppression tool for fire departments, which is the same. I can’t think of the name of the company in the states that’s doing that as well. But, uh, yeah. Most of the people I’m talking to up here have never seen it. They’ve heard of it. They’ve never actually seen, seen this before. They make one of the nice elements of what we do is our the cast iron units that the aerosols in. If they discharge, we can recycle that. We can send it back to us, and we’ll refill it. Wow. Or send it off to be refilled. So it’s re it’s, uh, and there’s, um, 15 year lifespan on, like, you’re basically at zero maintenance for 15 years once it’s installed.

Drew Slocum):
Gotcha. Now, is it, uh, uh, can it be in occupied spaces? I know. So I saw some presentations, I don’t know, four, four or five years ago at this point. And aerosol, I actually had some experience with them in New York City because they were trying to protect these elevator machine rooms. It wasn’t great for a clean agent. They didn’t want sprinklers in there. So they kind of, you know, um, you know, there was a, a, a company called Static out there that has had a solution. There’s another solution by Ho Chik, but they didn’t have occupied status. So, I don’t know. Is that any can, can you be in the room when these go off? I probably don’t wanna be in there, but you,

Peter Hallinan:
You can be in the room. It’s not recommended. Yeah. Obviously, there’s no, like, we have clearance distance for people how far you have to be away from the unit. That’s right. On the, so, uh, like other, any other type of clean agent, we obviously, you know, we recommend warning when it’s going off.

Drew Slocum:
Get out.

Peter Hallinan:
Right. Yeah. But do you, uh, there’s, because it doesn’t dis it doesn’t disrupt the oxygen in the room. Right. So, it has no effect on oxygen. Doesn’t need oxygen. So there’s no depletion in the oxygen, like others, uh, other agents do. Yep. So you, you know, technically, you can be in the room too, but you shouldn’t be in the room. So I, uh, yeah. It’s like, you know, I did a fire alarm inspection one time that people were complaining cuz they couldn’t work at their desks cuz the bells were too loud in the building. Well, you’re not supposed to be in here anyway when the bells are

Drew Slocum:
Going off <laugh>. Yeah. The,

Peter Hallinan:
That’s, uh, that’s, that’s a whole point. So, yeah. So, uh, again, you can be, but we recommend you’re not.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. And I think there’s an application for it. I saw it there, and I was like, Hey, if they want sprinklers in those elevator machine rooms or they if they want fire protection in those elevator machine rooms, you can’t seal off the room. So it, it’s a, it’s a good solution, you know, because it’s a clean agent, you really need a big seal. You need to seal the plate, you know, and there’s not, there are not many people in those rooms. Right. So it has this application, but it hasn’t really taken off. I, I know in the states, at least I haven’t, I haven’t seen greens, salt, but, um, you know, I think it’s, and all the stuff that’s going on with, with Clean agent right now with, uh, FM 200 kind of, and, and Novec just skyrocketing with cost, um, because of the new EPA regulations and all that. Um, so I know you mentioned SNAP before Snap’s an EPA, it’s a, or EPA kind of, uh, it’s in the US EPA at least significant new alternative policy. So it’s, it has to do with the HFCs and, uh, global, global warming causing agents. So this has nothing, you know,

Peter Hallinan:
This is non-ozone depleting. Yeah. A nonozone, non-ozone depleting completely environmentally fairly. Cause that’s, I guess that’s one of the Jeff’s, one of Jeff’s mandates is everything. He’s very environmentally focused. So everything we have to do is sustainable, environmentally friendly, like, you know, especially being in Candace Arctic. Yeah. Um, we look at all that as sustainability. So that was, uh, that’s the one of the, and that’s, you know, that’s one of the, when I came up with, uh, the slogan for the company, it’s an environmentally friendly suppression alternative because that’s what we are, everything we’re offering and looking at is based on being environmentally friendly. And, Hey, I gotta do everything I look at in the lens from the company, from Jeff. Jeff basically said Peter and Martin said, build this, run it, get it up and going. They like my vision, but the only rule is it’s gotta meet our environmentally friendly criteria for the company.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so the other solution, the other big solution that I was, I was really intrigued with, and that’s what kind of got me, uh, getting this podcast going is the Fire pass solution. And I ran this a bunch through a bunch of people that I know suppression-wise and, and, uh, just friends in the industry. So I guess what is Fire Pass?

Peter Hallinan:
So fire passes an oxygen reduction, uh, system. So there are other things out there called Oxy Duct, uh, which we’ve had a few applications and little, we’ve got two seconds for background. I saw this at a CFA, a presentation from some engineers about five or six years ago.

Drew Slocum:
Oh wow. Uh,

Peter Hallinan:
The first time was done in Ontario, Canada, at a Dr. Ecker frozen food plant. Hopefully, I didn’t give away a trade secret there. Anyway, so I’m sitting there as executive director of Tom, I’m looking this, and I know the engineer Mike Zoff, and I’m saying, this is the future. Like, you know, as a firefighter, I mean a 30-year volunteer firefighter. I’m looking at this going like if we can’t if we can keep fires from even starting. Right. You know, how good is that? So yeah, I mean, there’s a cost and other things. So, um, one of the advantages of FPAs is that we don’t inject nitrogen into space. We filter the air down to a level that sustains or won’t sustain fire. So we, you know, we can program it 14,000 815 1 5 percentile. So I don’t know how in-depth you want to get me to be, but you know, normal air is 21% combustion’s not supported below 17%, uh, depending on 16, 17% depending on the space. So. Gotcha. We keep, we keep the air in the occupied in the space at, you know, 15.1. So fire’s never gonna occur. So if you’ve got a high rack, uh, a warehouse that’s very tightly packed where, you know, you can’t get water flow in. Right. Well, the whole it’s and robotics, you’ve got a frozen food section. Sure.

One advantage to fire pass is that, um, you can actually be breathable, it’s a breathable space. You can actually work. We’ve done, we have the medical studies to back up that you can actually be in that space. You know, there are some medical criteria required for people. Right. To be in there, you know, in preexisting conditions. You know, there’s a recommendation that you don’t stay in this space longer than four hours. Gotcha. But, uh, you know, the case, a lot of your listeners, the first American flag and the constitution’s actually protected by a FPA state, uh, system down the states, so Oh, wow.

Drew Slocum:
Through is it an actual fire pass, or is it similar

Peter Hallinan:
Actual fire pass? We, we actually use that. We actually use that in our marketing materials. My presentations I give <laugh>, uh, to engineers. It’s there along with, uh, some other applications. So it’s very well used in Europe. Uh, Australia’s really taken this on in interesting energy, energy hospitals, um, you know, clean agent rooms. I think four of my five references on our current presentation are for FPAs in Australia in the Middle East. Uh, and ACTU in the Middle East. It’s actually at some applications where it can actually be used in standby mode and used as a suppression. So if there was Oh, wow. In a closed space, you could actually drop, you can, um, flood the, flood the space with, uh, 10% oxygen to balance it out. And, you know, comparison to engen, or I don’t, I shouldn’t, I don’t wanna mill line anybody, but comparison to clean agent gas. Right. There’s no refill time. There’s no cost to refill because it’s

Drew Slocum:
A filter.

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. Then the generator turns one compressor and refills your tanks for standby. Interesting. So there’s, there’s that application as well. So it can’t be used in most suppression or the, uh, the modem. Um, right now in Canada, we have, I’m going through a few hoops because it’s an, so it’s an alternative solution. So, basically, the fire department and the engineers have to spec it, and they have to sign off on it. Um, with the oxy ducts, there was some concern about a threat to life and health. So they want TPE, all those other, uh, elements on that. So we’re working through some of those. But, uh, you know, there’s, I have the Canadian distribution rights for FPAs. I’m leading that. There’s, um, FPAs itself actually, uh, I work with those guys quite well. They’ve got the United States we’re working on common marketing. Yeah. Um, but it’s the company, their partner company states, called Hypoxic. Okay. And they’ve got 30 or 34, uh, facilities across the United States in gyms where people who are mountain climbing, rock climbing,

Drew Slocum:
Uh, interesting.

Peter Hallinan:
Those sorts of things go into train in these taint chambers cuz it represents, so if you’re in an airplane, you, the concentration in your body’s actually 15% of oxygen. The com it’s yes, the plane’s at 21, but the altitude makes you feel like you’re 15. Same as a fire pasts environment. Um, you know, I skiing at Whistler is a top of the Whistler skiing in. So, you know, a little bit of heavier breathing. Sure. Same composition, but 16% of my body thought I was at 16% cuz of the altitude. So that’s the, your body, you know, understands that. So there’s interesting the premier athletes use this for training and for recovery. And then one of the other benefits we just discovered is one, you’re in a, like, in the Smithsonian and or Museum of National Museum of History, I think it is in states and other, um, in Osland Norway, they’ve realized putting artifacts in these rooms at 15%, not only does it prevent fire, but it also slows the oxidation of, uh,

Drew Slocum:
Artifacts. Oh, interesting. Yeah. You have the oxidation cor or Corrosive aspects of it. Right. Yeah.

Peter Hallinan:
So I’m, um, we’re actually in the process ourselves right here. Cause we talked about earlier, we have a major data center in a teleport, we call it the teleport here in Ottawa. It’s our big communications data link. The satellites we send and receive. Sure. You’ve got a, uh, blue, a 10-year-old blue sapphire system here protecting our space. So I’m in the process of looking at swapping that out and putting a fire pass into protect our own, uh, uh, we don’t put your money where your mouth is a

Drew Slocum:
Company. Yeah. Right. Right. So I guess, um, would you have a secondary system on top of that? I mean, why wouldn’t you just leave the Sapphire system there and just have that, you know? Well,

Peter Hallinan:
I’m coming up on my, I’m coming up on my 12 years where I’m gonna need to hide.

Drew Slocum:
Oh, you got H

Peter Hallinan:
Tested, all those others. So, um, we could just do that. Obviously, be a lot cheaper. But as you know, in conversations with, um, Martin and Jeff, is that you know what, it’s a showcase for us. We show we can have a system here. People can come and see our system. Uh, you know, um, you know, I’m building demonstration units for green solid and F S T and some videos that’ll be coming out, showing how it operates. Right. To help market it, uh, in county United States. Um, so say cuz we are actually available, we’re able to, the Greens saw, I’m able to distribute to the United States as well, so Nice. Through our agreement. So, um, yeah. And that’s kind of why let’s, let’s invest in ourselves and have this facility here to showcase.

Drew Slocum::
Sure, sure, sure. Is it, uh, now obviously, you probably need the same room integrity and ceiling off of the space. Is that similar to a clean agent? Is it, I can feel that that’s the big thing that you need to keep your concentration. So you have to seal it. Is there any, is it worse, or is it easier to keep that sealed? I don’t know.

Peter Hallinan:
Um, we have to have a much tighter air type because we’re, you know because we’re maintaining at some points now. Right. It’s, um, our compressor, we monitor, we put oxygen sensors within the space depending on the volume. So we’ll monitor, and the compressor’s not always running. It’ll, we, we can program the range. So we never want to get blower above X and Y, right? Sure. Cause we wanna maintain at Z, we program that all in, and the system’s all monitoring. And so I said, oh, I’m at this one. So I will kick in, bring it up to the level, bring it down to level. So we’re always maintaining at a grid level. Um, you know, we also fail-safe with the things with fire passes. If we fail, we fail safely to normal air. So, you know, if something goes wrong, we’re not going to

Drew Slocum:
Yeah.

Peter Hallinan:
10%, we’re gonna boot up, alarms are gonna go off, technicians are gonna be there right away, you know, to, to get this maintained. So

Drew Slocum:
Interesting. Yeah. I haven’t seen this. I’ve seen maybe, you know, obviously some of the other clean agents, you know, bring the percentages oxygen down. So that’s, obviously, it fights fire well that way. Um, and I know over in Europe when I worked for Tyco, Ansel, they had a, a similar, a similar solution where they would constantly keep the oxygen, temperature X, but this is more of a filtering system, so you don’t have all the bottles and, and

Peter Hallinan:
No bottles. Um,

Drew Slocum:
There when

Peter Hallinan:
You, when you see our value engineering, uh, graphs, like, you know, when you get, and here’s the other thing. We can go up to Fire Pass can protect up to 1.5 million cubic feet. Wow. 5 million cubic meters. Yeah. So you can’t, you can’t get enough tanks, uh, sure. Or certain gassiest ones at that point. So, you know, on a very low end of the scale, fire pass is more gonna more expensive than your gas. But if your volume grows in those elements, it becomes much more cost-effective for installation. Yeah. And as well as maintenance, because there’s the, basically your maintenance is change, change your filters based on the volume of airflow. Yep. Uh, you know, so then you don’t have to refill annual things like that. There’s no piping. If you’re in archives, museum, historic building, um, you know, you don’t wanna be putting piping into some of these places, but you wanna protect it.

So there’s, uh, there’s that, um, I lost my train of thought on, on now, but there’s there, you know, that’s the oxygen reduction prevents the fire. So, you know, and you talk about the the gas. Same with us. If we have a fire by the time the gas goes off, we could lose a grid of Northwest Territories in one of those blacks. Yeah. Yeah. So with the fire pass, we’re never gonna have that. We might have a pop of a circuit board, and it dies, which we can go, go in and re-change the circuit board out and go Right. Go worried right back. Work. So, I guess that’s the advantage of the fire pass is that we are not allowing the fire to ever occur.

Drew Slocum:
Right? Yeah, you’re not. Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s,

Peter Hallinan:
We, actually have a system. If you, uh, the systems, you know, I went to 1.5 million, but there’s actually a fire pass system. If you were in a small office space and you just had all your it in a rack in a room somewhere that’s self cooled, we can put a fire. There’s a fire pass that will actually go into one of the slots in the rack and just

Drew Slocum:
Oh, nice. Keep

Peter Hallinan:
Inside, keep inside the rack at, uh, at, uh, in 15.1

Drew Slocum:
50. Yeah. You just gotta, I guess, just gotta seal that, that unit. And, and I, I know there is some other technology. I used to work, I work for Viking, too, minimax, and they had a little solution with a server rack with a clean agent. But this seems, you know, this is more passive and, you know, you’re getting way ahead of it and just keeping it at the certain, you know, the concentration of oxygen. Interesting. Nah, it’s good. I, I’m glad, uh, I’m glad you brought it up. And, um, yeah, it’s really cool. It’s just the ceiling of the room, and that’s really it. Right? You just gotta maintain it.

Peter Hallinan:
The biggest hurdle we were talking about, one, uh, there’s one we’re working on, uh, for Fire Pass or, uh, sorry. Green X is working on a fire pack solution in Europe right now that’s about, uh, 300,000 square feet. But they’ve got multiple conveyor belts going in and out of the room. So they’re trying to do a lot of integrity testing, and they’re just, they’re 90% sure it’s not, with that kind of volume loss, it’s not gonna be able to get where they need. So they may have to, but now they’re gonna switch over to the aerosol to the green, cuz the people don’t wanna put, they can’t put in the tubing and other things. So they’re looking at the the Green X aerosol solution cuz we can melt the, um, the units within the space and then flood, you know, it’s not like water, where water see through the aerosol will if something, this is gonna be a reactive system other than the passive, which they first wanted. Sure. But if it’s there, the, you know, the aerosol will react in the entire space. Um, we try to engineer it so the entire volume could be flooded within 30 seconds.

Drew Slocum:
Wow. Wow. That’s interesting that you have a total flood on that too.

Peter Hallinan:
On the green. The green, the green

Drew Slocum:
Green. Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. The Green X.

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah, the green, sorry. The green X com company. We are, we partner with green. So I, I keep, uh, I gotta keep remembering that some Daisy, so, hey, it’s only been three months, uh, three months since we started this, uh, this, this, this growth.

Drew Slocum:
That’s great. Um, so tell me a little bit on, you know, I, I know I’m, I’m excited to see where SSi is going. I know you have some stuff that, um, you know, on, on some of the battery side you have coming out. Uh oh. Yeah.

Peter Hallinan:
We’re, uh,

Drew Slocum:
Nobody’s been able to solve that yet. So

Peter Hallinan:
We have, so, um, I’m hoping to make, I’ve been doing a little teasing on LinkedIn and some other things. We have a UL ULC turnkey, lithium-ion ion storage solution, uh, suppression solution done. Uh, you know, working with somebody like Veda, those guys too, as part of their runaway thermal runaway. Yep. So that will hopefully be coming the end of July or August. I just, I’m not allowed yet to

Drew Slocum:
Give Yeah, yeah, sure.

Peter Hallinan:
Specifics in the marketing stuff. But we definitely, it’s been proven in Europe. They’re using it in Europe. Um, greens cell or Green Next has used it in the Middle East. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that’s, uh, I’m, I’m really excited. I had a lot of conversations last week. I was doing some engineer luncheon turns. Um, you know, I’m not to give, I don’t think it’s any secret will. Obviously, the greens will be the suppression Sure. Unit. Sure. We’re incorporating everything into it. And again, with the green saw, because with the thermal runaway and the lithium-ion fires, you’re creating your own oxygen, right? Mm-hmm. Where with the green cell, we take the heating element, uh, the free radicals out of the fire element Yep. So that you can put off as much oxygen as you want. And we’re still gonna be able to fire. And hey, having been to a Tesla fire, uh, a couple of years ago,

Drew Slocum:
Oh, man.

Peter Hallinan:
Uh, I don’t; not fun.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. I just, we just sent a, I just had another podcast release, uh, earlier or yesterday or whatever, but, um, it, uh, yeah, there was a fire in California. It was at a scrapyard, but they used, they had to use like 5,000 gallons of water. And they essentially just dug a <laugh>, dug a moat in the scrapyard and just filled it with water and pushed the car into it, <laugh>. And

Peter Hallinan:
We had, uh, um, we had a fire last June, last May or June, uh, recycling facility here in Ottawa. I was the second in some, um, my, where I’m a volunteer in Ottawa Compass. A lot of people don’t realize OWA fire is one of the biggest compasses of fire departments in the world. So my station has a career and volunteer in it. And we got called to a recycling fire, and it was massive. And we had two water supplies. I forget. Well, I was driving a tanker of 2,500 gallons, and I took 32 loads myself, and they kept going for eight more hours. And we had 12 tankers doing that. So I think it was like seven, 800,000 gallons of water just in that. Wow. You showed this foam. We went through almost the entire, and when it went back to the fire, it was found out there was lithium, a small lithium battery. They believe they saw it on the cameras at the recycling facility that started the fire.

Drew Slocum :
Wow.

Peter Hallinan:
I mean, we had, yeah, you know, hundreds of firefighters there. Million multimillion-dollar loss for the recycling construction company, and we were there for a day and a half.

Drew Slocum:
That’s crazy. Off a small probably car, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know. Ho, hopefully, there are some solutions here. So, I mean, that’s more energy storage. Then, the vehicles are another thing. Uh, we’re,

Peter Hallinan:
Uh, stay tuned on that too.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Well, it’d be interesting to see what comes out, cuz it, it’s, uh, definitely a nice emerging Yeah. Uh, problem, Right? Within our industry. Um, so, uh, you were executive director at CFA, which is, is, I was, I recently gave up my executive director at the New York, New York. Uh, just a smaller association in New York City. But, um, that’s an interesting kind of, how did you like being an executive director of a big association like that?

Peter Hallinan:
I love the job. I mean, I said to you before I said it was, uh, you know, I’d worked my way up, uh, you know, through the organization. The industry and job came up. I applied for it. Um, uh, you know, the downside was that I needed to reside in Toronto for it to auto.

Drew Slocum:
Boy. Oh, I gotcha.

Peter Hallinan:
Friends and family. And, um, so I went through, uh, not too much deal. I went through some, uh, divorce and some personal stuff at the same time. And, uh, you know, loved the job. Again, it was one of the toughest decisions in my life to, uh, but I told them when I resigned cause I wanted to come back to Ottawa that I would not leave the organization and that I was gonna stick around. And I, Oh, that’s

Drew Slocum:
Great.

Peter Hallinan:
Screwed my word, straight word. I chair, uh, chair committee. I said a couple of other committees. I’m on the board of directors. Nice. Uh, big supporter. But yeah, no, we, uh, um, and we went through a bunch. It was a little tumultuous when I first get in. Um, we, uh, found out that there was an investigation going on in the city of Toronto, which essentially had some repercussions. So I participated quite closely in that CFA supported what was going on. We saw we saw this as an opportunity to, uh, you know, so many disagree. We kicked the rock off, uh, you know, shed some light on some things we knew were wrong in the industry. Um, yep. Uh, and I give all the credit, uh, the, uh, Jim Jess was the deputy chief at Toronto at the time. Um, Beverly, uh, Buer, the Otter General. Then you know, Ryan, um, Ryan Duggan’s taken. Yeah, Doug.

Drew Slocum:
Yep. Yeah,

Peter Hallinan:
Ryan’s a good, really good guy. They’ve really, yeah.

Yeah. I like where we started this, and I state CFA director was a lot of things I wanted to continue to do, but, it was; it was a big challenge for CFA, but it was also a great opportunity. And then it’s really advanced., it really helped the industry change, I think. And especially, especially when it comes to, uh, we are reporting, you know, documentation, uh, trying to standardize that, make that official, that was the biggest thing that, uh, one of the biggest things I wanted to do when I was there was to standardize documentation and then make sure that everybody had to fill out the right reports.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Yeah. And I know CFA has been big with that, with ULC, and obviously, you guys did debt with Toronto or helped with that Toronto. Um, any, any challenges with creating, you know, cuz I, I come from the different side of that, you know, whatever the standard, I love, we love standardization, but you gotta, the data out of that documentation and reports is very powerful. So being able to collect that for the HJ for the industry is really important. Right. Because yeah, you wanna make sure things are compliant, but if you can gather that data and NFPA is trying to do this now and try to gather the data from inspections, deficiencies, all that, it, it just gives a lot more power to, to analyzing that and seeing what the problems actually are. Right.

Peter Hallinan:
No, and I, right, to your point, um, I had a conversation with three, four years ago with Tim Beckett when he was a time when he was chief of, uh, miss Sug at the time. Then he, now he’s the acting fire marshal. And, you know, he was a big analytics guy. It really turned me onto the analytics. So you don’t, if you don’t have the analysis, you don’t know what your problem is. So at the time, we knew we had a problem, but we had no way to gather the data on how bad our reports were until Right. You know, I don’t wanna say how bad it was. We had an industry with 90% really good people doing everything they needed to be doing properly and 10% that were causing problems for everybody else. And, you know, 90% of the top of the technicians, 90% of the companies were using a form similar to what ULC.

Mm-hmm. So for, I mean, I know this is in, uh, cross-border presentation. So U S C, we don’t; in Canada, we don’t use NFP 72; we use a U are owned ULC. So in the case of inspections, we use U L C S 5 36 mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we wanted to get a standardized report that came out of it. So, you know, I was part of that 5 36, 5 37 working group where we put it into the body. The next big challenge in Canada is we don’t, we’re such a vast country. What we don’t, we have provinces in jurisdictions that are using 10, 12 Yeah. Or older versions. So we need everybody to adapt when a new standard comes out, adapted uses. So that’s our biggest challenge now is I know that is to get that enshrined to get everybody using it along with educating our technicians.

I mean, we need to provide education to our technicians. And, and you know, that was part of our program for the CFA is in the past there was, you took your courses, and somebody signed you off. So one of the things that were in changing when I came in was we were actually standing, we were creating, uh, a theory exam on the codes and a practical exam to get your certification, which we put into place, and we’re finalizing. Now you’ve probably seen the virtual one that’s coming. So there was none of that before. So. Right. You know, we had a lot of, lot of guys that were never taught properly headed. The reports, which, you know, comes back on C F A, we need to redo some of our, we’re working on redoing our course to make, uh, one of our courses how to properly fill out the documentation.

And again, you bring back to standard, we need to standardize documents, so everybody’s using the same document, getting the same training. And the AHJs  all know what to look for when they, and that was one of the things I got back from the AHJs was that I got a hundred, a hundred inspection reports on my desk. He says I don’t know what to look for. Yeah. They’re all different. He says, I just want to be able to open the page and see on the second page, see my deficiencies or whatever and put it aside. So those are the little things that we’ve, we’ve, you know, we’re still working there, and I’m hoping next year or two we’ll get to that point.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. And I think, you know, I think the codes are there, and bringing it into the body of the U L C 5 36 and 5 37 is pretty big. It’s a big move. You don’t see that too much. That’s huge in N F P. Right? So at least there’s a standardization now. I think, you know, and it happens a lot in the states where there are AHJs and fire marshals, fire prevention bureaus have these third party or compliance solutions where essentially it’s taking all of the sit buildings and the systems that protect those buildings and it kind of puts it into a portal, I guess, and mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and so you’re not, you know, so the officials aren’t going through thousands or hundreds of reports. It’s just highlighting what’s important, what’s the, what are the critical deficiencies, and what’s not being followed up on. So I think, um, that’ll probably eventually happen in some of the, uh, Canadian jurisdictions, I would think.

Peter Hallinan:
And it has, there have been attempts, I know a few years ago Calgary, and I apologize if, I don’t know this is still going McAlary one point was requiring all their inspection reports to be faxed into a central fax number, and somebody was doing that. So I know, uh, at my time at CFFA and even, uh, I was at the Fire Prevention Officer’s Conference for Ontario there a couple of weeks ago. And, uh, there’s still some departments, you know, covid obviously a lot of things we were working on pre covid have kind of got put in aside. We had to pivot. Right. Especially the fire prevention had to pivot. How do I do mine, uh, pub ads, how do my part nines? All these things are done virtually in Ontario. Yeah. Um, so I know there’s talk again about creating these portals. Uh, I know I was talking about it where the fire alarm company was. When they’re done, we’ll upload them.

Drew Slocum:
Sure to,

Peter Hallinan:
To the municipality. I mean, fire prevention officers love that. I think to go and look at it online instead of having a stack of paper that they have to get in. Yeah. Um, so I think honestly that’s probably a few years down the road. Yeah. Uh, cause you know, I take Sure. Well, uh, bluntly, every fire department, I think, in North America is gonna be facing cost, uh, challenges with, uh, over the next couple years on all, you know, plus we have the aging population demographic change. Um, you know, and, you know, conversely, we also need to start directing more re this is a fire suppression firefighter and training officer talking here that we need to do, need to do more and direct more resources to our fire prevention. Uh, you know, and Terry, we talk about three lines of defense prevention, public education, and suppression. And we’ve never done enough in the prevention and public education. Sure. We need to do more there. And, you know, it goes to like fire pass. Hey, fire pass. It can prevent it. The big red trucks don’t show up and make a mess after. Right. <laugh>.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Right.

Peter Hallinan:
I said that over, I said that a few weeks ago, and everybody’s looking at me laughing, and I said, yeah, I know I can, uh, I can make that, uh, comment. I said I wear both hats here,

Drew Slocum:
<laugh>. Yeah, right. You’re on, you’re on both sides of it. That’s funny. Yeah. That’s funny.

Peter Hallinan:
And that’s, you know, that’s, I mean, I was trying to do, I, I mean, I’ve got that unique perspective. I think that I know I’ve, I’ve, I see our products, and I see what happens when they’re not done properly. Uh, you know, I don’t say every day, but I’ve seen that in my time as a firefighter. I get, uh, it’s a unique perspective. I’ve always been honored that I have that perspective in this industry when I look at things.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, no, it’s, it, it’s great. You, you, you need different perspectives. Then, when you know, you get that tunnel vision, it’s, yeah, well, we have trouble.

Peter Hallinan:
We, we’ve got 30 more seconds. We have that, the FST I talked about. So it’s green. So set it portable for fire departments, or you can mount it and use the room. So a couple of weeks ago, I was like, I did, I was part of, uh, for knowledge to practice the fire dynamic dynamics research. So I’m, I’m, you know, I’m not, I’m not that dinosaur. Always wants to put water on everything and break every window. I think you look, we always have to look at when we, we do fire. So I was really like, is this thing gonna work? Is this thing gonna work? And we had fire dynamics burning to go on here in auto fire mm-hmm. <affirmative> for a month ago. So we had, I went in with another guy who’s a professional videographer and a firefighter. We suited up, went in, had the fire going over our heads about 600 degrees, put the F s T in, and the two of us looked at each other cuz it was literally, we watched the flames die.

Drew Slocum:
Wow. So,

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. So that’s, you know, uh, I’m not, not trying to sell ’em, just say, you know what? The new technologies are amazing to see, now we just have to change people’s attitudes toward these things. But it’s, I, my perspective as a firefighter was able to see this product does work, and I’m gonna, II can speak a little more passionately about it better now as we

Drew Slocum:
Go through. Yeah. It’s cool to see more technology. Cuz traditionally, you know, in the last 50 years, it’s maybe 30 years this, there’s been a slow movement to technology and fire protection I feel like. So, um, some of this stuff that we’re talking about today is, you know, we gotta move forward and, um, yeah. It’s, it, it’s really cool to see you’re a part of it. So,

Peter Hallinan:
Well I, and I remember when I first came into this industry, everybody was like, oh no, we don’t want FM 200 or we don’t want these clean agent suppression systems. They’re not gonna work. So, you know, I see myself now where that was 20 years ago about educating and getting out. And in all honesty, I’ve met with a few of the big companies. The big names don’t divulge, but they’re all excited, you know, about this. And they see applications for this in the future too, which is exciting me back because if I’ve got people in the industry excited about the possibilities of these products, you know, it, it’s, it’s not just about the growth of the company to me. It’s about, you know, helping the industry as well move forward into environmentally friendly stuff, and Yeah. Sound it sounds like one of those guys now. Everything’s environmentally friendly, but you know, it’s like, it is what it is. Might

Drew Slocum:
Well, be Right. There are options for it now. So

Peter Hallinan:
We got rid of Haan for a reason. Right. And yeah. Uh, you know, um, I dunno if it was one of your podcasts I heard or somebody that some jurisdictions are now starting to look, we think gas, uh, gas suppression systems.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. I talked about the AIM act, I think in December, uh, John Demeter was on; he was talking about it.

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. Uh, some of the mid, the Middle East is really leading on this. There’s a lot of conversations in UAE about, uh, um, doing away with gas suppression altogether.

Drew Slocum:
It’s crazy. Yeah. Well, hey, the industry’s always, uh, I, I wish it moved faster, but, you know, that’s why we’re all good. My,

Peter Hallinan:
Uh, I have a poster on my wall of, I’m not poster picture of my office at home that says firefighting 180 years of tradition unimpeded by progress.

Drew Slocum:
<laugh>. That’s good. Please send me a photo of that. I like that

Peter Hallinan:
<laugh>. I will. And, and, uh, you know, it’s, I said the same thing. I said, I remember the resistance. Well, remember the resistance on going to addressable fire alarm systems when they said, oh man, that’s funny. They’re new too. Right? And then now, a few years ago, people were, uh, oh, addressable, uh, horns and strobes. Oh, those, those will never work. We don’t need those. So it’s, uh, me, I, I always, I always, I don’t wanna disparage anything, but I always argue that, you know, builders will argue and fight over how many millions of dollars they’re gonna spend on granite or their, their front entrance lobby, but they don’t want to spend $5,000 more to upgrade the fire alarm.

Drew Slocum:
I know. It, it’s the same thing. Or put a sprinkler system in a, you know, a rep the house or something, you know?

Peter Hallinan:
Yep.

Drew Slocum:
Crazy. So I do a little something at the end of every podcast. Haven’t, uh, I didn’t do this last episode, but it’s something called a quick Response round where just fire a couple of questions at you and, uh, you don’t know they’re coming. Um, and, we’ll end right after that. So, I know you’re an Ottawa guy. I’ve always heard, and I think there’s an event for the CASA or CFA’s there next year. I forgot what it is.

Peter Hallinan:
CASA is here. CASA’s here at actually, uh, next year. Cause I was talking to somebody who’s a director of CASA who has to come to once a month for work. He says, yay, get to go to Ottawa.

Drew Slocum:
Well, what’s up with this River, river Oak? Uh, I’ve always heard of this skating trail. Tell me <laugh>. I know probably people, it’s just, you know, some guy from the states talking about this, but I’ve always heard about it, you know, it’s

Peter Hallinan:
Awesome. So there’s one run right near my house in Stittsville by a guy who used to play in the NHL. Um, and we went there a couple of times this winter. It’s awesome. So literally, he’s cut its path through the trees and flooded it. It’s up and down, and you’re, it’s like when I, we used to do this stuff when I was a kid up on the big RTO Lakes as we cut in the little bays and shovel stuff out. So I don’t know what this is all new for, but yeah. This, uh, are you talking about the RTO Canal? The world?

Drew Slocum:
I’m talking about River Oaks. I guess it’s a big skating trail run. Yeah,

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah, yeah. There’s probably four or five of ’em now where there’s Oh wow. Three years. Yeah. So they’re pretty, I’ve seen, been to a couple of ’em. They’re pretty awesome.

Drew Slocum:
Ah, that’s, that’s fun.

Peter Hallinan:
If you come to the win, come up here in the winter, and I’ll take him.

Drew Slocum:
But in the summer, you’re, you’re a big, uh, river guy, right?

Peter Hallinan:
Uh, I love the river. I’m a big boater. Uh, grew up on the water. Um, actually, we were laughing earlier. I said, I used to joke, I’m a weekend American cuz I keep the boat in the United States. I’m in the US, with sun and water. But yeah, I’m, uh, if if you’re looking for me, there’s, uh, in the winter, in the summertime, I’m probably gonna be by the water.

Drew Slocum:
Nice, nice. Yeah, it’s a, I’m an I’m, I’ve, I’ve become a, you know, boater and couple Right, right. When Covid hit my wife, we decided, you know, let’s get a boat. We’re, we’re close to the water, so we’re on it. And it’s, it’s, it’s a great way. And it was, it was good during the pandemic too, cuz you know, you’re outside. Right. So, uh, the last question, and I don’t wanna get too deep into these, but the three largest problems in fire protection right now. What are the three big problems of technicians?

Peter Hallinan:
Tech technicians, trying to find the great staff, uh, adoption of new technologies, uh, being open to it.

Drew Slocum:
I like that. And,

Peter Hallinan:
Um, as far as Canada goes, standardization of the codes of standards. We really, like I said earlier, we really need to make sure Ray’s using the latest updated versions.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. And it’s not just in Canada, it’s in the US too. It’s all over. I mean, there are standards, but it seems to be jurisdictional. It’s, it’s getting that way and, um, where jurisdictions are requiring different things here, you know, New York’s requiring different things than in California than Seattle, than Texas. It’s like, all right, we have national standards for a reason. Right guys? So, and girls. So

Peter Hallinan:
Yeah. It, that, that shocked me. I think 2010, um, my previous company, we opened a, uh, division down in, uh, Colorado and, uh, Ava, and I was shocked when I started diving into that and finding out that, you know, uh, one jurisdiction had a three-page fire code, the other had a 30-page fire code. You know, there was no, even, even within the states, there was no standardization.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Even within the state that falls. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Peter, uh, pleasure, pleasure. Coming on the podcast today. Where can we find you? Where can we find out about the technology and SSi?

Peter Hallinan:
So SSi Fire Solutions. So SSi fire Solutions, dot com, or SSi Canada both lead you to me. SSi Canada gives you a nice view of, I can take security pictures of the Arctic, see some live camera and then link to, uh, yeah. So, um, currently, right now, SSi fire solutions.com website’s just about, it’s under the construction, but SSi Canada, it’ll take you to SSi Canada, and you’ll, you’ll find me there. But, uh, nice. Yeah. Does that sound con does that sound too convoluted?

Drew Slocum:
No, no, you get it. I, I’ll put it all in the notes anyway. They’ll know where to find you.

Peter Hallinan:
<laugh>. Yeah, no, and I’m all, any, any questions, uh, that’s what I’m here for. Uh, I’ll always, I’ve always open to answering questions. People wanna talk to me, uh, you know, not just about what we have about the, you know, the Canadian fire, uh, the Canadian Fire Protection Industry in general. Um, you know, questions on that. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I just know part of a member of a couple of boards. It’s, uh, my, I advocate for the associations, and I’m always willing to help. Um, you know, some people help me mentor me. Um, guys like Rich Morris, you probably know, remember Rich Morris, Jerry Lamber goes like, they help me when I get out. And now that I’m the gray hair’s coming, <laugh>, I guess it’s, you start helping the next generation,

Drew Slocum:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Help. Yeah. You’ve helped me out a couple of times here, so I appreciate that. Thanks again for coming on.

Peter Hallinan:
Have a good day.

Drew Slocum:
Take care. This has been episode 44 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Wanna thank my guest again, Peter Hallinan, from SSi Canada, for coming to discuss a lot of different topics and some new solutions in fire protection that, uh, even I or a lot of my colleagues didn’t know about. So, um, really cool stuff to hear and, um, glad he was able to make it on. So, uh, more to come and, uh, uh, next month. And feel free to drop me a line at sales@inspect point.com if you’ve got any suggestions for episodes. Talk soon. Thanks.