The Fire Protection Podcast: Episode #78 – Mission Critical Fire Protection with Lee Kaiser

le weeks of fancy outfits and bourbon and then we'll have the big day.

Drew Slocum

Yep. That's fun. We're actually, you know, my wife's cousin's getting married the last weekend in April. So we'll be in Lexington, which is, we're going to try to get over to Keeneland at some point. But I didn't know it was just like this, like a couple of week-long thing down there. So we're trying to rearrange our schedule to see more of those horse racing and just, you know, the excitement down there.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah. It's, you know, until I moved to Louisville, I didn't really pay attention, but now it's cultural here and I really enjoy a lot of people that travel into town. If you land at the airport, the Louisville airport that week, it's super busy, but everywhere you look out on the, any space they can, they've got private jets parked, you know, for people that are in town.

Drew Slocum

Man.

Lee Kaiser

It's a spectacle of another way of living.

Drew Slocum

Yeah, I've, the funny part is where, this year and last year where I grew up up in upstate New York, the Belmont's being held in Saratoga. And that's where I grew up and that's where Inspect Point's based out of up that way. So it's, I'm going to try to get up there this year. We're going to try to go up and that's, it's a similar kind of older, older track, right? Than like the Belmont and the Preakness. So it's a shorter track, so it's not like the Belmont. But yeah, excited for the season to get kicked off here.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah.

Drew Slocum

Well, I know we saw each other at the FSSA. What is going on? Yeah, guess we know each other really well. Let the audience know who Lee Kaiser is and what Orr Protection is all about.

Lee Kaiser

Sure. Well, I've been on your podcast before. I think this is the third time at The Circuit. So I work for ORR Protection. And ORR is a fire protection contractor. We're a nationwide US-based fire protection contractor. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. But we've got offices throughout the US like maybe 15 locations, I think, and growing, and that's nice. I wear a lot of different hats. I came here just in engineering, a fire protection engineer, but I picked up a few more areas, which is really interesting, and I also have some industry involvement things that I do for the company to make sure that ORR is contributing to the fire protection industry. And so I sit on the board of directors for the Fire Suppression Systems Association because we're, ORR is heavily focused on, you know, non-water based extinguishing systems. And you know, we also do fire alarm systems and sprinkler. Sprinkler systems depending on where, you know, that varies throughout the country a little bit with sprinkler. But FSSA board of directors, I'm the FSSA technical committee chair because I'm, you know, more on the technical side of things and then I sit on four different NFPA technical committees. I chair NFPA 75, the data center, more or less a data center standard.

Drew Slocum

How nice.

Lee Kaiser

But then NFPA 200 is the hanging and bracing standard. 418 is vertiports, heliports, which is an odd one a little bit. I was inspired to join that through a conversation that was had years ago. And then 915, which is remote inspections and tests, which we sit on together. So those are some of the things that I do in that. I think in future I would like to get involved more in SFPE too and as our sprinkler business grows I've thought about AFSA.

Drew Slocum

Yep, yep. Yeah, there, there, there's some great associations out there and. You know, I'm on a, we're on 915 together, which is, it's been an, and that was the first one I've ever been on. I'm on FPA 25 now, but 915 has kind of evolved a little bit, right, and it came out. I think a little bit before the pandemic and everything so. Which probably helped. I just don't know. Love your opinion to see where the whole remote inspection and testing, the standards there, but what are we doing with it?

Lee Kaiser

Well, I mean, I think it's the framework for how it can be done. It is the minimum. Here's what you need to have as a minimum to be able to do it. But it's not the actual solution. We went through a little bit of an evolution because I don't believe. I think the standards council at NFPA set out for it really just to be remote inspections. How does an AHJ use technology to, or what, you know, it doesn't have to be technology, but how can they remotely inspect a project? And that word inspection can mean different things to different people. Does mean different things. So we're a fire protection contractor. We install systems and service systems. When we say service, we mean inspection, testing and maintenance in the sense that it's in the system standards, you know. But, you know, a building inspector means a different thing. Like, you know, they're both inspections, but for them, they're, you know, they're making sure that you can get a building permit or what you've said in the building permit is what you're really doing. The workmanship is done and they're keeping the public safe. That, but it's a different intent for their inspections. And so setting up that, you know, they were setting up for that type of inspection, I think at the beginning of that document and you know, we did get a change to change the title to "Inspections and Tests". And you know, my intent really for that document, if I was seeing where the world could go is, you know, how do we remotely test these systems? I mean, not just, hey, the installation of the building, but the systems that are in the building where we need ongoing inspection, testing, and maintenance. How do we do that with less people, more automatically, more in real time so that we can catch problems and get them corrected? I wish we had almost two different words for inspection because it is, you, but we don't have that in the English language. It really means the intent of inspection in that document was two different things. Nonetheless, a lot of the framework of how you would do it with technology is, is the same. So, and I'm, where I think where it needs, where I'd like to see it go.

You know, in addition to all the building inspector, AHJ stuff, eventually, you know, let's set the framework for what can we trust for remote inspection or systems that self-inspect or self-test and then give reports out in such that then once it's been tested, a qualifier, if there is a problem, a qualified person can go out and repair it. And I think when we get there, we will, it's going to, I mean, that will take a long time to not only get the technology there, but to then get those systems installed in buildings so that, you know, we can, we can change a lot of things. Like we, we have to reduce the amount of false alarms in this country and probably worldwide, but definitely this country where we have so many buildings with alarm systems where, you know, some of those things are due to misrepair, you know, or, or systems that have had our problem systems with systems that can self-test and they, you know, ultimately save the owner some money on their inspection and testing contract that they can.

Put that money to the repair of those systems. So, if we can lower the burden on the fire departments, ultimately we'll lower the burden on taxpayers. I think that's one place that we can go and we can always, it's popular as contractors to talk about the labor shortage, but that's out there in all kinds of things. I mean, fire departments, believe it or not, some fire departments struggle to get people to come on and they have to lower their standards to get people to be able to join. That's ultimately lowering standards is not good for anyone. We contractors aren't the only ones that struggle with labor, but yet we do. And so if we can focus on getting to the point where we can have systems that can take some of the labor load off for them to exist and be checked properly. Then we can use our labor resources just to repair them and keep them running. Because these things break. There's just no doubt about it. They break. Things happen to them in buildings. I mean, there's all kinds of stories about things that happen to fire alarm devices to sprinkler systems, other things to get them to be broken and not work. Then, you know, we ultimately we want to fix as much as we can, but we just know that there are building owners out there that don't want to necessarily get things fixed.

Drew Slocum

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You brought up the point of, you know, remotely testing. I think there's a big opportunity to remotely monitor, right? And not with the central station monitoring or anything, but why aren't these fire protection systems being just data monitored, right? Where we can grab pressure, we can grab different parts where it's not testing the system, but at least grabbing data to give us knowledge of like, hey, what is actually happening over time. And it's maybe not the fire alarm systems, it's usually the sprinkler suppression down the line of like, can we grab data there and be smarter about, you know, when we send those technicians out instead of, you know, and that'll get into frequencies at some point, and hopefully alter the standards once we know more about these systems.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, I mean, you know, it should probably is pretty obvious to your audience, but the reason we have, you know, biannual or more inspections and tests of systems is because they sit there unused until there's fire, right? In other building systems, you know, every time the things are uncomfortable from a temperature perspective, well then somebody calls the person in charge of the building and says, hey, my office is cold or it's too hot in here. So it's real-time that the occupants are kind of like your inspectors. Nonetheless, even I could think of, I don't happen to have a smart thermostat at my house.

But I've been thinking about that. Like one of the things I've been thinking about doing is getting a Wi-Fi enabled thermostat so I can see what's happening in my house and know about it ahead of time and then deal with it before there's a problem. In any other business, that sensor technology and monitoring and sending that data to somebody that can do something about it is where we need to go in fire protection systems and it's where all the other building systems are headed.

Drew Slocum

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a, we had a Google Nest at another property and that we, Vermont, Vermont property and we rented it out and stuff and the tenants or whatever must have shut down the thermostat, right? And for some reason the Wi-Fi was off, but if the Wi-Fi was on, that would have alerted us saying, hey, they shut down the heat, right? And we could have prevented. Luckily, it didn't go below freezing, but if it did, we would have had a huge issue, right? And did you see the technology I brought up at FSSA, the electrical IoT device that monitors your kind of wiring in your house?

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, you know, we didn't get to talk about that because there was so much else going on. Devices like that, I'd seen that through our local electricity energy provider. And I can't recall if it was the same brand or not. It seemed like it was. And it's offered to you. And I tried to get one for my house. But believe it or not, the website it just wasn't that clear. Couldn't navigate the website to sign up. And so I wasn't able to get a device. You're bringing that up. I'd forgotten about it. You bringing that up made me kind of inspired to go back and try another time on the website and try to get that for our house. They say it's either electrical or mice with matches set in houses.

Drew Slocum

Well, well, it's funny, like insurance companies and then, you know, on the HVAC side, the, the utility companies, they're pushing these IOT and remote monitored devices for your, your, your power, your, your HVAC and your electricity. Right. And, you know, the insurance just gave it to us, right. The Senate, I an email, Hey, do you want this IOT fire? And it said the future of fire safety on it. Right. And

I was like, I got it. I have to do it if it says that. So, it's been great. You know, I get a weekly report of like, Hey, how the, how the power is doing. And, you know, eventually, you know, as, as houses become more electrified with electric vehicles and, and, and backup generators, I think that'll be more of a thing moving forward. And, yes. Yeah.

Lee Kaiser

Well, even just aging wire. You know, I mean, my house has, I've caught, my house was built in the 90s and I have caught some aluminum wire in my house. So it really needs to, it needs to come out. It was on a, you know, frankly it was on a higher amperage feed over to an oven. Everything else is copper, but.

Drew Slocum

Mm-hmm. Right.

Lee Kaiser

I just, I happened to see that this one was aluminum and it's like, you know, that stuff, not much keeps me up at night, but that one thing it says okay, you know, the, I hope that doesn't ever overheat and I'm a problem. So good point to probably even more reasons for me to go to get one of those electric monitors for the house

Drew Slocum

Right. I know. I mean, all the big insurance, I think State Farm is doing it, Nationwide is doing it. And there's a variety of other ones that are doing it now that they'll, they're just giving it away because I mean, if, if they can reduce electrical fire risk, they'd be glad to do that with all the stuff going on in insurance these days. So, so, um, a little back to Orr, I know you guys are obviously, uh, big on the special protection scheme, high challenge fires, maybe not like a high, you know, fire risk, like, you know, data centers and oil and gas and I guess, is there a new trend toward different high challenge fires that you guys are looking at and there's different industries popping up?

Lee Kaiser

Well, you know, we focus on, you know, our tagline is "Mission Critical Fire Protection Experts". So we, you know, frankly, we'll do fire protection systems in any type of building. It's not like we, you know, we're not going to say no to anything, but there are certain buildings that can use our systems and services and our expertise more than others. And so we tend to focus on those.

Vertical markets and data centers is one of them, telecommunications is another, and you know, big picture, I see those, the functions of those two different building types which really used to be separated by, in a data center you processed and stored data, in a telecommunications building you handled communications and let that information or data flow through it on a path to a data center, but those two are really blending, you know, and telco buildings are having more data center uses inside of them. There's more data processing occurring in them. And so that's one trend we see. We see in real-time the growth in data processing for AI and other high-performance computing needs is growing exponentially. And so we're very happy that we're already have a good footing in that market. And we're getting, we're growing with that market.

But that also, we've chosen a number of years to really focus on fire protection for power plants. And there is a blending of power plant applications at data centers that's starting to occur now because the power usage demands for AI computing exceed what we can provide with our current electrical generating capacity in the country. So data center installations are being planned with power plants on premises. And so for us, those are really two specialties that are coming together on similar sites. And that is not going to happen with coal or natural gas, and it's not going to be enough with solar and wind. And so we see a future where small nuclear reactors are being placed at data center sites. And we are really you know, really interested in that and really trying to be ready to be the fire protection provider for those situations. And so those are a few of the things that we see happening out there. But there's a lot of work with renewables. You know, everybody is talking about lithium ion batteries in their applications. You know, there are so many different ways to get involved in that business. We've got involved in it in a big way and that takes up a lot. I mean there's that area needs a lot of expertise and we've been working really hard to be a reliable provider for that expertise.

Drew Slocum

What is your, what is your overall outlook on the lithium ion battery? I guess it's more, it's not protection, but it's more detection, right? At least at what I've heard is I guess you can control it, but the best way to. The best way for EV or not EV, but lithium ion is detection, right? So are you guys focus more on the suppression or the detection side or is it a combo?

Lee Kaiser

Well, we have a lot of spaces where we've provided suppression solutions, but we're not making any claims that the systems that we're providing can extinguish a battery fire. But we have had, there are a lot of electronics in energy storage containers, you know, it's a battery container for used for whatever electrical technique.

And we've seen several fires just in those electronics. Then it comes back to traditional systems, clean agents, aerosols. Those systems work to extinguish those fires so they don't grow to involve the batteries. I would say that the current trend is when batteries are catching on fire, the general arrangement is just to let it burn and then try to have the installation of the batteries such that there's a limit to the loss of that fire and it only grows so big and it doesn't. So what we're really seeing is generally smaller packages of batteries, small cubes containing you know, one or two racks of batteries instead of 20 racks of batteries. And fire doesn't grow to involve 20 racks. It grows to involve just the two and burns and you know, it burns for a long time, but then it eventually goes out. And so most of the strategy is detection of the, of the fire, of the gases that come off the batteries so that you know what's going on and you can confirm remote from the cube what is actually burning. Is this a battery fire or not? Then respond appropriately because you've got more success in extinguishing a non-battery fire. Along with that, there's these fire prevention systems, battery fire prevention systems. FIKE has a system and I've seen it and I'm encouraged by it. Siemens has a nitrogen-based system and I'm also, you know, we've got some familiarity with that and we're, you know, those things are exciting but the idea is early detection, apply the agent so that, you know, it doesn't get to the point where you're burning a lot of batteries.

Drew Slocum

Right, right. Yeah. And it's interesting that the arrays of them are coming smaller and that's obviously, you know, fire protection likes that. Also the, whatever it's the utility owner or the property or electric owner at that point, it's a potential nice, reduces the risk for them as well. Right. So that's coming down from the insurer or even internal. Right.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah. Just recently there was another big fire at the Moss Landing Battery site out in California. It was an old building, not an old building, but it was a decommissioned power plant building that has lots of lithium ion battery racks in it, and it was on fire. There are a lot of people pointing to it as to you know, that technology, how dangerous it is. But you've got to understand that that installation was, wasn't, you know, first gen installation of lithium ion batteries and current systems going in, current battery systems going in are a lot safer. No one's saying they're not going to catch on fire because that's what we found. Even the batteries that are claimed to be fire safe are not fire safe, they all get your fire. But we install them as such a way that the consequences of the fire is less. But that Moss Landing, that last Moss Landing fire, it was gen one and it was a big fire. And that's how we build them to have big, big, fires. And I think what the... what at least, you know, the country has to realize is it's not the only installation like that. We need to go back retroactively through the code enforcement process and bring those old installations up to snuff so that those aren't big, big fires. And you know, these fires can't be good. I mean, you know, no matter, even though we have a let it burn strategy that we see out there, that can't be good for the environment, and especially not when it's a really big installation, a number of batteries burning. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Drew Slocum

Yeah, I don't know the, I don't think there's a solution yet, but you know the electrification of, of, of society is not going away. I think there are tremendous benefits to it. It's just we've got this, you know, this potential fire problem that keeps popping and obviously we're in front of that, right, because we're in the fire industry, but I think overall it's going to, it will continue and I think. You know, it's just going to progress and we just got to be ahead of it with installations and how the grids are set up. So back to ORR, I know you guys are a huge national footprint in everything. Do you guys go international at all, a little bit?

Lee Kaiser

Usually under duress.

Drew Slocum

Client's like, yeah, please go to Argentina for us.

Lee Kaiser

So we do some of it. I think in the long term, we would like to grow to do that. But currently, it's not a major strategy for us to do international work. So all the other companies in the US that are happy to go do that. But we focus on the United States. We have customers in every state. We self-

Drew Slocum

Yeah, that's funny.

Lee Kaiser

Do you have subcontractors do that? We have a big network of subcontractors, but we self-perform in about 34 states in the US. So we've grown well in that our organizational structure and who we hire and where we hire is kind of built for that to cover all those states. And when you're at special hazards focused company, the types of facilities that have the systems that your people are good at working on aren't on every corner. Not like, we're not the average fire protection company that can go and take over service down a whole block, get every building on the block. That's just not who we are. We are very focused on some key industries. And we try to sell into those spaces and those tend to be pretty spread out. So that's our strategy.

Drew Slocum

With that national network there, I know, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of M&A happening within the market now. Right. And I feel like with the M&A, it's like, they're, they're picking up different companies throughout the country, different, whether it's privately owned or if it's, you know, maybe regionally owned, you know, I know there's trouble trying to get that standardization. And I know you guys are different in that capacity because you're, you're a national network. Right. So. Is there challenges with that and trying to keep that methodology to the same from California to Maine to Florida?

Lee Kaiser

It for yes, absolutely. And that is a focus we try for our customers. We want to have them to have the same experience with their local Orr office, whether it's here in Louisville or it's, you know, in Atlanta or if it's in San Francisco, we, we want a similar experience. So we, we invest a lot in things that help bring standardization to the company. We have been since the 90s, we're an ISO 9001 certified company. And basically that means that we have a quality management system that has been certified to this standard. And what that helps deliver in the company is standardized processes and you know, so that you get a similar experience because we, you know, a lot of our growth has come with seeking out to do business with other companies that have multiple locations in multiple states. And we want to be able to deliver a very similar level of service wherever they're at in the country. And so we focus a lot on that and that takes a lot of effort. And, you know, we've, we've grown to this point, a lot of that organically, we've done some acquisitions and, you know, that continues to be part of our strategy. But, you know, we really have focused a lot on organic growth and, you know, we're good at hiring. I mean, that's a secret to our success is you know, we've got a great HR team that really goes out and helps us hire good talent. And we often bring in somebody really talented in operations or in sales, and then we'll build around them. And that's how we grow organically.

Drew Slocum

I was at the New York Fire Alarm show the other day and I saw David up there. And I was asking them some questions of, you know, because I've known ORR for, you know, my entire fire career, but obviously I know more now with, with, uh, with everything going on. And, um, you know, I was asking him, I'm like, Hey, where are you pulling your technicians from for, you know, data center projects or whatever? And he's like, Oh, we have. This is all internal and we cover the Northeast and you know that that that has probably there's a likeability factor to that too, because you get to travel a little bit either regionally as a technician and you're working on really cool projects, right? And again, you guys have created great culture for that and yeah, interesting, interesting work too, right?

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, I mean, you know, we know that our technicians have to travel a lot. There's just, there's no way around it. Any technician in a special hazards company of any size is gonna travel a lot. But when you do special hazards, you're working on neat projects and in neat buildings, how about that? You're working in neat buildings and generally they value what you're doing for them because they either know the risk of a fire or they've experienced fires and they know what you're doing is helping them to minimize the effects of the next fire. And so that you're generally well-liked just from what you're doing for them. But we focus on work-life balance. As a leader for ORR, you know, that is part of our every conversation that we have, you know, when we're making decisions on policy or this change or that change, you know, how is that going to affect our, our workforce, you know, and we, we want an engaged workforce that likes to come to work and do a great job for our customers every day and a good job for the company. And, you know, so we really, we focus on that work-life balance. Know that that's really important. And people say they have a family atmosphere. Want, you know, our leaders, we want to know what's going on in people's families, not from a creepy perspective, but just from a supportive perspective. And that's important to us. And I think we've done a really good job, really led by the Orr family. You know, we're still privately owned and the ORR family, they really care about the people that work for them. So, yeah, that it's been important to me and my family, and I know it's important to a lot of others that work here.

 

Drew Slocum

Yeah, it's great to have that. There's not many. I posted about it recently of just the mergers and acquisitions side and the privately owned. If you guys are a national company, privately owned probably, I would say the largest, at least the national network side. Anyway, you should be proud of that and anybody working there should be proud of that.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, we definitely are.

Drew Slocum

So I got a couple out of the box questions. Are there any other topics you wanted to hit before we got out of here?

Lee Kaiser

I'm not going to bring any extra up and make it any longer.

Drew Slocum

We'll do it again. I'm sure, you know, once, you know, there's again, there's like three more topics here I wanted to cover, but, you know, try to clip this up in the, in the best possible for our listeners. You know, out of the technical committees that you're on, what, what, or I guess just different committees with associations, what, what's your favorite?

Lee Kaiser

Well. The FSSA's technical committee is probably my favorite. I know those people well. We meet three times a year no matter what and we tend to do it, well the committee itself tends to do it in person. That's, we get to be friends, you know. We do know about it. There's a family atmosphere there too. Frankly, that is helped a lot by the FSSA forum, which is a nice event. And often people will bring their better half with them. So you get to know a little bit of their family. That's neat. There's a lot of intentional networking time at those events. And that's good too. Same with the meetings throughout the year.

I really like the FSSA. Second to that, I really like the data center NFPA bystander. I like to go to dinner with some of those people when we have those meetings, but you just don't have those meetings as often because of the cycles. FSSA is every year, three times a year, no matter what.

But I like it really because of the work it's doing and what it represents. Keeping data centers safe from fire and minimizing the effects of fire is important to society. I think about what's enabling us to have this conversation at distance today and save it and get it processed and then host it and deliver it later. Well, all that matters. It matters to you and to your business and ultimately to your family. And it matters to me too. Where we have had examples in the world recently of large data center fires, they cause big outages and they cost a lot of money and resources are precious. And so I just think about that. Think about all the neat things that we're going to be able to do in society, not just neat, but all the valuable things we'll be able to do in society. Wait until we get to, you know, we've got autonomous vehicles, but wait until service drones are flying over us to do things. I mean, all those are supported by computing someplace that needs support and we don't want fires to take out that service. I like, I think about my aging parents, how when they can't get out to go get a prescription, getting that prescription to them easy, that it's enabled today in driving, but it could be a drone. And that it could happen even faster. The 75 standard supports the systems that help make that possible. Then AI, I'm sure you use AI in your everyday. I've really worked to do that so that I can get some time back. If it makes me work one less hour a day, that's a good thing.

And we want that for everybody. Maybe we can have some hobbies.

Drew Slocum

Yeah, right. Yeah. The, you know, I presented about that and, and, at the FSSA forum this year and it was, you know, you gave a great shout out in the middle of it, by the way, everybody enjoyed that, about PDFs. So that was great. Yeah, yeah, I know. Right. But yeah, it's affecting everybody's life and it's, and people are worried about it, but as long as...

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, we're gonna bring that up here.

Drew Slocum

And worry is good. It means we're putting the right safeguards in place. So I think it will help overall. Yeah, everything behind that is a data center, right? And it's that small nuclear reactor that's powering that data center. So I'm really curious to see how that's going to go. And maybe nuclear even takes off more than it has. So.

Lee Kaiser

I think it's going to have to until we figure out other sources.

Drew Slocum

One more quick. Again, I mentioned our trip to the Kentucky, Louisville, and Lexington. Is there one distillery that we should hit along the way?

Lee Kaiser

I've not been to any distilleries in Lexington. If you come to Louisville, one I've went to recently is Rabbit Hole. It's in downtown Louisville. It's a good tour, a very hands-on tour, and you can really understand the process of, you know, the engineer in me gets excited about looking at the process and all that stuff. And then they've got a really great really elegant tasting at the end. So yeah, I would recommend the Rabbit Hole tour.

Drew Slocum

All right, I'll have to tag them in this and maybe they can share the fire protection podcast too. Well, thanks again, Lee, for doing this. And I'm sure I'll see you probably at NFPA or one of these other events coming up.

Lee Kaiser

Yeah, you bet. True. Thanks for having me on.

Drew Slocum

Yeah. All right. Thanks again.