News (blog)

As we are in between our regular monthly meetings, I would like to take the opportunity to reminder you about our upcoming events.

The Second Annual AL Brown Scholarship Golf Outing will be on September 10, 2010 at Cypian Keyes in Boylston, MA.  Space is still available including sponsorship opportunities.

Due to conficts with the SFPE International Annual Meeting, our first meeting is September 27, 2010 at the Four Points Sheraton in Norwood, MA.

Finally, please renue your membership as it provides the Chapter with much of its revenue to cover the yearly costs.

Hope to see everyone either at the Golf Outing or the first Meeting.

NEC-SFPE past president James F. O'Regan, 89, of Westborough, passed away peacefully on Saturday, March 20, 2010 surrounded by his loving family.

His funeral Mass will be celebrated on Wednesday, March 24, at 10:00 A.M. in St. Luke the Evangelist Church, 70 West Main St., Westborough. Burial will follow in St. Luke's Cemetery. Relatives and friends are invited to attend calling hours on Tuesday, March 23, from 4 to 7 P.M. at the Britton-Summers Funeral Home, 4 Church St., Westborough.

A complete obituary is available online.

On behalf of the Nominating Committee, Ronald Melucci, P.E. (Immediate Past President) has submitted the following recommendations for election to the positions indicated below for the 2010-2011 Chapter year.

President
Jeff DeMaine, P.E., Fire Risk Management, Inc.

First Vice President (Program)
Edward Orazine, P.E., Rolf Jensen & Associates

Second Vice President (Membership)
Amanda Kimball, P.E., Arup Fire

Treasurer
Dana Haagensen P.E., Massachusetts Department of Fire Services

Secretary
Kevin LaMalva, Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger

New Directors
Ed Ledoux, BR+A
Ted Dow, Hughes Associates
Christopher Lynch, P.E., Rolf Jensen & Associates

Scholarship Committee
Kevin Cox, Firepro, Inc. (chair)
Russ Deubler, P.E., Hartford Steam Boiler
Jeffrey Paoletti, FM Global

As current President of the Chapter, Andrew Woodward, P.E. will automatically assume the position of Immediate Past President, holding responsibility for nominations for the 2011-2012 chapter year.  Seth Sienkiewicz, FM Global, will serve another term as Director.  Kevin Cox, Firepro, Inc. will assume the position of Scholarship Committee Chair.

As required by the Chapter-By-Laws, this report is being submitted at least thirty (30) days prior to the Chapter’s Annual Meeting and will be presented to vote by all members in good standing at the Annual Meeting.  As per Section 11.2.2 of the Chapter Constitution, “nomination of any eligible candidate may be made by any Chapter Member for election to any office, if the candidate’s name and proposed office are submitted in writing to the Secretary seven (7) days prior to the Annual Meeting, together with the signatures of five (5) members of the Chapter.”

The official 2010/2011 Nominating Committee Report is available for download.

The subcommittee report on one and two family residential sprinklers will be discussed and possibly reported out with a recommendation to the full BBRS Board on March 9th.  This is the first step in the process as the new 1 & 2 family residential code will soon begin to be revised.  
 
The BBRS Meeting will be Tuesday, March 9th, from Noon to 1 p.m.  Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts (FCAM) is presenting a white paper outlining the Association's position on the installation of residential sprinkler systems in new construction one and two family residences.

The meeting will be at the Wellesley National Guard Armory.

Directions:
Traveling toward the West on Route 9, Minuteman Lane is 1800 feet from Route 128 (95)
On the right. Traveling East, make “U” turn at the lights 800 feet before Route 128.
Minuteman Lane is 1200 feet toward the West.
Pull into the parking lot and enter through the side door DO NOT USE THE FRONT DOOR.

The Society of Fire Protection Engineers Greater Atlanta Chapter will host their Sixth Annual Fire Safety Conference in Duluth, GA.  For additional information and registration information is available at https://sfpeatlanta.org/events_conference.htm.

Our new website and online membership management software has been available to the public for nearly six months.  Over the past six months, we have had 950 visitors to our website,  2,150 total visits, and 11,000 pages have been viewed.  We have also processed 173 membership applications, renewals and 131 event registrations.

We are five months into our fiscal year and currently have 175 active members.  We will be continuing to contact and assist members with their annual membership renewal.   By comparison, over the past three years our membership numbers have been between 200 and 220 by the end of the year.  We expect our membership numbers to be slightly above average for this year.  We will continue to encourage any of our 482 contacts that are not currently members to join the Chapter.

So far this year’s event attendance is good.  For the October meeting, there were 42 attendees and the November meeting had 68 attendee.  By comparison, last year we had 34 registered for the October meeting and 38 for the November meeting.  This upward trend is an improvement and shows the strength of our Chapter.

In the months ahead, we will be unveiling a member’s only section of our website.  Features of this area will include a member directory.  Prior to deployment of the member directory, we will send a notice to remind members to review their privacy settings to protect their identity.

Thank you for your continued support!

The Automatic Fire Alarm Association of New England will be hosting a discussion on the changes to the 2010 edition of NFPA 72. The presentation will be Thursday, November 12th at 5pm. The presentation will be by Wayne Moore of Hughes Associates and Tom Hammerberg the President of AFAA National.  Additional information is available on the AFAA-NE website.

The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) Greater Boston Chapter (GBC) is holding a tehcnical meeting on Wednesday, November 18th at 5:30pm regarding fire damper regulations. The presentation will be by Joe Wioncek of Freeman Air. Additional information is available on the ASSE-GBC website.

At the SFPE Professional Development Conference and Exposition, the New England Chapter presented the SFPE Educational & Scientific Foundation with $800.  The funds will be used to support the foundations mission, "To advance the science and practice of Fire Protection Engineering internationally, by advocating and supporting engineering research, technology transfer and education".

Also, at the Chapter Senate meeting the New England Chapter received the Gold Chapter excellence award.  Ronald Melucci completed the evaluation form documenting the contributions of our members.  The Board thanks Ron for all your hard work on the evaluation form. 

At the October meeting on Monday, October 5, 2009 the New England Chapter of the SFPE awarded $7,000 in scholarships to five students.  The recipient of the A.L. Scholarship was Richard Emberley, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) student.  Additional $1,000 scholarships where awarded to Brandon Finzel and Tracy Golinveaux at WPI, Cathleen Childers at the University of Maryland, and Shawn Mahoney at the University of New Haven.

These scholarships were funded by the proceeds from our annual seminar in March and the raffles conducted during our monthly meeting.  The chapter would like to acknowledge the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) for their generous donations of NFPA publications that are raffled as prizes during the monthly meetings.

Scholarship applications will be on our website and distributed to colleges offering a fire protection program in November with applications due January 31, 2010.  Scholarship recipients will be announced at the May 2010 meeting and awarded in October 2010.

In September, we held our first annual SFPE-NEC Golf Tournament to benefit the A.L. Brown Scholarship and we are pleased to announce that it was a success raising approximately $3600 for the scholarship!  We would like to thank all of our sponsors and golfers who braved the weather conditions.  We hope that everyone had a great time - we know that we did!  Our sponsors were: Siemens, enGauge Inc., Fenwal Protection Systems / AirSense, Marioff, Norel Service, Rolf Jensen & Associates, WPI Department of Fire Protection Engineering, The Protectowire Co., Robert Benedetti, Xtralis, Fike Alarm Systems, The Pappas Company, and SimplexGrinnell. 

We would like to congratulate our winning golf team: Jeff DeMaine, Thomas Garbedian, Peter Brooks, and Ron DeMaine!  

 

Winning Team: Ron DeMaine, Jeff DeMaine, Thomas Garbedian, and Peter Brooks

We also had two teams tie for second place: Team 1 - Lance Harry, Carla Pizzarello, Mike Beatrice, and J.J. Schoenrock; Team 2 - Mike Theriault, Ralph Tiede, Dave Hague, and John Dellogono.  The longest drive winner was Peter Brooks and the closest to the pin winner was Chad Binette. 

Second Place Team: Mike Beatrice, Lance Harry, J.J. Schoenrock, and Carla Pizzarello

Second Place Team: Dave Hague, Mike Theriault, John Dellogono, and Ralph Tiede