Siemens has announced Jensen Hughes, Inc., headquartered in Baltimore, as the winner of its fifth annual Engineering Innovation Award for fire and life safety design. An external panel of industry experts selected Jensen Hughes, which used an innovative design approach incorporating Siemens’ FireFinder® XLS fire panel into the Quick-Turn-Around (QTA) fueling facility of the new Consolidated Rental Car Facility at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Once the new car rental facility opens in the fourth quarter of 2018, the three-story QTA building will provide indoor gasoline fueling and car servicing, with each floor measuring approximately 90,000 ft². The gasoline dispensing system will include 72 fueling nozzle positions supplied via 36 fleet fueling dispensers.
For the project, Jensen Hughes was tasked with developing a performance-based building design that adhered to the Chicago Building Code which prohibits dispensing of Class I flammable liquids (gasoline and windshield washer fluid) inside any building as well as to NFPA 30A, Code for Motor Fuel Dispensing Facilities and Repair Garages, which allows indoor fueling at-grade under very limited conditions.
Jensen Hughes’ proposed design incorporated a multitude of safeguards and protective measures that included deluge foam sprinklers, high-degree of fire resistance, fire separations, automatic fire detection, fail-safe fuel system design features, ventilation features, and many other safety details. Siemens’ FireFinder XLS fire panel will provide fire protection systems monitoring, building occupant notification, and graphic annunciators for critical information to first responders. The fire alarm control panel and system devices serve as a City of Chicago “Class I” zoned general evacuation fire alarm system.
In addition, an APOGEE building automation system from Siemens will also be integrated with the O’Hare Communications Center for direct communications with the facility’s various building systems.
“Jensen Hughes had to really think outside of the box to address some of toughest fire safety building codes in the country,” says Brad Haeberle, Vice President, Solution and Service Portfolio, Siemens Building Technologies Division. “I’m proud that our FireFinder XLS fire panel was instrumental in helping tie it all together. Congratulations on a job well done, Jensen Hughes!”
Siemens would also like to thank the judges for reviewing this year’s submissions: Dr. James Milke, Chair of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering and Professor at the University of Maryland; Dr. Albert Simeoni Professor and Department Head at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Mass.); Andy King, Assistant Chief and Fire Marshal for the City of Franklin, Tenn., and Vice Chair for the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), Fire and Life Safety Section and for the International Code Council Fire Code Action Committee; and Chris Jelenewicz, Senior Manager for Engineering Practice at Society of Fire Protection Engineers and Technical Editor of SFPE’s Fire Protection Engineering magazine.
Siemens’ annual Engineering Innovation Award recognizes consulting specifying engineering firms that have incorporated Siemens fire and life safety technologies into an innovative design that solved a customer’s difficult challenge or advanced the use of technology in this field. Examples of innovation may range from new applications of existing technology, to cost-effective design solutions, to meeting unique building or construction requirements. An external panel of experts in the fire protection industry selects the winner from the applications received each year. The award is part of Siemens’ EngineeringAdvantage™ program.