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UHSSL Fire Safety
 The
final acceptance of the new
construction at the UH Sugar Land
Campus was an ongoing process that
began in the conceptual stage of the
facility and culminated with the
issuance of a Certificate of
Occupancy for the facility. Hundreds
of man hours were spent in the
process to provide as safe a
facility as possible for the
University students, faculty, and
staff.
The fire and life safety review
process began in the conceptual
phase with a number of meetings with
design team members to establish the
codes that the building should be
designed to meet. Once the code
criteria were established plans and
specifications were developed by the
design team and forwarded to
numerous entities throughout the
University for review. This review
process typically took a minimum of
two to three full working days and
comments with code references were
returned to the design team for
discussion and implementation.
Typical comments concerned emergency
access, egress design and
protection, fire alarm product
selection, fire protection system
design, emergency lighting,
emergency signage, and a host of
other issues.
The next step in the fire and life
safety review process focused on the
detailed drawings of the fire and
life safety systems. Detailed
drawings were submitted to the Fire
Marshal’s Office for approval
concerning the fire alarm system,
the building water-based fire
protection system, and the specialty
clean agent fire suppression system
for the penthouse mechanical room.
Comments were submitted and numerous
meetings were held to discuss the
design and the installation process.
Progress walkthrough inspections and
meetings comprised the next step in
the fire and life safety acceptance
process. This was especially
difficult for this project
considering the distance from the
Main Campus to the Sugar Land
campus. As a result of these
meetings the process was either
allowed to continue or in some cases
the process was temporarily halted
while corrections or modifications
could be made.
The fourth step in the fire and life
safety acceptance process consisted
of walkthrough inspections of the
facility for life safety compliance
and the inspection and testing of
the fire alarm and fire suppression
systems for compliance. The fire
alarm testing and inspection is
usually the most time consuming due
coordinating all of the trades such
as fire alarm, elevator installers,
and fire suppression system
installers, the physical inspection
of devices for proper installation,
and the testing of each device for
function and device identifying
address labels. In addition to the
fire alarm and fire suppression
systems the following life safety
system and components of life safety
had to be inspected and tested:
emergency lighting system(s), the
back-up emergency generator , fire
zones , fire door assemblies and
locks, fire damper locations and
fire damper shutdown. This entire
process took two Fire Marshal Team
members several days to complete and
resulted in a punch-list of items
that needed correction or
modification and re-testing.
The final step was the issuing of a
Certificate of Occupancy once all of
the corrections and modifications
were completed, verified, and
tested. The issuance of the CO
verifies that the building fire and
life safety systems have been
inspected, tested, and accepted and
the building is ready for occupancy
from a fire and life safety
perspective.
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