The purpose of New Zealand Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers is to:

To advance the science and practice of fire protection engineering and its allied fields, to maintain a high ethical standard among its members, to develop fire protection engineering guidelines and standards and to foster fire protection engineering education.

In accomplishing this purpose, the Society engages in activities that are educational, scientific, charitable or promote the practice of fire protection engineering. Please see our news and events pages or follow us on twitter to find out more.

The New Zealand chapter of the SFPE is the fire engineering Technical Group of Engineering New Zealand and a Chapter of the international Society of Fire Protection Engineers with headquarters located in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Engineering New Zealand works with Technical Interest Groups, to provide targeted information about specific engineering fields, or areas of interest to Members.

History

The NZ Chapter of SFPE was formed in 1994. The formation was largely in response to the introduction of a set of performance based legislation covering environmental protection, construction, and worker safety, mandating the performance requirements but also allowing more or less prescriptive solutions. Under the NZ Building Act “Acceptable Solutions” deemed to comply with the legislation. “Alternate Solutions” that use specific fire engineering are normally used where they offer significant project cost savings over a design complying with the acceptable solutions. This legislative change created new fire engineering opportunities for professional engineers, which has resulted in an increase in the numbers of practitioners and an increase in the membership of SFPE in New Zealand.

The NZ Chapter of SFPE operates within the ethical and constitutional frameworks of both parent organisations.

Code of Ethics

The New Zealand Chapter of the SFPE is bound by both the code of ethics of the SFPE parent organisation and that of Engineering New Zealand for which it is the Technical Interest Group for matters of Fire Engineering. These ethical objectives align well and are set out in full in the links below;

SFPE Code of Ethics

ENZ Code of Ethical Conduct

Constitution

The following link leads to the SFPE NZ Chapter Constitution this was published on the 3rd November 1998.

Executive Committee

Daryn Glasgow

CPEng, CMEngNZ, MSFPE, MIFE

President

Daryn is a Technical Fellow at Beca Ltd, based in Auckland New Zealand, and leading performance based fire engineering design for projects across the Asia/Pacific region. He has nine years’ experience as a consulting fire engineer, and prior to that was in the NZ Fire Service for 12 years with roles in operational firefighting, command, and engineering review. Daryn is committed to enhancing and evolving fire regulation and practice in NZ to reflect our potential to lead the world in performance based fire engineering design, controls, and construction.

Martin Feeney

CPEng FIPENZ FSFPE

Secretary

Martin is a Fellow of the SFPE and a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand for his contribution to the advancement of engineering practice. His contribution to development of the field of fire engineering, and particularly his leadership in developing guidelines setting out good practice have been of particular value. He has shared his knowledge willingly for the benefit of others through his extended service to the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, which included time as both President and Secretary.

John Davidson

AIPENZ, MSFPE

Treasurer

John has been on the SFPE Executive Committee for more than six years and has served as treasurer for the last three of that. His career has been driven by fire, commencing with Wormald in 1972, covering all aspects of active fire systems. The last 11 years spent as a fire engineer at Macdonald Barnett Partners. John is passionate about fire safety because “the difference between fire systems and everything else is that they are not easily tested but have to work right at the first call as there is seldom a second chance.”

Michael James

M(Fire)E BEMech NZCE(HVAC) CPEng PMSFPE

Immediate Past President

Mike is the managing Director of Pacific Consultants and has been on the SFPE Executive Committee for many years. His SFPE activities are focused on the FireNZ conference and liaising with Standards NZ.

Committee

Greg North

Having previously worked as a fire engineer in England and Sweden, Greg is now a Senior Associate Fire Engineer at Beca, based in Dunedin. He is a member of the FPANZ Passive Fire Special Interest Group, regularly presents on fire safety design and construction matters, is a practise area assessor for Engineering NZ and in late 2018, won the SFPE (NZ) President's Award for contributions to the New Zealand fire engineering industry.

Robert Peart

NZCE(Mech) CPEng, CMEngNZ, PMSFPE

Robert is the fire engineer for Fire Consultants. Robert has over 35 years’ experience in the fire engineering sector. Robert originally practiced in the fire protection sector and then changed to the fire safety sector in the 1990’s. He has worked as the senior fire engineer for Norman Disney & Young and for Lincolne Scott. Robert is a keen promoter of the fire engineering profession and is pleased to mentor upcoming fire engineers when asked to do so.

Jeff Parkinson

General Manager of Crossfire, Fire Engineering Consultants, Auckland with 20+ years’ experience working in the fire sector. Previously a UK fire officer and a fire engineer with FENZ (2009-2012) and for the last 5 years as a consultant fire engineer with Crossfire, based in Auckland.