Reaz Shakil

Mahbubur Rahman

Tajinder Singh

Saif Khan

November 04, 2019

Fire Destruction is One Man’s Job:

 Fire Prevention is Everybody’s Job!

 

Introduction:

Are you scared of death by fire? If so, rooms of the City College of New York campus must be the most dreadful place for you to be. Many rooms on campus do not have a sprinkler system installed which can be very terrifying if you are stuck within a fire. As stated by the National Fire Protection Association, “about 1,700 fires occur every year in college residence halls, classroom buildings, and fraternity and sorority houses.” (Douglas) These fires correspond to 32 deaths since 1990 and many more have occurred in college housing. Although you might be thinking that 32 within 29 years isn’t bad at all. However, Hector Montoya, “an 8-year-old Texas boy had been saving for months to buy a new Playstation 4,” but opted to use his $300 that he had saved to buy his neighbors smoke detectors. (CBSNews) He had stated that “saving a life is more important.” (Montoya). If we inherit the same mindset as Montoya, we should be trying to lower the fatalities from fire incidents to zero. Especially on campus which holds thousands of students and hundreds of professors as well as a faculty members. As indicated by the survey conducted for the efforts of making change, 36% of students stated that were not aware that many rooms on campus do not have sprinkler systems installed. Of that 46% stated that they were not aware of the presence of a sprinkler system, 95% stated that sprinklers are important within a building with 78% to 91% stating that sprinklers are important to very important. Overall, when asked if sprinkler systems should be added to all classrooms, 93% of all students surveyed stated yes. Students that enter the campus employ their safety on the campus and it is our duty to ensure that students are safe.

Action Plan: 

To begin our journey into student safety, we start with evaluating the number of rooms that currently do not have a sprinkler system installed within the Shepard Hall. We begin with Shepard Hall because it is one of the oldest buildings on campus with a relatively high number of classrooms. Since Shepard Hall is an older building, it is more prone to damage and deterioration in the occurrence of a fire. As we examine the rooms for sprinkler systems, we also determine the layout of the room. The layout helps use to determine the numbers and dimensions of the sprinklers that will be both cost efficient and structurally stable. The normal layout of many classrooms in this building is off 20X20, as shown in figure 1. Some are 20X30 but 20X20 is the most popular room layout for the classrooms. Having the layout, we begin to determine the approximate number of sprinklers that should be installed in all classrooms. The AutoCAD layout with sprinkler dimensions is shown below in figure 2. The sprinklers are spaced 7 feet from each corner. Depending on the sprinkler, the radius of the water dispersal will cover a distance of radius 7-10 feet. For the sprinkler that we have chosen for the efficient price, the sprinkler will cover a distance of radius seven feet.

Now that the sprinkler system for classrooms of the Shepard Hall have been set up, our next goal is to implement sprinklers in some rooms of the NAC building that pose the greatest threat to students. The rooms that are very small and have only one door and no windows. These rooms are available on every floor of the building and cover the same area on each floor which is the center of each section of the building. This helps us be more cost efficient as we can have water pipes running laterally in the area of the rooms instead of having to scatter them around the building. Scattering them will require greater pipes and labor, thus more money. Figure 3 shows the layout of rooms that need urgently needs a sprinkler system. These rooms are typically, 10X20 feet and include one door and no windows.

As seen from Figure 4, only one sprinkler is required in this room. The piping can extend vertically upwards and laterally into each room. This method is economically efficient as we will be saving the labor and extra material for piping.

Having these plans made, we visit ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) as support to campaign for the addition of sprinkler within Shepard Hall and the NAC Building. Having their knowledge as civil engineering students and experience as a club on our side, we can begin to make change.

Costs and Benefits:

First and foremost, very little can be done in the five boroughs without pulling a permit through the Department of Buildings. So how is this possible? Well it can be the most cost effective way for us to find a company or corporation that already has a mechanical engineer or an architect on their team, since only these two professions generally pull permits from the state; therefore they will pull the permit and do the job altogether, rather than paying for the permit and labor separately.

 

• Retrofits: You can install sprinklers in an existing property or business for an estimated cost of $2 to $7 per sprinklered square foot. A retrofitted high-rise typically costs $2 to $4 per sprinklered square foot.
• Historic building: Due to the strict design standards required to maintain a historic building’s aesthetics, installing a sprinkler system here could cost up to $10 per sprinklered square foot.
• Plastic: This is the most affordable type of piping used in sprinkler systems. Install plastic pipes whenever possible to keep installation costs down, as well as future repair cost since plastic erodes much slower than cast iron possibly rusting.

Benefits:

• The sprinkler makes it safe and reduce the amount of people to be in danger in case of fire. The National Fire Protection Association has the least amount of death rates in a fire when the building had a functional sprinkler system in place. These fire protection services save lives and can help those evacuating get out of the building safely.
• The sprinkler system can minimize the damage to the building.
• Sprinkler system gives protection from a fire and it costs less in the long run in case of fire events in the future. The sprinkler are cost efficient and creates a safer environment to work with.
• Once installed, fire sprinkler systems are actually relatively low maintenance. They only require inspections on an annual basis to determine their functionality, but other than that they can last upwards of 20 years without any major repairs or upgrades needed.

 

Upon visiting the Office of Facilities Management website for the City College of New York, we found that in 2018, 38 out of the 43 projects that was ongoing was funded by the DASNY (Dormitory Authority of the State of New York). The lowest funded budget (not estimated budget) of which was 200 thousand dollars to renovate the library archive room; and the highest of which was over 20 million dollars in planning of mechanical upgrades at Steinman Hall.

In total, the estimated budget for all pre-planned, planned, ongoing construction and renovations, as well as completed projects motioned for a total of 301 million dollars and the funded budget for those projects 284 million dollars.

As we know from our research and survey, to start off on Shepard Hall, it would cost roughly around $250,000 at the rate of $1.35 per square footage for classrooms and hallways. On the low end, that would entail 160,000 (see calculations in appendix) square feet of workable sprinkler mains and sprinkler heads; a very reasonable amount for such a building spanning more than an acre.

 

Team/Personnel/Bio: 

Reaz Shakil is a sophomore at the City College of New York. Majoring in  Computer Science. He took java and C++ is something that he learned on his own. Volunteer experience in the IT department in The City College Of New York. Experience managing business office. He can use Excel, Microsoft Word, and Photoshop. Group project that He did in John Dewey high school was to create a program that can solve basic calculus problem. He has experience of working in a company where he had to create a program to organize some of the company’s important files. In John Dewey high school He was team leader in AI club, he successfully managed to work with other students built a strong friendship bonds with them and gain some leadership skills.

Saif Khan is an aspiring Mechanical Engineer(ME) attending The Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York. Being a sophomore, he still has some two plus years until his Bachelor’s degree-which is the minimum requirement for his career choice. Until then, he has and will continue to strive in learning new things that could give him an upperhand post graduation. For example, he worked with Kishan’s Plumbing and Heating located in Jamaica Queens for some time. Knowing how to set up PVC pipes at the right pitch and back flows for bathrooms and sewer mains are extremely important, because the last two years of his college degree education includes the studies of such factors by the books; therefore his hands on experience is considered a plus one, which will make his studies easier to grasp. Focused in the real estate industry, he one day dreams of opening his own company whether it be plumbing, electrical, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), or any other aspects in the  Department of Buildings (DOB) and housing. This is possible and likely because of the career he has chosen because ME’s have the mobility and are qualified to move between almost any given trades-mechanics, construction, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and the list goes on and on; therefore the opportunities are endless.

Mahbubur Rahman is an ambitious student attending The Grove School of Engineering in Chemical Engineer(ChE) majoring at The City College of New York. This is his second year at CCNY. Before attending here, he got his High School Diploma from Bronx Bridges High School in 2018. He is now a full-time college student with having a part-time job which he takes care on weekends. On his childhood, he aimed to be an Aeronautical Engineer. Later, when he got in touch with Chemistry, he loved it. A new goal added to his mind to be a Chemical Engineer. He wanted to majoring in Aeronautical Engineer but he couldn’t find a place to go as it is very rare and no public school offers that in New York State. He took his second choice, and now he wants to finish his bachelors in ChE. Later, either he wants to have a job, or he will start his own business. For example, he knows how a food store runs since he is working on a fast food restaurant for three years where he can manage register, money counting, assigning employee, place food orders, make inventory reports etc. To gain knowledge about business, he worked on gas station as a cashier, he worked on GNC Live Well as a retail sales associate, he worked on RCC as a host. He is an active athlete. He loves to play Cricket, Soccer, Badminton, Table-tennis, Volleyball. He was his high school’s table-tennis team captain, and he managed to take his team in the semi-final on PSAL in 2017, also he played Mayor Cup in 2017. He also likes to travel. In fact, he wants to travel the whole world.

Tajinder Singh is a determined civil engineering student at The City College of New York. He had previously gone to Thomas A. Edison High School where Tajinder took classes teaching manual drafting, AutoCAD and Revit. He has also shown extensive learning and knowledge about the two programs (AutoCAD and Revit) by taking and passing the certification examination for both. These were the AutoCAD Certified User and Revit Certified User certifications. During his years in High School, he took part in the ACE Mentoring Program. Within this program, he learned about the different fields of construction such as architecture, structural, geotechnical, and MEP. He then went onto work with structural engineering at Thornton Tomasetti to create a design for a ferry terminal in lower Manhattan. Not only was he able to learn about the fields, but also witness and experience how they work together. As the end project, he worked with other groups that were involved in other fields and communicated with them to regarding details or questions. Tajinder had previously taken Engineering 101 where he learned about loads and material properties. Using this knowledge, he worked with a group to create a model for a bridge. He is now taking a course in Structural Site Planning during which he learns about the construction of buildings and how to read an architecture and engineer plans.

 

Conclusion:

There are many things to consider when it comes to such a large scale project-proposal. So much pre-planning, and labor as well. However,  my team and I would like to emphasize, how imperative it is for us to act now before an unfortunate loss due to a fire that we could have controlled if we had a full sprinkler system, and not just the partially existing sprinkler system. In the scope of Shepard Hall, as the price range was mentioned earlier, and yes this may seem like a lot of money; but we need to consider the importance of this project-proposal. Shepard Hall is the oldest and most historic University building in the country, an architectural wonder of all the City Universities of New York, and if we can sum budget over 250 million dollars for other renovations, we urge the board to strongly consider this proposal as it is better to be safe than sorry in sparring roughly $250,000 to start this preventative measure we hope to undertake.

 

Citations: 

Ellsworth, D. (2013, March 12). A Need for Change. Retrieved from https://www.asumag.com/fire-amp-life-safety/need-change.

 

Izzo, N. (2019, March 12). Breaking: Fire at CCNY’s The Towers – No Injuries Sustained, Residents Evacuated. Retrieved from http://www.ccnycampus.org/2019/03/breaking-fire-at-ccnys-the-towers-no-injuries-sustained-residents-evacuated/.

 

Morena, P. (2018, October). 2018 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/safety/upload/CCNY-ASR2018.pdf.

 

Texas boy, 8, buys smoke detectors instead of PS4. (2014, April 21). Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-boy-8-buys-smoke-detectors-instead-of-ps4/.