The Firestop Academy, a forum for Professionals, Academician, Authorities and Industry Experts to interact and disseminate knowledge on various aspects of Fire safety with relevant stakeholders with intent to increase awareness on the ‘Importance of Passive Fire Protection in Built Environment’ with a vision to make this as one source of information of all passive fire protection initiatives.

The initiative was launched in India four years ago with the vision to make this as the single source of information on the topic. The academy saw its light through the first Annual Conference in 2022 and since then has taken steady strides to create significant impact with the stakeholders.

It continued the journey with the second Annual Conference on 1st September, 2023 at India Habitat Center, New Delhi.

Conferenc e saw presenc e and participation of diverse audience from different parts of the country and from multiple disciplines of construction segment. There was participation from some of the key stakeholders from the industry who contributed by exchange of their enriched experience during the day. It was a day full of learning and knowledge exchange.

Mr. Ashish Mittal, Vice President - Engineering, Hilti India Pvt. Ltd. welcomed the audience and set the context for the day. He summarized the initiative and the progress in terms of the different activities, developments happened in the last one year in codes landscape.

Dr. Devendra Kumar Shami, Advisor – Fire Engineering, DLF & Advisory Board Member, The Firestop Academy, (former Fire Adviser, Govt. of India & Director NFSC) shared his rich experience in the industry and how he has seen the understanding changing in the passive fire industry, and share same perspective as how the importance of passive fire and firestop systems in place through more engaging platforms like “Firestop Academy” He highlighted on the importance of compartmentation to save life and assets and how every stakeholder is responsible to ensure this.

Mr. Sandeep Goel - Director, Proion Consultants & Advisory Board Member, The Firestop Academy, highlighted the concept of compartmentation and explained the intricacy associated with the topic in very lucid form. He also touched base on the important clauses from the National Building Code in this regard. He also shared his insight and perspective from the Advisory Board and how the academy can be an enabler to create more detailing guidelines and evolve as a body for representation in BIS in improving the Codes landscape.

Mr. Lalit M. Pandey, Principal Consultant, L.M. Design, spoke on the aspect of passive fire protection for building facades and highlighted on the new national standard developed in this regard for the knowledge of all present.

Mrs. Kamalika Kundu, Codes & Approval Manager, Hilti Asia Pacific, spoke about Firestopping - Right selection, specification, execution, and inspection of tested firestop systems, use appropriate tested firestop assemblies as required by codes and standards, right Installation by trained/ certified installers with Proper documentation and maintenance.

This was followed by couple of sessions on case studies by Mr. Lalit Bharadwaj, Asst. Vice President, MEP – Projects, DLF Home Developers Limited who spoke in detail their approach towards setting up robust guidelines through specification for selection of right firestop solution and also covered an project example & Mr. Waibhav Kumar National Fire Service College (Nagpur) (Alumni) & Member of The Institution of Fire Engineers (UK), through his rich background spoke about the aspects of NBC that are still to be looked into to have a more robust guidelines / codes for safer built environment.

We had an engaging panel discussion towards the end of the day with rich experience panelist like, Dr. Gaurav Shrivastava, Associate Professor @IIT Gandhinagar, Mr. Suresh Shanmugam - Engineering Head – Built Environment along with the speakers.

The session provided a great platform for like-minded stakeholders to interact, learn and exchange ideas and disseminate further knowledge on the topic, thereby paving the way to make construction better and contribute to a better built environment.

The event was managed by Revered Media, a unit of CE&CR.