If your warehouse or distribution center is anything like the typical warehouse or DC, it’s likely undergone a lot of changes in recent years. For instance, maybe you’re storing different types of products than you used to or you’ve overhauled your storage layout to take better advantage of vertical space. And chances are, you’ve automated some or even all of your processes, incorporating automated storage systems or robots into the operation to offset the shortage of workers.
While automation can go a long way toward improving operations, it can also create problems. That’s because many times, warehouse operators get caught up in the complexities of choosing the right technologies and neglect to update the fire safety systems that protect their equipment, their inventory, and the people working there. So how can supply chain managers make sure their facilities are adequately protected?
Tracey Bellamy has some thoughts. He is the chief engineering officer at Telgian Engineering and Consulting, a fire-protection company that helps warehouse operators understand the complex fire-protection requirements associated with their facilities. Telgian helps clients determine the appropriate hazard and commodity classifications for stored items and design appropriate fire suppression systems to help protect lives and property.
Bellamy himself has more than 30 years of experience in the fire-protection industry. He is active within the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and represents Telgian on a number of NFPA technical committees. A registered Professional Fire Protection and Civil Engineer, Bellamy is a graduate of the University of South Carolina with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in civil engineering. He also holds an advanced graduate certificate in fire-protection engineering from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
He spoke recently with DC Velocity Senior News Editor Ben Ames on an episode of the “Logistics Matters” podcast.
Q: Warehouses have rushed to install advanced technologies like automated storage and retrieval systems in recent years, raising concerns that their legacy fire-protection systems, which were developed for more traditional, manual operations, may no longer be adequate. Could you explain why that is a concern?
A: Our legacy fire-protection requirements for sprinklers come from what is known as NFPA 13. It’s the most prevalent worldwide standard for sprinkler protection. And that fire-protection standard was developed some 50 years ago, when fire tests were run to evaluate what was needed to protect facilities. Among other things, it was based on palletized loads, so you had a four- by four-foot cubed palletized load of product with space between the pallets, and limited storage heights.
When we look at the warehouses of today, we see equipment like AS/RS, or automated storage and retrieval systems. The arrangement of the products in storage is different, as we have very limited fluid spaces, a significant increase in the burning surface area of materials being stored, and much smaller units made up of totes or things like that. So the fire hazard has changed dramatically with respect to what we’re trying to protect.
I like to compare it to preparing a dish from a recipe. If we change the ingredients or the cooking method, we don’t get the same results. And that’s what’s happening with our storage facilities. We’re doing things significantly differently than we did before. We are taking our legacy standards and are trying to shoehorn the facilities into that standard, and we come out with a protection system that just does not fit.
Q: Yes, that makes sense. Does the problem lie mainly with AS/RS systems or are there other types of automated equipment that present similar challenges?
A: We have to try to look at it against those palletized loads that were originally tested. There are some modern automated facilities where the material handling process is very similar to what was done previously with palletized loads. So we have to make some logical decisions—does this fit the standard or doesn’t it?
I think there are opportunities for protection with conventional, older methods of protection associated with NFPA 13 in those circumstances. But our world is no longer just about delivering palletized loads of product; instead, we see more handling of individual items. We’re seeing more smaller loads, such as mini-load and top-loading type systems. And many of our systems are changing even beyond what we consider to be common systems today. I think the material handling folks are coming up with more ingenious, efficient methods to try and store more product, deliver faster speeds, and things like that. So we in fire prevention are constantly in a state of trying to catch up with the industry.
Q: What about the products being stored on those pallets or in those automated storage systems? Have they changed over the years?
A: I think one of the things that has changed our industry dramatically over the years is the introduction of plastics and synthetic materials. When we look at a plastic, we refer to “Group A” plastics typically. It’s a variety of plastics that reacts similarly to a hydrocarbon. They’re a very high rate-of-heat-release material. That doesn’t just include the materials that we store, though; it also includes the containers that we use to store them. We’re starting to see many of these facilities operate with plastic containers and totes. And as we see that, we increase the fuel load. For example, even though we may be storing a metal product, if it is stored in a plastic container, we will view that plastic container as the fire hazard.
In addition, a lot of our products used to be made of materials that were mostly ordinary combustibles—cotton batting, pillows, and things like that. Now, everything is a foam plastic that has significantly increased the fire loads.
We see facilities that were purpose-built for a particular item that might have once been made out of ordinary combustible materials, such as wood or paper. But then plastics were slowly introduced to a facility whose fire-prevention system was not designed to handle them. And we do not go back and adjust our protection systems to address those plastics and don’t even recognize that we are, in fact, increasing the hazard dramatically.
Q: Given those challenges, can you share some best practices for fire prevention and protection?
A: One of the first things that I think we need to do from a facility standpoint is to recognize what the hazard is. As I get involved in a project, I purposely ask what is it that they intend to store. Many times the answer that I get back is, “stuff”—“We store stuff.” And of course, that doesn’t provide much insight. So I dig a little deeper and ask what types of stuff? And the answer I get usually is, “just regular stuff.” Most folks understand their product in terms of what it is but don’t understand how to tell me what the **ital{hazard} is. It’s a little like me going to the doctor with chest pains and then not telling them I have chest pains so that they can properly treat me.
So we have to try to dig deeper to figure out what is the hazard within the facility. And not just today, but what about longevity for the facility? Many times, you have a facility that is purpose-built for a particular use today, but that might change. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems I face—trying to extract enough information to feel comfortable that we have identified the true hazard associated with the facility.
Once we figure out that hazard, we need to determine the appropriate protection system. Even though we’ve outpaced our legacy NFPA 13 standards, one of the things that we really want to delve into more deeply is truly understanding the hazard not just from reading the standard, but by testing. We need to understand what we are facing in terms of risk, and the best way to do that is by conducting large-scale fire tests. When we’re confident we truly understand what the hazard is, we can purpose-design the protection to fit that hazard—so it’s neither over-protected nor under-protected. There’s an efficiency thing here in terms of value to design the protection to the hazard in the most economical way.
