2020 NFPA Technical Meeting Update

The 2020 NFPA Annual Technical Meeting (Tech Session) will be held electronically due to the global pandemic and NFPA has temporarily adjusted their procedures to allow remote debate and voting on certified amending motions - the details of when and how that will be done can be found here. NFPA has begun the debate portion of the Technical Session this past Monday, June 8 and will continue through Friday, June 19. ASHE has highlighted the three CAMs that the ASHE Advocacy Team has identified impacts to the health care field. ASHE encourages all ASHE members with current up to date NFPA memberships to register and vote. To be able to vote you must register no later than Wednesday, June 17. Voting is planned to be open from June 22-26. With the tech session going virtual for 2020, the health care field can all stay informed and vote on these key issues.

Report of the NFPA Motions Committee

ASHE’s Advocacy Team will be supporting CAMs 4-1 & 4-5 – Modification to add coordination of passive fire protection within integrated testing. ASHE believes that the need to document that the active fire protection devices coordinate with the passive fire protection elements needs to be coordinated within the integrated fire alarm testing. The proposed text would eliminate this from the document.

ASHE’s Advocacy Team will be opposing CAM 99-5 – Adding Fixtures, Furnishings and Decorations to Section 16.3 Special Hazard Protection for Flammable Liquids and Gases. These requirements are included in other standards such as NFPA 101 and are not needed to be included in this section. The proposed text would include this requirement in the above stated section which would be redundant and unnecessary.