SFPE Europe Working Session in Switzerland

Evening entertainment at the Eurofire conference 
that followed the SFPE Europe meeting.

On the 8th of October a meeting and working session was organized by SFPE Europe in Basel, Switzerland. SFPE Europe is actually called the European Chapters Coordination Group (ECCG) and formally consists of the national chapter leaders. The group meets about 2-3 times a year and focuses on the development professional fire safety engineering in Europe.

Some reports from the meeting regarding SFPE:

• It's great to see that new chapters are formed! Most recently, there's the new student chapter formed by Edinburgh University.
• Also, it's great to see that several European countries are considering the formation of new chapters. Anyone interested, feel free to contact me!
• SFPE HQ has found a new executive director, Nicole Testa Boston, which is great! Welcome Nicole!
• The ECCG has now been formalized and there will be a one year term for the SFPE Europe president. It's now being lead by Jean-Claude de Smedt from Belgium.

The working session itself was titled "Professional recognition and qualification of fire safety engineering/engineers" and was moderated by Robert Jönsson. Last year SFPE Europe conducted a survey on the status of fire safety engineering in Europe. The results showed that fire safety engineering is progressing in Europe, but also that there are large differences in what we mean by FSE. There are also big differences in how we measure and require competence as well as qualification of practitioners. These are of course vital elements to ensure a high quality of fire safety engineering work. Below you will find the presentation I made in Switzerland at the working session and the Eurofire conference.



The presentation of the status in Europe set off a discussion about what we need in the European countries. Robert and I had prepared background information, including a lot of excellent material already being done by others. These questions has been raised before, and will again.

Some of the key conclusions were:
- There is a need for operational standards, or job descriptions, of what fire safety engineers do
- These descriptions may be matched when defining model curriculum or contents of educational programmes. See SFPE:s BSc curriculum and strategy/core competences.
- Short courses are needed for professional development of existing practitioners, and also to raise awareness and knowledge of the fire safety engineering field among other disciplines.

These are just some of the questions that SFPE Europe will continue working on. For more information, feel free to contact me!