RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Uptime Institute advisory on Fire Suppression

Uptime Institute recently announced plans to issue an advisory about the use of inert gas fire-suppression systems. We expect this advisory to be extremely timely and useful in light of recent reports of downtime incidents caused by the inadvertent discharge of these systems.

As part of our effort, Pitt Turner and Kevin Heslin conducted a virtual roundtable of end users drawn from the Inside Track community. During the roundtable, which was held on March 7, 2018, these end users shared perspectives and experiences with fire suppression, especially inert gas systems. We found this topic to be surprisingly complex, as fire suppression is not the only driver of system selection and the facility owner is not the only stakeholder in the process. These drivers include Risk Management considerations, insurance and underwriter demands, AHJ requirements, budget, and, in the case of hosting providers, marketing pressures.

During the session, attendees noted that even the risk of fire could be practically eliminated by strict adherence to “house” rules, training, and proper construction and siting practices. Accordingly, only one attendee had experienced a fire while at least four had experienced an inadvertent discharge of the fire-suppression system. In addition, almost half had successfully deployed a “just say no” strategy to inert gas. That is, the attendees had been able to persuade internal or external customers to use an option other than inert gas.