It begins with the need for firefighters. Today’s firefighters wear many hats. Hats for rescue, extrication, emergency medical care, hazardous materials technician, and life safety inspector, just to name a few.  Wearing all these hats, the firefighter provides an effective, cost efficient service to the public. Keeping this efficiency, and keeping firefighters at peak performance is the goal of training, and 3-D live fire burn buildings are a vital part of such training.  Take time to consider all of your available options by taking these points into consideration. Turn this vital training aid into a long-term asset with proper care and attention.

• Take time to research. Take advantage of the time to explore all the avenues and ideas.
• Ensure you know what temperature the structure is seeing at all times.
• Be familiar with the guidelines of NFPA 1402 and 1403.
• Get a professional engineer with burn building experience to survey your structure.
• Think about preventative maintenance.
• Talk to the Fire Department and training facilities that have burn buildings.  They are only a phone call away. Ask them some of these questions:
  • What has or has not worked for them?
  • What would they do differently?
  • What was the cost of their burn building?
  • How much are the maintenance and usage costs?
  • What are the related downtime costs?
  • What type of construction and materials were used?
  • How long has it been in service?
  • How often do they burn in it a year and how many times a day?
  • What type of burning are they doing?
  • What is the average duration of a burn?
  • What size and how many stories is the burn building?
• Keep an eye on fire/rescue conferences and expositions.
• How versatile and multi-functional is the design of your burn building?