Chapter 1

Question 1

Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ)

Answer 1

An organization, office, or individual responsible for enforcing the requirements of a code or standard, or approving equipment, materials, an installation, or a procedure.

Question 2

Design-Build

Answer 2

The use of a single organization to design and build a facility to minimize risks for the project owner. May also refer to a design-build firm.

Question 3

Design Principles

Answer 3

Guidelines applied to basic units of a project that cause the items to work together as a unified, completely finished item that serves a purpose within established parameters. Units can include the materials, concepts, and settings.

Question 4

Building Code

Answer 4

A set of rules developed by a standards organization and adopted as law by a governmental body to regulate the minimum requirements for construction, renovation, and maintenance of buildings.

Question 5

Building Permit

Answer 5

Authorization issued from the appropriate authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) before any new construction, addition, renovation, alteration, or demolition of buildings or structures occurs.

Question 6

Board of Appeals

Answer 6

Group of people, usually five to seven, with experience in fire prevention, building construction, and/or code enforcement, who are legally constituted to arbitrate differences of opinion between fire and building officials, property owners, occupants or builders.

Question 7

Fast-Track Construction

Answer 7

Strategy to reduce the overall time for completion of a project by merging the design and construction phases. Often used in conjunction with design-build.

Question 8

Preincident Survey

Answer 8

Assessment of a facility or location made before an emergency occurs, in order to prepare for an appropriate emergency response. Also known as Preplan.

Question 9

Preincident Planning

Answer 9

Act of preparing to manage an incident at a particular location or a particular type of incident before an incident occurs. Also known as Prefire Inspection, Prefire Planning, Preincident Inspection, Preincident Survey, or Preplanning.

Question 10

International Building Code (IBC)

Answer 10

Code that is dedicated to providing safety regulations for life safety, structural, and fire protection issues that occur throughout the life of a building.

Question 11

International Code Council (ICC)

Answer 11

Organization that develops the International Building Code (IBC) and the International Fire Code (IFC), for city and state adoption. Was formed by the merger of the Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) International, Inc., the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), and the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI).

Question 12

Noncombustible

Answer 12

Incapable of supporting combustion under normal circumstances.

Question 13

Fuel Load

Answer 13

The total quantity of combustible contents of a building, space, or fire area, including interior finish and trim, expressed in heat units of the equivalent weight in wood.

Question 14

Heat Release Rate (HRR)

Answer 14

(1) Total amount of heat produced or released to the atmosphere from the convective-lift phase of a fire, per unit mass of fuel consumed per unit time. (2) Heat released when a material burns, expressed in kilowatts or British Thermal Units (btu).

Question 15

Area of Refuge

Answer 15

(1) Space protected from fire in the normal means of egress either by an approved sprinkler system, separation from other spaces within the same building by smokeproof walls, or location in an adjacent building. (2) Area where persons who are unable to use stairs can temporarily wait for instructions or assistance during an emergency building evacuation.

Question 16

Setback

Answer 16

Distance from the street line to the front of a building.

Question 17

Gentrification

Answer 17

Process of restoring rundown or deteriorated properties by more affluent people, often displacing poorer residents.

Question 18

Green design

Answer 18

Incorporation of environmental principles including energy efficiency and environmentally friendly building materials into design and construction.

Question 19

Spec Building

Answer 19

Building built before securing a tenant or occupant. Spec is short for speculation.

Question 20

Aesthetics

Answer 20

Branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste.

Question 21

Conflagration

Answer 21

Large, uncontrollable fire covering a considerable area and crossing fire barriers such as streets and waterways; usually involves buildings in more than one block and causes a substantial fire loss. Forest fires can also be considered conflagrations.

Question 22

Fire Spread

Answer 22

The movement of fire from one material (source) to another (exposure). May occur within a compartment or across a break.

Question 23

Heat Transfer

Answer 23

Flow of heat from a hot substance to a cold substance; may be accomplished by convection, conduction, or radiation.

Question 24

Convection

Answer 24

Transfer of heat by the movement of heated fluids or gases, usually in an upward direction.

Question 25

Thermal Radiation

Answer 25

Transmission or transfer of heat energy, from one body to another body at a lower temperature, through intervening space by electromagnetic waves similar to radio waves or X-rays.

Question 26

Exposure

Answer 26

(1) Structures or separate parts of the fireground to which a fire could spread. (2) The heat effect from an external fire that might cause ignition of or damage to an exposed building.

Question 27

Wildland/Urban Interface

Answer 27

Line, area, or zone where an undeveloped wildland area meets a human development area.

Question 28

Combustion

Answer 28

A chemical process of oxidation that occurs at a rate fast enough to produce heat and usually light in the form of either a glow or flame.

Question 29

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Answer 29

Computer software application that relates physical features on the earth to a database to be used for mapping and analysis. The system captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that refers to or is linked to a location.

Question 30

Automatic sprinkler system is the

Answer 30

First line of defense in many buildings

Question 31

When the sprinkler system is properly designed and maintained

Answer 31

Incipient stages fires will be promptly detected and controlled

Question 32

A primary hazard of green design is

Answer 32

The tendency of components to increase the combustibility of the overall building

Question 33

Areas of refuge may include arrangements such as:

Answer 33

Stairway landing in a smoke proof enclosure
Balcony located adjacent to an exterior stair
Protected vestibule adjacent to an exit enclosure

Question 34

To the firefighter, building failure usually equates

Answer 34

To structural collapse

Question 35

There are only three primary strategies in fire incident:

Answer 35

Offensive ( life hazard, structural stability, risk “benefits outweighs risk)
Defensive ( volume of fire, structural deterioration, risk “risk outweigh benefits, structural conditions)
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