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The AFAA Who We Are and What We Do   The AFAA has been around for over 55 years, although AFAA basically only worked within NFPA Committees for the first 35 years.  AFAA  star
Phone (973) 429-4846
Website Link Visit Link Here
Country United States of America
State/Province New Jersey

Automatic Fire Alarm Association New Jersey

The AFAA Who We Are and What We Do

 

The AFAA has been around for over 55 years, although AFAA basically only worked within NFPA Committees for the first 35 years.  AFAA  started to grow in 1987 when Larry Neibauer was hired.  Larry’s job was to grow the association by working with local companies to start Member Associations.  One of the primary goals was to be an industry watchdog on the national codes and standards.  The goals of the Member Associations are to influence local codes and standards to bring the level of the playing field up to a higher level.  Today AFAA has approximately 1000 members with 18 Member Associations, with others in either an organizational or re-organizational status.

 

Tom Hammerberg took over as President/Executive Director when Larry Neibauer passed away.  Tom has been with AFAA for over 18 years now. He started as the Training Director and has seen the peaks and the valleys of our association.  Collectively, Tom and the National Board of Directors are trying to improve our association and make being a member worthwhile.  One of the items the AFAA is actively improving is communications with our members and Member Associations.  AFAA still has a long way to go, but it already is 100% better than it was in the past.  AFAA is actively trying to improve membership benefits; a major challenge is our own membership categories, which consists of both individual and company memberships.  Each person who is a member, regardless of whether they are an individual or a company, will be able to be identified and will have benefits not available to non-members. We are still working to improve this process. 

 

One of the strongest reasons for supporting the AFAA is our involvement in the codes and standards arena.  Without AFAA‘s work, there would be a lot fewer fire ALARMS and a lot more fire SPRINKLERS in the codes, we are not against fire sprinklers, however, we believe fire protection must be balanced with detection, suppression and proper construction. The Board, our members and Tom are very active with the ICC and NFPA.  If AFAA is not there getting to know the players, and them getting to know us, and speaking in defense of fire alarms and smoke detectors, who will?  Anyone who makes a living building, installing, selling or servicing fire alarm systems needs to support AFAA if they wish to continue building, installing, selling or servicing fire alarms.  If you don’t believe this, come to the code meetings and listen to how many proposals recommend not having smoke detectors or pull stations when sprinklers are installed.  Trade offs are becoming too abundant! Life Safety has three legs, Active Detection, Active Suppression and Passive Suppression or Building Construction, the loss of any one of the legs will weaken Life Safety in America.

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Phone (973) 429-4846
Website Link Visit Link Here
Country United States of America
State/Province New Jersey
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