NFPA 3 Standard for Comissioning of Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems

NFPA 3 – Standard for Commissioning of Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems
The 2012 edition of NFPA 3, Recommended Practice for Commissioning and Integrated Testing of Are Protection and Life Safety Systems, represented NFPA’s first document outlining a systematic approach to provide documented confirmation that fire protection and life safety systems function as intended by the owner and the design team. The genesis of this document was a request from the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) to provide a commissioning document for fire protection systems that would be part of a conglomeration of commissioning documents that could be used to create a total building commissioning program.

NFPA 3 addresses the administrative and procedural concepts of fire protection and life safety system commissioning and also provides direction on the integrated system tests. This document is designed to identify the commissioning team members, their qualifications, and their roles and responsibilities throughout the commissioning process.

Chapter 5 addresses the concept of commissioning from the incipient stages of a project through to the occupancy and operation of the facility. Throughout the commissioning process, there are several key documents that must be identified in the recommended practice, such as the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) and the Basis of Design (BOD), which provide direction to the commissioning team members as they are executing the commissioning plan. These documents, which are generated during the design phase, are implemented during construction.