Presentation:   Remote Inspections - In the Codes and in Practice

The presentation will provide a brief overview of the NFPA technical committee standards development process. Then two members of the NFPA 915 technical committee will discuss the history and development status of NFPA 915 Standard for Remote Inspections. In addition, our presenters will discuss their personal experiences with performing remote inspections at CU Boulder and Clark County Washington.

Guest Presenters: 

Jim Muir, Clark County Building Safety Division and NFPA 915 Technical Committee Chair

Jim Muir has been the Chief Building Official for Clark County Washington for 16 years and was previously the building official of Washington County Oregon, where he worked for 12 years.  He had a 20 year career in construction that included spray applied fire proofing, insulation, metal buildings and general contracting prior to working in the public sector.

Jim currently chairs the NFPA 915 Standard on Remote Inspections committee which was scoped as a new standard in 2019 and is now in the first draft RFP stage. Jim has been involved in codes for nearly three decades. He was on the Uniform Fire Code committee for its last edition.  Jim was a member of the NFPA Building Code Development Committee after its first meeting in 2003 and chaired that committee for about 12 years until its sunset in 2019.              

Jim is also very active in innovation, emerging technologies, and public outreach. Even though he works in Washington, he chairs the Oregon Building Officials public outreach committee.  In 2011, Clark County was presented with the ICC Raising the Profile award for outreach; they currently have a 30’ interactive trailer that has everything from an earthquake shake experience, a Rube Goldberg-like Home Hero machine, to a Pipe the Poop game.

Jim and his wife, Karen, live in Tualatin, Oregon.

Zac Niehues, University of Colorado Boulder and NFPA 915 Technical Committee Member

As Director of Engineering in Planning, Design and Construction at the University of Colorado Boulder, Zac leads technical planning, quality assurance, and code compliance for construction on campus.  He is a past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SFPE, joined the NFPA 915 technical committee in 2019, and is unabashedly proud of being a Fire Protection Engineer in the great State of Colorado.

Bob Sullivan, NFPA Southwest Regional Director. 

Bob Sullivan is NFPA’s Southwest Regional Director, assisting with code adoptions, legislative advocacy, and stakeholder engagement in the States of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.  Mr. Sullivan has over 31 years of experience serving on fire departments in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Colorado, including several years as a company officer.  Prior to coming to NFPA, he served on the Thornton Fire Department in Colorado as the Senior Fire Protection Engineer and Deputy Fire Marshal, focusing on new development construction and fire code enforcement.  He has a Master's Degree in Fire Protection Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and is a Certified Fire Protection Specialist.