Firestopping is a form of passive fire protection system used to seal gaps around openings and penetrations between joints in walls or floors that are designed to be fire-resistant and prevent the spread of smoke. Firestopping is also an effort proven through testing to maintain the fire resistance level of walls and other building elements.
Fire safety of buildings must be considered in all stages of building operations, including design, construction, commissioning tests, operations, and maintenance. The availability of experts including engineers in the field of fire safety and protection is a challenge in maintaining development results from fire hazards. Based on this background, Professor of the Faculty of Engineering (FT) Universitas Indonesia (UI), Prof. Ir. Yulianto S. Nugroho, M.Sc., Ph.D., together with Kamalika Kundu and Dana Lutf Ilmansyah launched a book entitled “Firestopping in Buildings”, which was launched on Wednesday (02/08) at Makara 04 Smart Meeting Room FT UI as a collaboration between the Student Chapter of Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) UI and PT Hilti Indonesia. At the book launch ceremony, invitees who play a direct role in fire safety were present offline. Hopefully, they will learn more about the firestop system to protect buildings and people from fire and smoke hazards.
In this book, which can be downloaded for free on the hilti.co.id website, Prof. Yulianto tries to answer the challenges of fire safety in buildings that can be used as a reference source to understand the definition, standard review, design and application, and inspection of fire stopping in buildings. Prof. Yulianto revealed that he discussed the importance of fire safety becoming a scientific study and part of the curriculum and research activities by FTUI Mechanical Engineering students.
“References on frestopping are relatively limited in Indonesia. Therefore, through discussions with Mr. Dana and Ms. Kamalika, we tried to present a book that is relatively easy to digest by the public. Of course, it also includes fellow students and lecturers who may be interested in this field,” said the FTUI Professor in Fire Safety Engineering.
The Dean of FTUI, Prof. Dr. Heri Hermansyah, S.T., M.Eng., IPU, revealed, “The presence of the book “Firestopping in Buildings” is an effort to increase public awareness, both from the side of planners who build or contractors and later from policy makers and friends from the Fire Department in Indonesia.”
Meanwhile, Dana Lutf Ilmansyah added that the book technically discusses passive fire protection systems by giving buildings the ability to withstand fire and smoke by compartmentalizing. “So this book will provide a kind of information to the general public and also to practitioners in the field of building and construction so that more people are more concerned about fire protection in buildings,” said the Codes & Approval Manager of PT Hilti Indonesia regarding the book, which is available for free.
With the launch of this book, the three authors hope that there will be more discussions about passive protection and can contribute to moving to the next level. Not only that, this book is expected to mitigate the importance of fire safety for the construction industry and the wider community in fire safety solutions.
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Public Communication Bureau
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia