Episode 310: Bridging the Gap Between Fire Engineering and the Fire Service with Fiona Perrin

Episode notes

What happens when the people who design buildings and the firefighters who respond to emergencies inside them stop talking to each other?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, Fiona Perrin - Principal Risk Engineer for Zurich Insurance - shares her perspective on the critical relationship between fire engineers and the fire service.

Drawing on experience in both the United Kingdom and Australia, she explains how the Institution of Fire Engineers brings together professionals across the fire ecosystem to strengthen collaboration and professional learning.

The conversation explores how building design decisions affect emergency response, from complex facilities like airports to emerging risks such as EV charging infrastructure. Fiona also speaks candidly about the importance of mentorship, visibility, and workplace support for women in fire engineering.

Her message is simple but powerful. Do not doubt yourself. Step up to the next challenge and keep moving forward.

So take a listen to hear what she has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 2:41 Fiona's path and Women in Fire Engineering
3. 5:54 Why engineers and firefighters need to talk
4. 8:44 Spotlighting women in fire engineering
5. 11:28 Recruiting and retaining women
6. 14:09 Risk engineering at Zurich
7. 16:27 Proactive safety measures
8. 17:46 Where the IFE is heading
9. 19:35 Words to live by

Questions answered in this episode

What is the Institution of Fire Engineers and where did it originate?

Fiona Perrin explains that the IFE is quite an old organization that stems back from the middle of last century, originating in the UK. In Australia, about 80% of members are fire and rescue personnel or former fire and rescue, both operational and on the fire safety side, with a very small percentage of fire engineers.

Hear it at 2:26

Why does the IFE focus on being a nexus between fire engineering and fire service?

Fiona Perrin says fire engineers design buildings that fire and rescue personnel will be going into, including hydrant placements and width of access for trucks. The IFE brings together all facets of the industry to discuss real issues affecting everybody, not just technical topics like fire doors.

Hear it at 2:26

What are the top three causes of fires in commercial buildings according to Zurich insurance?

Fiona Perrin says the big three causes are hot works, electrical faults, and arson. These can be addressed through prevention measures like regular thermography scanning for electrical heat spots, good hot works procedures with fire watch, and security measures for vacant buildings.

Hear it at 16:53

How does risk engineering for insurance differ from building code compliance?

Fiona Perrin explains that building codes heavily rely on life safety to ensure everyone gets out safely, but don't go much further. Insurance risk engineering goes one step further to make sure the building doesn't burn down, using early detection, suppression, and compartmentation to prevent business interruption.

Hear it at 14:24

What challenges do women face in fire engineering and the fire service?

Fiona Perrin describes microaggressions like being asked to take minutes or make tea, and people directing conversation to male colleagues instead. Retention is difficult because fire services don't cater well to part time or job sharing for mothers with young kids. She says the amount of engineers who leave the industry before they hit 40 is astronomical.

Hear it at 8:55

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 310 transcript

Bridging the Gap Between Fire Engineering and the Fire Service with Fiona Perrin

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Fiona Perrin

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 Conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, researchers and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting into a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration, these episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. Good day, mate. On our second and final day of the IFE Conference with AFAC, You put in a lot of time and effort to make this happen. So now that it's, you know, I guess it's almost done. And then now it's really the start of this next road show chapter. So it's not really done, but how's it, how's it been going?

[1:06] Fiona Perrin: Yeah, thank goodness. I'm not doing too much of the road show. So, it's been good. I mean, it's been a real team effort, especially with Ryan and Jason putting in perhaps the larger component of it, but, you know, we wouldn't be able to do it or pull it off without an extraordinary team and we've had such a great lineup of speakers, you know, interest in our stand, lots of new member inquiries. So, yeah, we're really excited that it's going on.

[1:32] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I will say it's been really wonderful to be a piece of the puzzle of this little IFE dream team.

[1:37] Fiona Perrin: Yes.

[1:38] Kevin Sofen: And it seems like in American sports and maybe in general, there's this term called glue guy or glue girl where it's just stuff that doesn't necessarily show up in the box score of maybe scoring the goal or getting the assist, but just like make stuff happen. And you are the epitome of the glue to all this happening. So thank you.

[1:57] Fiona Perrin: Oh, that you're very kind, but yeah, I try and find the stuff that's not getting done and just do it.

[2:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well, bless your heart. It's great. And so for just to kind of like a 30,000 foot view of maybe people who are kind of continuing to learn about, you know, what is the institution of fire engineers? You know, what brought you to not only join, but now kind of serve as a board member and all your different hats. Give me a little high level of what is IFE and what does IFE do?

[2:26] Fiona Perrin: That's a good question. We are quite an old organization. So we stem back from middle of last century, originating in the UK. And that's actually where I got involved with the IFE. So I spent about 20 years living in London and that's where I did my fire engineering degree. So I joined initially as a student and became really empowered by some of the amazing people I was meeting through the IFE events. I then, with another close friend of mine, Andrea, set up the Women in Fire Engineering Networking Group with the IFE. Within the space of a few months, we had hundreds of women join our LinkedIn group, and just coming together to share experiences, mentor, coach, support, and empower each other really. It was quite a special time and we got involved in many events like this. Exhibitions, we spoke at events and really reached out to other people in the wider network. When I then left London to return home to Australia after a very long time, I reached out to Ryan and said, I'd love to be involved with the IFV here. It was a bit of a shock to the system. Australia has a bigger tradition with the fire and rescue service. So the majority of our members, I should know the figures because I'm in charge of membership, but I would say probably 80% are fire and rescue personnel or former fire and rescue, both operational and sort of on the fire safety side. And so a very small percent of fire engineers, but it's been wonderful learning about what they do, challenges they face as a fire engineer, although I don't do designs anymore, but you're designing buildings to also enable the fire and rescue personnel to be able to fight the fire effectively, so whether that's hydrant placements, width of access for their trucks. It's great to be able to actually talk to them about what is it that annoys you about the way buildings are built or what can we do better as a fire engineering community. And so I've been involved with the board, well, I've just been announced my third term. So I am co-opted in and I do a lot of things. I do memberships, help a little bit with these conferences, but one of the other things I'm quite passionate about is giving back to our members in CPD as well. So we run and we call it the Ignite Webinar Series. And you've probably heard the term a lot this week, but being the nexus between the fire service and the fire industry. So having CPD sessions that bring together all facets of the industry. So it's not just another CPD on fire doors or on fire stopping or whatever it may be. It's actually real issues that are affecting everybody. So we have panel discussions talking about emerging technology. We had a very interesting and political one on firebolts. I'm not gonna get too much into the nitty-gritties of it, unless you're a bit of a fire geek, but that webinar is available on our YouTube channel, along with all of your podcasts from last year as well.

[5:47] Kevin Sofen: And soon to be all the podcasts from this year. You mentioned that term nexus, and with humans living in the built environment, at least for the foreseeable future, humans living in the built environment, various disasters or challenges happening, first responders needing to work within the built environment context. Tell me more about this dynamic of the nexus and why it's so important between the engineering and the first responder firefighting community to have this dialogue to know again, what is the building design? Why is it designed this way? How do first responders respond? You know, what is wearing PPE local? What is that experience like? What does it mean to actually carry hose link? Why is it this nexus so important to continue to ensure safety of the people and have these buildings as well as the first responders that are responding?

[6:36] Fiona Perrin: Yeah, Marianne, who I hope you'll speak to today, ran a great presentation yesterday and we're talking about the challenges of airports and airport buildings and how over time they change so much and the design changes and how actually when Van Ressie do turn up that they struggle to find the staircase or find the hydrant because none of the, you know, the plans are up to date. and the building is so complicated that it's no longer, you know, enter and find their way without knowing the building. And I think to some extent, I don't think Australia is immune and neither are other countries, but we've started to drift apart almost. I noticed in some of the fire engineering discussions yesterday, actually there were no fire and rescue personnel coming and listening to the talks, which is concerning because we're talking about designing buildings that they'll be going into. Whether it's we've become too academic and not speaking the right language for them to understand, but we need to get better at talking about subjects that actually are important. A great example is EVs. Actually, in the building context here at this lovely convention center, we noticed the placement of the EV charges were actually not very good, close to emergency exits in front of hydrants and stuff like that. So actually if the designers and the building operators came together with Fire and Rescue and actually spoke about some of these issues, I think we'd find that, you know, we wouldn't keep having them.

[8:10] Kevin Sofen: You would like to think so, but that's ultimately why we got to keep bouncing the ball and continue to have the conversations and create the dialogue between the two. And one thing you mentioned earlier in this conversation was this group you helped to spearhead with the Women in Fire Engineering. And we, that's continued to be, unfortunately it continues to be a challenge with continue to have this gender parity within the fire service as well as high engineering world. And just kind of from a high level perspective, I'm curious in sort of the status of the women in fire engineering in terms of where are we at now? What can we continue to do to elevate and in the spotlight women do an amazing thing? And why is it so important to continue to have this inclusion of women in fire engineering?

[8:55] Fiona Perrin: The first one, unfortunately, when I left the UK, a lot of the impetus behind the group kind of dissolved and there's no longer committee running the group. So it has slightly lost a bit of its momentum. Here in Australia, we don't have our own specific group because we have the Women in Firefighting group. I think you spoke to them earlier yesterday and you spoke to them last year. So they're doing amazing things, but it's still an issue. You know, whether you're a firefighter experiencing discrimination in the workplace or in the engineering or fire safety world, you know, we've all had situations where perhaps we attend a meeting, we get asked to take the minutes, or can you make the cup of tea, love, those sorts of things. And a lot of, perhaps I think the term people use now is microaggression. So they're not outwardly sexist to you, but they treat you in a different way. So when I'm with male colleagues, I might be more senior than them, but people on site will often direct their conversation towards my male colleague. requires is, I suppose, raising awareness of biases, becoming aware of your own biases, but also we need allies, in particular male allies, to speak up and say, hang on a minute, you know, I'm not the one you need to be speaking to, it's my female colleague, and calling people out for bad behavior. I spoke at Fire NZ last year, so the New Zealand conference equivalent to this, and I was on a panel discussion on the stage, and I spoke about some of the things that I'd experienced in my career. And as soon as I'd finished, every hand in the room kind of shot up and they said, oh, we're so thankful that you're talking about this because it's just not spoken about. We're still such small numbers of females. I can count on, maybe I might need three hands to count the number of female members. I think we're up to about 22 or something. So it's still so small that we're not even being heard. So we need to speak up and be listened to.

[11:02] Kevin Sofen: Well, I grew up in a matriarchal household and fortunate to have a very inspiring, wonderful mother, as well as three amazing sisters. And I do believe in the fact that women-run organizations are, in a lot of ways, run just a little bit more effectively.

[11:18] Fiona Perrin: There's lots of statistics on this, isn't there? It's just the numbers, unemotional about it.

[11:24] Kevin Sofen: And so I commend you and the continued work that you're doing to continue to beat the drums, but on top of male counterparts standing up, what is it that you see the IFE and the Australasia Fire Service and there's these organizations, I mean, what else do you think needs to be done, can be done? I mean, I'm almost, it's almost like a broken record. I'm tired of talking about this, but at the same time, there's still so much work to do. So I'm not trying to belittle that, it's more of, I want to let everyone know What needs to be done so we can move past this?

[11:58] Fiona Perrin: And there's no easy answer. So we were out at DFES's training academy the other day of the unrolling of the, unveiling of the honor roll for WA. And I was speaking to some of the academy trainers there and I was asking, oh, you know, how many female recruits are you getting through? And they said, actually, you know, we've got quite a few this round, but last round we only had two and some rounds we have none. And I said, what can we do to attract more females? and they're doing a lot. But unless there's significant female role models for young women to look up to, it's really tough. So things like, you know, interviewing more females on your podcast, having more, we try really hard to get a good share of female speakers up on the stage. But actually the fire service in particular, but also engineering disciplines are not able to retain their female staff. Can you imagine being a young mum with young kids and having to work shifts. Fire and Rescue will quite openly admit they don't cater for part-time or job sharing very well. It's not flexible unless you move into a non-operational role. I have a close friend of mine who's a fire engineer and she worked in a fairly pretty much all-male dominated company. When she became pregnant, the bosses just didn't even know what to do. They didn't even have a maternity policy. So having these things in place, being a little bit more flexible when you know working with females, making sure you can retain them is super important as well. I think the amount of engineers that leave the industry before they hit 40, I can't remember the figure, but it's astronomical.

[13:40] Kevin Sofen: So a lot there from a systemic change as well as kind of the individual person, but I think it's a call and a message to everyone of all the little things you can do. All those little standing up for other people, thinking twice about making that comment. Those all have meaning. And as opposed to just embracing that up, you know, we can't do anything. We can all do our little part on top of while continuing to beat the drum for some larger change.

[14:07] Fiona Perrin: Yeah, absolutely.

[14:09] Kevin Sofen: So you mentioned that now, I mean, you wear a few hats, not just with IFE, but you also have your day job with Zurich. What is it you've evolved from fire engineering, but now with Zurich, what do you do for them? And tell me about how that applies to fire engineering.

[14:24] Fiona Perrin: So I'm employed as a risk engineer, essentially. So we help our insured customers to manage their risks. So in the sort of property fire sense, we can go out and we can assess a building and work with that customer to improve their risk. But interestingly enough, and I'm quite famous for this, it's all about property protection for us. So I often say, I don't care about life safety. I'm about the only person in this building that doesn't care about life safety. And I say that in jest because of course we do, but we go above and beyond. The codes in this country and your country as well, they all heavily rely on life safety matters. So to ensure everyone gets out of your building safely, you can comply with the codes, but they don't go much further than that. So they sort of assume if everyone's out, the building can still burn. Well, that's not very good for the insurer. So we go one step further and say, okay, let's make sure everyone does get out, okay, but let's also make sure that your building doesn't burn down. So having early detection, perhaps suppression and compartmentation. So if you do have a fire, Let's make sure it's not too big and it doesn't interrupt your business. In one of the sessions yesterday, our colleagues from IFEE in Singapore were talking about the effect of fires in tunnels, for example, and how expensive it is to repair a tunnel, how long it can be closed for, and we talk about that as in business interruption. And that's really important. There's a lot of businesses that fail after a fire event because they just can't get back up and running quick enough in today's economy.

[16:10] Kevin Sofen: All these little variables that no one really ever thinks about until the fire happens and after the fact, which can continue to drive home the need for being proactive. And that's one thing that I admire and appreciate about the fire engineering world, but also on the public safety side, the community risk reduction side and public safety outreach and curious and any other sort of trends or initiatives you're seeing, obviously EV being a big one, but other examples of proactive safety measures. Of course, there's the follow the codes, implement the codes, but any sort of examples you can think of like the fire engineering world working with the fire service on being proactive to reduce risk.

[16:53] Fiona Perrin: I mean, I can speak from the insurance perspective, our big three, top three causes of fires in, particularly in commercial buildings. We don't insure residential buildings. It's hot works, electrical faults, and arson. They're kind of three things that actually can be worked on. There's a lot of prevention things. Whether it's regular thermography scanning, looking for heat spots in your electrics and your switchboards, having a good hot works procedure document, fire watch after the effect, All of these sort of things, or arson, it's security measures. So in particular, walking around here in Perth, I've seen a lot of vacant buildings, they're quite often a target for vandals and arsonists. So there is a lot of things people can be doing in the community to help manage those risks.

[17:51] Kevin Sofen: And now again, I'm curious, and a little bit of a path forward, it's August, almost September 2025. Looking at that logo of Institution of Fire Engineers, I'm curious, What are you most excited about with your, you know, it seems like the board can't get rid of you can't get rid of the board, you are firmly planted into the IFE leadership over the course of the next one, three, five years. I know that's a little bit of a long trajectory, but what are you excited about with where IFE is going and doing? And again, what are ways that you encourage people to maybe consider getting involved?

[18:26] Fiona Perrin: So I'm really excited. We've got a new president. So Ryan's term has finished when we've now got Jason to silver in the hot seat. And of course he brings with him a different background, you know, as a fire protection engineer, he's got different connections with the wider industry. So very excited to see what he can bring to the space. Our membership continues to grow. So I reported the AGM this year over the last three years, we've had, in fact, even in the last 12 months, we've had a larger than 10% increase in our membership numbers, which is huge. With that brings more opportunity for events. It brings us more money as well to some extent, so it enables us to run more of these fantastic events. We're hoping to run more webinars, more networking sessions. We've got our roadshow coming up, as you said, visiting a number of states over the next couple of weeks. never-ending. I'm looking forward to all the great ideas that other people bring to us that I'm not even aware of now. So yeah, if you've got an idea, if there's something you want the IFE to do, you know, hit me up, find me on LinkedIn.

[19:34] Kevin Sofen: Brilliant. And now Fiona, final thing, as the show floor seems to be opening up now, is there any favorite quote that Fiona loves or any words of wisdom that you intertwine within your role within fire engineering, your role with the IFE or just general any sort of quotes or words of wisdom that you live by.

[19:55] Fiona Perrin: I mean you know just don't doubt yourself you know perhaps we need a whole other podcast on imposter syndrome and so forth, but just, you know, really encouraging people to step up, to take on that next challenge, don't doubt yourself and, you know, just to keep smashing it. So, yeah.

[20:15] Kevin Sofen: I needed that. I appreciate that, you know, because sometimes we're running in circles and we need to kind of remind ourselves of why we're here and what we're doing and we're both right where we're supposed to be feeling. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work alongside you and Ryan and Jason and Mark and everyone and it's really the work that you're doing is very noble and important and I'm excited to keep building on it with you.

[20:36] Fiona Perrin: Oh fantastic, well we hope to have you back next year Kevin.

[20:38] Kevin Sofen: Twist my arm, I'm here in Melbourne and I'm hoping to shout out to my lovely wife who's just put in.

[20:44] Fiona Perrin: Who should be coming next time as well hopefully.

[20:46] Kevin Sofen: Yes who's just now in the process of trying to put the baby boy down you know with the 13 hour time difference it's just about bedtime right now for her and hopefully William but yeah we hope to make it back and excited to keep building alongside side to you and IFE.

[20:59] Fiona Perrin: Fantastic. Thanks, Kevin.

[21:00] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Fiona. And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.