Hands-On Workshop Prepares Students to Design for Compliance

In a series of hands-on workshops hosted in the “Water Based Fire Protection Systems Design” undergraduate course, students learn to develop fire suppression systems from concept to commercialization in a unique setting that models regulatory processes.

The course, which is taught by Adjunct Lecturer Mark Hopkins, engineering director at SUMMIT Fire Consulting, brings in two seasoned engineers from mechanical piping solutions firm Victaulic Company: Len Swantek, consultant for global regulatory compliance and Kevin Kelly, codes and standards specialist for one week each year to teach the Regulatory Compliance Workshop, which the team created in 2018.

Identifying a Need in Fire Protection Engineering Education

While some higher education institutions have developed curricula focused on fire protection system design and building codes, many still lack dedicated courses on product testing and agency certification, which led to Swantek and Kelly developing “Victaulic’s Regulatory Compliance Workshop,” which trains students on the importance of integrating certifying agency performance requirements throughout each stage of the product development process.

With the goal of transferring new skills to fire protection engineering students, the workshop is conducted in teams of up to six students, who spend five days working on real-world fire industry problem scenarios to develop a technical solution that is judged by Victaulic regulatory professionals and department faculty.

Swantek says that their workshop supplements the ENFP-310 curriculum with critical learning specific to how each step in the product development process must be carefully integrated with the certifying agency test requirements.

“In parallel, the workshop is designed to provide students with real-world experience in actual fire protection industry roles in which they may someday be employed as their full-time career,” said Swantek.

With student and faculty input and feedback, he says that they plan to continue developing the program well into the future.

Getting Their Hands Dirty with a Real-World Challenge

Once the teams are formed, students are placed in real-world scenarios with fictional characters and titles, building names and site locations, with challenges ranging from conflict between opposing parties, product malfunction, potential code violations or system design problems. Once the challenge has been established, the workshop instructors provide student teams with a range of information—and the students must discern what pieces are relevant to their solution.

During the hands-on portion, students are provided with actual fire protection products, measurement tools and gauges necessary to disassemble the product and conduct any required analysis, recording critical dimensions and making thoughtful observations. Because the challenges are based on actual case scenarios, the commercial and legal implications of their solutions, along with looming deadlines, set a high-pressure environment for the students to carefully think through their problem-solving methodology.

Students like Jillian Tamayo ’27 reported having a great experience with the workshop, especially as a junior who’s starting to think about full time employment after graduation.

“The scenarios given were unique and realistic but could also be solved in a multitude of ways that encouraged us to be innovative. Len and Kevin were great at encouraging us to consider different factors that might be present and how they may challenge what we previously thought about our solutions,” said Tamayo.

Published July 9, 2026