The Fire Protection Podcast : Episode #50 – What’s new at the AFSA with Bob Caputo

Drew Slocum: :
This is episode 50 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guest is Bob Caputo of the American Fire Sprinkler Association, AFSA. It’s crazy. This is episode 50 already. I haven’t put out a few this year, but a lot more on the docket with the Fire Protection Podcast, and great to kick off episode 50 with Bob. We have an upcoming AFSA convention in early September, which is really cool to promote. And we’ll be there, Inspect Point and the Fire Protection Podcast. And so and obviously all the vendors, it’s one of the, it’s the, like Bob says in the episode, it’s the biggest fire sprinkler show in the entire world, which is really cool to kinda be involved with.

 Bob’s mainstay in the fire protection industry is really cool to get his take on a bunch of different topics and kind of the trend of the industry toward that recurring revenue inspection and service kind of business. And then obviously getting into Bob’s background and where he came from, where he cut his teeth, and it was really good to chat with him. So hopefully, like the episode and subscribe, and we’ll see you at AFSA here in early September and onto the podcast. Thanks. All right. All right. Thanks, Bob, for joining the Fire Protection Podcast today. What is the temperature down there today?

Bob Caputo::
Well, I’m in Dallas, and it’s only about 103 <laugh>. It’s been a very hot summer.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. I, I forgot I was talking to somebody in Austin, and they’ve had like record days above a hundred degrees or something. 

Bob Caputo::
My home is now in the Phoenix area, so it’s only, it’s only cooler here than it is at home. <Laugh>, my wife, my wife keeps asking why we moved from Carlsbad Seaside to 70-some-odd degrees, 73 degrees today. 

Drew Slocum: :
Oh, man. What were you doing? What were, what were you doing out in Carlsbad? Who were you working for?

Bob Caputo::
I owned my own company there, consolidated Fire Protection, and my brother. Oh, wow. My brother John still owns a small sprinkler company in the San Diego County area, Vista, California.

Drew Slocum: :
Oh, nice. Nice.

Bob Caputo::
Two of my four kids are still there.

Drew Slocum: :
Wow. Wow. So I guess let’s go back to your background. Start beginning where, yeah, how’d you? Weirdly enough, I always wanna know how people got into fire protection. Right.

Bob Caputo::
Well, interestingly, you know, I’ve been in fire protection since dinosaurs were on the planet. I was part of a system that cooled the Earth’s core. Let’s see, I was in the Navy, and when I was in the military, you know, and shipboard, fire sprinkler systems were part of the thing that I had learned. And I’ve had a back injury, and I went to work in a ship a shore-based operation that was doing modifications, so shipboard, fire sprinkler systems. And so my intent when I got outta the Navy was to go to law school, and I took all the LSATs and, you know, was prepared to do that. Got married right after I got outta the Navy instant family and had opportunities in the fire sprinkler business. And it just kind, kind of stuck. I mean, it’s a great business. It’s a fun business. You, you get to see every kind of thing out in your community, you know, it’s fire and life safety. You get to save lives and property. There’s a lot of pride in that. So it just kind of stuck. And 45 ish years later, I’m still trying to decide if this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. <Laugh>,

Drew Slocum::
Right? Yeah. I’m 20 years this year myself, which is kind of crazy that I’ve been doing this long. But I, a lot of people come out of the Navy that goes into the fire, like John Mackey, who I know, he came outta the Navy, Jack Fel outta the Navy, a bunch of, a bunch of others. It’s, it’s interesting it’s, you know, maybe they get a, a taste of it in their stint in the Navy and then kind of keep going with it. So

Bob Caputo::
I think what happens, you know, the beautiful thing about military service or college, whichever, you know, when, when you’re, when you’re in that age group, you’re still trying to figure out what and who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life. And, you know, when you’re in the military, you learn opportunities. You also learn responsibility and a whole lot of things about pride in esprit corps and things that you may or may not have actually been ready for when you got into this service. But what you learn in this service can become your career. Right. You know, unless your job is blowing stuff up. There are not a lot of jobs doing that in the civilian world. But from the reality point of view, you know, a lot of people grow up in that timeframe serving. So I appreciate everybody who serves. I don’t know if you know this, but only 1% of Americans serve in the military, so we’re a pretty, pretty rare group.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, I did not know that. Wow. And, and it’s probably, it might have dropped right over the last, I don’t know, maybe it, maybe it hasn’t, but

Bob Caputo::
No, it’s possible.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah.

Bob Caputo::
It’s a good place to grow up, you know, solid structured background for guys like me who didn’t necessarily know what they wanted to be if they grew up,

Drew Slocum: :
Right. Yeah, I know, you know, I work with APII group, a big company, right? They, I know, hire a lot of their management out of like West Point and other places like that too, because ’cause of the structure and leadership, you know it’s, it’s interesting to kind of see that. And I know they’re proud of that too. So.

Bob Caputo::
Yeah. And, and, and, you know, that’s a great point. Really, really solid companies look for solid leadership. And leadership is not something you’re necessarily born with. It’s something that you learn along the way. And I, I do think that API is stronger for them I mean, not everybody in their group comes outta the military, but I think a lot of ’em do. I think that’s a great thing.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of leaders like back, you know, 45, 40 even throughout, like any mentors out there that

Bob Caputo::
Kind of

Drew Slocum: :
Absolutely. That carved your career, I guess?

Bob Caputo::
Oh, absolutely. You know Jim Lewis, who’s gone now, he was killed in a motorcycle crash, but his son James still runs the company in Kansas City, American Fire. Oh, yeah.

Jim absolutely was more than just a mentor. He was a life coach for me. Somebody who I think about on a very, very regular basis. Jim, Jim was awesome, a true Christian who walked the walk, talked the talk, believed in people, you know, people first, and just a great business guy. Carol Garvin out on the West Coast, Carol Garvin worked with and for many years. I probably learned more about business issues. Carol’s a really solid business guy. He’s still around, and I gotta say, Russ Levitt. Oh. Yeah. Russ and I have been competitors. We’ve been teaching partners, we’ve been business partners. We’re more like brothers than friends. And Russ is somebody I really, really respect, looked up, look up to, and never failed to learn something from yeah, Jack Vic is, again, another brother by choice that I’m inspired by and hope to be more like pretty much any given day of my life. So I, I would say those, I mean, I’ve had people have an influence on my life other than those guys. But if I, if I had to pick those people that have had the most influence in my life, I mean, I wouldn’t even be in this job if it wasn’t for Jack or for Ross. Ross suggested that I pursue this opportunity, and Jack’s the one who really made it happen, more or less. So,

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. You know, we, we in Spec point the software company that, that that’s kind of partnered here is that was, that was the first association we joined as AFSA, and I knew it from being in my Tyco and Viking days, that very powerful association. And as well as others too. You know, you got to get got gotta get involved in the trade associations. But AFSA was the first one for us. And it, it’s interesting to see since, since our, we’re not even little, almost ten years old at this point, just the transition, you know, kind of when, when you kind of took the realm and, and kind of brought back that fire, and obviously you had the board and all the members and, and all that, but I think the leader being definitely one of them, the key people in fire protection in us it matters. Right. So appreciative I was,

Bob Caputo::
I appreciate you saying that Drew, but I have to tell you this is a team sport. Yeah. You know, when I got here, I encouraged the staff to understand that their primary job was to try to make me look good. And they’ve done a really fantastic job of that. You know, I, I take the credit for the work that you know, we, we have a very dynamic team both on the administrative side and incredibly so on the tech support side, you know, we have the, yes, I think we have probably the strongest tech support team anywhere in the industry, and awfully proud of them, and proud to take credit for a lot of what they do.

Drew Slocum: :
That’s, that’s great. What was the transition like going from kind of for-profit contracting and national accounts and all that engineering to kind of the association side?

Bob Caputo::
Well, clearly, there’s a big difference Yeah. Between managing a nonprofit and the rules and regulations that govern that particular thing. And believe it or not, there is an association of associations. The American Society of, I don’t even know I have their books, but AAEs, S A A A S A E is the group. And so the folks on our administrative side just got back actually from their convention. Lots of great ideas, lots of encouraging things that have to do with managing nonprofits and associations. You know, me, I’m a fire protection guy, and so having to learn the other half of that. But you mentioned earlier about leadership and leadership doesn’t change no matter what. So as far as bringing more ideas and more focus and leadership to an organization that might’ve struggled a little bit prior to my getting here, having been through a couple of different leadership opportunities that didn’t work out, you know, I came in kind of being patient and not thinking we had to change anything overnight. We have a great team of people. A lot of people have been here a very long time. I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been teaching seminars for AFSA for over 20 years. So

Drew Slocum: :
It’s, oh, wow.

Bob Caputo::
It’s, it’s not like I was a stranger to the organization. I represented a s a on a number of NFPA committees, and in addition to teaching seminars for AFSA, I’m still teaching seminars for NFPA, which is kind of the grandfather of Right. All things fire and life safety. So you know, being plugged in helped, but for the most part, you know, John Denhardt was here before I got here. I think he had the shift moving in the right direction on the technical support side; the one thing I really focused on and continue to focus on is, is the organization’s mission. And we are a training organization whose focus is on helping grow open-shop contractors. And, frankly, the birth of AFSA was the result of not having an apprenticeship program for open-shop sprinkler contractors.

Right. That wasn’t available 43 years ago, and it wasn’t gonna come out of NFSA, where most of us were members. Yep. so today, we have as good an apprenticeship program as anybody. And frankly, we have a lot of overseas organizations, UK and European, as well as central and South American organizations, coming to us and saying, Hey, you know, can we, can we access your training programs? Right. And so and so, that’s really cool. So, you know, we really do focus on our mission, which is the training, not just for installers, but, you know, we’ve got design school beginning and intermediate design school for designers. I don’t think you can go anywhere in this country and not have a sprinkler contractor say, I need more designers. Right. You know, one of the things we’ve recently developed is a scholarship program to try to help feed a few more. Maybe it’s 15 or 20 more designers into the pipeline every year than we possibly can.

Drew Slocum: :
Wow. Wow.

Bob Caputo::
The most, probably the most dynamic thing we’ve introduced this year is called the VIP program, which is virtual instruction, and it really is the classroom portion of the apprenticeship program. Okay. When you think about it, apprentices need to find; they have to have a classroom training piece. Yeah. Some of them are on jobs long into the day or are pretty far away drive time from a classroom where they can be with an instructor. This allows them to participate with a solid instructor, live for two hours twice a month from any laptop, you know, iPad, iPhone, we record the sessions. It’s a relatively inexpensive way for the contractor to get their apprentices’ classroom training. And we went to DOL and got approval as a not as a program. You know, the contractors have to have their own DOL-approved program. Sure. Ours is, is a training program that’s allowed to be used in conjunction with their, you know, admitted program. So you know, those are the kind of things we’ve, since I’ve come aboard in supporting the mission of the organization of training. So those are pretty exciting things.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. It’s kind of crazy like with, you know, with the advent of, you know, when covid happened, everybody’s gone virtual if, if you hadn’t already gone virtual. Right. And you know, I always wondered, I’m like, how, how do, how do you know apprenticeships pro programs happen? Obviously, if you’re in locals, you, you have those locals around the country, but like the open shop side, I’m like, oh, man, how do we get everybody together? You gotta, there’s a cost to get them to a certain location, and yeah, you could regionalize it, but I think it’s, it’s a perfect option for, and if you got that approved through the Department of Labor, that’s, that’s amazing. ’cause Now everybody has access to it, right? Yeah. And you don’t have the cost of travel and, and lost time or whatever, you know?

Bob Caputo::
Yeah. And I don’t want to confuse people. What we have approved is the training piece. The classroom piece, they still have to go through and have their apprentices in a program if they’re participating in, you know, prevailing wage work because the DOL  didn’t want AFSA to have employees. It, but if you look at what CSSA has done out in California, you know, they’ve done a phenomenal job, not because California now has its yeah. Certification program. So the CSSA folks, the members there, have done a phenomenal job of putting together training programs. And I think they have like five labs throughout the state. But again, it’s a very, very big state. And even their apprentices struggle to get from a job site to a training site. Now, this is the classroom piece, you know, the contractor still has to provide the OTJ and the tactile learning experience and expose people to physically doing things. But you know, hopefully, we hopefully we are providing enough good materials for the contractors to make it easier, especially in those quote unquote flyover states. You, you know, you’re not gonna get somebody in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, the, you know, these are big land mass areas and there’s jobs all over the place. Oh, yeah. You’re not gonna get a guy after eight hours worth of work to drive four hours to go to a classroom.

Drew Slocum: :
No,

Bob Caputo::
No. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s taught us that we can do distance learning successfully.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot, a lot of good remote stuff. Obviously, it’s hands-on. You mentioned the valve labs and, obviously, what Cass is doing. Are you, I I, I know I’ve, I’ve been involved in some of your ITM classes and actually did a couple of guest appearances up in at, at General Air in Philadelphia. But are, are you guys doing anything yourself?

Bob Caputo::
Well, we just moved into our new location in Richardson, Texas, and part of our location and build-out includes a wet lab and a flow lab and a, and a valve lab. So our lab is gonna be incredible. We’re in the process of building it out. We took a bit of time to find a landlord who would let us put a swimming pool in their building <laugh>. So, you know, if you look at JCI’s lab or Viking’s lab, or, you know, the manufacturers have labs where they’ve built stuff out to showcase their materials. This is an independent lab where you see pretty much everything. But you know, those I t m trainees are gonna be able to come in 22 different risers.

Drew Slocum: :
Wow.

Bob Caputo::
A static hydrant flowing hydrant. They’ll physically, literally, be able to flow water. They’ll be able to stand behind a glass wall and watch sprinklers of every type spray water. We’ll be able to show them the impact, of obstructions, like beam rules and ceiling fans and all those kinds and types of things. Oh, that’s cool. We’ll have a standpipe test. We have a 500 DPM pump showing up as a donation

Drew Slocum: :
Nice.

Bob Caputo::
And they’ll learn how to do the annual fire pump test or initiating, you know, system acceptance, fire pump testing with full-on flows, hose monsters donating test kits for them to learn how to use that particular equipment. They’ll learn how to use PTO tubes. I mean, just literally, there is not anything that flows. Water needs to be inspected, needs to be tested to apprentices, trainees, and technicians can come to our lab and break it here so they don’t break it in the field. And it’s just gonna be an incredible experience. So we have a training classroom for design school. We have a training classroom for ITM, and then we have all the flow lab stuff, the valve lab stuff, and the pump room lab. So people are gonna be able to come here. I’m gonna say no more than four to six months from now. Nice. And just, I’m pretty sure once they spend a week here, they won’t want to go home.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. By the way, if you need to,  we’ve done this before, but if you want anything free from us, a free subscription, what we’ve done with other Valve labs is like, Hey, here’s a, here’s a copy of, of an ITM platform. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty cool stuff. But, you know, I cut my teeth at Tyco back in the day, and I was at an NFPA 25 training up in Rhode Island, and kind of had an idea, right? Of like, why are we doing this on paper with pen? Why are we doing this? Right? Isn’t there a better way to document deficiencies and all that? So it’s kind of funny that the lab spurred all that on just ’cause being hands-on is like, there’s, there’s nothing else like it. Right. Yeah. And obviously, being in the field, there’s nothing else like that either,

Bob Caputo::
So. Well, and that’s absolutely true. And we wanna take advantage of technology. You know, one of the challenges with written reports, first of all, is reading some writings. Another is, you know, sometimes those reports are laying on the floor of the truck if a copy spilled on ‘EM or burger wrappers. And in my career, I’ve asked an inspector, Hey, what does this say? And they’ll look at it, and they’ll look at it, and I don’t know, you wrote it. How am I supposed to know what it says? Electronic reporting is clearly the best way to do record keeping, the best way to transmit to an owner, the best way to help the owner understand what deficiencies are, why they’re important, why they need to get repaired, and, you know, help them understand. And that’s one of the beautiful things about the NFPA25 committee.

You know, when they put out the annex section 3.3 0.7 of now 3.3 0.8, depending upon your addition. But, you know, that whole table of deficiencies of what should be considered critical versus non-critical versus rising to the level of impairments. You know, that’s just a great tool for an inspector to open the book and show the owner or the owner’s representative, Hey, this is what the problem is. This is the finding. Here’s what the book says, and here’s why it’s important. You know, just another tool in communicating the importance. A lot of owners, you know, they don’t understand when their elevators don’t work, their HVAC doesn’t work, they get it. Right. But when a fire sprinkler system doesn’t work, they don’t know.

Drew Slocum: :
No. Right. Yeah. And referencing it back to the code, you don’t even need a book anymore. The NFPA link’s done; a pretty good job with stuff. And we’ve got some pretty cool stuff that we’re working on with NFPA, to kind of push the digital side forward. 

Bob Caputo::
<Inaudible> link is awesome. Yeah. I hear so many people tell me, oh, you know, I miss having the PDF link is way better than, way better than you. You get the handbook commentary. You can download it to your computer for use offline of the books you use. Most of you can query all the standards or a few of the standards by keywords or phrases. I, I mean, it’s anybody who hasn’t tried the link needs to go to the NFPA website and do the, I guess they give you a 14-day, or maybe, I don’t know if it’s a week or two trial use. But they have such a great staff of folks at the NFPA who can coach you through how to use it better than you think. You, you, you know, there’s, it’s so robust. It’s so powerful that, I mean, I’m still a book guy ’cause I’m really old, but man, are you kidding me? I use Link every day.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, that’s great. And they’re, they’re coming out with some new stuff that’s even beyond that, which is, which is even kind of more forward thinking. Right.

Bob Caputo::
Well, you think about technology, I mean, just think about computers. You know, I carry this iPhone, but it’s not really a phone. It’s a computer that works as a phone. But you think about storage, you know, you can go out and buy a one terabyte flash drive when I was a kid; if you had a terabyte, it meant you’d been bitten by a <laugh>.

Drew Slocum: :
You don’t even need a flash drive anymore. You have a Dropbox or a Google Drive that’s, you know, three terabytes, and it’s unlimited in some servers. You know that Amazon owns <laugh>.

Bob Caputo::
You know, what’s cool about our industry, though, is no matter how advanced technology gets, and no matter what tools we can find to apply technology when it comes to installing fire sprinkler systems, you still have to pick the pipe up, stick it and the hole, and turn it to the right. And no one’s gonna automate that. And, so, you know, if you have children at home who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, sprinkler design school, send them to me. I’ll send you back some designer fitters.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, yeah. Fitters

Bob Caputo::
Technicians. You know, we provide all that kind of training. Second, third-generation sprinkler contractors. You know, there are opportunities now that didn’t exist before for fire protection engineering degrees, Oklahoma State, you know, eastern Kentucky, Maryland Worcester, you know, w p I there’s great programs for those of us who brought our kids up in this industry to go out and get a degree and come back and run the company better than we did.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There are so many opportunities, and it’s kind of this niche industry that, no, not a lot of people know about. And, you know, you go in a building, you look up, and people I’m with randomly or friends or whatever, they’re like, why are you looking up? I’m like, well, you know, and I explained to this a lot of my newer staff at the company, I’m like, you’re gonna start looking up. You’re gonna notice where exit signs are. You’re gonna notice if there’s an extinguisher on the floor or the sprinklers are covered by a beam or whatever. So it’s, it’s you don’t know about it, but, and you don’t wanna know about it because fire, fire protection’s a, you know, it’s, it’s,

Bob Caputo::
It’s special.

Drew Slocum: :
It, it’s special. It’s supposed to work. You know,, it’s a pain for building owners because they, they don’t know what they’re getting. But at the end of the day, it’s, it’s saving lives. It’s saving that building. And it’s, it should be bringing down their insurance premium at some point because

Bob Caputo::
Oh, of course. Of course. But it’s also code driven.

Drew Slocum: :
Yes.

Bob Caputo::
And required. I think, I think, there’s a lot of fear of the unknown. I think they think, you know, it’s all Hollywood systems, the right UD systems, right? When one sprinter goes off, revenue gonna go off. They’re gonna cause water damage. They don’t understand why it matters most that they have. You, you know, I’m fond of saying that when seconds count, first responders are minutes away. Yeah. But that fire sprinkler system is going to work immediately. It’s going to control and limit that fire and limit the damage, even with water damage. You know, we’re cleaning up water, but we’re not cleaning up a business now that’s now lost, sending people home without a job and worse. So, you know, we were talking about labor and opportunities. One of the things that our industry has always been about, or at least in a lot of cases, it’s been nepotism. Right. How did you get into the business? Did you have a parent or an uncle or somebody who got you into the business? I mean,, I personally have four children, and three of them are in fire protection.

Drew Slocum: :
Wow.  

Bob Caputo::
Brother in fire protection. He has children in fire protection. I mean, think about how you get into this thing, a neighbor or an uncle or somebody, you know, it’s not something you grow up in school knowing about fire sprinklers or our fire and life safety systems in general terms, whether it’s alarms or, you know, hood system, whatever it happens to be. We as an industry need to do a much better job of outreach to encourage non-family members to see us as a career. How do we get into elementary schools, high schools, you know, there’s a bunch of community colleges out there that do fire protection programs for kids that want to become firefighters, but they’re all not gonna find jobs in firefighting yet. We have so many opportunities, and our industry needs so many more people. Every contractor I talk to when I ask, what’s your biggest challenge? And they say, finding good people.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah.

Bob Caputo::
And I think that’s one of the things AFSA is focused on. Well, I don’t think so. I know. So we’re very, very focused on recruiting and, and encouraging and getting out with guidance counselor organizations and making sure they know what our opportunities are. We’re doing more training with the facility managers. We’re doing more training with a broader group and a better focus just so that we can attract more people to our industry for our members. Yeah. And I think it’s one of the important things, you know, that we do. I also think mem I think that Spire sprinkler contractors who are not members of one of the trade associations really need to take inventory of their business and their futures.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. I don’t understand it. I mean, I think the last one of the stats I got, it was only like 30 to 40% of the market is in is a member of a trade association.  

Bob Caputo::
Not even that.

Drew Slocum: :
It’s not even that?

Bob Caputo::
It’s half that.

Drew Slocum: :
It’s crazy. There’s so much information, and I just don’t get it. It’s a small line item on their expenses and how much value.

Bob Caputo::
It’s minuscule. We have contractors who tell us that when they’ve had challenges where they’ve used our tech support to solve a problem, and that paid that alone, solved a problem that paid their dues for five years.

Drew Slocum: :
Right.

Bob Caputo::
Just one phone call or one email saves them more money than their membership could cost for five years. And,  we have literally, we turn around technical questions in, in, in, in within 24 hours.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. And I mean, just the marketing alone, like being a member of a trade association, I’m, if I’m hiring a plumber, H V A C PEs, if they’re not part of the association, I’m, they’re not coming to my house.

Bob Caputo::Wow. Good for you. You know, that’s a great thought. I dunno; we’ll have to start a billboard campaign that says that <laugh> Drew Slocum says <laugh>.

Drew Slocum: :
That’s funny. Yeah. So podcast, I guess there’s a, so you got an upcoming event I hear about? 

Bob Caputo::
Yeah. We have our annual convention down in Orlando, Florida, at Bonnet Creek Hilton. That’s nice. Well, our trade show is the biggest fire sprinkler-centric trade show, literally on the planet. Our booths are sold out, and we’re people in booths out in the corridors. We have no more booths, basically have a waiting list. We’ve got more people members; contractor members reserve this year signing up. And it’s a record year for us, but so was last year or the year before. Right. But we’re seeing more and more activity. Of course, we do a free workshop day for AHJs in the area. We do a plan review class. We do that every year. And that’s filling up pretty well. So we, yeah, we’re pretty excited. Our conference has over 60 technical topics for seminars.

 We’re not broadcasting this year, like we have the last two years with the Zoom rooms, because it’s just been difficult. We’ve had a lot of people take advantage of that, but it’s just been difficult with the hotels not having the bandwidth to support us, you know, and it’s very frustrating if it doesn’t work seamlessly. Sure. But hopefully, in the future years, we’ll get that done right when we get the bandwidth to be able to do that. But you know, we have our apprenticeship competition, seven finalists, and they’ll compete for top dog prizes from all the regions. And so that’s always a lot of fun.

Drew Slocum: :
That’s fun.   I mean,  just being on the floor a lot, and we will be there again obviously this year, but it’s just, it’s, it’s kind of cool to hear the, you know, the threading of pipe or the grooving of pipe and it them install No cutting oil. It’s so cool. It’s so cool to hear that while the convention’s going on. Right? Yeah. There’s nothing else like it,

Bob Caputo::
Right? Yeah. Now we’re pretty excited, man. We’re just everybody here, you know, it’s work, but it’s fun.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. Yeah, it is fun. I guess they’re, you know, obviously, there’s our podcast here, but then there’s this Fire Sprinkler Podcast, and there are these new guys, I’m gonna be on their show in a couple of weeks, the Dope & Tape Podcast, which are a bunch of it’s like a fitter podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And they just, it, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. They do it twice a week, but they’re all, we’re all, they’re all getting together down in, down in Florida to, to kind of do some, just some combos, but it’s all, you know, around the AFSA event. And yeah, it’s kind of really cool to see the buzz about it.

Bob Caputo::
Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of positive comments about the Dope & Tape guys, which by the way, is a controversial question for

Drew Slocum: :
<Laugh>. 

Bob Caputo::
If you tape, do you put the dope first with the tape first? <Laugh>,

Drew Slocum: :
What’s your answer?

Bob Caputo::
I don’t think you should use open tape. I think you should pick

Drew Slocum: :
One or the other. Yeah. One or the other, right? <Laugh>, I, I I think it’s it’s kind of fun that they kind of put that out there, but I think Bobby does use both. I could be wrong.

Bob Caputo::
So does my brother. It’s always; it’s always blown my mind. You know, Teflon tape’s not a sealant; it’s a lubricant, right? Yeah. And you know, there are dopes out there that are, you have to remember when I came into the industry, you mix your own, you know, you mix your own dope with linseed oil and Portland cement. And that’s why when you go to those old systems, you need a damn hammer or 48-inch compound wrench can get anything apart,

Drew Slocum: :
Right? Yeah. It isn’t, isn’t it somewhere, in areas of the world they use, they use hemp rope or something, don’t they?

Bob Caputo::
Well, I’ve seen people cork threads with hemp. I’m not sure that’s a legal thing to do.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah, it’s probably, I mean,

Bob Caputo::
We should not be promoting things that are <crosstalk>.

Drew Slocum: :
No, no, no, no, no. You got a little off-track there. So yeah, look forward to obviously a ss a in a, in a few weeks here. And excited to, you know, if, if you can get down there, great. It’s in; it’s in a great part of the country in Orlando. And yeah, it kind of kicks off the, the whole fall that, you know, everybody coming out of the summer, it’s the kind of the first event. 

Bob Caputo::
Well, speaking of kicking off our opening night party, is that Universal Studios? It’s got a magic theme to it. And we have exclusive access to all this Harry Potter Park.

Drew Slocum: :
Ah, that’s awesome.

Bob Caputo::
And so, and that’s just the opening party, you know, that’s not even our ending party, so that should be a lot of fun. A lot of family activity there. Believe it or not, we have a lot of folks who are bringing their kids to Orlando because it’s Orlando, but we also have a lot of people who are signed up and are just adding that night-one party. I mean, it’s a real attraction for members.

Drew Slocum: :
Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that was happening. Oh, that’s <crosstalk>. I heard Harry, Harry Potter’s one of the best things in Orlando to see.

Bob Caputo::
Yeah. So our opening night party’s something you don’t wanna miss.

Drew Slocum: :
Well, cool. Yeah, we’ll definitely get that out when we release this. Kind of last question before we kinda get going. What’s, you know, evolution? What I’ve seen over fire protection over the last ten years since doing in spec point is, you know, the industry has been segmented, right? Sprinklers, fire alarms, and kind of suppression end kind of three categories. And then there’s another life safety end, which is more on the life safety devices and stuff like that. And over the last ten years, and definitely the five years, a lot of that’s coming together, right? So you don’t; you’re not just a sprinkler fitter anymore. You gotta know more than just sprinklers, right? And it’s still slow to be that way. I think it’s still segmented, but what, what at least I’ve seen is, you know, if you know everything, you’re a, you’re a dime, you know, you’re a needle in the haystack to find if you can do alarms if you can do everything. It seems like that’s where the companies are kind of molding all these sub-sectors of fire protection together. 

So do you see that? Do you see that as well?

Bob Caputo::
Well, prior to coming here, I was a VP of training at Fire and Life Safety America, which is now Oh, yeah. Summit. Summit. And so I’m gonna cover up this AFSA piece on my shirt for a minute and tell you my opinion. This is just observational. This is not AFSA <laugh>, but at AFSA at, at FSSA, our training program for fitters, I’m sorry, I apologize, I gotta back up. My training program for inspectors had nothing to do with being a fitter, okay? We took people that were either retiring or who had never been fitter, I don’t think twisting pipes and installing and understanding NFPA 13 makes you an inspector. We wanted inspectors who had not been fitters, had not been alarm technicians, had not been hood people, ELI people, or fire extinguisher people. We trained them in every one of those disciplines so that they could go to a building and review and look at the fire doors and do the 11-point inspection; the duct detectors and dampers testing a fire alarm system is not the same as fixing a fire alarm system, inspecting a fire sprinkler system. I personally don’t believe that being a fitter qualifies you to be an inspector.

I want, I want people, I want a whole new category of inspector. Now here’s the challenge. A lot of states have NYCET requirements for inspectors. So if I’m doing fire alarm and fire sprinkler inspections, NYCET will not give me credit for both for the same timeframe. I have to be one or the other for 50% of the year or the other, right? So it’s gonna take me longer if I have to have three years of practical experience or five years of practical experience to get a nice set certification, maybe let’s say level three and water-based if I’m doing both, I can’t claim both all the time for fire sprinter, I gotta claim part of it for fire alarm if I’m trying to achieve both of those, right? So there’s a bit of a setback when you’re cross-training, but I do think, honestly think, that ultimately we will see a whole new breed of, so we have designers, we have fitters, we have us, we we’re gonna have inspection, testing and maintenance technicians who maybe have never been a fit or never been a fire alarm installer.

 They know how to test things. They know how to do inspections of things, and they know how to write reports, but they don’t know how to fix things, right? And I actually prefer that we would fire alarm technicians go out and find a panel with some troubles. Well, they only have eight hours to do the inspection, and they spend the first two of ’em trying to clear the panel <laugh>, do anything. I don’t want ’em to do that. You know, I want ’em to tell the owner we can’t do the inspection. You’ve got these trouble signals. Those have to be corrected first.

Drew Slocum: :
Right? 

Bob Caputo::
But I will also say, well, you see a lot of mergers and acquisitions in this business in the last couple of years, which is a huge trend. It’s had a big impact on us as an association. And frankly, what sells companies is a recurring revenue service. So, you know, the the multiplier on EBITDA valuation of a company is much heavier with recurring revenue than it is with new construction. Yep. New construction might have big numbers, but the value comes in the form of recurring revenue streams. And so I think your point of seeing more activity in the ITM world is a result of the value plan or the value of companies and the mergers and acquisitions piece. People may be positioning themselves to be purchased as an exit plan from a business they’ve been running for the last 25 years. And so I do think that the ITM piece is bulletproof when it comes to economic up and down turms because you still have to do the ITM, whether the building, whether the business is slow or business is fast, whether buildings are even empty, if the building’s empty, you’re still required to inspect and test the system.

So it’s a solid piece of the business. And I think a lot of people are gravitating more into that area, to your point.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. Yeah. We call it recession-proof . Well, recession-proof and pandemic-proof, right? Pandemic, we saw a lot of people have to go virtual literally a month. It was, they were off for a month doing inspections in maybe that March timeframe during covid; literally a month later, they were back flooded with work service calls, inspections, and yeah, construction might’ve been shut down, but inspections fire life safety was not. 

Bob Caputo::
Well, that’s because the two associations managed to get our industry determined to have been critical

Drew Slocum: :
Oh Yeah, that was big. I forgot about that. I forgot you, you, you got, and then NFPA did something as well, obviously put this and all the AHJs kind of bought in, you know, not bought into it, but like announced that to their, to the buildings and hey, we still have to be protecting these buildings even though nobody’s here.

Bob Caputo::
Absolutely. And not only that, you know, even if you’re in a hospital or nursing home, hey, you’re protecting people. And you know, I’m fond of repeating something I heard many years ago, and that is the three biggest causes of fire will always be men, women, and children, <laugh> not getting them out of the building. And so the systems still need to be functional, still need to be inspected and tested and repaired. So, you know, I mean, this has become a huge part of the business that wasn’t necessarily as pervasive, you know, 30 years ago.

Drew Slocum: :
No, no, it’s it’s been fun for us, then, the ride. So well, we look forward, obviously, to the AFSA convention look forward to seeing you guys. And one more quick question. This is a quick response round. So I have this little round that, that talked to you about different things. But what is your favorite standard out of all the NFPA standards?

Bob Caputo::
Oh, my, that’s really a difficult thing to say. I, I’m gonna say 25.

Drew Slocum: :
Okay. All right. Same, same here. It’s the most complicated one, too, in my opinion. <Laugh>,

Bob Caputo::
Well, we have a lot of eyes. The reason I say that, and I’ll make it really quick, is there’s a lot of eyes on new systems, right? We have plan review and inspections, and acceptance testing. A lot of systems out there where something changes, packaging might change, storage methods might change, or tenants might change. And who’s looking at all those systems to make sure they’re still adequate for the current occupancy or the changes? I think NFPA 25 is, you know, you don’t park your car in your driveway for three years and not pay attention to it for three years and think it’s gonna run when you go to start it. These are mechanical systems. They need to be inspected and tested periodically, and if we expect ’em to work.

Drew Slocum: :
Yeah. No, I agree. Cool. 

Bob Caputo::
Well, thanks for having me. Yeah,

Drew Slocum: :
Thanks, Bob. This is great. You know, love to love to chat more some other time, maybe at the convention or obviously down the road, I’m sure. Fire not leaving, fire life safety anytime soon. I’ll; it’s once you’re in the business, you usually don’t get out, though.

Bob Caputo::
Well, that’s why I’ll probably find myself dead at my desk. I’m here for a long time <laugh>.

Drew Slocum: :
All right, thanks again.

Bob Caputo::
All right. Take care. All.

Drew Slocum: :
Take care.

Bob Caputo::
Bye

Drew Slocum: :
Bye. This was episode 50 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. I wanna thank Bob Caputo again from the AFSA to join me today and the 50th episode. Right. Lot more to come. Can’t wait to do episode 100 here soon. Yeah, big convention coming up. Make sure to check it out. We’ll be in attendance as Inspect Point. And yeah, stop by and say hello. Talk to you soon.