A carpet manufacturer in Glasgow, Virginia retained Harrington Group for property loss control services after receiving a report from their HPR insurance carrier that contained a mandatory recommendation to provide an additional private fire pump and water supply. Estimates were obtained, and the recommendation would have cost approximately $235,000 to complete. This plant was already equipped with several fire pumps, and the client wanted to be sure that the additional protection was warranted. If so, the client was interested in reducing the cost if possible.

Harrington Group’s property loss control services included a plant audit where we were able to identify the hazard requiring the highest fire protection water demand. This hazard was analyzed carefully, and an overall risk assessment completed. Water tests were conducted and a water supply analysis was performed. Existing water supply sources were all private and consisted of one automatic diesel fire pump taking suction from a river, two manual steam fire pumps taking suction from a common 250,000 gallon tank and one elevated 100,000 gallon gravity tank. We discovered that a dam in the river, downstream of the diesel fire pump, had recently been removed. This caused the river level to be lower at the pump suction inlet, particularly during the dry summer months. This supply was, therefore, unreliable. We concurred with the insurance carrier that a new automatic fire pump was needed to increase the overall reliability of the water supply. Then we developed a creative conceptual design for providing this new fire pump to take advantage of existing building space to house the pump and existing water supply storage facilities to supply the pump. The cost to complete this solution was estimated to be approximately $111,000.

Value Delivered

We concurred with our client’s insurance carrier that a new automatic fire pump was definitely needed as a reliable means of fire protection water for this plant. However, our creative conceptual fire protection design and property loss control services still resulted in a savings to the client of over $120,000.

By Jeff Harrington, CEO and Founder of Harrington Group, Inc.