Fire Protection Engineer
What you'd do
This vacancy is for Fire Protection Engineer in the Office of Facilities and Environmental Quality (OFEQ) within the Department of Commerce. This position will serve as one of the delegated authorities with jurisdiction for fire protection and life safety.
Major duties
As a Fire Protection Engineer, you will: Serve as delegated authority in the development of fire prevention projects; the design, construction, inspection, testing, or operation of firefighting or fire-prevention appliances, devices, and systems, or the testing of fire-resistant materials. Provide support in the installation, operations, maintenance, and testing of fire protection and life safety systems and sub-systems (fire suppression, fire alarm, mass notification, special hazard, egress, etc.) related to activities and building construction/renovation activities. Ensure the Department of Commerce complies with industry standards and codes. Review design and construction projects to evaluate adequacy of fire protection and life safety with contractual requirements, adopted building codes, and industry standards. Manage the Fire Sprinkler, Fire Alarm, Life Safety, and Mass Notification System, and system capacity calculations. Advise on, administer, or perform research or other professional and scientific work in fire investigation. Develop prescriptive and performance-based approaches to solving various fire protection and life safety issues. This Job Opportunity Announcement may be used to fill other Fire Protection Engineer ZP-0804-4, FPL 4 positions within the Department of Commerce in the same geographical location or local commuting area with the same qualifications and specialized experience.
What you need to qualify
Qualification requirements in the vacancy announcements are based on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Qualification Standards Handbook, which contains federal qualification standards. This handbook is available on the Office of Personnel Management's website located at: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/#url=Occupational-Series Applicants must possess one year of specialized experience equivalent in difficulty and responsibility to the next lower grade level in the Federal Service. Specialized experience is experience that has equipped the applicant with the particular competencies/knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position. This experience need not have been in the federal government. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations e.g., professional; philanthropic, religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies; knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. This position is being filled under the Department of Commerce Alternative Personnel System (CAPS). Under CAPS, positions are classified by career path and pay band. The ZP-4 is equivalent to the GS-13/14 grade levels. To qualify at the ZP-4 level: BASIC REQUIREMENTS: A bachelor's degree (or higher) in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by ABET; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics. OR Combination of education and experience -- college-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following: 1. Professional registration or licensure -- Current registration as an Engineer Intern (EI), Engineer in Training (EIT)1, or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration. For example, an applicant who attains registration through a State Board's eminence provision as a manufacturing engineer typically would be rated eligible only for manufacturing engineering positions. 2. Written Test -- Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE)2 examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. 3. Specified academic courses -- Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph A. 4. Related curriculum -- Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in fire protection/ fire prevention, (or an appropriate scientific field) e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor's degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions. (The above examples of related curricula are not all inclusive.) AND SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: You must possess one full year (52 weeks) of specialized experience equivalent to the GS-12 (or equivalent pay band) in the Federal service. Specialized experience is defined as: Inspecting buildings or building designs to determine dangerous fire hazards and to identify placement of fire protection systems; and Advising employers, architects, builders, and other construction personnel on fire prevention techniques, equipment, industry standards, and fire code compliance; and Recommending appropriate fire protection equipment, alarm systems, and fire extinguishing devices and systems in commercial buildings.
Before you apply
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