Kerry Bell, P.E., is a principal engineer at Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), specializing in fire sprinkler and pump equipment. Since 1976, he has been involved in UL’s testing and certification activities related to a variety of fire suppression products, including fire sprinkler system equipment, portable fire extinguishers and special hazard extinguishing systems. Bell is a member of several technical committees of the NFPA, American Water Works Association and ASTM International. He is currently a member of NFPA’s Residential Sprinkler Systems, Sprinkler System Discharge Criteria and Technical Correlating Committees; chairman of the NFPA Technical Committee on Water Spray Fixed Systems, and vice chairman of UL’s Fire Council.
Because the application and installation environments are
expanding and changing, on-going performance assessments of fire sprinklers in
the field are instrumental in maintaining a high level of
effectiveness. As a part of United Laboratories’ third-party certification program, qualification and
surveillance testing is conducted to evaluate the ability of sprinklers to
comply with specified criteria.