NCAFED News

Letter from the Board

In our recent Board of Directors meeting a lot of things were discussed, including COVID, our Legislation, Annual Dues, and our Annual Conference. There are many issues facing all of us, regardless of the size of our companies. We are all facing many of the same obstacles and have the same decisions to make daily, weekly, and monthly.

Legislation is alive and well. As we have mentioned the House Bill had a resounding success and was moved to the Senate. The process was stalled due to the COVID Pandemic but should begin moving forward soon. When this happens, we will be reaching out to our membership for letters of support to be send to a list of Senators we will provide.

NCAFED has decided that there will be no annual dues required this year. This is not because we have a huge sum of money in the bank, but simply our concern for the financial welfare of our members. From the beginning the top priority has been our industry. Without your membership and support, the things we are trying to accomplish would be impossible. So, we are here to support you during this time and will forego the annual dues for this year.

Along the same lines, we have decided there will be no Annual Conference this year. While this has always been an important event for everyone, the uncertainty if it could even be held was a driving decision in this step. Also was the consideration of committing funds which may be lost if the event were first planned and then cancelled, or poorly attended.

Another topic of discussion was virtual or live remote acceptance testing. We have worked with Office of State Fire Marshal (OSFM) and provided them with our official stance of not supporting this process.

If you have a local AHJ who mentions this, please have them contact Charlie Johnson with OSFM. He is the Chief Fire Code Consultant and has information on that process. This initial idea came up before the COVID Pandemic and OSFM published a paper on the subject. The process was primarily for residential type inspections and not allowed for those inspections deemed as Life Safety.

In closing, we are here to support our membership. If you have any questions or concerns for NCAFED, you can always send an email to admin@ncafed.com and someone will respond to you.