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Mrs. Colwell is a licensed fire protection engineer that leverages her fire protection engineering expertise to assess and analyze building fire protection and life safety systems, evaluate the fire performance of various materials and products, and conduct origin and cause determinations for residential, commercial, and industrial fire and explosion events.

Mrs. Colwell's training and practical experience includes design and testing of automatic fire suppressions systems, fire pumps, and fire alarm systems; design and review of inert gas and clean agent fire suppression systems; national, state, and local fire and building code compliance; material fire performance; fire testing; and fire origin and cause investigations.

Mrs. Colwell provides expertise in the evaluation, inspection, and maintenance of residential, commercial, storage, manufacturing, and industrial occupancies and products for code compliance in accordance with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) codes, International Code Council (ICC) codes, and state and local jurisdictions.   Mrs. Colwell also has specific experience in providing consulting services to survey, assess, and evaluate existing or newly constructed health care facilities for compliance with the Life Safety Code and established accreditation criteria.  

Mrs. Colwell uses her diverse background to investigate failures of wet, dry, pre-action, and deluge automatic sprinkler systems, including root cause failure analysis, water infrastructure and supply analysis, hydrant flow testing, sprinkler system water demand and water delivery analysis, construction and as-built drawing review, inspection, testing, and maintenance requirement analysis. This includes failures of automatic sprinkler systems to operate or perform in the event of a fire and inadvertent operation due to rust/oxidation, freezing, excessive heating, and mechanical damage. In addition, Mrs. Colwell has investigated fires involving operational failure of commercial kitchen and cooking fire protection equipment and cooking ventilation systems (hood, duct work, fans), fire alarm and detection systems, fire extinguishers, and consumer products.  Her experience also includes the evaluation, inspection, and maintenance of buildings, facilities, hazardous materials including flammable and combustible liquids, flammable solids, flammable gases, oxidizers, and products for code compliance.  Mrs. Colwell has also investigated explosions and fires involving the alleged failure of natural gas and liquefied petroleum (LP) regulators, gas piping systems, and cylinders.

Mrs. Colwell has a has both small- and large-scale fire research and testing experience with numerous national and international testing protocols and methods, including those published by the ASTM, NFPA,  FM, UFAC, ISO, UL, and in the CFR.  Mrs. Colwell actively participates in the development of fire protection standards through her participation on technical committees for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).  She maintains her expertise by regularly attending conferences, seminars and continuing education training sponsored by professional and technical organizations including the NFPA, SFPE, IAAI, NAFI, AFSA, and NFSA among others.

Prior to joining Ģ��tv, Mrs. Colwell worked as a Senior Fire Protection Engineer (Lead Consultant, Fire and Life Safety Engineer) for an internationally recognized multi-disciplinary engineering firm focused on the design and engineering of complex building systems.  In her previous role, Mrs. Colwell performed fire suppression, alarm, and life safety system consulting, design, testing, and coordination with architects, owners, and the authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) at the local, state, and federal levels.