Heritage Protection Group is an international consortium of experienced professional engineers and consultants who focus on fire protection, life safety and emergency planning solutions for historic buildings, archives, libraries and museums. The group has extensive experience identifying and implementing protection approaches systems-and-procedures that safeguard the property while minimizing the impact on historic fabric, aesthetics and site functions. The group is a leader in engineering specialized fire systems that include high sensitivity air sampling and video smoke detection, and low and high pressure water mist sprinkler systems that rapidly control a fire while drastically reducing water damage to building fabric and valuable contents. Heritage Protection Group is a member of the Protection Alliance and the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection.
Nick currently serves as the Managing Principal of the Heritage Protection Group, a Middlebury, Vermont based collaborative of fire protection and security consultants and engineers that specialize in the protection of unique, specialized and heritage facilities. The services that he provides his clients include fire and hazard risk analysis, fire protection option appraisals, emergency preparedness programming, code consultation, and the engineering of fire resistance, detection and notification and fire suppression systems.
With more than thirty- years of fire protection engineering experience his projects have included sites in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Bermuda, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Poland. His projects have included President George Washington’s Mount Vernon, New York State Office of Parks and Historic Preservation, President Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the National Library of Ireland, the United States Marine Corps, and the Canadian Museum of History. He has worked extensively on projects for the United States National Park Service at more than 150 National Park and National heritage Sites. The fire protection engineering projects undertaken for the Park Service have covered a wide range of facilities and structures and have included some of the world’s most prominent hotels, water and wastewater treatment facilities, electrical generation facilities, office and residential buildings, heavy maintenance and transportation operations, and historic museums.
Nick is a Licensed Professional Fire Protection Engineer and has a formal education consisting of an Associates Degree in Fire Protection Technology from the State University of New York and a Bachelor of Sciences Degree in Fire Protection from the University of Maryland. Nick is a licensed professional fire protection engineer with more than 35 years of experience protecting cultural properties throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. He is a member of numerous professional organizations and standard writing organizations that focus on fire protection and security requirements for museums, libraries, historic buildings and places of worship.
Nick has authored a number of journal articles on fire protection for cultural properties including in publications produced by the Western Association for Art Conservation (WAAC), the Association for Preservation Technology (APT), and the Landmarks Conservancy. He serves as an instructor for several fire protection educational seminars including those presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Philadelphia Center for Conservation of Art and History, the National Park Service and Simmons College (Boston) School of Graduate Library Studies. He is serving an advisory role to the University of Vermont College of Engineering in the development of Preservation Engineering Programs. He has also recently been assisting with fire protection evaluations and seminars for historic building fire protection for the Polish Institute of Sciences, Krakow, Poland.
Recently Nick has joined RAN Fire Protection Engineers, based in Albany New York (US) and is able to better serve the cultural heritage community with the extensive engineering and research resources that RAN offers.
