Given that NFPA membership is made up of firefighters and fire equipment manufacturers and vendors, do you think that they are really independent enough to be the group responsible for developing firefighting standards?
Allowing the manufacturers tp help develop the standards seems like an obvious conflict of interest in that they are always going to be pushing for newer and better equipment that they happen to sell. Are they ever likely to say that the old stuff will be just fine?
With firefighters it is a little tougher call in that you obviously want people with experience on the ground involved in coming up with standards for stuff like personnel needs. But, I wonder about a conflict of interest there as well. For example, a department may need more firefighters and one way of getting that is to say that they don't meet some NFPA standard, so they have an incentive to try to get that standard higher.
Obviously, changing the standard is very complicated and no one person is going to be able to influence it that greatly. But, if everyone involved has that sort of thought in the back of their head, it could add up.
Am I overthinking this? Probably so. But, it does seem like there are potential conflicts of interest involved here. Has anyone actually seen this in practice?
Allowing the manufacturers tp help develop the standards seems like an obvious conflict of interest in that they are always going to be pushing for newer and better equipment that they happen to sell. Are they ever likely to say that the old stuff will be just fine?
With firefighters it is a little tougher call in that you obviously want people with experience on the ground involved in coming up with standards for stuff like personnel needs. But, I wonder about a conflict of interest there as well. For example, a department may need more firefighters and one way of getting that is to say that they don't meet some NFPA standard, so they have an incentive to try to get that standard higher.
Obviously, changing the standard is very complicated and no one person is going to be able to influence it that greatly. But, if everyone involved has that sort of thought in the back of their head, it could add up.
Am I overthinking this? Probably so. But, it does seem like there are potential conflicts of interest involved here. Has anyone actually seen this in practice?
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