Skip to main content
NIH Logo NIH Logo

Office of Research Services

Serving the NIH Community

Close message Close Icon

Our Mission

The DFM has a dual mission:

To ensure the life safety of NIH staff, patients, and visitors | To protect research efforts in support of the NIH mission
Fire Marsharl Tagline 



Our Services

DFM’s mission is accomplished by the proactive delivery of consistent, timely, collaborative, and professional services for NIH-owned* facilities:

Engineering

Engineering

  • Construction and renovation plan review
  • Construction inspections (progress, close-in, and final)
  • Fire protection system shop drawing review
  • Fire protection systems acceptance testing
  • Fire hydrant testing and water supply analysis
  • Review of requests for site selection, road closures, temporary tents, and fire protection systems outages
  • Interim Life Safety Measure (ILSM) assessments
  • Evaluation of equivalencies and variances
     

Enforcement

Enforcement

  • Existing building periodic inspections
  • Investigating fire hazard complaints in existing buildings
  • Permits for hot work and temporary cooking
  • Advance and event inspection of food trucks
  • Crowd control monitoring
  • Tent Inspections
  • ILSM Inspections

Education

Education

  • Staff training
  • Public education displays
  • Articles and public service announcements
  • Consultation on fire and life safety matters
  • Policy development
  • Investigation of fire and explosion incidents

*Note for leased facilities: These are not under DFM’S authority. DFM plays a consultative role only in leased facilities. Please contact the following fire code authorities with any code enforcement concerns in jurisdictions with leased facilities:​

Organization
Engineering Team

This team primarily handles fire and life safety aspects of construction and renovation of NIH-owned facilities. This team can be reached on the “Fire Marshal” global email address in the NIH internal outlook system. The Deputy Fire Marshal supervises this team.

Inspection Team

This team primarily handles fire and life safety aspects of NIH-owned existing structures and their operation. This team can be reached on the “Fire Prevention” global email address in the NIH internal outlook system. The Fire Marshal supervises this team.​

​Both teams are supported by an Administrative Assistant, who will likely be your initial contact when calling the general office number.



​​