The Fire Design Skills Shortage: How Will Your Firm Adapt?

Posted on May 20, 2025

Globally, fire protection companies are facing the same issue: a shortage of skilled fire designers. With increasing requirements for fire protection systems, the industry simply isn’t producing enough experienced professionals to keep up.

What’s Driving the Shortage?

• Aging workforce – Many senior designers are retiring, taking decades of experience with them.
• Lack of training programs – Unlike other engineering disciplines, fire protection has limited structured pathways for new talent.
• High demand for projects – As buildings and society become more complex, with compliance to codes and standards even more onerous, fire safety takes centre stage –> the need for skilled designers has skyrocketed.

The Pressure is On

Companies are now being forced to make tough choices:

• Delay or decline projects due to a lack of available staff.
• Increase salaries to attract and retain talent—massively increasing overhead costs.
• Rely on overworked teams, increasing burnout and error rates.

So, What’s the Solution?

Hiring more people isn’t always possible—and even if it were, it’s not a sustainable solution. The companies that are adapting successfully are rethinking how their designers work, shifting away from time-consuming manual tasks and embracing technology to multiply their team’s capacity.

In the next five years, the companies that thrive won’t be the ones that simply hire more staff—they’ll be the ones that find smarter ways to work.