Building & Fire Code Consultant
Robert Davidson is retired from a career as a Fire Marshal in the state of New Jersey. In this position he commanded a Fire Safety/Special Operations Division and was responsible for the supervision of the Fire Safety Bureau and the Office of Emergency Management. His position included assessing hazardous material risks, response plan development, and mitigation of hazardous material incident impacts. His division had regulatory oversight of all buildings, structures and premises pursuant to the NJ Uniform Fire Code to ensure they were maintained as constructed pursuant to the NJ Uniform Construction Code, the Hotel, Motel & Multiple Dwelling regulations and the Rooming & Boarding House regulations along with their referenced standards and related laws, ordinances and regulations effecting health, safety and welfare.
His career responsibilities included: Regulatory proposal review and comment; drafting and review of local ordinances effecting health, safety and welfare; planning and zoning board subdivision and site plan reviews; site compliance inspections starting from the point of site development; code compliance and enforcement; fire, arson and environmental incident investigations; public education and community/business group presentations; liaison to local, county, state and national emergency response or regulatory agencies.
He has instructed a variety of subjects involving firefighting, rescue, health, safety, OSHA compliance, building code, fire code and housing code compliance for Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Middlesex County College, Middlesex County, New Jersey, the Middlesex County Fire Academy, the University of North Carolina, Charlotte Campus, School of Architecture and the University of Texas, Arlington Campus. Mr. Davidson has been developing and instructing courses on various regulatory, health and safety topics for the past thirty-three (33) years. He has been a speaker at the National Fire Protection Associations' World Safety Conference for eight conferences.
He has been certified as a hazardous material technician and specialist, a certified hazard materials scene commander, and was certified and/or licensed as a Fire Marshal, Construction Code Official, Housing Code Official and Fire Protection Subcode Official - High Hazard Specialist. He has been certified and/or approved as an instructor of fire code, firefighting, construction code, housing code and hazardous material courses.
In 2005, he gained national recognition serving as chair of the International Code Council’s ‘International Fire Code Development Committee’ and he served as chair of the Subchapter III Subcommittee, (NJ Uniform Fire Code technical provisions), for the NJ State Fire Safety Commission, Codes Advisory Council from 1993 till 2017. He also served on the ICC Fire Code Interpretation Committee along with numerous other committees.
He has been involved in the Fire, Law Enforcement, Office of Emergency Management and EMS fields on a career and volunteer basis for over 35 years and in 2006 was the recipient of the International Code Councils annual “Fire Service Award”. In 2011 he was designated by vote of the membership as a permanent Honorary Member of the International Code Council. Honorary membership can be granted to an individual who has been recognized as having rendered outstanding service to the International Code Council.
He is currently the Managing Partner and primary expert for Davidson Code Concepts, LLC a firm that operates as a consulting business servicing the design profession, legal profession, business community, insurance industry, construction industry, educational institutions and the code enforcement community across the United States; specializing in code development, educational presentations, code compliance analysis, solution development, post incident code review and expert testimony.