Fire Protection Concepts, Inc. co-owner Mark Neal at the main office in Golden, Colo.

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Humans have been building fires for tens of thousands of years. But when it comes to putting them out, a lot of people are still stuck in 1874—the year the first automatic sprinkler system was invented.

When people find out that Mark Neal is in the fire protection business, they automatically utter the dreaded “s” word.

“They immediately think we’re a sprinkler contractor,” Mark says with a good-natured laugh. “We’re actually a little bit unique: we provide a waterless solution in fire detection and protection”.

As co-owner of Golden-based Fire Protection Concepts, Inc., Mark sells and installs clean-agent fire suppression systems, a term that applies to using chemical agents or inert gases instead of water to put out a fire.

It’s not a new idea—clean agents have been around for decades. But the technology keeps improving, and Fire Protection Concepts is one of the few companies in the Denver area that sells 3M™ Novec™ 1230 Fire Protection Fluid, an innovative, waterless solution.

The lack of water is key, Mark says, since his company works extensively with computer data centers and other “high-value environments” that could be seriously damaged by a sprinkler system.

“We’re able to detect and suppress a fire in roughly 10 seconds, without harming sensitive data equipment,” he says. “There’s zero cleanup, no loss of revenue, and all our clean-agent products are completely clean, green and environmentally safe. They don’t harm people.”

Fighting Fire at Sea

Ironically, water was what got Mark into the fire protection business in the first place.

After joining the U.S. Navy in 1983, he became a firefighter and then a fire marshal on the warship USS Lewis B. Puller. For four years, he trained and managed firefighting teams—and even successfully put out two fires on the ship itself, a job that’s far trickier than putting out a fire in a building, he says.

“When you’re at sea and you have a fire, you have nowhere to go,” Mark says. “You’ve got to find a way to put the fire out and continue on.”

When Mark left the military after four years, he’d acquired all the job training he needed to start his career. “I was discharged on a Friday and literally went to work for a [fire suppression] contractor the next Monday morning,” he says.

In 2008, he and his wife, Jacqueline Neal, launched Fire Protection Concepts out of their Denver-area home. Now, a decade later, it’s grown into a thriving business with 10 employees and a reputation for in-depth industry expertise and excellent customer relations.

“When I hear Mark talk during a presentation, I’m still kind of shocked by how much he knows about this industry,” says Jacqueline, the company’s co-owner. “He’s also very personable—people just automatically like him.”

A River Runs Through it

Although the company does most of its business in Colorado and nearby states, Mark has installed fire protection systems all over the world, from Holland to Guam to Cairo, where he worked with the Egyptian Ministry of Defense and Military Production.

But he prefers to stay close to the Rocky Mountains, where he and his wife love to fly-fish when they’re able to squeeze it into their busy schedules. Mark says his biggest catch was a 35-pound trout, but he’s never upset if he fishes for hours without getting a single bite. “It’s just so beautiful,” he says of his favorite rivers in Montana as well as Colorado’s South Platte River.

Fishing also gives him quiet time to contemplate the best practices and most effective ways to run his business and work with his employees.

“It’s hard to find good, knowledgeable people in our industry because it’s a niche market. But we found them, and we’ve had very, very small turnover. You treat your team with respect and dignity, and they hang around,” he says.

Growing and Shrinking

The bigger challenge, he says, is adapting to the shrinking size and needs of computer data centers, a niche that has long provided some of his main clients.

“Thirty years ago, you could roll a bowling ball across some of these enormous data centers and never hit the other side. Today, data processing might be done in a little room that’s 10 feet by 12 feet,” he says. “There’s more of these facilities, but they’re getting smaller.”

To keep flourishing, Fire Protection Concepts will have to diversify with more products and also focus more on the service and inspection end of the business, Mark says. But no matter how his business changes, he’ll hold onto the same core philosophies he’s honed during 34 years of working in the industry.

“We want to expand the company, but it’s important to continue to be the very best in the industry,” he says. “We’ve built our whole business on honesty, integrity and providing a service that is second to nobody else’s. As we grow, we really want to keep exceeding the expectations of our customers. We’re not satisfied with anything that’s just average.”