Beekman Point Engineering serves as Qualified Fire Protection Engineer and specialty Commissioning Authority for the conversion of three active rotorcraft hangars at The Boeing Company’s Ridley Park facility — Buildings 3-62, 3-95, and 3-96 — from legacy AFFF to Solberg Re-Healing RF3 Synthetic Fluorine-Free Foam (SFFF) at 3% concentration. The work supports Boeing and its design and construction partners in meeting the Department of Defense’s PFAS phase-out schedule established by Section 322 of the FY2020 NDAA. Each hangar protects approximately 15,800 SF of HC-2 aircraft bay at 0.20 GPM/SF using a Solberg balanced-pressure bladder tank system — two 1,600-gallon tanks, four 6-inch Variable Range Proportioners, and a manual hose-station proportioner — with a system demand of roughly 4,440 GPM at 102.5 psi.

A central technical consideration on the project is that SFFF concentrate is a non-Newtonian, shear-thinning fluid, so the standard Hazen-Williams correlation used for water-side sprinkler hydraulics does not strictly apply to the concentrate side of the system. Working alongside the Engineer of Record and the general contractor, BPE developed an independent Metzner-Reed power-law hydraulic analysis, back-calibrated against measured surrogate-fluid test data, to support proportioner-listed equivalent-length compliance. BPE personnel have witnessed multiple rounds of FM-Global-approved Planit Safe FF3-S surrogate acceptance testing, issued PE-sealed commissioning reports tracking the team’s progress against NFPA 11 (2024), NFPA 13 (2022), NFPA 16 (2019), and FM Global Property Loss Prevention Data Sheet 4-12 (2025), and provided specification-book review to help refine the standard for future SFFF retrofits. The result is a coordinated, collaboratively-tested fluorine-free foam suppression program supporting Boeing’s rotorcraft mission and the broader PFAS-elimination goals of the Department of Defense. The project showcases BPE’s ability to deliver QFPE and specialty CxA services on technically demanding PFAS-to-SFFF retrofits across DoD, FAA, and NASA aviation infrastructure.