History
It all started with one devastating fire...
In the early morning hours of January 16, 1967, Chicago’s McCormick Place, the convention showplace on the shores of Lake Michigan, was destroyed by fire. Rolf Jensen, then chairman of the Fire Protection Engineering Department at the Illinois Institute of Technology, received a call from Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Would Mr. Jensen be willing to chair a blue-ribbon panel investigating the cause of the tragic fire?
Rolf Jensen agreed and the resulting fire investigation report became the basis for many of the fire protection and life safety codes in Chicago and other major cities. His subsequent consulting with a major architectural firm demonstrated how it was possible to combine code compliance with creative architectural design. From this single event, the consulting engineering firm of Rolf Jensen & Associates was launched in 1969.
