About Rhino
Rhino Fire Protection Engineering, PLLC is a small business founded by three licensed professional engineers, all with degrees in fire protection engineering from the highly regarded University of Maryland Department of Fire Protection Engineering. Our sole practice is fire protection and life safety engineering and design.
Rhino FPE combines the customer service of a small business with the capabilities of a large company. We serve as your advocate and technical representative throughout the course of a project and provide the sound engineering judgment needed when dealing with complex life safety issues. Our responsiveness and depth of experience on projects both large and small are just two reasons why clients frequently return for follow-on projects.
We employ an ethnically and culturally diverse staff of professional registered fire protection engineers, junior engineers, construction administration specialists, and full service Computer-aided Design personnel. Our CAD staff has been utilizing Revit Building Information Modeling (BIM) since 2009. The strength of our size comes from our tightly knit engineering team, most of which have been working together for many years.
Each member of our team brings a unique background that augments our capabilities in a particular facet of fire protection engineering. From fire alarm to explosion suppression and military facilities to kindergartens, Rhino’s engineers have direct experience and have created solutions that work.
Have a look through our website and see how we can help make your project a success.
Rhino Leadership
Fernando Escalante
Mr. Escalante brings years of experience in special fire suppression and detection systems for industrial applications including the design of fire suppression, fire alarm, detection mass communication, and smoke control systems. He is also the lead for Quality Assurance and Quality Control at Rhino FPE.
He is also very familiar with building codes and design guidelines such as IBC, Veterans Affairs Fire Protection Design Manual, UFC, and NFPA codes. His projects have included hospitals and medical facilities, museums, historic properties, federal, higher education, laboratories, high-rise buildings, malls, hotels, industrial, oil, gas, and petrochemical facilities.
Mr. Escalante holds an M.S., Fire Protection Engineering degree from the University of Maryland as well a B.S., Industrial Engineering degree from Universidad de los Andes. He has been practicing fire protection engineering since 1985.
John Mitros
Mr. Mitros specializes in fire sprinkler and suppression engineering and design and applies his sprinkler installation experience to many of our sprinkler designs. He has extensive experience in all aspects of fire protection and life safety engineering and consulting, third party commissioning, and witness/acceptance testing particularly for government clients in both domestic and international venues.
Mr. Mitros provides cost estimating, contract management, and executive oversight for many of our projects. He also conducts site investigations, Fire Safety Evaluation System (FSES) and NFPA 101A surveys, and provides guidance with respect to code analysis and compliance.
He holds a B.S., Fire Protection Engineering degree from the University of Maryland and has been practicing fire protection engineering since 1999.
Craig Thompson
Mr. Thompson specializes in fire alarm engineering, design, and commissioning. In addition to his engineering expertise, he has extensive knowledge of fire alarm components/systems and their applications from his tenure at one of the largest worldwide fire alarm manufacturers.
Mr. Thompson’s projects often include design and implementation of fire sprinkler/suppression systems, smoke control evacuation management, voice evacuation and mass notification design, egress analysis and calculations, and fire modeling. He is skilled in managing the design and implementation of retrofit fire alarm and sprinkler projects with compressed schedules to minimize disruption to occupants and on-going activities.
Mr. Thompson holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Fire Protection Engineering from the University of Maryland. He has been practicing fire protection engineering since 1992.