Sirina Fire goes big time in the Big Apple and beyond
GARDEN CITY PARK, N.Y.—Twenty-one years ago, Sirina Fire Protection started as a sprinkler company so small its office was the founder’s kitchen table. Today, Sirina, a full-service fire protection company based here, has about 250 employees and specializes in large projects that have included Yankee Stadium, The New York Times building, and New York City’s first casino.
“We built a company from the ground up and we’re pretty well-known within New York City,” Carl Filomio, president of Sirina Protection Systems, a subsidiary created 15 years ago to expand Sirina’s fire capabilities, told Security Systems News. Sirina now designs, installs and services fire alarm, fire suppression, and fire detection systems and also offers mass notification and evacuation systems.
Sirina, which also has an office in Manhattan, says it has “earned a reputation as one of the few contractors capable of handling major installations.” Filomio said the company is ideal for handling large projects because of its experience, its large, expert staff, and its strong bonding capacity—which its website says is in excess of $50 million.
“We don’t really advertise ourselves because we’ve been around so long and most of the large construction companies know Sirina,” Filomio said. The company serves New York and New Jersey and its clients include airports, hospitals and power plants.
Filomio said the company’s founder and chairman, Anthony Florez, didn’t even have an office when the company got its first job with New York-Presbyterian Hospital. “We’ve been there ever since,” Filomio said of the hospital. “We’re their preferred vendor on 68th Street.”
Filomio said Florez set strict hiring standards. “The managers at Sirina will not hire entry-level people. They will hire degreed people (who) know what they’re doing so they do the job right,” said Filomio, who added that the company is affiliated with two unions, one of sprinkler fitters and one of electrical workers.
Filomio said the sales staff includes specialists to meet changing industry demands. “The industry has gotten to the point where, if you go to a sales meeting, you’re most likely going to meet with the customer’s IT people or engineers, so we’ve gone ahead and hired fire protection engineers that are salespeople, so that they know what they’re talking about,” he said.
Projects that Sirina, a Notifier Engineered Systems Co. (NESCO) distributor, completed in 2011 include the sprinkler and clean agent systems for the 1-million-square-foot Resorts World, a racino at the Aqueduct horse-racing track in Queens. New York City’s first casino, it opened in October.
“We had six months to complete that project, so that was 24/7 shifts of electricians and fitters,” Filomio said.
And in a job recently finished at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, Filomio said, “we did a full integration between the fire alarm system and the building management systems. … That saved redundant conduit work.” He said that job by Sirina, which also carries Fike and Ansul products, marked the first time such an integration was done in New York City.
Areas We Serve
