What the work actually is

You build evaluation tasks that look like a workday, not a quiz. A task starts from a real artifact — a plan set, a hydraulic calculation, a fire alarm riser and device layout, an ITM report, a video walkthrough of an occupancy, a photo of a firestopped penetration — and asks for the deliverable you would produce in the seat: an egress and life safety plan check, a fire access review, a correction list with code citations, a pass/fail acceptance decision. You author both the task and the reference answer. A second reviewer in your discipline checks it before it ships, and you will review others' work in turn.

Some task families ask you to write from more than one seat. A sprinkler review, for instance, may be authored from the design engineer's chair, the fire marshal's chair, and the property insurer's chair — the same submittal, three different thresholds for what is acceptable. Being able to hold those perspectives apart, and explain why they diverge, is a large part of the value here.

What the screen is looking for

  • Seat time, not adjacency. Three years minimum reviewing or inspecting; eight or more preferred. Firefighting or fire officer experience without plan review or inspection responsibility is explicitly not a fit, nor is installation or service work without design or review authority.
  • Credential. Fire marshal appointment, NICET Level III or higher, or a PE in fire protection.
  • Working fluency in IBC, IFC and NFPA, including the ability to say what changed between editions and which edition a given jurisdiction has actually adopted.
  • Judgment under ambiguity. The stated bar is not whether you can cite the section — it is whether you know which occupant load calculation, travel distance, or coverage gap a reviewer would wave through, and which one draws a correction.

Signals that stand out: training junior inspectors, writing departmental correction language or an SOP, doing acceptance testing as well as desk review, and working across multiple NFPA cycles.

Logistics

Remote and asynchronous, contract, paid hourly. The observed band on this listing is $45–60/hr depending on experience, with the platform indicating a path to a higher rate as the project scales — treat that as stated, not promised. Hours are self-directed and flexible; most contributors on task-authoring projects of this type work in blocks rather than fixed shifts. You will need to be able to mark up plan sets digitally and read hydraulic calculations and device layouts without a CAD seat provided for you. US-based.