Fire Protection Engineering or PCI engineering, is the application of the principles of science and engineering to the protection of people, property and the environment from the destructive effects of fire. It is also known as Fire Engineering.

The discipline of fire protection includes, among others:

PCI engineers identify risks and design protective measures aimed at preventing, controlling and reducing the effects of fires, assisting architects, designers and owners in evaluating building safety and protecting assets. Another field of action is fire investigation.

The roots of this discipline date back to Ancient Rome, when Emperor Nero ordered after the Great Fire of Rome that destroyed the city[1] that it be rebuilt taking into account passive protection measures such as maintaining a minimum separation between homes and the use of non-combustible materials. The discipline of fire protection engineering emerged as a discipline differentiated from civil, mechanical and chemical engineering at the beginning of the century as a response to the risks posed by fires derived from the activity of the Industrial Revolution.

Another motivation to promote the discipline, define its practices, and conduct research to develop advances was in response to the catastrophic urban fires that devastated many North American cities at the end of the second half of the century. The insurance industry also helped promote the establishment of this discipline interested in the development of fire protection systems. At the turn of the century, building standards were adapted to new construction techniques to improve the protection of people and property as a result of some catastrophic fires.

In 1903, the first fire protection engineering degree was launched at the Armor Institute of Technology (USA), which later became part of the Illinois Institute of Technology.[2]​

The first reason for PCI engineering to develop is the need to develop a specific “body of knowledge” to address the risks derived from fires. Other factors that contributed to the development of the profession were the creation of the Institution of Fire Engineers in 1918 in the UK and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers in 1950 in the US, the emergence of independent fire safety consultants and the promulgation of standards for fire protection.