Fire Door Inspection
from £15

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Lets Expose the Mystery

Fire Door Inspections are in high demand, our Assessors inspect 1000’s of Fire Doors every year, but there is still a lot of mystery and confusion over fire doors, who should inspect them, and what fire door inspections should cover.

What we check when inspecting fire doors 

All inspections and assessments are completed by professionally competent consultants. Reports are reviewed and validated by Senior Technical Leads to ensure the reliability of information and that standards are maintained. All reports and information are compiled and supplied via the ATAI, a revolutionary dynamic risk assessment compliance portal.

So, what is a fire door?

We frequently get asked when undertaking Fire Safety Assessments & Inspections, what is a fire door, why we need them, how can you tell?

The simple answer is that… 

A fire door assists with containing a fire in an area of a building like a room. So, if for example a fire starts in your office, and your escape route is through a corridor and down a stairwell to exit the building, we need to keep the corridor and stairwell clear from the effects of a fire so you can safely escape the building.

So what needs inspecting? … surely there are just two sides, a handle, and hinges to look at…

Depending on the fire door set (door and frame) installed, the door inspection can include up to 52 points to check. The process can be ‘non-intrusive’ keeping to a visual check with measurements, through to an ‘intrusive’ check resulting in the door surround being removed to ensure the door and frame won’t fall out of the wall in a fire situation.

Independently published data reported that 75% of fire doors failed to meet the required standards.

How do I know which doors are fire doors?

A building’s design is engineered to protect occupants in the event of a fire. This is achieved by complying with Building Regulations or engineering an alternative solution. The best way to view a building’s design so you can understand where the fire doors are located is within the Fire ‘Design’ Strategy (FDS) or on the Compartmentation Plans (CP), and how you should manage them.

The FDS will describe and illustrate the requirement for a fire door location, fire rating e.g. 30, 60, 120 minutes, whether it requires smoke seals, intumescent strips etc. The Compartmentation plan will illustrate this visually on a floor plan.

We often visit sites where Fire Door Inspections have been completed on all doors considered as Fire Doors, without considering design or compartmentation information resulting in a higher than required management burden, wasting resource, time, money by managing and maintaining (and even upgrading) doors as Fire Doors, when they simply are not. Reliable building information is the essential starting point…

We can help if you require advice on which doors are Fire Doors

Who can carry out the inspection?

Fire doors must be inspected by a competent person, someone trained and experienced. The level of competence depends on the level of risk (Risk Profile), how frequent and thorough the inspections need to be, and the approach to risk and compliance management.

Frequent visual inspections (daily, weekly, monthly) could be completed as part of your regular building inspections undertaken by internal property management, checklist completed as a record. Less frequent (6 monthly, annual) but more thorough ‘non-intrusive’ inspections by a more competent person, a professionally qualification experienced person, knowledge of the property type and risk type (profile) is essential. Intrusive inspection, where door, door trim and door furniture may be removed, so installation can be inspected requires a specialised contractor.

The level of risk is based on the buildings risk profile, this is easiest described by a common approach to residential properties. Under 11m is low rise (low risk), above 11m and up to 18m is medium rise (medium risk), over 18m is high rise (high risk). However, all these buildings have sleeping occupants (residents) so are at a greater risk when compared to an office building, as office occupants are mostly awake, familiar and alert. And, if we consider hotels, again with differing heights, occupants are asleep and unfamiliar with the layout (escape routes), or the sound of the alarm etc. so the risk profile changes again.

The Fire Risk Assessment and/or Fire Design Strategy should detail the property Risk Profile and Management Approach…. If unsure, then contact us for help

Should all properties have an FDS or Compartmentation Plan?

The answer with my fire safety hat on is ideally ‘Yes’, although the correct answer is ‘No’… Some buildings are heritage, constructed before planning documents were required, and for the majority, the original build information has simply been mislaid or lost over time. But ‘Help’ is only a click away… we can help and give advice through surveys and provide retrospective FDS and plans where required.

Complex properties should have an FDS, non-complex properties may only have basic drawings or plans, think of it more as a fire safety building design manual or drawing, and if you do not know how the property is designed for fire safety, are you managing it correctly??

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