Fire doors are critical to effective passive fire protection (PFP) in commercial and other buildings, but specifying and choosing a fire door – for dimensions, fire rating, finish etc. – is only half the job done.
Installing the doors properly to ensure fire safety compliance is equally important, and this is where, in the quest for a low-cost solution, things can go badly wrong – and compromise your building’s fire safety certification to boot.
In short, a compliantly manufactured fire door installed by someone who isn’t appropriately trained is likely to become non-compliant in the eyes of a fire protection assessment or fire protection survey, because installation errors wipe out the benefits of the door’s fire safety features.
Worse, it risks not being capable of doing the fire compartmentation job it is designed to do – stopping the spread of flames, smoke, and toxic gases – and that comes with a potentially shocking cost to human life and to property.
Who to trust to fit your fire doors
Firstly, look to the manufacturer. If you source your fire doors through a manufacturer who designs, manufactures, and installs them, cutting corners at the installation stage would be pointless for the manufacturer, because it would negate the compliance investment they have made in all the previous stages.
By this token, manufacturer installation can be a wise (and safe) course of action.
However, not all manufacturers install, which means you have to source those installation skills elsewhere. This adds cost, and it’s here that all your efforts to ensure fire safety compliance can unravel, as you seek a general tradesperson who can install the doors more cheaply. After all, it’s just hanging a door, right?
Wrong. Fire door installers must have undergone appropriate fire door installation training, enabling them to be classified as a “competent person” under the recently strengthened provisions of The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
This training could include, for example, the renewed Fire Door NVQ launched in 2017, although fire door installation is a big responsibility, so the higher the level of the installer’s qualifications, and the more experience they have, the better!
At the same time, it pays to check whether the installer is a member of the the BM Trada Q-Mark scheme, as this provides independent reassurance that installation is carried out in accordance with the manufacturer’s strict guidelines.
Can you trust the fire doors themselves?
So, non-compliant installation can potentially render an otherwise perfectly compliant fire door unfit for purpose – which means you can’t entrust installation to just anyone.
But in the same way as an installer must be able to demonstrate competence to install the door, the door must surely be able to demonstrate its own competence to perform the job in hand. How can you be sure, then, that your fire door is what it purports to be, and that what is on, under, and around it won’t let it down?
Credible and trustworthy fire door suppliers and specialist PFP companies can provide complete and detailed manufacturer information regarding reception, installation, and compliance, but here are a few key features to look out for:
