Fire Door Experts were called upon as leading fire door contractors to assist with a high end residential project last summer. The building had been handed over with non-fire rated riser doors!

FDE were tasked to come up with a solution to replace these riser doors with a bank of fire rated riser doors, across a very large aperture.

What made things even more complicated was the sizes and configurations of the new riser doors needed to be manufactured and installed exactly to suit the existing configuration of the electronic access panels, so that each door would open directly onto a panel.

Our Contracts Manager and Lead Fire Door Technician, Blaine Heard, decided to use risers with back-to-back frames.

Having spent time examining the riser cupboard, Blaine expertly designed the layout of the riser door configuration using Forza Doors back to back fire rated frame solutions.  As far as we are aware, Forza are the only fire door manufacturer able to offer this back to back frame design.

Following client approval, we successfully procured and installed these replacement riser doors configured in banks with back to back frames. This ensured full fire door compliance and the safety of the buildings residents and users.

Yet another first for the market leading team here at Fire Door Experts! Why not make us your go to fire door contractors?!

Another fix-only project in conjunction with SDS.

December saw the FDE team prove themselves as one of the leading fire door installation companies with our 5th project undertaken for SDS (Specialist Door Solutions) in 2020.

As preferred installers for SDS, Fire Door Experts were presented to the Main Contractors for an Essex hospital refurbishment.

Scope of Work

The project included the installation of 80 fire rated door-sets, which were a mix of FD30s and FD60s fire ratings and single, double and leaf and a half door configurations.

All doors feature wood veneer facings with blue door edge protection; ironmongery varied depending on the doors’ final intended use and location within the building.

Even when engaged on a fix-only basis, the FDE team check every detail on the door production schedule. Proposed door leaf sizes need to be confirmed, as do door swing actions and handings to ensure each door-set is correct to be installed with minimum fuss once on site and to allow the project to run as smoothly as possible.

Once work commenced, Fire Door Experts maintained a consistent onsite Project Leader, to offer all parties involved a single go-to point of contact to streamline all communications.

Progress of Work

Hospitals are busy buildings, and even when the wards are being refurbished, there are patients waiting for the beds! Team FDE worked with the Main Contractors to ensure the right part of each ward was handed over on time to receive the incoming patients.

Progress was reported back to the Main Contractor on a regular basis, with installation photographs of each door-set supplied via shared Dropbox folders per door-set.

Having handed over the first floor, which allows patients to occupy the wards and much needed beds, our team have now commenced work on the next phase of the project on ground floor.

If you’re unsure which of the many fire door installation companies to engage on your next project, why not give us a call and discuss? We’d be very happy to hear from you!

Carpentry and joinery package underway with 120 fire doors to be fitted in the New Year.

Our parent company, BW Consultants Ltd have commenced work on a major project at Gramophone Works on behalf of Grahams. This includes carpentry and joinery work to install a number of timber upstands and roof access hatches as well as refitting the Reception area and Cafe Roof Terraces over the new few months.

Once the building renovations are complete, the Fire Door Experts arm of the company will beginning installing 120 fire doors. Doors have been procured from Integrated Doorset Solutions Limited with ironmongery from AllGood.

This project is not only a major work contract, but also a perfect example of the wide ranging skillsets of the BWC and FED operatives.

Watch how quickly fire can engulf a room!

Working with our clients, not just for our clients…

It’s vital, when working on projects, that all parties concerned work for the betterment of the project, especially when a variety of suppliers are involved and an ever-increasing scope of work.

Fire Door Experts were originally engaged by Hanevo back in December 2018 to carry out the installation of 250+ fire doors on a fix only basis. Due to the quality and timeliness of our work, the clear communication channels and our professional project management, we have developed an excellent relationship with Hanevo which has led to further works being awarded for fire door maintenance work and the supply and installation of a number of fire doors, including;

Maintenance Work

Essential maintenance is now completed on 76 existing bedroom doors to the nurses home at Whittington Hospital where doors were maintained back to their originally intended fire rating. Work included resizing the doors by the addition of hardwood lippings to achieve correct door margins, the addition of batwing seals to add smoke control, the replacement of existing hinges with fire rated hinges, new overhead door closers to ensure the doors close correctly and appropriate fire door signage.

Further Maintenance Work

Whilst in the same block, we completed the maintenance of the existing kitchen and store room fire doors to maintain them to current standards.

Replacement On-Call Doors

15 On-Call bedroom doors have been replaced with 30-minute rated FD30s Ash veneer door-sets and integrated over panels. As well as offering passive fire protection, these replacement doors have an enhanced acoustic rating offering better potential for rest for the staff in a busy area of the hospital. Door-sets were supplied by Humphrey and Stretton with ironmongery from Spiller Door Controls Direct.

Improved Escape Route and Fire Compartmentation

We have just been awarded the contract to replace the existing stairwell doors in the nursing home for 60-minute rated FD60s fire door-sets and associated ironmongery, coupled with the supply and installation of new FD30s veneer leaf and a half door-sets to add corridor breaks and improve the fire compartmentation of the building.

Fix Only Door Installations

Whilst these new stairwell and corridor break doors are in manufacture, we have since recommenced on site for the second phase of the 18 month fire door replacement programme we were originally engaged for. This sees us replacing all the existing non-fire rated doors around the hospital on Level 1 with SDS Specialist Door Solutions fire door-sets, whom we are preferred installers.

Fire Door Surveys

We are currently working through reports having just completed a fire door survey of the existing fire doors on Level 2 of the hospital. Once complete, we will submit our survey report to Hanevo and The Trust with our recommendations.

Given the numerous steps involved in the fire door procurement process, especially when working on multiple concurrent sub-projects, strong project management skills are required along with clear and concise communications. Fire Door Experts pride ourselves on offering a true full circle service providing peace of mind from project conception to completion and beyond.

As a building owner, landlord or Responsible Person, you have a statutory obligation to ensure your fire doors are compliant and fit for purpose.

So, you instruct a third party accredited fire door contractor to inspect and assess your fire doors. You (should) then receive a detailed report and cost estimate. Naturally, you want to get comparison quotes, so you send the report out to other contractors to price up.

The following things then probably happen:

1 Other contractors refuse to provide costs for repairs based on someone else’s report.

2 Another fire door contractor will price up the report, but include many clauses to cover them for pricing off someone else’s report. This includes disagreeing with some elements of the report and / or not costing certain elements at all.

3 A lot of time elapses between from when the first report was commissioned and completed, to when you finally have (at least) 2 costings to ‘compare’.

4 Now you have at least 2 costs back, you can’t actually compare like for like as each contractor’s prices have different interpretations of the reports and what they have (and have not) allowed for. So, in effect, you can’t actually compare like for like.

5 Several months have since elapsed into this project, and you have not progressed any further as all you have managed to do is pay for a fire door survey which you have vastly different costs back for any remedial works, all with different views on what is permitted to be carried out to maintain an existing fire door assembly back to its originally intended fire rating.

If this has happened to you, this is where we can help!

Our Planned Preventative Maintenance Proposal for fire door maintenance works can filter out all this lost time and money with the traditional route of fire door surveys. With our PPM, we have different levels of service agreement to maintain your existing fire door assemblies back to their originally intended fire rating with BM Trada Certification, whilst we survey them!

This not only saves you the cost, lost time and headache of conflicting fire door survey reports and costs, it also ensures you are fulfilling your statutory obligations to maintain your fire doors.

Please get in touch for further information.

The Home Office has introduced a new bill to improve fire safety in buildings

Building on action already taken to ensure tragedies like the Grenfell Tower never happen again, the new Fire Safety Bill amends the Fire Safety Order 2005. This clarifies that the responsible person or duty-holder for multi-occupied, residential buildings must ensure fire door maintenance is carried out regularly. This is to manage and reduce the risk of fire for entrance doors to individual flats that open into common parts of the building.

More details will emerge over the coming months, but the Fire Door Experts team welcome this new Bill as this is an area of building maintenance that is often overlooked. Fire doors often only appear on a responsible person’s radar when they become faulty – by that time, they’re endangering life, and probably have been for some time!

With such exacting tolerances, such as 3mm gaps around the leaf edges, front entrance doors need to be regularly maintained and fit for purpose. This may sound a strange comment to make – they also need to be a fire rated door-assembly in the first place!

When carrying out surveys or maintenance works, we’re often presented with doors missing vital elements such as intumescent strips and fire rated hinges. Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple job for our technicians to fit these parts to “upgrade” a door into a fire door; without these parts present, we have to assume it was never a factory tested fire door – or the intumescent strips would have been present!

Simple, regular maintenance visits by accredited fire door technicians can keep all fire doors at optimum performance levels, and providing effective passive fire protection.

BM Trada Q-Mark Certificate 001 – we really were 1st!

Whilst recently rearranging the office, we realised what we had in our possession – the very first BM Trada Q-Mark certificate for door installation!

As well as being No. 001, we’re also very proud to be BM Trada Q-Mark certified. Here at Fire Door Experts, we firmly believe the detail required through Trada’s fire door inspection and maintenance schemes leave no stone unturned, and leaves a building’s Responsible Person in no doubt that the fire door assemblies will provide effective passive fire protection.

A prime example being a ‘fire door’ with no intumescent strips present can’t have been a factory tested fire door under the Q-Mark scheme, otherwise it would have the strips installed – which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Other schemes would allow the door leaves to have the edges routed and intumescent strips retrospectively fitted, but you can’t make a door into a fire door just by adding some strips and an overhead closer.

BM Trada have 23 Accepted Repair Techniques, and allow Certified maintainers to use these ARTs to maintain fire doors back to their original intended purpose as fire rated door assemblies. Fire Door Experts can then issue a Record of Maintenance Activity once the work is completed, along witht an O&M folder with all required fire test evidence, giving the building’s Responsible Person an audit trail of what was fitted, using what technique, on which date and by whom. This is vital information when looking after passive fire protection equipment.

The same level of detail is behind the Q-Mark door installation scheme, providing our clients with the knowledge that factory tested door-sets are being installed to the highest standards. That’s our opinion anyway, why not engage with us on your next fire door project and see the difference?!