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!

315 fire doors successfully maintained despite unforeseen challenges

Fire Door Experts have completed fire door maintenance work on 315 bedroom, communal and riser doors on behalf of a large student accommodation chain successfully maintaining  all doors back to their originally intended fire rating.

Under our BM Trada Q-Mark Fire Door Maintenance accreditation, we can carry out a number of Accepted Repair Techniques to make fire doors compliant, techniques such as;

1. 1. Easing and adjusting the door so it hangs correctly in the frame to ensure the perimeter margins are within tolerance.
   2. Adjusting the frame to reduce excessive gaps on the long edges of the door leaf, particularly when working on veneer finish door leaves.
   3. Increasing the height of the door by adding hardwood lipping to the bottom edge.
   4. Installing automatic drop-down seals to provide smoke control where uneven floors make tight fire door tolerances of 3mm difficult to achieve.
   5. Replacing worn hinges to ensure the free swing of doors.
   6. Adjusting, or replacing, overhead door closers to ensure the doors self-close correctly so ensuring the integrity of the fire compartment.

These are just some of the Accepted Repair Techniques used to rectify the 658 identified non-compliances and maintain these fire doors back to compliance.

Projects such as these are normally challenging enough as our team work their way through the building. This particular project was made even more challenging as students began returning ready for the start of a new term. While this doesn’t sound a particularly difficult obstacle to overcome, when we remember this was the height of the Covid restrictions, and these students were arriving from all over the world…

Following Construction Leadership Council Site Operating Procedures Guidelines, and our ever evolving site-specific Risk Assessment and Method Statement, our technicians were able to book appointments for each apartment to ensure these guidelines and our RAMS were observed. This allowed social distancing and all other Covid-19 requirements to be applied and honoured so the project could continue smoothly.

One key point that was highlighted from this project…

Student accommodation… 315 fire doors… 658 identified non-conformities… ZERO compliant fire doors in the property before we commenced work!!

Planned Preventative Maintenance is vital for any fire doors, but when you have a few hundred fire doors, with people sleeping in the property, it really should be top of the Responsible Person’s list. Please see details of our PPM initiative here >> Fire Door Experts 360^®

Watch how quickly fire can engulf a room!

Here at Fire Door Experts we are looking forward to the upcoming Fire Safety Bill as this, long awaited legislation will hopefully provide clear guidelines on the statutory obligations of landlords, building owners, operators and Responsible Persons with regards to their fire doors.

However, what we are concerned about is that there still does not appear to be 1 governing body with regards to the standards that fire doors should be maintained to.  There are various third party accreditations schemes which contractors can become members of (we are accredited to BM Trada’s Q-Mark scheme for both fire door installations and fire door maintenance), which have very strict procedures and accepted repair techniques that are permitted to be carried to maintain fire door assemblies back to their originally intended fire rating.

Any other works deemed as ‘upgrades’ (for example, retrospectively routing in intumescent seals to a ‘nominal’ door leaf) are not accepted repair techniques and therefore neither are these endorsed, nor are they covered under the Q-mark scheme.

So how does this leave end users, landlords, building owners and Responsible Persons when determining the standard to accept when maintaining their fire doors under a third party accreditation scheme, when they are receiving detailed fire door survey reports which conflict between permitted repair techniques across different third party accreditation schemes?

This has large cost implications as where one report can state to rout combined cold smoke intumescent seals into a door leaf that does not currently have any, to another scheme recommending the same door to be replaced for a proven and tested fire door leaf.

Surveying fire door assemblies is a very technical, skilled discipline which can take years to learn and understand.  Yet we are aware of 1 day courses that you can attend. At the end of the day you are classed as a fire door inspector and can start surveying fire doors and producing reports and recommendations to clients.

We were therefore not surprised to recently receive a bulletin from a company with an extensive property portfolio, stating that due to conflicting reports and recommendations they have received from fire door contractors engaged in surveying fire doors across their portfolio, all of whom were surveying the existing doors under different third party accreditation schemes, that they have made the decision to create their own internal guidelines to comply with their legal obligations to maintain their fire doors, in their own words as ‘broadly compliant!’, all of which will be carried out in-house by their general maintenance team.

We can only think that their rationale here is if there is not one industry standard with one voice and clear direction on fire door maintenance standards, their only option is to create their own standards and proceed with their fire door maintenance on this basis.

As experts in the supply, installation and maintenance of fire doors, we’re very proud to have been early adopters of BM Trada’s Fire Certification programme (we have Certificate No. 001 – you can’t get any earlier than that!). We strongly believe Trada offers the most comprehensive and reliable service to building owners, landlords and Responsible Persons. By following their Accepted Repair Techniques, we can assure you of the integrity and performance of the building’s fire doors post maintenance as there are no options for ‘maybe’ under their scheme.

A prime example being something we touched on earlier; the presence, or otherwise, of intumescent strips. BM Trada dictate if there are no strips present, it can’t be a factory tested fire door; if it was, the strips would be present. Adding intumescent strips does not turn a regular door into a fire door.

Why take the risk with such vital pieces of passive fire protection aka life saving apparatus?! Some of you will remember the old Everest double glazing adverts, “If you want the best…” That still holds true!!