HOSPITAL & HEALTHCARE FACILITIES A HOT TOPIC IN HOSPITALS


Richard Sutton, General Manager at Horbury Property Services, looks at fire safety in healthcare environments and why it is so important that fire compartmentation is properly inspected.


Last summer, the government ordered more than 17,000 care homes, private hospitals and hospices to carry out checks on the fire safety of their buildings. A number of hospital trusts were found to have serious breaches, whilst some had failings in basic fire standards and others were warned that a failure to properly compartmentalise areas was putting patients at intolerable risk if fire broke out.


Fire safety continues to be a concern in hospitals that have had refurbishment work carried out, with managers having to take decisive action to ensure their buildings are as safe as they should be.


Fire compartmentation Building Regulations’ Approved Document B requires that buildings be sub-divided into a number of discreet compartments or cells. As the dividing walls are filled with specialist materials, this prevents the passage of fire from one cell to another for a given period of time. This compartmentation offers essential protection, especially in larger buildings, such as hospitals or care homes, which rely on it to ensure the safety of occupants.


It is essential that fire compartmentation is installed


“Fire compartmentation can be easily ignored as high risk


areas are often hidden above false ceilings, ducts and risers.”


correctly and regularly inspected by certified personnel to ensure it has not been breached. This is best done as part of a fire risk assessment, which is required under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (RRO) 2005.


As detailed in RRO, the fire risk assessment must be carried out by a responsible person and should be detailed and rigorous, covering many aspects, one of which is ensuring the integrity of fire compartmentation, including the fire doors.


Compartmentation, when it has not been breached and has been properly installed, should be able to contain large fires and limit the amount of damage to a building and its contents.


As hospitals are occupied by many vulnerable and immobile people who may find it very hard (if not impossible) to be evacuated quickly in the event of a fire, special consideration needs to be given to fire prevention – and fire compartmentation to ensure it is meeting patients’ needs.


Identifying breaches A fire risk assessment, in the majority of cases, does not extend to inspecting the integrity of the fire compartments. Fire compartmentation can be easily ignored as high risk areas are often hidden above false ceilings, ducts and risers. Even the most competent person may not have the skills and expertise to ensure the integrity of the compartmentation, meaning the risks of a fire not being contained between rooms can go unknown for months, if not years, often until it is too late.


Inspections of fire compartmentation should include checking whether there is any damage caused by services that have been added since the building was completed, such as cabling or IT systems or other building work to the walls, floors or ceilings. This could compromise the integrity of the fire compartment.


Fire doors are an important part of ensuring fire compartmentation is maintained too, but they are often not subject to sufficiently rigorous or regular inspections. Again, this could lead to a breach of fire compartmentation, for example, if the fire seals are broken, the door closers are not working properly or the ironmongery has become worn or the glazing detached. They should be inspected every six months.


Research shows that in general, compartmentation and fire protection of escape routes are successful in containing a fire. In the last 10 years there have been very few cases where residents of a hospital have died as a result of a fire in another room. However, since the tragic events at Grenfell Tower, many healthcare providers are looking into increasing fire detection methods and even introducing sprinklers within a building in order to keep the fire risk to a minimum.


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