PROTECTION AND MAINTENANCE
Above: Preventative maintenance supports compliance and helps protect patients and staff.
Above right: Checking control panels as a safeguard measure in the event of a fire.
perform as expected in the event of a fire. The wide range of new legislation, standards and
voluntary codes that have been introduced in recent years relating to these systems can be confusing for teams to navigate. The new SCA Guidance on Maintenance of Smoke Control Equipment is designed to provide clarity, offering a simple reference guide for estates managers which supplements the specific guidance within Health Technical Memorandum 05, helping estates teams to understand the risks and requirements, and ensure smoke control systems are being properly inspected and maintained.
Engineers carrying out inspection and testing on smoke control system components, ensuring compliance with maintenance schedules.
New guidance The SCA Guidance provides an initial overview of the key legislation which applies to the maintenance of smoke control systems, including the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2025 (RRO) and the Fire Safety Act 2021, and provides clarity on the roles and responsibilities for both the Building Representative and the organisations appointed to maintain these systems. The document goes on to provide an outline of the
different core components of smoke control systems, and details what steps facilities managers should take during handover of a building to ensure they have all the necessary information about the smoke control system (including its design, maintenance logs, and specification and performance criteria).
It finally provides details on the inspection schedules which should be maintained to meet the minimum recommendations under relevant standards. These schedules clearly detail when different types of smoke control system should be inspected, serviced and maintained, and who should carry out this work, highlighting relevant standards where needed.
122 Health Estate Journal October 2025
At the core of the document is the creation of a new role
– Competent Maintainer – which has been developed to ensure all maintenance works are completed by individuals that have the required knowledge and experience. The SCA guidance views this role as being separate from that of the ‘Competent Person’ defined in the RRO, and it is important that estates managers are aware of how these differ. The SCA guidance defines the Competent Person as an individual who has sufficient training, experience and knowledge of smoke control systems in general, and understands how the system is laid-out within the building, in order to be able to adequately undertake inspections of the systems as required. Critically, a Competent Person may therefore not have the skills to actually carry out any maintenance work that is required. In contrast, the SCA guidance defines a Competent Maintainer as a ‘maintenance organisation having appropriate training, skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours suitable for undertaking maintenance of smoke control systems’. To ensure they meet these requirements, it recommends that the organisation is certified under the IFCC SDI 19 scheme for maintenance activities.
Key industry regulations IFCC SDI 19 has been specifically developed for installers of smoke control systems, requiring them to demonstrate they are suitably experienced in the design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of these systems across a range of building sizes and types, and have suitable knowledge of the key industry regulations and standards. The standard was developed by SCA in direct response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s call to industry to improve competence as part of the findings of the Building a Safer Future: Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety – Final Report. SDI 19 is independent, accredited by UKAS and managed by IFCC Certification. Certification under the scheme is a requirement for membership of the SCA. The IFC SDI 19 scheme requires certified companies to continually demonstrate that their processes and trained staff adhere to industry best practice, including relevant standards such as BS 9991, BS 9999 and BS 7346 - 4,5,7 and 8, through a process of regular audits. As part of the application to be accredited under
IFC SDI 19, firms need to confirm that they meet all the technical requirements contained in the scheme document, including specific installation and maintenance requirements. IFC Certification then carry out an initial audit of different aspects of the company’s on and off site
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