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dampers. It also highlights key elements needed to put a planned maintenance regime in place for fire and smoke dampers linked to the Association’s digital maintenance tool SFG20.
This is helping to address a huge and potentially damaging impression that it is possible to reduce the frequency of damper testing to as little as every five years by carrying out risk-based assessments. This is simply wrong and dangerous but has even become quite common practice in hospitals and other healthcare facilities with obvious implications for safety.
BESA explains that one of the most important aspects of fire and smoke damper testing is pinpointing those dampers that cannot be tested – often because they cannot be found or easily reached. If you cannot test something, you must propose remedial work such as installing access panels or builders’ hatches. It is no longer acceptable – or compliant – to put in your report that a damper simply could not be tested.
Another crucial change is the requirement for the testing company to provide the client with a proposal for how this can be rectified so that 100% of dampers in an installation are checked.
Everyone has favourite examples or stories of bad practice, but it is not uncommon to hear of firms saying they could not test the dampers because they needed cleaning. If they need cleaning, then clean them and test.
Improvements
Grease extract cleaning was also hampered by the same access problems and, therefore, damper testing is already benefitting from improvements in that area with more building owners aware that it is important to install access panels and/or builders’ hatches at regular intervals. One positive outcome from the COVID-19 crisis is that many clients have been getting damper testing done at the same time as the building’s indoor air quality monitoring. The greater focus on building ventilation prompted by the pandemic means more end users are now aware that they actually have dampers.
Along with growing awareness of the fire safety issue, there is also more appreciation of the need for training and certification to ensure work is carried out by competent people. The ventilation hygiene industry has benefited from comprehensive training and verification of competence driven by BESA guidance. The same could now be done for damper testing based around VH001. A crucial part of being a competent tester is the ability to address, not just those dampers that can successfully be tested, but to also provide comprehensive information about any faulty or inaccessible dampers. You should also be competent to provide feedback on any fire stopping issues that you find (including any holes that might have been drilled in a fire wall since the previous inspection) and be able to give a client a full summary and quotation so they can be compliant with legislation. Testing which fails to show what is wrong and how to put it right, is pointless. The industry training course needs to incorporate these vital areas as well as how to successfully test a damper. The size of the market and the life safety importance of this work should provide the necessary incentive for many employers to make the necessary investment in training and recruitment to make sure the damper industry can collectively rise to this challenge.
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