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fire doors is being carried out on a responsive basis, rather than as a regular programme of planned preventative maintenance. This has created a bubble of repairs
required and an increase in the potential risk. If issues are identified, it may be the case that work cannot be carried out for several weeks, as tenders have to be issued and responded to if it is a public project and a fire safety contractor is not currently in place. As highlighted in the interim report by
expertise and equipment are required in order to carry out this work effectively.
Fire compartmentation
It is not just fire doors that are critical to maintaining fire compartmentation in buildings. A local authority building that we inspected recently was found to have more than 900 breaches to its fire compartmentation. A thorough inspection of its compartmentation had not been carried out since it was built. Most of the breaches were due to IT and mechanical work being carried out on the building without the correct fire stopping being put in place. It is surprising how often compartmentation has been breached, which leads to the risk of rapid smoke spread in the event of a fire. An added concern these days is how, due to budgetary pressures, remedial work on
Dame Judith Hackitt into building regulations and fire safety in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, there is no need to wait for the final report to come out to carry out essential fire safety works. As the interim report highlights, the current requirements will be the minimum that is expected in the future, and it really does make sense to act now to carry out full and thorough inspections to ensure that passive fire systems are compliant. The worrying thing is that many public
and private buildings are still not being regularly and competently inspected. If the last time fire doors were properly inspected in some public and private buildings were common knowledge, there would be a public outcry. The fact remains that fire risk assessments
have to be taken seriously. As part of this, only fully trained and certified fire door and passive fire inspectors should be carrying out assessments of fire doors and compartmentation, in order to offer the very best protection to occupants
Richard Sutton is general manager at Horbury Property Services. For more information, view page 5
54 JUNE 2018
www.frmjournal.com
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