Fire Inspection Services
Checkmate Fire offer fully accredited, third-party inspections for both fire doors and fire stopping compartmentation. Whether your requirement is for a single building, or a full estate, our expert teams are on hand to deliver detailed surveys nationwide.
With broad, multi-sector experience, we specialise in delivering inspections in occupied buildings, providing our clients with all the information needed to make informed decisions on how to maintain passive fire safety in their buildings.
Section At-A-Glance
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Trained inspection of service penetrations and voids in compartment lines to LPS 1531 fully accredited standards across the UK
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National inspection of fire doors to ensure compliance to the Regulatory Reform Order (2005) to third party accredited LPS 1197 standards.
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Our reports are different, giving clear options and often simple routes to making your buildings safer.
Fire Compartmentation (Fire Stopping) Survey
The Requirement
Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, in respect of the requirement for maintenance of fire safety provisions, states that it is advisable to set up a regular planned preventative maintenance programme for completed works.
In relation to compartmentation, the following guidance could be adopted in accordance with BS 9999: 2017:
It is essential for the safety of the occupants of a building that fire safety equipment (including passive fire protection provisions) is inspected frequently. Although much of the inspection can be undertaken by suitably trained personnel, a formal agreement should be made with the installer or the installer’s representative to provide the regular inspection and testing described in the relevant British Standards for individual fire safety installations.
To satisfy this need Checkmate Fire offers a range of surveys and reports tailored to the client’s unique circumstance and priorities.
The Critical Role of Compartmentation (firestopping)
Effectively 'stopping' a fire from spreading throughout your building, fire compartmentation is the most effective means of limiting fire damage before the fire brigade arrives.
By dividing building premises into “fire compartments”, fire is contained by forming a barrier against smoke, heat and toxic gases. This effectively holds the fire in the area of origin, providing protection for the building and its occupants.
Due to the vital role compartmentation should play in your overall fire strategy, it's fundamental that both the fire resisting partitions and fire doors should be
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properly installed by expert teams who fully understand the importance of correct product installation for maximum fire safety.
The best way to answer “Why firestopping?’ is by looking at the statistics.
- 75% of all fire deaths are caused by smoke inhalation
- Over half of fire-related deaths occurred in rooms where the fire did not originate
- Smoke can fill a 20 by 20 by 20-foot room through a pencil sized hole in less than 4 minutes
Firestopping and compartmentation came into its own in the late 1970s to help reduce the catastrophic loss of life and property caused by smoke and other airborne pathogens. It is especially critical in buildings where the mobility of tenants is restricted, including hospitals, assisted living and nursing homes, along with high-rise buildings and prisons.
What to Expect From a Compartmentation Survey
Our teams will visually inspect all areas of the identified compartment lines within your building to assess their likely performance in the event of a fire. Defects in compartmentation lines can take numerous forms and require expert identification.
Common defects include: simple penetrations, such as pipework entering or exiting a compartment with no gaps, or inappropriate firestopping, allowing smoke or fire to potentially pass from one compartment to another.
Others defects include, cabling, voids, ducts or linear gaps where compartment lines do not fully encapsulate the compartment. These defects are either latent, from the original build, or imposed from subsequent works (such as M&E events). Both are re-iterating the need for regular inspection.
What type of Compartmentation Survey do I require?
There are a number of differing compartmentation surveys available. Dependent upon the type and use of your building, your fire strategy, and potentially the recommendations of an existing fire risk assessment, you may choose different levels of compartmentation survey. All inspections can cover common areas and dwellings dependent upon scope.
Checkmate Fire offer four distinct survey types:
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Indicative
Checkmate Fire will undertake all elements of the “standard” compartmentation survey, but only to selected floors or areas of a building. This will give you the same detail of electronic reporting within your chosen areas, from which our specialists will extrapolate results to enable indicative results to be presented for review.
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Standard
Our standard survey is classed as “invasive”. This means we will review all areas of the building, along with inspecting some harder to reach areas, such as roof voids, above suspended ceilings, and through inspection hatches in solid ceilings.
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Enhanced
This option provides all the benefits of the “standard” survey, but includes additional indicative destructive works, including a percentage of identified areas for further investigation. In most cases, this will include 10% of soil vent pipes and 5% of behind architraves. Our teams will make good on all works, with follow-up attention by your chosen decorator.
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Destructive
All elements of the “non-intrusive” survey, together with a pre-defined scope of intrusive works that are defined as a greater requirement than the enhanced survey option.
The Inspection Report
Electronically recording all deficiencies, along with photographic evidence, the report will highlight the following:
- A unique identifying number for each defect
- Location
- Room type
- Required fire rating
- Penetrating service type
- Seal type required
- Date and surveyor details
Let's make this simple...
In addition to providing the detail, Checkmate will provide a suite of report conclusions and practical next steps. These include:
- A dashboard, highlighting in graphical form the report key findings
- A snapshot report, showing findings by door at a glance
- A summary report, detailing all the practical next steps to define a pathway to getting your building compliant
We can even provide full costs with your report, should you require it, for remediation ofany defects found.
Fire Door Surveys
Fire door inspections involve the application of a defined set of protocols/inspection/survey checks to determine the condition of an existing fire door. A pass and fail criteria is agreed and remediation and repair solutions are provided to bring the fire door back to its original condition. An inspection certificate is issued on completion with a detailed report. Fire door inspectors have the appropriate knowledge, training and experience to apply these checks, and are usually FDIS, BRE or BM TRADA qualified.
Third-party fire door certification provides an additional level of assurance of both the level and consistency of performance relevant to the door for both manufacturer and installing contractor. It provides an independent, technical process for evaluating and approving the fire door or installation against a set of defined criteria in standards and procedures.
The Requirement
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 outlines the legal obligations of the responsible person. It covers all maintenance of all elements of fire safety provisions within buildings. In BS8214 (c.13) and BS9999 (Annex L), routine inspections of fire doors are highlighted as necessary to maintain fire safety in buildings.
Checkmate Fire are certified through third party accreditation under the BRE/LPCB scheme, so you can rest assured that our inspectors have the appropriate fire door qualifications and credentials.
Our qualified fire door inspectors, repairers and maintainers are aware of the British and European standards relating to fire doors and their installation as well as publications and best practice guidelines. Our inspections are offered alongside our capability to provide remediation, supply & installation of new door sets and ongoing pre-planned maintenance.
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The Importance of Inspections to Fire Doors
The key to passive fire protection is to contain the fire to a particular compartment or room, giving occupants enough time to escape and the fire service enough time to enter the building and tackle the fire. Designed to prevent the fire or smoke from spreading, a fire door is one of the most important fire safety products on your premises.
However, due the nature of fire doors being used in a functional way on a regular basis, they are at greater risk of damage and abuse, seriously compromising the fire protection in your building. This is why it's key to ensure regular surveys and remediation, preventing the need for replacement, and more importantly, ensuring your buildings remain compliant.
What to Expect From a Fire Door Survey
Checkmate Fire specialise in the surveying fire doors and frames. This includes front entrance doors-sets, emergency doors, plant room, risers, communal and bedroom doors.
We have a breadth of experience across many sectors, from busy commercial areas, to the well-used corridors of hospitals to the vulnerabilities of social housing
90% of our fire door work takes place in occupied buildings. Our care and attention to both users and residents is exceptional, working with meticulous diligence to reduce disruption as much as possible.
All our surveys are fully work-programmed with client stakeholders. Our well-trained fire door inspectors methodically work through a building, utilising the latest technology and software to manage inspections onsite and record the data in real time. We dynamically capture the essential details and condition of each door, creating a database for future ongoing inspections.
Areas of non-compliance are visually highlighted in a way that allows organisations to prioritise maintenance activity and expenditure. This is primarily to accommodate budget constraints, while demonstrating an understanding of the nature and scale of the problem.
It creates a door schedule, as required by RRO, and records the history of each
door to provide information for analysis, both in terms of fire compliance and ongoing remedial cost. This is a unique system that allows a robust and highly cost-effective maintenance plan to be developed and managed by all internal stakeholders for the lifecycle of the building.
This ensures fire compliance can not only be achieved, but also maintained and recorded to satisfy Fire Service Enforcement Officers (FSEO), building control and other external bodies.
What Type of Compartmentation Survey do I Require?
Checkmate offer fully third party accredited LPS1197 inspections to fire doors. With all our surveys you will receive completed certification together with your full door schedule report.
During a fire door inspection our technicians inspect each component of the fire door assembly including:
- Door leaf
- Door frame
- Door closer (self-closing devices)
- Hinges
- Intumescent door strip and cold smoke seals
- Glazing (vision panels)
- Locks and levers/handles
- Fire safety signage
- Hold open devices
- Gaps around the doors and threshold gaps
- Panic hardware devices for external final fire exit doors
Upon completion of fire door and final fire exit door inspections, a report is produced detailing the condition of each door and listing the areas of non-compliance, which in turn creates a register for future on-going inspections.
Checkmate Fire offer two distinctive survey types:
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Standard Fire Door Survey
Our standard fire door inspection is best for properties under 30 doors, where we complete full LPS1197 inspections detailing a full photographic schedule of any defects found.
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Enhanced Fire Door Survey
With our enhanced fire door inspections, larger buildings/groups of buildings are provided with a suite of reports to enable effective decision making. A full LPS1197 photographic schedule is presented, alongside a graphical dashboard report (detailing defect trends, overall rates of remediation/replacement with prioritisation), a snapshot report, and a summary report (highlighting practical next steps to achieve compliance).
The Latest RFID Tagging
Checkmate Fire use electronic surveys/works records and asset management recording to provide a unique reference for each door set, which, alongside the location plans, encourages the physical numbering of doors to assist in their identification and long-term cost-effective maintenance.
Let’s make this simple
Our reports are different, with all the benefits of LPS1197 third party accreditation, we really do outline the way forward, not just detailing defects, but highlighting what the practical next steps are in order to make the fire door compliant. We can even provide full costs alongside your report, should you require it, for remediation of any defects found.
Do you want to learn more?
Want to protect your fire safety investment?
Our Pre-Planned Maintenance service, Compliance+, removes the impact of unexpected costs and provides with with peace of mind that your fire safety measures will always be compliant.
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Enable Budget Surety
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Mitigate Risk & Liability
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Safety First Compliance
