Global assessment of fire doors.

[Tom Sutton]

I was asked about Global assessment of fire doors and this is new to me.

I did a bit of research and it appears that fire door core manufacturers have them tested to BS 476 pt22 and then a global assessment can be conducted by a third party, like Chiltern International Fire, using the test data of the core. 

This global assessment can then be used to produce fire door sets that can be certified if the joinery company is a member of BM TRADA, if not then it is good evidence to have them accepted by an enforcing authority (BCO/FS inspector) as a nominal fire door.

Can anybody confirm this or am I way off.

[Tom Sutton]

Thanks Kinsale could any competent joinery company use the Global/technical assessment to produce fire door sets?

[Tom Sutton]

Thanks Kinsale I agree, if you require a certified door-set, but I think an enforcement officer would accept a door-set constructed by a competent joiner as a nominal door-set with good credentials.

[Fishy]

I was asked about Global assessment of fire doors and this is new to me.

I did a bit of research and it appears that fire door core manufacturers have them tested to BS 476 pt22 and then a global assessment can be conducted by a third party, like Chiltern International Fire, using the test data of the core.  

This global assessment can then be used to produce fire door sets that can be certified if the joinery company is a member of BM TRADA, if not then it is good evidence to have them accepted by an enforcing authority (BCO/FS inspector) as a nominal fire door.

Can anybody confirm this or am I way off.

Broadly speaking, you're correct.  

You can't economically fire test every permutation & combination of product, so what often happens is that those who wish to 'offer' fire door blanks / leaves / doorsets to the market consult with the test lab and come up with a suite of tests that represents the worst case(s) in fire resistance terms (they've been testing these things for decades and they pretty much know what configuration will perform worst).  The "Assessment" - often written by the test lab but could be a third party - takes that data and will produce what's sometimes called a 'Field of application' covering variations like frame size, species & minimum density, double/single leaf & double/single action; glazing; ironmongery, lippings, intumescent strip details etc, etc...  They basically include a detailed spec & say "So long as you construct it like this, it should do XXmins fire resistance if it were tested" (to the relevant standard - be it BS or BS ENs). So long as you comply with the spec, & the product hasn't been altered there's no necessity to mess around claiming they're "Nominal" fire doors (and if anyone ever finds out what this actually means do pray tell...).

This assessment then becomes the main evidence of fire resistance performance (accepted in National guidance - e.g. Appendix A of the England & Wales AD-B) & can be given to BCOs etc if they ask for it.  Should also be handed over as part of the Regulation 38 obligations, I would suggest).

Once CE Marking for fire doors becomes mandatory, all the above changes and we'll be looking for Classification reports including "EXAP" ("Extended Fields of Application") data.  No more BS 476 test data allowed!

"Certification" is a slightly different issue - if that's a particular client requirement it would probably necessitate that all parties working on the doorset to be paid-up members of the relevant scheme(s) (TRADA Q-Mark, Certifire or whatever).

[Auntie LIn]

Just being a bit picky here - you say "Once CE Marking for fire doors becomes mandatory" and what will be mandatory is CE marking for fire doorsets.   The requirement to CE mark relates to complete doorsets supplied from a single identifiable source.

[Tom Sutton]

So long as you comply with the spec, & the product hasn't been altered there's no necessity to mess around claiming they're "Nominal" fire doors (and if anyone ever finds out what this actually means do pray tell...).

Assuming it is not a rhetorical questions I would say a nominal fire door is one were an assessor thinks the construction of the door should prevent the passage of fire for the stated period or should I use the word notional. How would you describe a fire door that?s specification has not been fire tested to the current standard, but assessed? Also I would think most fire doors fall within the second category (part 8 fire doors and others).

[Golden]

Tom I use the guidance and phraseology from the PB Flats guide and assess as a 'nominal fire door with a notional degree of fire resistance' and use the various benchmarks for existing blocks to guide me on what is acceptable and where according to the height of the building, whether or not lobbied and the type of access. Para's 62.12 to 62.23.

[Fishy]

So long as you comply with the spec, & the product hasn't been altered there's no necessity to mess around claiming they're "Nominal" fire doors (and if anyone ever finds out what this actually means do pray tell...).

Assuming it is not a rhetorical questions I would say a nominal fire door is one were an assessor thinks the construction of the door should prevent the passage of fire for the stated period or should I use the word notional. How would you describe a fire door that?s specification has not been fire tested to the current standard, but assessed? Also I would think most fire doors fall within the second category (part 8 fire doors and others).

I'm aware of the guidance in the PB flats guide - but in my (very personal) opinion it's a bit of an unworkable fudge!  I think I know what they were aiming at, but they've missed the mark, IMHO!  My reasons:

-  The definition in the Guide is "A door assembly that satisfied the current specification, or fire resistance test, for 30 minutes at the time of construction of a block of flats or manufacture of the door ".  So... so far as I understand to do the assessment you have to know a) when the building was built or b) when the door was manufactured and c) the content of the particular Building Regulations guidance were at the time and d)  the detailed content of the relevant British Standard fire resistance tests at the time and e) you have the technical expertise to judge that what's in front of you complies with c) and d).  Good luck with that!  I suspect that in reality the true criteria for most assessors will be "is it heavy, solid, not recently installed and in good nick", which might be fine, but it's not what the Guide says.

London Underground had exactly the same issue with their existing fire doors & they came up with a fairly detailed technical spec that you could survey against - much more robust and workable I'd suggest?

- The whole concept of 'Notional' fire protection could set an unhelpful precedent.  What's next - do you start talking about commercial buildings that have battery-powered smoke detectors in them (I've seen this) as having "notional fire detection"?  Or buildings with ancient sprinkler systems in them with no separation between sprinklered & non-sprinklered areas as having "notional fire suppression"?  Are we not just saying "there's something there, it might or might not work but we've not developed ways to technically assess it so we've given it an ambiguous name??

At the end of the day, there are numerous people around competent to survey existing doorsets and issue an assessment assigning them a fire resistance, so you could have said in the situations where a 'notional' fire door is mentioned as being risk-appropriate you recommend (say) an FD20 door.  You can either develop a spec for this, to survey against, get someone competent in to survey or develop the competence yourself.  If the doors need upgrading (to either 20 or 30 mins) and are suitable then with surface-mounted intumescent seals & inexpensive letter plate kits it needn't be either difficult or expensive.

I do get the concept - a solid piece of wood in the hole will provide some (unquantifiable) benefit & in some comparatively low-risk cases it might arguably offer enough fire risk reduction to render risk acceptable.  I just don't like the potential confusion & perhaps unwarranted comfort this 'notional fire door' designation might provide, & in any case the definition is not (in my opinion and based upon my experience) realistically useable for the vast majority of the likely users of the guide.

[Tom Sutton]

Fishy are you saying all non-certified fire door should be replaced with certified fire doors. Because it is not going to happen, I do accept when a door has to be replaced it should be replaced by a certified fire door. My concern was fire doors constructed to a global assessments, if done by a joinery company a member of the certifying schemes then it is a certified fire door, if not, what is it?

[Fishy]

Fishy are you saying all non-certified fire door should be replaced with certified fire doors. Because it is not going to happen, I do accept when a door has to be replaced it should be replaced by a certified fire door. My concern was fire doors constructed to a global assessments, if done by a joinery company a member of the certifying schemes then it is a certified fire door, if not, what is it?

Absolutely not!  That sort of blanket argument would be contrary to the whole concept of risk-based protection.

I am saying that (in my opinion) the difficulty/expense of upgrading fire resistance is routinely overstated & often too easily dismissed.  The possibility of getting a competent person in to assess the performance of existing passive fire protection is sometimes not given due consideration.  This would give you the basis of making your risk-based assessment, knowing (say) you've got a 20 minute fire door instead of a 30 minute one.

I am also offering the opinion that the concept of a Notional Fire Door is novel, odd & potentially unhelpful.  Furthermore the definition for these in the above guide will be pretty difficult for most users of the document to assess against.

Of course you can't do risk assessment on the basis that all the existing fire protection (passive, active or whatever) must comply with the current codes & standards.  In many cases and in many risks existing fire protection (doors, glazing, floors or whatever) might be fine, even if they wouldn't fully comply if tested to BS 476, BS EN 1364 etc, etc...  Situations where passive fire protection is really important (flats, hotels, hospitals, sub-surface railway stations might be examples) ought to have a higher rigour in the assessment methodology than premises where it's less important (warehouses, low-rise offices with plenty of staircases, for example, where you might concentrate on means of giving warning instead).


On the question of certification - it's probably a matter of terminology.  For new kit, the bare minimum is appropriate evidence of fire resistance performance - could be a test report, an assessment or a classification report (as I said before Appendix A of the E&W ADB explains the difference).  These documents are sometimes called "certificates" but they're not really.  The PFP community generally understands "Certification" as meaning third-party conformity certification of product, designer and/or installer (as offered by Certifire/TRADA/IFC etc, etc).  ASFP is a good source of info on this - e.g. http://www.asfp.org.uk/Certification%20&%20Accreditation/product_certification.php .  Probably not vital to draw this distinction as regards the risk assessment itself, but very important if the requirement for Certification is to be included in any spec's.

So - if someone constructs and installs a doorset to the specification in one of these 'global assessments', then it may well satisfy the recommendations in (for example) the AD-B & the assessment itself becomes the evidence of fire resistance performance mentioned in Appendix A of that document (other parts of the UK have similar recommendations).  If someone is asking for the product or personnel to be "Certificated" then that might mean the necessity for the work and/or the product to be covered by one of the schemes mentioned in the ASFP link (above).

CE marking will add additional level of complication, but for doors it'll be a few years yet before we have to worry about it (not so for some other fire protection products, where it's already mandatory).

[Golden]

Fishy if you're not saying that every non-certified door should be replaced then what are you saying? A 'nominal' fire door - i.e. stated or expressed as a fire door but not necessarily corresponding exactly to the real value with only a notional i.e. suggested period of fire resistance is my understanding. You state that there are numerous people around that could make an accurate assessment ( I assume you are one) - but every door in a block of flats? In my opinion the nominal doors linked to the benchmarks are a good tool - its risk based in that the further you go up and the less protection to the common areas then the greater certainty that is required in the door. If we start losing people in flats due to fire doors failing then it may be necessary to look again but as it happens fire deaths are going down with the usual victims, fires are reducing, very few victims are outside the compartment of origin and there is a greater awareness of fire precautions in blocks of flats - although your argument may be theoretically sound there is no justification in practice.

On the subject of cost the fitting of battery operated smoke alarms was a big challenge for the fire service and even at ?5-10 a go it was impossible to get many of the more vulnerable members of the population to fit them and brigades had to start giving them away and fitting them in many cases - are your overstated and often dismissed upgrades coming in at less than a tenner?

[Fishy]

Golden:

I'm failing miserably to get my point clear... I am not stating that the outcome of any fire risk assessment ought to be that existing doorsets of uncertain provenance (as regards fire and smoke resistance) ought to be automatically trashed, replaced or upgraded.  If you're happy that you understand the likely performance of the doorsets against the accepted national benchmark of what constitutes a fire resisting doorset, and you have reason to believe that would render fire risk ALARP then of course it can be retained.  I've done this myself - many times.  What I don't routinely see (and what isn't, in my opinion, offered by the PB flats guide) is much rigour in the first part of this process?

What I'm trying to get across in broader terms is why does the Guide promote treating fire doors as anything special?  Why have we felt it necessary to invent a new term for this particular fire protection measure (and only this item) that is a) potentially very confusing (and I think this chain demonstrates that admirably) and b) is in a document intended for use by many users, but contains a definition ("benchmark") which very few of them would conceivably have the competence to assess against? You are right - I could do this, as could others.  It wouldn't take too long to assess (say) 50 doorsets provided they're all of similar construction and access is well organised.  But that is not the point.


Why not: a) accept a reduced performance in the lower-risk situations e.g. FD20 which could be reliably assessed, perhaps with minimal upgrading measures or b) do what LU has done and invest in developing a technical specification that can be surveyed against, visually and non-destructively?

To illustrate my point - block of flats built in the 70s.  To use the technique in the PB flats guide you would have to:
a) Know what the relevant building regs guidance said at the time;
b) Know what the standard fire resistance test method was at the time;
c) Be competent to assess what you find in the building against a) and b)

As I said, there are people around who could do this - but not many so I strongly suspect most are using some variation of the more informal benchmark that I mentioned in my last post - "is it heavy, solid, not recently installed and in good nick".  Am I wrong - if I am, please tell me?

[Tom Sutton]

do what LU has done and invest in developing a technical specification

Whats LU and the technical specification.

[Dinnertime Dave]

If the original post had said that Dinnertime Dave has been out to my premises and said you can't trace the history of these doors so here is your Enforcement Notice, you've got to change them all. Everyone would quite rightly be up in arms.

I have recently witnessed a hospital changing all the cross corridor doors in the hospital street because they can't trace the history back to the mid 80's when the hospital was built. Whilst the doors play a part in the fire safety of the building there is little or no fire loading in the street.

iMO a total waste of tax payers money at over ?1000 per set.

I agree with Fishy, it's abouts making a judgement.

[colin todd]

Yep fishy you are wrong. For a start, notional fire resistance is not a new term.  It was used donkeys tears ago in relation to the FR of lath and plaster ceilings.