Passive Fire Audits

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Non-Invasive or Invasive Inspections

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Identify

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Provide Solution Options

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Remediation Management

Passive Fire Audits

Whether it is installation or the maintenance of passive fire protection (PFP) systems, the industry is now seeing the issues resulting from the poor specification, installation and maintenance of PFP systems.

Background

Passive fire protection systems and products are part of the building structure and are vital to restricting the growth and rapid spread of fire, smoke and other hot gases throughout the building. By design, they are an intrinsic part of the structure controlling the flammability of wall and ceiling linings. They divide the building into fire and smoke cells and providing stability during a fire event to structural elements to prevent their collapse. The PFP of a building (Building Act 2004) provides tenable escape routes for persons to escape and also provide an element of protection to allow firefighters to complete their job. The PFP is either an element of construction such as a wall or floor, or an additional system such as a fire door, fire damper or fire-stopping material.

It is imperative that all PFP measures have been appropriately designed, specified, and installed to enable the building to behave as designed, should a fire occur. These systems are passive in nature and will only perform when required.

The Issue

To this end, it is essential that these systems will work if a fire occurs within any building fire cell. Experience informs us that PFP fails due to poor construction and substandard fire stopping methods. The main passive issues that the CoveKinloch fire engineering team witness on a regular basis during site visits, is that penetrations through fire separations for the passage of cables or pipework has either not been fire-stopped with a proprietary fire resistant product or the fire-stopping has been completed poorly. These issues get overlooked due to a lack of knowledge and experience of these systems from all parties involved in the construction and inspection process, including Building Control Authorities (BCA).

The Solution

So how can the team at CoveKinloch assist you in protecting your people and your building asset? We can complete both non-invasive and invasive inspections on your behalf to identify and catalogue any issues that are present. After this initial stage, if required, we can then manage the installation/rectification process for you and ensure that all Quality Assurance (QA) processes are in place to ensure not just a compliant but a ‘fit for purpose’ solution is in place.

The Passive Fire Audits Team