It’s Fire Safety Week again and in our experience, knowledge of Fire Doors is vitally important in any commercial fire strategy.
Why are Fire Doors Important?
For years, we’ve known about the benefits that smoke & fire alarms will bring in making you aware of a fire in a building, but let’s think 1 step further. Our thoughts on things are, a smoke alarm TELLS you a fire is present, a fire door creates the barrier and STOPS it from coming.
A well-fitted fire door will achieve various outcomes in the event of a fire, it will:
- Prevent smoke spread (in most fires smoke causes greater damage than the flames themselves)
- Prevent fire spread, the door acts as a barrier to compartment the fire in one location.
- Secure escape routes, if fire doors are allowed to act as they should, fire doors will be your best friend by securing the escape routes for those needing to escape from a building.
- Protects both lives & livelihoods. The smaller the area we contain the fire to, the lesser the downtime for that company in getting the building back operating again.
So what are companies getting wrong?
Unbeknown to them, many commercial buildings are currently operating with what they believe to be fire doors in place but they either aren’t compliant or are just normal doors that do not offer the same level of protection. This is before we even consider those doors that are propped open or are blocked.
Please find the following video and infographic (5 Step Fire Door Infographic) that gives 5 simple steps to begin to understand whether your doors are compliant with the Fire Safety Order 2005 and would satisfy your insurers.
If you are unsure whether your doors are compliant, what can you do? We carry out a service called a Fire Door Survey which looks into each of your doors in turn and provides a report of its findings. We can then advise or signpost on how to remedy any issues found.
If you have anything that you’d like to ask us, we’ll happily help in any way that we can. Feel free to email [email protected] or call us on 0800 0096876. We look forward to helping you.
More information about this year’s Fire Safety Week can be found here .
