How Halspan can help with fire door certification

By Andy Davies, Technical Manager

Third-party certification is vital to ensure your fire safety assets are compliant and reliable. Fire doors are a critical component of a building’s passive fire safety system, and third-party fire door certification can provide peace of mind that they are operating as they should be.  

If you are a ‘responsible person’ for your building, as outlined in The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, then you should be thinking about third-party certification as a way of demonstrating the compliance of your fire safety assets. 

However, recent research from the British Woodworking Federation revealed that fire door certification rates are falling, despite greater importance being placed on certification as a result of new regulations introduced within the Building Safety Act. As an industry, it is important we understand why fire door certification rates are decreasing, and what can be done to promote attaining third-party certification. 

Why do you need third-party fire door certification? 

You might be thinking – but if it’s not a legal requirement, then why should I bother with third-party certification for my fire doors? It is necessary for several reasons, the most obvious being that having certain standards in place helps to improve fire safety performance.

Third-party certification also helps assure customers, suppliers and building users of the quality of fire doorsets, through assessing that they can withstand specific fire conditions for a predetermined period. It provides an independent evaluation of a fire door, attesting that it meets consistent quality and performance standards. This helps prevent substandard or even counterfeit fire doors from entering the market. 

Third-party certification schemes also provide reassurance to the purchaser. Certified doorset manufacturers must undergo an annual audit of their manufacturing facility. This audit looks at every aspect of the production of fire rated doors and doorsets, from the ordering process and the procurement of the correct components to the quality assurance of the finished product. This helps to ensure that the doors or doorsets placed on the market are produced in accordance with the correct certification documents and test evidence. 

Certification is also an essential factor for insurance and liability reasons, with many insurance companies requiring that fire doors in a building are certified. Having third-party certified fire doors can lead to lower insurance premiums, and it may also protect property owners and managers from liability claims in case of a fire-related incident. 

From a sales angle, certification is also an important tool – it proves to customers that a fire doorset meets certain standards and gives them confidence that your products have been independently accredited. 

Barriers to certification 

Put simply, as more regulations are put in place, the more complicated it is to achieve certification. Part of the reason that certification rates are declining is because of this complexity, which can be off-putting for a number of reasons, including increased costs and increased restriction on design. 

Certification itself is changing. In the post-Grenfell world, fire resisting doorsets and their certification has come under more scrutiny. Certification documents are examined in more detail and as such, these documents must be able to demonstrate their links back to the original test data which proves the scope of certification. 

What’s more, as the certification is not mandatory, people are even less likely to go the effort of understanding increasingly detailed and sprawling regulations. If you can’t understand the details of something, it is unlikely you will recognise the importance of it. The growing intricacies of regulations have thereby created a barrier for certification. 

How Halspan can help 

Halspan endeavours to make it as simple as possible for those seeking third-party fire door certification. 

Halspan Verified is the biggest way we simplify certification for our customers. Everything you need, whether that be compliant drawings, specifications, door schedules or supporting test evidence for certification is in one place. You can be assured that your door systems are pre-designed with compliant components throughout the supply chain, so it takes any uncertainty out of achieving third party certification – without compromising on essential details. 

Another factor that we have developed is splitting certification documents out, which we have done with some of our larger certification bases. For example, our Prima FD30 fire door blanks can be use in both timber and steel frames, so we split these up into separate documents to make these more manageable and user friendly.  

In summary, if you are looking for clarity when it comes to third-party fire door certification, Halspan Verified provides a robust, all-encompassing solution. Ensuring compliance not only now, but in the future as regulations continue to evolve. 

If you are looking for peace of mind when it comes to fire safety assets, get in touch with our friendly team today to find out how we can help.