How much experience is needed to modify fire doors

[Guest Rich]

Can our on site maintenance team work on fire doors? We have carpenters with several years experience. We have issues such as fire doors unable to close on release from their holdback because they get stuck on the floor. Could they , for instance, take a mm off of the bottom of the door so that it can close as its better than it not closing at all at the moment. We have a large amount of fire doors in our buildings and we are changing the door sets that are beyond repair, but due to financial  restraints we cannot change them all.   

[Neil ashdown]

Whilst there is currently no legal requirement for fire door installers and maintainers to possess a dedicated qualification, competence is necessary. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires those that provide fire safety related services to be ‘Competent Persons’.  Approved Document 7 of the Building Regulations covers workmanship and materials. Many clients such as housing associations, healthcare organisations and education providers now require that those that install or maintain fire doors have a qualification or certification as proof of competence to perform those works. 

 

Subsequent to the Hackitt Report there are industry led working groups looking at what competence should look like and you may find the recent report ‘Setting the Bar’ interesting at   https://cic.org.uk/setting-the-bar-annexes.php

 

[Guest Rich]

Hi Neil, 

 

that's what I thought. I work in a Hospital so the doors form a major part of our fire strategy and as there are so many it isn't always feasible to replace an entire door set so fixing is the only option. 

 

it was just a case of reassuring our on site maintenance team that they are allowed to do it.

 

many thanks for your response to this question.