Fire Door Inspector Required

[HelenC]

Hi,

The Hospital where I work is looking to employ an FDIS Certified Fire Door Inspector to survey and report on the existing fire doors in our 3-storey residential flat blocks on site, which are occupied by a mixture of student nurses, doctors and their families. Many of the flats house multiple occupants in bedsit rooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom.

Having met with said Fire Door Inspector he has informed us that although several of us are trained Fire Risk Assessors (with experience of assessing flat blocks and HMO's) that we aren't certified and are thus unable to check fire doors sufficiently to say whether they are compliant with Building Regulations and the RRFSO.

As a hospital is third party certification of the fire doors in the residential blocks necessary?

Would it be of any more value/importance in a court of law than inspections and Fire Risk Assessments undertaken by the in-house Fire Risk Assessors?

Any advice on the above would be appreciated, as personally I'm of the opinion (whether right or wrong) that employing an FDIS Inspector wouldn't give the hospital any more legal protection than we as Fire Risk Assessors are able to, and thus doesn't represent value for money.

[Tom Sutton]

I think I would take that with a pinch of salt, a court would accept a Fire Risk Assessor as a competent person, which is defined in Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, providing he/she met the criteria as detailed in  A Guide to Choosing a Competent Fire Risk Assessor.

Based on the Fire Door Inspector's  assumption  a FR assessor would need to be a certified for fire alarms, emergency lighting, etc as in fact he/she only needs a good understanding of all the different aspects they have to deal with. I think if you only have problems with the fire doors then I would use FDIS if it is a FRA the I would use a competent FP assessor.

[AnthonyB]

There is no legal requirement to hold the FDIS qualification to inspect fire doors - the actual specialist installers of fire doors and passive fire protection that also carry out inspection services don't have it and they are hardly incompetent.

FDIS is a method of competency, but by a long way is not the only one - it's possible to be competent without this and (tens of) thousands of inspections are carried out every year to a competent standard by people not in this scheme.

Unfortunately some FDIS holders have let it get to their heads and have been a bit misleading in their advice to end clients.