Scope of Installer certification

[Guest MikeC]

Hi - I'm trying to clarify what scope the certification of installers would cover. I'm being told by my carpentry contractor that their installers were certified on one project for the fire doors they installed there, but the same installers are not certificated to install fire doors on my project because the contractor is not supplying the door set. While I accept the contractor cannot guarantee the chain of custody of my door sets, isn't certification of competency to install fire doors meant to be global across all installation scenarios, irrespective of who sources the fire door set, provided the door set comes with it's own certificate?

[Neil Ashdown MAFDI]

To be certain of the reason, you would have to either:  1) Ask the contractor exactly why? or 2) Find out which third party certification scheme is concerned and talk direct to the scheme provider.

It may be that conditions exist regarding the contractor's certification scheme membership. A possible reason is that, the contractor is unable to verify suitability and compatibility of all the components of the fire door assembly / set, because they are not (this time) also the supplier.

I note you state "certification of competency".  It is important to understand that with third party fire door installation certification schemes, it is the company that has the certification based on audit work by the scheme provider. The individual installers, employed by the company, may not always have received training by a third party.  Fire door inspection work has sometimes revealed non-compliances with third party certificated products and installation work, so unfortunately certification is not always a guarantee of quality. Currently, there is no legal requirement for fire door installation work to be 'certificated' but the work should be carried out by a 'competent person' in accordance with product installation instructions / relevant British Standards.