
Building and Fire Safety Regulations and the "Golden Thread"
If you're a building owner, are you aware of the implications they all have?
The introduction of the Building Safety Act and Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 has significant implications for building owners, especially for higher-risk premises. Additional safety measures are now required for high-rise residential buildings and multi-occupied residential buildings over 11m in height.
What do the regulations mean for Responsible Persons?
RPs also now have additional responsibility regarding both communal area fire doors and flat entrance doors, which now should be inspected quarterly and annually respectively.
The government guidance on fire doors is based on the assumption that the fire risk assessment has assessed the suitability of the fire doors. In reality, It could be unlikely that all fire risk assessments contain sufficient information on fire doors and ordinarily may not provide the detail required for all the premises fire doors to be confidently understood about their nominal or notional compliance.
Any doors which do have certification and test data/manufacturer specifications will require a significant inspection to confirm that they have been installed and maintained correctly and in line with the exacting requirements of the test data, compatibility and frequency/extent of upkeep as dictated by any certification scheme.
If your fire risk assessment has not considered the above in relation to your premises fire doors then the responsible person will not be adequately informed or equipped to enable the government-recommended basic checks are conducted correctly.
What is the Golden Thread?
The golden thread is:
- the information about a building that allows someone to understand a building and keep it safe
- the information management to ensure the information is accurate, easily understandable, can be accessed by those who need it and is up to date.
The golden thread will hold the information that those responsible for the building require to:
- show that the building was compliant with applicable building regulations during its construction and provide evidence of meeting the requirements of the new building control route throughout the design and construction and refurbishment of a building
- identify, understand, manage and mitigate building safety risks in order to prevent or reduce the severity of the consequences of fire spread or structural collapse throughout the life cycle of a build
How can Sircle help?
Sircle can help with initial building height verification through our RICS-accredited measured survey team. This validation of the number of floors and the actual building height is a crucial first step in identifying the risk category of your premises. Understanding the compliance requirements for premises between 11m and 17.9m and those exceeding 18m is essential.
Our survey team can also conduct a premises survey to confirm and produce updated plans as needed. Additionally, our full CAD bureau can ensure that you have these plans in the required format and at precise levels of accuracy.
We have extensive experience in collecting information on fire equipment assets. Our team is capable of conducting multiple surveys simultaneously, which speeds up the process and ensures consistency, efficiency, and added value in our services.
Our multi-disciplined fire team can carry out surveys on fire doors, compartmentation, fire risk assessments, condition surveys, planned preventive maintenance (PPM) surveys, and asbestos reinspections. This allows us to gather an array of information during our surveys, ultimately helping to reduce costs and the time needed for you to receive crucial building safety data.
Not only can we provide the services mentioned above, but we can also support your ongoing building lifecycle needs. We offer additional services such as Project Management, Contract Administration, fire door installations, and fire stopping works audits. All these services utilize modern software that can help you manage and track any identified actions until practical completion and sign off. This helps you achieve a ‘Golden Thread’ of compliance and building safety information.
Our suite of professional services can significantly reduce your need to engage with multiple specialists and provide you with the peace of mind that your project and information needs are in capable hands.
To find out more, contact us today.
