What should be in a fire door report?
A guide to reading one, and to judging if you got your money's worth.
Get a priceYou may already have a report and be wondering if it is any good.
Here is what we would expect to see in one.
One entry per door
Each door has its own reference and a location you can find. "Door 14" means nothing. "Second floor corridor, stair side" does.
If a report lists 80 doors in a single table with no photos, someone has not looked at 80 doors.
A photo of each door
At least the whole door. Close-ups where something is wrong.
Photos stop arguments. A contractor can see the fault. A fire officer can see what you saw. An insurer can see it was real.
Measurements
The gaps at the top, both sides and the bottom. Reported in millimetres, not as "satisfactory".
What is wrong, in words
"Non-compliant" is not a finding. "Closer arm loose, door stops 50mm short of the latch" is.
How urgent
Not every fault is equal. A missing sign is not a hole in the door.
A good report sorts faults into those that need doing now, those that can be planned and those that can wait. Then you can budget.
What it does not say
A report should not say a door is rated when there is no evidence of that. It should say what it saw.
It also should not pretend to be a fire risk assessment. It covers the doors and nothing more.
Using it
Hand it to your fire risk assessor so the doors in their action plan match what is on the ground. Hand it to a carpenter to price from. Put it in a folder next to last year's, and you can see which doors have got worse.
At a hotel in Reading we surveyed 129 doors. With that many, a report only works if each door has its own line.
When ours arrives
After the visit, once the invoice has been paid. It is a PDF. If a line in it is unclear, ring or email and ask us.
Questions we get asked
How long should I keep a report?
For as long as the building has those doors. It is part of the record that you looked after them.
Does a report prove the doors are compliant?
Only the doors we saw, on the day we saw them. Doors change between visits.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count and we will come back with a price.
Get a price