Free Site Audit
We will come and walk the building with you, at no charge.
A passive fire specialist comes to your building, looks at what is actually there, and tells you what they found. No charge, no obligation, and the written summary is yours to keep whatever you decide to do with it.
Overview
Most passive fire problems are found late — in a defect report, at a handover audit, or when somebody asks for evidence that does not exist. By then the work is urgent, the programme is fixed, and the price reflects both.
A site audit is the cheap version of that conversation. We walk the building, look at the fire doors, the penetrations, the dampers, the structural protection and the fire-rated walls we can get to, and photograph what we find. You get a short written summary of the main items and what we would deal with first.
If the summary tells you the building is in reasonable shape, that is a useful answer too.
What happens on the day
One of our people meets you, or whoever looks after the building, and you walk it together. We go where there is access — risers, plant rooms, ceiling spaces with liftable tiles, corridors, stairs, service cupboards — and look at the passive fire in those places.
What we look at
- Fire and smoke doors: the leaf, the frame, the hardware, the seals, the gaps, and whether there is a tag and what it says.
- Service penetrations: whether they are sealed at all, what they appear to be sealed with, and whether anything identifies them.
- Fire dampers and duct protection, wherever there is access to them.
- Structural steel protection: whether it is there, what condition it is in, and where it has been damaged or removed by a later trade.
- Fire-rated walls and shafts: the head of the wall, the service crossings, and anything cut through since.
- The paperwork: what you already hold, and what is missing from it.
Nothing is opened up, cut, drilled or taken apart. It is a visual walk-through and it stays one.
What you get, and when
Within a few working days you get a short written summary by email. It names what we looked at, what we found, and what we would treat as urgent, with photographs of the items we are talking about.
Where something cannot be answered from a walk-through — and there is always something — it says so, and says what it would take to answer it.
It is written to be forwarded. If you need to show an owner, a strata committee or a head contractor why something needs money spent on it, a page with photographs on it does that better than a phone call does.
What it is not
Worth being straight about this, because the difference matters and the wrong assumption gets expensive.
- It is not a baseline survey. A survey records every item individually, with a reference another person can find again. An audit looks at a sample and tells you what kind of condition the building is in.
- It is not an AS 1851 inspection and nothing from it goes into a maintenance record.
- It is not a certificate, a compliance statement, or anything a building surveyor can rely on.
- It is not a defect register you can price work from — though it will tell you whether you need one.
If what you need is the full record rather than an opinion, that is a passive fire inspection or a baseline survey, and it is quoted as its own piece of work.
Who asks for one
- Building owners who have taken on a building and do not know what is in it.
- Facility and asset managers being asked for passive fire evidence they have never seen.
- Strata managers holding a report they do not have the background to read.
- Builders with a defect list from a surveyor, wanting a second opinion before they price it.
- Anyone who has had passive fire work done by somebody else and wants to know whether it was done properly.
Where we do them
Across the Perth metropolitan area, at no charge. Outside the metro we still do them, but the travel has to be agreed first. A day's drive each way is a different proposition to an hour, and we would rather say so up front than surprise you with it afterwards.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
- Is it really free?
- Yes. No charge for the visit and no charge for the summary, and no obligation to use FRS for anything that follows from it.
- What is the catch?
- There is not one, but the reasoning is not charity either. Most buildings we walk through have something in them that needs doing, and we would rather be the people who found it. If yours does not, you have lost nothing and neither have we.
- How long does it take?
- An hour or two for most buildings. A large or complex site takes longer, and if we think it is more than a morning we will say so before we come.
- Do you need to open anything up?
- No. It is visual, and we work with the access the building already has. If something can only be answered by opening up, the summary says so and leaves that decision with you.
- What do I need to have ready?
- Access, and somebody who knows the building. If you hold fire safety drawings, an asset register or a previous inspection report, have them there — they make the walk-through far more useful. If you hold none of that, the audit is still worth doing, and that absence is itself one of the findings.
- What happens if you find something that might be asbestos?
- We record it and photograph it where it is, and we do not touch it. Identifying asbestos is a separate discipline from assessing fire protection. The summary flags it so it is dealt with before anything is disturbed.
- Can I use the summary as evidence of compliance?
- No, and it says so on it. Evidence of compliance needs the test and installation records behind each item, which is a different piece of work. The audit tells you whether you have those records and what it would take to get them.
Want someone to come and look?
Tell us where the building is and roughly what you are dealing with. If it is easier to talk it through first, leave your number and we will ring you.