Passive Fire Maintenance
Passive fire maintenance, with certification at the end of every cycle.
Overview
Passive fire systems fail quietly. A door that no longer latches, a seal painted over, a penetration opened up for a new cable and never made good again — none of it sets off an alarm. It is found at the next inspection, or it is found after a fire.
We maintain the passive fire systems in your building on a routine cycle — fire and smoke doors, dampers, fire-rated barriers and penetration seals — and certify the work at the end of each cycle.
Fire and smoke doors and dampers are serviced to AS 1851, which sets the routine for them. Barriers and penetration seals are not in that standard, so they are inspected against the building's asset register and the evidence behind each system, and repaired to the system they were built to. It is the same cycle and the same visit.
An inspection has two halves. We look at the asset — on site, item by item — and photograph what we find. Then we look at the paperwork behind it: the test reports, the registers, whatever exists. An installation can look perfect and still be unsupportable, and a defect list that only records what can be seen misses half of what a building surveyor will ask for.
A standard inspection is non-destructive. Where something needs opening up to be answered properly, we quote that separately so you can decide. Where a condition cannot be resolved without doing so, we say so and it becomes a separate, agreed piece of work.
What a cycle involves
Inspection against the asset register, defect identification, rectification of what we find, and a record of everything found and everything done. Where a defect sits outside routine maintenance — a system that cannot be identified, damage that affects the assembly, suspect asbestos in an older building — it is reported rather than absorbed.
If your building has no asset register, that is the first job rather than a reason to wait. A maintenance cycle against an incomplete register produces an incomplete result every time.
Where the obligation sits in Western Australia
It sits with the building owner, and it is written down. Regulation 48A of the Building Regulations 2012 requires the owner of an existing Class 2 to Class 9 building to ensure the building's safety measures remain capable of performing to the standard set out in the relevant building standards for each part of it. Failing that duty carries a penalty of a fine of $5,000.
The regulation defines “safety measures” to include building fire integrity — which is passive fire protection, named in Western Australian law, sitting in the same list as means of egress and automatic fire detection. It is not an optional extra to the active systems.
One detail in that regulation catches people out, and it works in the owner's favour more often than not. The standard a building is held to is not the current NCC. It is the edition of the Building Code identified in the certificate of design compliance for the most recent building permit for that part of the building — for an older building, what applied when it was built or last altered. So a 1998 building is measured against 1998, and a part altered under a 2019 permit is measured against 2019. One building can carry several editions across its parts.
That is why a maintenance cycle here starts with the building's approval history rather than with the newest code. It is the difference between a defect list you can act on and a defect list written against a standard the building was never required to meet.
General information about the regulatory framework, not legal advice. Your building surveyor or a lawyer is the right person for advice on your specific obligations.
What you get at the end
A record of what was inspected, what was found, what was repaired and what remains open — and a Certificate of Compliance covering the passive fire work we performed.
Drawings, photos or a defect report in front of you?
Send what you already have. We will tell you what else is needed before the work can be reviewed, priced or booked for site inspection.