The building or project condition
A new office building, where an opening had to be protected without a door in it — and one contractor held the whole curtain, not just the hardware.
What FRS delivered
- Supplied and installed the fire curtain as a complete assembly — headbox, side guides, fabric and drive
- Installed the detection that drives the curtain, and the interface to the building's fire system
- Commissioned the curtain and witnessed it operating as intended
- Set the surrounding construction out to the tested detail, because a curtain performs against the opening it is built into
- Coordinated the installation with the trades building and lining the opening around it
- Recorded the installed assembly and its evidence for the handover pack
What made it difficult
- A curtain is built into the structure, so the opening has to be right before the assembly goes in — and wrong is expensive to correct
- The headbox and guides have to be coordinated with ceilings, linings and services that other trades were installing at the same time
- Work at height in a building still closing out, sharing access with everyone else finishing it
- A site inside the airport estate, with its own access and induction requirements on top of the builder's
- Retention held against completion, so the records had to stand up at each release rather than at handover
Technical basis
A fire curtain is a tested assembly — fabric, headbox, guides and fixings approved together, with the surrounding construction part of what was tested. A curtain that does not drop when it is supposed to has not protected anything, so the detection, the interface and the commissioning are part of the same scope rather than someone else's.
What was recorded at close-out
- The installed assembly recorded with its system and evidence
- Commissioning records for the curtain and its interface
- Photographs of the installation before it was concealed
- Certificate of Compliance
A fire curtain goes where the building needs an opening to close in a fire and a door will not do it — a void, an atrium edge, a lobby that has to stay open every other day of its life.
What makes it a different job from hanging a door is that the assembly is built into the structure. The headbox sits above the ceiling, the guides are fixed into the construction on either side, and all of it was tested as one thing. Get the opening wrong and you are not adjusting a curtain, you are rebuilding what it was fixed to.
So the sequence matters more than the installation. The opening was set out to the tested detail, the headbox and guides were coordinated with the ceilings, linings and services going in around them, and the assembly was recorded and photographed before any of it was concealed — because after that, nobody can see what was installed.
The part that usually goes wrong on a curtain is not the curtain. It is the handover between trades. One contractor supplies and hangs it, another wires the detection, a third interfaces it to the fire panel, and at commissioning nobody owns the fact that it does not drop when it should.
Here it was one scope. FRS supplied and installed the assembly, installed the detection that drives it, interfaced it to the building's fire system and commissioned it. If it had not worked, there was one contractor to call — which is the reason it worked.
