The building or project condition
An operating cold storage and logistics facility, with an opening too wide for a swing door.
What FRS delivered
- Built the sliding fire door leaf on site, on the warehouse floor, to the opening it had to fit
- Set out the track, the supports and the surrounding construction to the tested detail
- Installed the door and handed over the record behind it
What made it difficult
- A leaf that size is assembled flat and then stood up — get it wrong on the floor and it is wrong in the opening
- A sliding fire door is a piece of structure, not a fitting — the track and what carries it were tested with the leaf, not added to it
- An operating facility, with forklifts, pallet traffic and a biosecurity area working around the assembly
- Cold and condensation, which affect what can be fixed, sealed and cured
- No second attempt — the door was built for one opening and no other
What was recorded at close-out
- Doorset record with its system and evidence
- Photographs of the assembly and the installation
- Certificate of Compliance
Most fire doors arrive on a truck. This one was built on the floor of the client's warehouse, between the forklifts and the loading dock, and then stood up into the opening it was made for.
That is what a sliding fire door usually needs. It goes where nothing else will do — an opening too wide for a swing door, in a building that moves pallets through it all day — and at that size the leaf, the track and the structure carrying the track were all tested together. None of it is a fitting added to a door. It is a piece of construction, and it has to be built to the opening rather than ordered to fit it.
Assembling it flat is the unforgiving part. Everything is square and measurable on the floor and nothing is once it is up, so the checking happens while it is still lying down — which is exactly what is happening in the photograph.
The facility never stopped. Stock kept moving, the biosecurity area kept working, and the door went in around them.
