The building or project condition
A large Perth project where FRS held both the structural protection package and the electrical penetration package.
What FRS delivered
- Sprayed vermiculite fire protection to the building's steel — the complete package, not a portion of it
- Every service penetration for the electrical trade, sealed and recorded
- Both packages run by FRS crews under one programme and one record set
What made it difficult
- Two packages with different trades, different sequences and different inspection points, on one programme
- Steel protection has to be applied before the steel is concealed, so the window is set by the trades that follow
- Electrical penetrations continue to appear as the fit-out proceeds, which means returning to the same walls as the cable count grows
- Applied protection to steel is weather- and condition-dependent, so the programme had to allow for what could not be applied on a given day
- Overspray and containment controls around other trades working the same structure
- Elevated work throughout, with access by scaffold and platform rather than from a floor
- Thickness and coverage checked as the work proceeded, because once the steel is concealed it cannot be checked at all
Technical basis
A sprayed vermiculite system, applied to the thickness the steel required. Thickness is what the protection is, so it is measured as the work proceeds rather than assessed afterwards through a ceiling.
What was recorded at close-out
- Member-by-member record of the steel protection, with applied thickness and photographs
- Location-by-location penetration record, with photographs
- Certificate of Compliance
Two packages, one contractor. FRS protected the building's structural steel and sealed every penetration the electrical trade created — which is unusual, because those are normally two different subcontractors who never speak to each other and whose records never reconcile.
Holding both is worth something on a job this size. The steel gets protected before the trades that follow conceal it, the penetrations get sealed as the cabling goes in rather than chased down afterwards, and the building ends up with one record set covering both rather than two that have to be reconciled at handover.
Structural protection is unforgiving about sequence. Once a member is boxed in or a ceiling is closed, putting it right costs several times what it cost to do in the first place — so the work is programmed against the trades that follow it, not against what suits the applicator.
The steel was protected with a sprayed vermiculite system, applied to the thickness each member needed. Thickness is not a detail of the job, it is the job — a member sprayed thin is not protected, and it looks exactly like one sprayed correctly. So it was measured as the work went on and recorded member by member, while anyone could still check it.
Applied protection is also one of the few passive fire scopes where the weather and the condition of the steel decide whether you can work at all on a given day. That has to be in the programme from the start, not discovered in the middle of it.
