The Building Blocks of Fire Safety: A Guide to Compartmentation for Property Managers
A vital element of your building’s fire safety strategy, effective compartmentation involves dividing a building into fire-resisting compartments. Each compartment is designed to contain fire and smoke, helping to protect residents and the property. When installed and maintained properly, it saves lives.
Current legislation (Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and Building Safety Act 2022) places responsibility on building owners and managers to ensure that fire safety systems are in place and well maintained. Compartmentation is one of the core elements you must understand and protect.
What is Fire Compartmentation?
Fire compartmentation involves the use of fire-resistant construction to divide a building into separate areas. These compartments are designed to prevent the spread of fire and smoke from one area to another for a set time - often 30, 60 or 120 minutes.
Construction of these compartments can include a combination of:
Fire-rated walls and floors
Fire doors
Cavity barriers
Fire dampers in ducts
Service risers and voids
Each element forms a barrier, keeping fire and smoke contained wherever the fire starts. This gives residents time to escape or the time needed for a stay put response to be used. The time bought by compartmentation also allows emergency services to respond more safely and limits damage to the property.
How Can Compartmentation Be Breached?
Even a building built with strong fire barriers can be weakened over time. Breaches are commonly caused by:
Poor Construction or Workmanship: Compartment walls or ceilings may not be built to the required standard - incorrect materials may be used or gaps may be left unsealed.
Service Penetrations: Cables, pipes or ducts that pass through walls or floors can create gaps. If these aren’t properly fire-stopped, they can allow fire and smoke to pass through.
Refurbishments or Alterations: Fire barriers are often disturbed during works e.g. new lighting or internet cables may be added without resealing the compartment properly.
As a property manager, you may come across damaged or missing fire door seals, gaps around pipework, unsealed ceiling voids or poorly-maintained fire dampers. If spotted, these issues must be quickly remedied. Unfortunately, issues may not be visible during a basic walk-through, which is why proper assessments are important.
Assessing and Maintaining Compartmentation
Keeping compartmentation intact is an ongoing task and will involve the correct use of inspections and assessments.
A Type 1 Fire Risk Assessment should be your starting point. A professional assessment should identify whether there are obvious breaches and if further inspection is needed. Make sure your building’s assessment is current and carried out by a competent person.
Sometimes, visual checks are not enough. A compartmentation survey may be required. These are intrusive surveys that involve looking behind ceilings, walls, or risers to assess the true condition of barriers.
To summarise the 4 levels of fire risk assessment:
Type 1: This is a non-intrusive survey of the common areas of the building and is the most commonly requested assessment.
Type 2: This assessment involves intrusive works in the common areas of the building. Type 2 assessments are required only if there is good reason to believe there are serious structural flaws that risk breaches in compartmentation.
Type 3: This is a non-intrusive assessment, like Type 1, but it includes the assessment of individual flats. This is only advised if there is reason to believe there is a fire risk present within an individual unit.
Type 4: This assessment is the same as Type 2, but it extends to individual flats.
Your own routine inspections of the property should include a check on all fire doors and their closures. For properties that are under 11 metres in height, it is a legal requirement of The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 that both the communal fire doors and flat entry doors are inspected “on a regular basis”.
For properties that are over 11 metres in height it’s a legal requirement of The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 that the communal fire doors are inspected quarterly, and the flat entrance doors annually.
Recording your efforts is vital, as is record-keeping for the Building Safety Act’s “golden thread” of information requirements. This includes records of fire strategies, compartment locations, and any changes made over time. Keep plans, certificates, and reports organised and accessible.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
Put simply - never assume everything is intact. Many property managers assume compartmentation is fine if it was installed properly during construction. But even minor works you may not consider “works” (like installing a new extractor fan, for example) can weaken a barrier.
Compartmentation damage is often hidden, so looking below the surface is vital. Unless you physically inspect service risers, ceiling voids, and behind cupboards, you could miss key issues. You should be especially alert after refurbishment or retrofit works, fire door replacements, and new cabling or plumbing installations.
If in doubt, always call in a specialist to re-evaluate the building’s compartmentation. Your resident’s lives may depend on it.
Conclusion
Fire compartmentation is a vital defence against fire and smoke. It protects lives, supports safe evacuation, and limits property damage. But it only works when properly installed and maintained.
As a property manager, you need to make compartmentation checks a part of your ongoing fire safety schedule. Review your compartmentation regularly and keep clear records - especially after any building works, no matter how minor.
If you need help assessing your building’s compartmentation, feel free to reach out to us here at 4site for expert advice and support. We’re here to help you stay compliant and keep your properties safe.
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