Which is better?
Many Social Housing Clients / NHS Trusts and other clients with large property portfolios often specify that fire doors must be installed by companies that are members of ‘Third Party Installation Schemes’.
Even Building Regulations Approved Document B – Fire Safety states:
“Independent schemes of certification and accreditation of installers can provide confidence that the required level of performance for a system, product, component or structure can be achieved.”
In theory, at least, this is true.
Installation companies that sign up to third-party certification schemes effectively ‘promise’ that:
● They know what they are doing.
● All staff are fully trained where required and competent to install fire doors.
● The staff understand the importance of compliance.
● The staff are well versed in the common problems associated with fire doors and how to overcome them.
Most importantly, though, they effectively promise that every fire door they install will be compliant, 100% compliant.
After all, a fire door can’t be ‘almost compliant’; it can’t be ‘pretty good’.
A fire door that isn’t 100% compliant cannot be considered a fire door.
It is understandable then that so many clients insist on TPC Installers – it guarantees compliance.
Or does it?
At the time of writing the author is yet to visit a compliant Third-Party Certified installation.
Here at The Fire Door Academy, we believe that personally qualified installers are the way forward, rather than TPC schemes where one ‘manager’ is expected to oversee and supervise up to 20 installers, none of which need to have any actual qualifications.
We believe a professionally qualified installer who is at least as knowledgeable as a typical TPC Manager is more likely to install a fully compliant fire door than a partially trained TPC installer, and it is a firm belief that drove the team here at The Fire Door Academy to create our installation course.
Time of course, will tell, but we are confident the benefits of personally qualified installers will be self-evident.
We’re excited about the future.
