Keep your buildings fire safe

If you’ve made your way to our website, you’ve probably heard about the annual fire door inspection requirements for your facility, and the recent rulings and enforcement by The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of annual fire door inspections per NFPA 80.

The requirement to inspect fire doors and maintain them in good working has been a part of NFPA 80 recommended practices for years. The 2007 edition of NFPA 80: Standard for Fire Doors and Other Protectives, however, actually made this mandatory and no longer just a recommendation. This change goes on to require that building owners maintain a list of all fire doors and keep subsequent inspection and test reports on file for review by the Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs). Furthermore, the operational and visual inspections of your fire doors must be conducted by subject experts, or those individuals with specific knowledge and understanding of all components involved.

This change was made to the standard and building code to ensure a more reliable building fire suppression system as designed by the architect and life safety engineers. Fire doors are a very unique part of a building and offer both passive and active fire suppression when installed and maintained in accordance with their labeling procedures. When they are not installed or maintained properly, they can adversely affect the reason they were installed in the first place.

Options are available for in-house testing, inspection, and reporting as long as you maintain a staff of professionals who understand every aspect of your fire doors and their effect on the ratings of the wall and building in which they are installed. Your personnel is required to maintain the list of fire openings, along with the test and inspection reports, and a complete maintenance record for every fire door. Over a period of time, as determined by your AHJ and with a proven track record of compliant fire doors, you may be granted an extension to your annual report deadline. These are generally granted in six-month intervals. Conversely, buildings with repeated fire door violations may be required to have inspections more frequently than every year.

Our Products

DOORDATA Solutions, Inc., (DDS), offers a suite of field-inspection software tools that aid fire door inspectors. Our mobile data collecting solutions use the most up-to-date computer and software technology to minimize the time required in the field to conduct these inspections. Our technology solutions increase the accuracy of the inspections by creating a unique database of your building’s openings as inspections are taking place in real-time. That data is then retrievable in multiple formats and mediums, including the required “fire door inspection report” you must keep on site for review by your AHJ.

DOORDATA also provides you with the tools and guidance to help you identify and record every fire door at your facility in anticipation of upcoming inspections.

We recommend that you consult with a credentialed fire door inspector and an inspection company in your area to find out what services they offer.