Collaboration and testing are key for hospital fire safety, explains Russell James of Specialist Door Solutions
In the event of a fire, a fire-rated doorset provides a life-saving barrier, allowing time for people to evacuate and for the emergency services to arrive. Tragically, there have been too many examples of fire door failures, painfully demonstrating the significant impact of doorsets failing to provide the ‘certified’ protection against a fire and emphasising the importance of meticulous testing and robust certification.
While the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 continues, the incident has resulted in substantial changes to fire regulations in the UK. The enactment of the Fire Safety Act 2021 intensifies scrutiny and accountability, placing a greater level of responsibility on building owners and managers, and emphasising the need for transparency, accountability, third-party certification, and detailed specification of fire doorsets.
Maintaining the structural integrity of fire-rated doorsets is crucial to maintain public safety and suppliers must employ rigorous fire testing procedures to guarantee that every element of a design maintains that integrity throughout fire rating processes.
The importance of collaborative design
Creating a doorset that is guaranteed to maintain its integrity and fire-safety compliance in a busy building like a hospital is best achieved through a collaborative effort; being experts in door components and manufacturing is simply not enough.
Over many years we have developed partnerships with healthcare architects, NHS trusts, and contractors to ensure we can consider the needs of healthcare environments and the patients and staff who use them alongside the stringent health and safety standards of NHS buildings.
The evolving nature of fire safety demands a thorough approach that extends beyond conventional standards and brings together different sectors to contribute insights into areas such as:
- innovative materials and technologies – architects, manufacturers, and contractors can advise on the best possible doorset options available to meet a hospital’s needs, for example in areas that are high traffic so doors should be robust and durable, or surgical spaces that require enhanced infection prevention.
- design and operational needs – hospital staff and architects can show how a space will be used by patients, visitors and staff, for example, if beds and heavy equipment will be pushed through the doors regularly.
- patient demographics – hospital staff using a ward or department can give insights into the different groups of people who might use an area and what requirements there are to consider for doorsets, for example, if they need to be lightweight and easily moved, if it is likely that beds will be moved through the doors and require additional width, or if options for privacy need to be added into glazing panels such as optional blinds for patient bedrooms.
- safety measures – staff working in a hospital can provide input such as if any security measures are required, like swipe card or push button entry, to ensure the doors meet the functional and security requirements of a particular area of the hospital.
This approach is, however, not one employed by all suppliers which has resulted in a broad variation in product choice for those specifying doorsets for hospitals, inevitably leading to a broad variation in quality and durability. We believe there is the need for a standardised approach to doorset specification and procurement across the sector to ensure NHS trusts can get reliable service, quality, and safety, that delivers long term cost savings.
Bringing every component together for onsite production
There are high levels of skill and experience within a door factory, and part of that lies in the process of completing the entire doorset onsite. Supplying a doorset as a complete product means quality and safety control can be maintained and the risk of alterations during installation are vastly reduced.
Take the process of morticing as an example. Factory-prepared morticing refers to the process of cutting precise and standardised recesses, or mortises, into a door or door frame at a manufacturing factory, before the doorset is installed at its intended location. These mortises are typically made for the hardware components of the door, such as locks, hinges, and other fixtures, and factory-prepared morticing ensures that the cutting is done precisely to fit these fixtures to guarantee they fit and operate correctly.
The same exacting process is true for every component of a doorset, and fitting them together in the factory is particularly important because it means the entire doorset can go through the process of fire testing and will maintain its structural integrity in the event of a fire. If any element of fitting is carried out on site it loses an element of precision afforded by factory fitting, and more importantly, it cannot be guaranteed to adhere to fire testing guidelines and may be vulnerable to premature failure during a fire.
This attention to detail is important during the production of a doorset, but also after fitting, and part of our role is to help those working in healthcare settings to understand the risks of damage once a doorset is in use. Of course, every door will ensure some level of wear and tear in its lifetime, but knowing how different levels of damage and individual components can affect a fire door is crucial.
In a recent project, we worked with an NHS trust to carry out a fire door survey of 4,500 existing doorsets, of which 60% (2,800) were identified as needing replacement within the next three to four years, which is a significant programme of work for the trust. It also indicates how important it is to ensure fire doors are not only compliant on supply, but effective during their life cycle.
Why primary testing is a primary focus
When selecting a fire door, every component in the doorset plays a crucial role in its certification, including vision panels and ironmongery. The most effective way to guarantee a fully fire-compliant package is to purchase a complete, primary-tested doorset. This means that the complete doorset is tested as a whole, providing the most real-world performance data possible. If door components are tested in isolation, there is no way to guarantee the door’s performance against a fire once installed.
Primary testing ensures that the complete doorset has undergone a real-life burn test under strictly controlled conditions where the complete doorset is set alight, monitored and burned until it is destroyed, a process that is essential to have full confidence in its performance when it could be the difference between life and death in an emergency situation.
Primary testing is incredibly important, and it’s an area we work hard on to help people understand when we talk to them about the compliance of fire-safe doorsets. Carrying out a test on a doorset with individual components that are all supplied with 60-minute certification from their manufacturers, should in theory allow you to apply that certification in combination to the final doorset. However, the whole package would not have been tested together as one product.
When we carried out a primary test on the doorset, it failed at 44 minutes. That’s 16 minutes before the stated certification period for the components, 16 minutes that healthcare staff may have thought they still had to complete an evacuation, 16 additional minutes fire service personnel thought they had to gain control of the fire. This is not a risk that should be acceptable to take in a real-life situation, especially one involving potentially vulnerable people. If a doorset comes with a 60-minute certification, then it simply must last 60 minutes. Testing all of the components together should therefore guarantee this.
If doors and their components are certified individually it creates a layer of variability for specifiers that is a hazard to the people using a hospital if the door were to fail before its certification period in a fire. There is already a vast level of variation in door types on the market, adding this uncertainty over safety performance is a risk that trusts, architects, and contractors cannot afford to take.
This issue of variability is a constant challenge for specifiers. We surveyed 1,450 doorsets across five different NHS trusts and found a staggering 255 different types of doors in use. Of those 255 types of door, there were 732 product variations (excluding ironmongery) when we examined the different elements of each door, such as vision panels, kick plates and veneers.
There are so many different elements to consider in the design, production, installation, and maintenance of a fire doorset that it’s incredibly difficult for any healthcare facility to prove full compliance and effectiveness across the whole estate. That is why we call for improved standardisation and quality, and why we are so focused on primary fire testing. When the worst-case scenario is a loss of life, how could you settle for anything else?
Case study 1: Harefield Hospital – Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust
During a refurbishment of Maple Ward, dedicated to patients requiring heart and lung critical care treatment, SDS’s Dfendoor doorsets were chosen to elevate fire safety performance and infection control. The doorsets are known for their exceptional toughness and minimal maintenance needs, making them an indispensable feature in a surgical environment.
John Calvert, Fire Safety Manager at Royal Brompton Hospital and Harefield Hospital, said: “We are very pleased with the SDS doorsets and the installation. The Dfendoor hospital doorsets have surpassed our stringent fire safety and infection control standards and have also proven to be a visual and functional asset in the critical care environment of our newly transformed ward. This project has showcased the importance of fire door upgrades in an exacting healthcare environment.”
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Case study 2: King’s College Hospital – King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
The Accident and Emergency Paediatric Department underwent a refurbishment to modernise the facilities and was designed with children and their carers. The client selected the Dfendoor in grape (purple) to provide a bright colour scheme that fit with the designs of the children, creating a playful and friendly environment to enhance patient experience while also providing improved infection control capabilities which are essential in high-traffic, high-wear healthcare settings.
Dawn Tunak, Director on behalf of JF Jones Ltd, the building contractors managing the refurbishment project, said: “We formed an instant client/supplier partnership with the SDS team. Their knowledge is outstanding, and it makes collaboration seamless.”
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Russell James is the Chief Revenue Officer for SDS