Passive fire protection in brief
Active systems — alarms, detection, sprinklers — respond to a fire once it has started. Passive fire protection is built into the fabric of the building itself. It divides the building into fire-resisting compartments so that fire and smoke are held where they begin, protecting escape routes and buying time for occupants to get out and the fire service to get in. It doesn't extinguish a fire; it stops it travelling.
What the survey inspects
Compartmentation
The fire-resisting walls, floors and ceilings that form each compartment line. We check construction type, continuity (does the wall actually reach the slab above?), condition, and the presence of cavity barriers in concealed voids.
Fire stopping & penetration seals
Every pipe, cable, duct and containment run passing through a compartment line must be sealed with a tested system suited to both the service and the substrate. This is the most common failure we find: seals that are missing, the wrong product for the application, or poorly installed.
Fire doors
Doorset condition and certification evidence, frame and leaf gaps, intumescent and smoke seals, glazing, ironmongery, self-closing devices and signage.
Associated items
Fire dampers at duct penetrations (visual condition at accessible locations), riser and service shaft integrity, and barriers in roof and floor voids.
Your legal duties
A current compartmentation survey is core evidence that you are meeting your obligations under:
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
The Responsible Person must assess fire risk and ensure fire safety measures are maintained in efficient working order, in non-domestic premises and the common parts of residential buildings.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022
Additional duties in residential buildings, including routine fire door checks and, in high-rise buildings, providing building information to the fire and rescue service.
The Building Safety Act 2022
For higher-risk buildings, Accountable Persons must manage building safety risks on an ongoing basis and maintain a golden thread of building safety information. Survey records form part of that thread.
Approved Document B
The statutory guidance setting out fire resistance requirements for compartment walls, floors and protected escape routes in new work and material alterations.
What you receive
A clear, usable report — not a box-ticking exercise. Every defect is photographed, located, and categorised by severity, with a specific remedial recommendation against each item. You get a document you can hand straight to your fire risk assessor, your insurer, or a remediation contractor, and a defect schedule that can be priced without further investigation visits.
Surveyed by the people who do the work
GoldThread installs fire stopping as well as surveying it. That matters twice over: our surveyors know what a compliant installation actually looks like in the field, and the defects we identify can be priced and remediated by the same team — including the enabling works (ceiling access, builder's work, making good) that other contractors subcontract out. One point of responsibility, from finding the defect to closing it out with full traceability.
Find out what condition your building is really in.
Tell us about the building and we'll recommend the right starting survey.
Contact us