Protect Your Buildings with Our Comprehensive Fire Safety Services

Whether you own or manage a commercial or residential property, it is crucial that you ensure your buildings comply with fire safety regulations and standards.

From our qualified surveyors conducting your Compartmentation Surveys to our team of in-house consultants solving all your fire safety challenges, our trusted experts hold extensive client-side experience and technical knowledge, ensuring you receive bespoke solutions tailored to your exact needs.

Discover our wide range of fire safety services below and learn how we can help you protect your building and its occupants.

•    Fire Risk Assessments
•    Compartmentation Surveys and Compartmentation Line Plans
•    Schedule of Defects
•    Floor Plans and Building Plans
•    Building Height Surveys
•    Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls (FRAEW) and EWS1 forms
•   Technical Audits
•   Fire Strategies (New and Retrospective)
•   Fire Management Plans
•   Fire Door Inspections
•  Chartered Fire Engineering Services
•   Authorised Engineer (NHS)
•   Fire Advice Services 
•   Project Management, Quantity Surveying, and Procurement

Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs)

Completed by our BAFE SP205 accredited team, an FRA is required by law under the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order 2005 (FSO) and provides an overall understanding of the risk to life safety from fire related hazards. Our FRAs provide an assessment of the risk to life from fire and, where appropriate, actions and recommendations are captured to assist you in mitigating or removing risks to ensure people are as safe as possible. FRAs are required regularly depending on the risk profile of your building and its residents to ensure hazards, risks and required actions/recommendations are captured over the building’s lifetime.

Compartmentation Surveys and Compartmentation Line Plans

Required by law under Building Regulations, a compartmentation survey assesses and captures the defects found in fire rated compartments of buildings, which are normally related to floors, walls, ceilings, doors, windows and services passing from one compartment to another.

Our passive fire specialists will conduct the survey to determine if the integrity of the fire resisting compartment in a property has been jeopardised. The output of the survey will allow a competent contractor to pinpoint and rectify every defect (often described as fire stopping) so that the compartment regains its required level of fire resisting performance and any future fire events in the compartment do not threaten or spread to neighbouring compartments.

Compartment line plans are another crucial element to your fire safety strategy, providing a detailed overview of where a building’s fire-resisting compartmentation sits. Whether you need your existing compartment line plans checking or creating from scratch, we’ve got you covered.

Schedule of Defects

You’ve done your compartmentation survey, what’s next? Through a schedule of defects, you will receive a list of all compartment breaches, issues and fire door faults in a digitised format that can be used to tender relevant quotes from competent third-party accredited contractors for future remediation.

Floor Plans and Building Plans

For buildings in-scope of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, it is a legal requirement to share up-to-date floor plans which identify key fire-fighting equipment with your local Fire and Rescue Service. Floor plans are scale drawings that show the relationship between rooms, spaces and physical features of buildings, facilities, and other infrastructure, viewed from above (2D).

The regulations require floor plans to be a reasonably accurate reflection of each floor of the building; they are a critical component of fire safety, being used for evacuation plans, wayfinding signage, ascertaining where your fire doors should be, and compartment line plans. Think of the floor plans as covering all necessary details surrounding the internal building, such as where the lifts and stairs are located. If anything changes, such as the layout of the building or location of any equipment, the plans should be updated. Your floor plans should also include different areas of fire resistance, known as compartment lines. If you are unsure of where your compartment lines are located, we can assist through conducting a compartmentation survey.

Building Height Surveys

If you are not already, you must be aware of whether your buildings, which are high-risk, high-rise residential buildings with more than two dwellings, fall in scope of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and the Building Safety Act 2022. Our building height surveys use advanced digital technologies with a quick turnaround of no more than two days to provide you with full assurance covering which of your buildings fall within scope of the regulations.

FRAEW and EWS1 Forms

Based on the defined PAS9980 methodology, a Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls (FRAEW) is completed by our competent experts to investigate and report the risks posed to occupants in a building from a fire spreading over or within the external wall system present on the building. An FRAEW is broken down into two stages, with the outcome of an FRAEW allowing the responsible person to decide the best course of actions to remediate against issues or mitigate the risks. An EWS1 Form can also be provided, which will confirm that your external wall system has been assessed for fire resistance by a suitably qualified expert, providing assurance for lenders, valuers, residents, buyers, and sellers. To read more about FRAEW’s and EWS1 forms, click here.

Technical Audits

Are you confident that your building is fully equipped to handle a fire emergency? Our fire safety experts provide a wide range of technical auditing services relating to fire safety provisions across a building, including audits of FRAs, audits of surveys and inspections, and audits of pre-existing building materials.

Fire Strategies (New and Retrospective)

Our Chartered Engineers help to develop a strategy that sets out the measures and escape plans put in place in your buildings to prevent a fire and limit the spread if a fire was to occur. We provide expertly crafted technical documents that outline the essential fire safety control measures for your building’s construction, design, and intended use. All strategies are tailored to meet the relevant building regulations and associated standards, ensuring your building is always fully compliant and safe from potential fire hazards. A fire strategy can be produced either before the construction of a new building or retrospectively for a building that has already been built and/or has had a significant change in it’s make up and/or use. 

Retrospective fire strategies are legally required if your buildings are within scope of the Building Safety Act 2022, and must be provided to the Building Safety Regulator as part of your key building information.  

Fire Management Plans

Fire management plans are crucial for identifying potential fire hazards, complying with legal obligations, and most importantly, saving lives. The plan will specify the planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the fire safety measures and provisions in your premises.

Fire Door Inspections

Referring to the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, if your building is over 11 metres in height you must conduct fire door checks every three months on communal fire doors and every year on flat entrance doors to best endeavours. Fire door inspections are integral to passive fire protection and play a crucial role in protecting safety. Your fire doors will receive a five point functional check based on government guidance, or a thorough fire door inspection of all constituent parts of a fire door if necessary.

Chartered Fire Engineering Services

Our industry-leading levels of competence allows us to provide complete assurance when solving your problems and undertaking the complex, high-risk works that you need.

Technical Engineers: Pennington Choices’ trained technical specialists are members of various industry bodies, including the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE), the Institute of Fire Safety Managers (IFSM), and the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP), amongst others. Our experts hold advanced knowledge and understanding to effectively apply technical and practical skills to your requirements.

Chartered Engineers: Also holding chartered memberships of several industry-leading institutions, our chartered engineers have extensive knowledge and competence to deal with complex and high-risk matters.

Authorised Engineer (NHS)

As defined in Health Technical Memorandum 00 (Policies and principles of healthcare engineering), we are an Authorised Engineer who sits as an independent, professional advisor for an NHS Trust to provide objective third-party feedback, advice and guidance where required, and specific project advice relating to fire safety.

Fire Advice Services

Receive access to qualified and competent technicians who will provide you with technical information, advice and guidance. Plus, receive access to the wider Pennington Choices team of in-house consultants and technical experts where required on matters including:

Project Management, Quantity Surveying, and Procurement

We can quantify, tender, procure, and deliver all of your fire safety remediation and improvement works; from fire stopping and fire door replacements, right through to building refurbishments, new builds and demolition. For more information, find out more here.