Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust) are a leading NHS Foundation Trust providing services from Warrington Hospital, Halton Hospital, Nightingale Building, and the Captain Sir Tom Moore Building.
The Trust commissioned Pennington Choices to conduct a Compartmentation Survey and Fire Door Inspection across their five-storey, 25,000m² Appleton Wing. This building houses theatres, Accident and Emergency, inpatient and outpatient wards, staff and administrative areas, and plant facilities.
The Compartmentation Survey aimed to identify defects and specify remedial work required to ensure compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and Healthcare Technical Memorandum (HTM) guidance.
We appointed two passive fire consultants and one fire door inspector to undertake the work. Initial pre-survey visits were carried out to understand the building’s complexity and coordinate with hospital staff to agree on access arrangements.
On-site, our consultants used our digital surveying and management application, Bolster, to collect compartmentation data in real time. Floor plans were annotated with location-specific ‘pins’, supported by photographs and inspection notes. Our consultants checked each accessible space for:
Measurements were taken using specialist equipment to ensure accuracy. The Trust was granted access to Bolster to review findings, photographs, and associated actions.
To streamline reporting, quality assurance checks were completed across each area of the report as and when new areas were assessed, enabling the final report, CSV dataset, and prioritised action plan to be delivered efficiently in a format compatible with contractor systems.
We have successfully completed the Compartmentation Survey, whilst ensuring minimal disruption to the Trust’s clinical areas, such as theatres and A&E, to avoid disrupting hospital services. This was achieved through:
This survey provided the Trust with an understanding of the wing’s compartmentation and identified any areas where they could improve their fire safety.
“Pennington Choices was appointed to carry out a full compartmentation survey of one of our hospital wards, including a detailed inspection of all fire doors and compartmentation.
The team demonstrated a clear understanding of healthcare-specific fire safety requirements and worked efficiently within a live clinical environment, ensuring minimal disruption to hospital operations. The final report was clear, comprehensive, and included practical recommendations to support compliance and ongoing risk management.
We were satisfied with the quality of the work and the professionalism shown throughout the project. We would have no hesitation in recommending Pennington Choices for similar fire safety surveying works in a healthcare setting.” - Head of Capital Projects at the Trust