Capability
The line the whole strategy assumes is continuous.
Compartment walls and floors are what hold a fire in the space it started in for long enough for the strategy to work. Almost everything else in a building safety case rests on that line being unbroken.
What this part of the line is doing.
A compartment line is not a wall. It is a wall, the floor it sits on, the soffit above it, every service that passes through it and every doorset in it, performing as one thing.
It is also built in, hidden from view, breached routinely by other trades, and almost never recorded in a way anybody can use afterwards. Very little else in a building is all four at once. An alarm panel announces itself. A cavity barrier does not.
The failures are ordinary, and they repeat.
Set out plainly, because a client who knows what to look for is a better client to work for.
Rarely at the wall. Above it. A wall built tight to a suspended ceiling and stopped there, with the void open over the top of it.
A cavity barrier omitted where the facade meets the slab, because it belonged to nobody’s package.
A line that is continuous on the drawing and open in the riser, because the drawing was never checked against the building.
What we do differently.
We survey the line where it actually runs, through the ceiling void and the riser, before pricing. Where the construction does not match the drawing we say so before anybody builds to it.
Building or extending a compartment wall is builder’s work rather than certificated passive fire work, and we describe it as builder’s work. Being precise about that matters more to you at a Gateway submission than it costs us in the tender.
What you are left holding.
Produced as part of the work and priced into the rate, not invoiced as a separate deliverable.
Every element located and referenced, the extent of void and riser opened, and what was recorded as not accessible rather than quietly left out.
After practical completion.
The line is only as true as the last person to open it. Where we hold a maintenance or inspection instruction, alterations by others are checked against the original record rather than against a blank sheet.
Tell us about the building.
New build, refurbishment, remediation, planned maintenance, inspection, or the information a building has to be able to produce.
Or speak to one of us directly.
nick@compartis.co.uk
sam@compartis.co.uk