Enabling improved performance in the passive fire industry
The industry response to improving the standard of passive fire stopping cables, pipes and ducts passing through fire rated walls and floors is improving rapidly in New Zealand. Increasing numbers of specialist contractors are responding to the ‘improved fire stopping’ demand and are making the use of technology to leverage their time and knowledge.
A number of companies now have digital recording systems to illustratively record where passive fire stopping was installed and what products were used. The Fire Protection Association has also released a passive fire stop register of products which will reduce the time spent researching fire stopping compliant systems.
These specialists appear to be lifting their game but there are also a number of peripheral players who are not up to speed on the requirements for passive fire stopping. These players include architects, building services engineers, project managers, construction managers and building services trades people. While they don’t need to have an intimate understanding of all the products and systems used for passive fire stopping, they do ideally need to have a general understanding of the principles involved. These players are also our clients, the people we talk with every day.
At Origin Fire we document passive fire solutions during the design stage of a project. When we get to the construction monitoring stage of a building project we are inspecting our solutions against our designs. This is much more useful and effective than choosing to design, redesign or come up with solutions in the middle of the construction process. In addition, we have been looking at the weaknesses in the supply chain to see where we might be able to help lift performance and quality when it comes to effective fire stopping.
Origin has put together a number of videos showing how generic passive fire stopping is installed. It is provided online through our YouTube channel so these can be accessed by anyone with a smart phone 24/7.
Our offering consists of seven videos about generic fire stopping installation. Click through to our video gallery below to watch them in full.