What price a fire door survey?

“How much will you charge to inspect our fire doors?”
 

A question I’m obviously asked on a regular basis and of course clients want to know how much a survey will cost before engaging a provider.

I wonder then how “£3,000,000” would be received.

Not that well I imagine, unless of course the client has a HUGE list of assets!

This figure though was the cost of a fire door survey we provided, not the cost to the client though, £3,000,000 was the compensatory figure paid TO the client by the FM Provider as a direct result of the fire doors they were being paid to maintain falling well below the required level of compliance. 

The client suspected that their fire doors weren’t being maintained to the required standard of compliance but needed an ‘expert opinion’ (we don’t generally use the term expert) to present to their legal team, so were engaged to survey the site (a large NHS facility).

NHS sites probably rank up there with schools, colleges and possibly prisons as the most hostile environments for fire doors. Hospital beds, trollies, cleaning vehicles, refuse bins and the like can all damage fire doors and of course even slight damage can dramatically reduce the expected performance of a fire door down to a few minutes. 
Maintenance is a critical factor in ensuring the ongoing fire safety of such buildings and of course FM providers are contracted to do exactly this.

Surveying sites in advance of a legal battle is something we do on a regular basis, but it’s not just existing buildings where we provide the service. We’re also regularly engaged by clients to act as a kind of ‘specialist Clerk of Works’ on new building projects. We will provide a number of inspections throughout the build programme, inspecting fire doors as soon as the installation, and through ongoing liaison with the Main Contractor / Installation Provider ensure that the completed building is as compliant as possible. 

Compliance issues are easier to resolve during the build process rather than afterwards and of course the client ultimately holds the purse strings giving them the ‘Ace’ up their sleeve.

Perhaps then when looking to commission a fire door survey, rather than look at the cost of the survey, consider what YOU may get out of it.