Masonite launches webinar series aimed at practising fire safety professionals

The first webinar in the new series, entitled ‘Fire Doors: The Consequence of Complacency, takes place on Friday 25 September as part of Masonite UK’s support of Fire Door Safety Week 2020.

It will focus on what happens when fire doors do not perform as they should and the consequences of this. Hannah Mansell, group technical director for Masonite UK, will take attendees through a review of fire door safety, examine the consequences of complacency and also host a Q&A session.

“Every single person involved in the chain of managing fire safety products needs to understand their legal and moral responsibilities for keeping a given building’s occupants safe,” urged Mansell. “It’s not just a case of being trained once and considering yourself an expert. Rather, it’s about making sure that training is done on a regular basis and that anyone who’s responsible for fire and building safety is completely competent, including those involved in the construction and maintenance of a building.”

Mansell added: “These stakeholders must understand that, when they chose to be involved in the construction sector, they’re essentially signing up to do work that, one day, may save someone’s life. Those that do not hold themselves accountable are playing an extremely dangerous game.”

Preventing fire spread

The principle behind passive fire protection is to divide a building into individual fire compartments. Compartmentation of a building prevents fire and dangerous smoke from spreading into additional rooms and floors, while allowing crucial time for occupants to evacuate and the Fire and Rescue Service to tackle the blaze.

What role do fire doors play in passive fire protection? An effective passive fire protection product, fire doors fulfil a life-saving role in preventing the spread of smoke and fire for a period of time dependent on their fire classification.

Fire Doors help to keep the levels of smoke and toxic gases contained within the room of origin and prevent fire from moving into escape routes long enough to allow people to escape. Further, fire doors will prevent fire moving into escape routes and from one room to another.

A fire door is an engineered passive fire protection system formed by its door frame, door leaf, ironmongery, glazing and seals. Each individual fire door components must fulfil its role in order for the fire door to achieve its function of holding back smoke and fire for a specified time period.

Throughout its life, a fire door may only be called upon to act as a pedestrian access door, but in the event of a fire it must act effectively to reduce the damage caused by fire and smoke, protect evacuation routes, provide the Emergency Services with a protected route to access the building and protect the users of a building who may have difficulty evacuating quickly.

*For more information on the Masonite webinar series and to sign up for attendance visit bit.ly/Masonite-UK-webinars