Fire Safety Management: Overview

About Fire Safety Management

Fire safety management covers two kinds of work that look different on site but produce the same kind of record: installing fire protection correctly and proving it, and inspecting it regularly afterwards and proving that too.

• During construction: the contractor installs fire doors, fire stopping at every penetration through a fire-rated wall or floor, fire dampers, compartment walls, escape route signage and emergency lighting, and documents each installation with photos, the product used and, where required, the installer's certificate. This is the record the building owner and the fire authority ask for at completion.
• In operation: the building owner or facility manager inspects the same elements at fixed intervals, records the result, fixes what fails and keeps the inspection history for the authority, the insurer and the fire risk assessor.

In both cases the question a record has to answer, sometimes years later, is the same: which element, where exactly, what was found, by whom, when, and what was done about it.

Terminology

Standards and intervals differ by country and building type. PlanRadar does not know which apply to your building. Your fire safety concept or fire risk assessment does, and the setup below follows it.

What PlanRadar Covers

In PlanRadar a fire safety element is a ticket pinned on the plan: this fire door, this penetration, this extinguisher. The ticket carries the element's data, its installation record with photos and certificate, and its inspection history. A QR code or NFC tag on the element opens its ticket on the phone. Every change is dated and attributed in the ticket journal.

PlanRadar does not come with a fire safety form, an element list or inspection intervals. You define them from your fire safety concept or fire risk assessment. Whether the checklist follows a British Standard, a German DIN or your insurer's requirements is decided in the form.

What PlanRadar does not do is tell you what to inspect or how often. It records that you did, keeps the proof, and shows you what is overdue.

Roles and Workflow

Roles

Installers and maintenance contractors are usually subcontractor users, free of charge, who see only the tickets assigned to them and can add photos, comments and status. Inspectors and the fire safety manager are in-house users. The fire authority or the client's fire consultant can be a watcher. Read more in User Types.

Workflow

The process runs in four stages: set up, install, inspect, prove. Inspect repeats for the life of the building.

1. Set up. The fire safety manager creates the Fire safety element form and the inspection checklist, uploads plans, creates one ticket per element on the plan, and prints a QR code label for each.
2. Install. The installer opens the element's ticket, records the installation with photos before and after sealing or fitting, the product and the certificate, and sets the status to Resolved. The fire safety manager checks and closes.
3. Inspect. At each interval the inspector scans the QR code, fills in the checklist on the element ticket or on an inspection sub-ticket, and opens a linked defect for anything that fails.
4. Prove. The fire safety manager filters for overdue inspections and open defects, and produces the inspection report per building, per floor or per element type for whoever asks.

Each stage is explained in Fire Safety Management: Workflows in PlanRadar.

The Example in These Articles

A fire stopping contractor seals the service penetrations in a new six-storey office building: about 400 penetrations through fire-rated walls and floors, each one to be documented with photos before and after, the product used and the installer's name. At completion the record is handed to the building owner, who continues to use the same tickets for the annual inspection of every penetration and every fire door.

The example uses one form named Fire safety element, an Element type list, a checklist field for the inspection, one plan per floor and a QR code label on every element. Where a decision could reasonably be made another way, a short note points out the alternative.

Planning Your Fire Safety Setup

Fire safety records outlive the project and often the people who made them. The decisions below determine whether the record still makes sense in ten years.

One Ticket per Element, for Life

The element is the unit of record, not the inspection. One fire door is one ticket from installation to removal. Everything that happens to it, installation, each inspection, each repair, is recorded on or under that ticket. This is what makes the history of an element readable in one place, and it is what the QR code points to.

Two ways to record the recurring inspections on the element:

Which Elements and Which Fields?

An Element type list is the backbone: Fire door, Penetration, Fire damper, Compartment wall, Extinguisher, Emergency light, Exit sign, Dry riser, Smoke vent. Keep it to what you inspect.

The fields depend on the element type, and most of them are needed only for some types. Use conditional visibility so that the fire rating field appears for doors and penetrations, the service type for penetrations, and the pressure test date for extinguishers. Typical fields:

• Element ID. It must be the same ID as on the fire strategy drawing and in the O&M manual.
• Fire rating: EI 30, EI 60, EI 90, EI 120.
• Product and manufacturer, for penetrations and doors.
• Installer and installation date.
• Certificate or declaration of performance, as an attachment.
• Next inspection due, as a date.
• Compliance status: Compliant, Non-compliant, Remedial action open.

How Does the Inspector Find the Element?

Fire stopping is above ceilings and behind risers. A plan position helps, but the inspector standing in a riser cupboard with 30 penetrations needs to know which ticket is which. Print a QR code label for every element ticket and stick it next to the element. Scanning it opens the ticket on the phone. For elements that are painted over or exposed to weather, an NFC tag does the same. Read more in Use QR Codes to Link & Open Tickets and Use NFC Tags to Link & Open Tickets.

What Proves an Installation?

For fire stopping and fire doors, the photo before and the photo after are the record. Decide and enforce:

• A photo of the open penetration before sealing that shows the services passing through.
• A photo after sealing that shows the product label or the marked element ID.
• The product, from a list, not free text, so you can find every penetration sealed with a product that is later recalled.
• The installer, from the Assignee or a user field.

Two custom attachment fields, Photo before and Photo after, keep the two apart in the record and in the report. Subcontractor users can fill custom attachment fields. Read more in Edit Field Permissions.

How Are Intervals Tracked?

PlanRadar has no built-in inspection scheduler. Intervals are tracked with a date field and filters:

• Set Next inspection due on the element ticket when the inspection is done. Filter the register for Next inspection due before today to see what is overdue.
• Or use the Due date of the inspection sub-ticket, so that the inspector gets reminder emails and overdue inspections show in every list and on the dashboard.
• For a large register, create the next round of inspection sub-tickets in bulk by import, or automate their creation with PlanRadar Connect on a schedule. AI agents react to events and cannot run on a timer.

Who Owns the Record After Handover?

The contractor builds the register during construction and the owner needs it afterwards. Decide before completion whether the owner takes over the project in the contractor's account, gets an export, or whether the register is built in the owner's account from the start with the contractor as subcontractor users. The last option gives the owner an unbroken record and costs the contractor nothing. A PDF export loses the plan positions, the QR codes and the ability to add the next inspection.

What to Avoid

• One ticket per inspection with no element ticket. The history of a fire door is then spread over twenty unrelated tickets.
• Product names in free text. "Hilti" and "HILTI CP 606" are two different values to a filter.
• A photo after sealing with no photo before. It does not prove what was sealed.
• Element IDs that differ between the drawing, the label and the ticket. Use one ID everywhere.
• Closing an inspection ticket with a failed item and no linked defect. The failure disappears from every list.
• Deleting elements that were removed from the building. Set a status or a checkbox instead, so the record shows the element existed.

AI Support for Fire Safety Management

An AI agent only ever creates a ticket, a comment or an email. It cannot close an inspection or change a compliance status. Read more in Create & Manage Your AI Agents.

Steps to Manage Fire Safety in PlanRadar

Fire Safety Management: Workflows in PlanRadar explains each stage: set up the register with forms, lists, plans and QR codes, document installations, run the recurring inspections, handle failures as defects, and produce the reports.

Additional Possibilities

• Open any element's ticket by scanning its label. Read more in Use QR Codes to Link & Open Tickets.
• Record a SiteView run before ceilings are closed, so the position of every penetration is visible later without opening the ceiling. Read more in SiteView.
• Inspect in basements and risers without signal. Read more in Working Offline.
• Import the element register from the fire strategy schedule or the O&M manual as tickets in bulk. Read more in Import & Update Tickets.
• Where the authority requires its own inspection form, fill it as a project report from a PDF template and attach the element tickets to it. Project reports are available on Pro and Enterprise plans. Read more in Project Reports and Attach Tickets to Project Reports.
• Sign the completed inspection to lock it with inspector and date. Read more in Sign a Ticket.
• Track compliance rates per building, per element type and per inspection round in Statistics. Read more in Statistics.
• Export the register per building as PDF or Excel for the authority, the insurer or the golden thread file. Read more in Ticket Reports and Create Excel Templates for Exporting Tickets.