The professional’s reference for commercial building equipment, compliance & specification

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Fire Doors & Fire Exits

Fire doors provide passive fire protection. This means they do not put out the fire, but rather, they keep the fire contained. An ideal fire door that has been installed, specified, and properly maintained gives people the opportunity to evacuate the premises and prevents the fire from spreading to the adjacent areas and more compartments. A non-compliant, defective, or poorly installed door cannot provide any of the above benefits, no matter what the certification states.

Fire doors in the commercial and industrial sectors are mainly governed by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRO). In this case, the Responsible Person (by the RRO definition) means the employer, building owner, or the person who has control of the premises and is obligated to do a fire risk assessment and to comply with all the requirements that are outlined in the fire risk assessment, which includes putting in and maintaining fire doors, as well as having the required fire doors installed.

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Industrial & Sectional Doors

The type of door selected for an opening in an industrial or commercial building affects operational efficiency, thermal efficiency, security, and compliance with safety of machinery regulations. These are distinct product types, each appropriate for different operational situations, traffic volumes and patterns, and functional and structural limitations. Specifying a type that is unsuitable for the circumstances will lead to issues that are costly to remedy after the door is installed.

The primary standard applicable to industrial, commercial, garage and loading bay doors in the UK is BS EN 13241, which outlines the basic requirements for safety, mechanical integrity, and thermal performance. Products placed on the market are required to display UKCA marking (CE marking for products placed on the market under certain transitional provisions) as evidence of compliance with the standard. The limits for force and kinetic energy for powered movement of doors and, therefore, the thresholds which determine the need for automatic reversing and safety edge devices, are specified in BS EN 12453 which is a normative reference in BS EN 13241.

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Lifting Equipment & Hoists

LOLER or Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 states that any lifting equipment that is used in a workplace in the UK must be compliant with the regulations, irrespective of whether the equipment is owned, hired, or leased, and irrespective of the sector or industry that the equipment is used in. Employers & Self employed people have the responsibility to choose suitable lifting equipment for the task, get the equipment examined at regular intervals and plan and supervise the lifting work. There are no exemptions, be it in terms of the size of the equipment, the weight of the load, or the frequency of use.

LOLER works in parallel with Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER), and which regulations state the wider requirements for the maintenance and the safe condition of all work equipment. Where lifting equipment is being used, all these regulations apply at the same time.

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