Fire safety software for residential blocks.
The communal parts are yours, the flats are not, and the people inside are asleep.
14 days free access · no card needed
A residential block divides into parts you control and parts you do not. The stairwell, the lobby and the plant are yours; the flats are somebody's home, and getting into them to check anything is a negotiation rather than a decision.
That matters because the things that protect the building most — compartmentation, flat entry doors, escape routes — sit precisely on that boundary. The door that has to hold is the resident's front door, and the breach that undermines a wall is usually behind a ceiling in a communal riser.
Expectations in this part of the market have moved faster than anywhere else, and in one direction: more evidence, held continuously, demonstrable to somebody else rather than asserted.
What residential blocks are answerable for
- Fire risk assessment, its review date and the actions from it
- Fire door register and recorded check routines
- Alarm, detection and emergency lighting servicing
- Compartmentation and fire stopping records
- Remedial actions, through to close-out
- Evacuation strategy and resident information
What makes this hard for residential blocks
The assessment produces actions nobody tracks
An assessment is valuable for what it finds, and findings only matter once they are closed. Where the report is filed and the actions live in somebody's inbox, the assessment has documented a risk rather than reduced one.
Doors you cannot always get to
Flat entry doors are part of the building's protection and part of somebody's home. Checking them depends on access you have to arrange, and the ones you cannot get into are exactly the ones worth recording as not checked.
Residents who are asleep
The occupants are at their least alert, least mobile and least familiar with the alarm when it matters most. Everything about the strategy — detection, compartmentation, whether anybody is expected to move — follows from that.
Work done behind finishes
Fire stopping is penetrated by every contractor who runs a cable, and then covered up. The breach is invisible, undocumented and discovered either at the next intrusive survey or at an incident.
A standard that keeps rising
What counted as adequate evidence a few years ago is now the starting point. Records assembled retrospectively are the hardest kind to produce and the easiest kind to doubt.
How FireOptix helps
The assessment produces actions nobody tracks
Actions are extracted from the assessment and tracked as their own items through to close-out, so the report becomes work rather than a document.
Fire risk assessmentsDoors you cannot always get to
Doors sit on a register with their check routine and history, so a door that could not be accessed is recorded as exactly that rather than silently skipped.
Fire doorsWork done behind finishes
Defects and remedial actions are tracked from identification through to close-out, with photo evidence attached where it was found.
Defects & remedial actionsA standard that keeps rising
Records are held against the building over time, so the history exists as a continuous record rather than being reconstructed when somebody asks.
Golden thread recordsResidents who are asleep
Alarm, detection and emergency lighting servicing is held with its own dates, so the systems the strategy depends on are watched rather than assumed.
Equipment & servicing
The people doing this job
Responsible persons
Carrying the duty for the building, often while not being the owner of it.
responsible personBlock and estate managers
Running several buildings and arranging access to parts they do not control.
Fire risk assessors
Producing the assessment whose actions somebody else has to close.
fire risk assessmentContractors and door inspectors
Servicing systems and checking doors under their own competence.
competent personResidents and leaseholders
Living behind the doors the strategy depends on, and entitled to information about it.
fire door
What residential blocks ask
- Does FireOptix carry out the fire risk assessment?
- No. A competent assessor does the assessment. FireOptix records it, holds its review date and extracts the actions so they can be tracked to close-out — which is the half that usually goes wrong.
- Can we record flat entry door checks?
- Doors sit on a register with their check routine and history, including where access was not obtained. A door recorded as not checked is far more useful than a gap.
- Does it connect to the alarm panel?
- No. It is not alarm monitoring, a receiving centre or panel integration. It records the servicing and the defects, not the live system.
- Does it handle building control or gateway submissions?
- No. It does not make submissions of any kind. It holds the records those processes draw on.
- Can we see every block at once?
- Yes. Records are held per building with a portfolio view across them, which is the position a managing agent otherwise has to assemble building by building.
Actions closed, not just assessments filed
14 days free access · no card needed