The Grady Doors vision is a housing sector where residents feel safe, landlords feel confident, and every fire door is backed by proof, not assumptions.
How can social housing procurement and duty holders confidently distinguish between what is claimed and what is evidenced when evaluating fire doorsets? Marketing brochures often reference test performance, but not all test data is created equal, and not all claims reflect how a doorset will behave once installed.
Check for full system testing of fire doorsets
Fire doors fail at their weakest interface, not at their strongest component. A hinge may be tested for load, a closer for durability, a leaf for fire resistance, but none of these isolated tests reveal how the system behaves when exposed to fire as a single engineered system.
One or two isolated tests provide almost no insight into the inherent safety margin built into the product, nor do they reveal where the weakest points lie. Only full‑system testing provides evidence of how components really interact with one another under test conditions.
Check for regulatory compliance – looking beyond British Standards
Evidence consolidation has become a priority when procuring fire doorsets, especially in light of the transition to a single European classification.
In September 2029, national fire resistance classes will be removed from Approved Document B (England). From that point, projects relying on this route to demonstrate compliance with the Building Regulations for fire safety will use fire door systems tested to EN 1634 (relevant parts) and classified under EN 13501‑2.
The shift to the European classification framework introduces new considerations for procurement teams: potential limitations on previously relied‑upon scope, more complex technical documents to scrutinise and a fundamental change in how evidence is interpreted.
Grady Doors prioritising transparent, evidence-led procurement
Fire door manufacturer Grady Doors only tests to the EN classification framework and advocate full fire door system testing – an approach that has driven its innovation ethos for over a decade.
To help procurement teams it has developed a Technical Assurance Manual for the Grady Doors Golden Thread fire doorset range. This manual brings every test, certificate and regulatory mapping together into a single, consolidated evidence pack, providing:
- One authoritative evidence source;
- Clear mapping to relevant Building Regulation and EN classifications; and
- Traceability from test reporting through to installation, and into the lifetime of the product.