A fire safety audit checks whether a building's fire protection is present, working and maintained. Active items such as alarms and sprinklers are tested. Passive items are inspected: shafts and service penetrations sealed, fire doors closing and latching, joints sealed, and structural steel protected. A good audit records each passive item with its location and a photograph.
What does a fire safety audit cover?
A full fire safety audit looks at four areas. The first is active fire protection: alarms, detection, sprinklers, hydrants, extinguishers and pumps, and whether they work. The second is means of escape: staircases, exit routes, signage, emergency lighting and whether exits are clear. The third is management: records, maintenance, drills and training. The fourth is passive fire protection: the walls, floors, doors and seals that hold fire in one place.
The first three are well understood and usually well covered. The fourth is often summarised in a single line, because checking it properly means opening riser doors, lifting ceiling tiles and knowing what a correct seal looks like. This checklist covers that fourth part. For what the finished record should contain, see passive fire audit documentation.
Before you start: the drawings
- Find the fire compartment drawing showing which walls and floors are rated, and for how long.
- Find the fire door schedule, if one exists.
- Collect any records of fire stopping work: product data, test reports, installer photographs.
- Note any fit-outs, tenant changes or major cabling work since the building was handed over.
If the compartment drawing cannot be found, record that as the first finding. Without it, nobody can say which walls must be sealed. Our guide to fire compartmentation explains what it should show.
Shafts and risers
- Open electrical, data and plumbing riser doors on at least every third floor, and on every floor in critical buildings.
- Look at the slab around the services. Can you see the floor below? Is there light coming through?
- Is the seal a tested fire stop system, or plywood, cement or foam?
- Have new cables been pushed through an old seal and the gap left open?
- Is the riser door itself a rated door that closes and latches?
Shafts are where we find the most serious gaps, because one open shaft connects every floor it passes through. We explain the correct method in shaft closing.
Ceiling voids and penetrations
- Lift ceiling tiles along rated walls, especially near risers, server rooms and corridors.
- Check the wall continues up to the slab. A wall that stops at the ceiling is not a compartment wall.
- Look at every cable tray, pipe and duct crossing the wall. Is each one sealed with a suitable system?
- Look for yellow or orange expanding foam. Ordinary foam is not fire stopping.
- Check plastic pipes through rated walls and floors have collars or wraps.
- Check ducts crossing rated walls have fire dampers where the design calls for them.
Fire doors
- Does each door in a rated wall carry a fire rating label or certificate?
- Does it close fully and latch on its own from fully open?
- Are the closer, hinges and lock intact and original to the door?
- Are edge seals present, and not painted over or torn?
- Is the gap around the door within normal limits, without daylight showing?
- Is the door being wedged or tied open?
Joints
- Check the head of rated walls where they meet the slab: sealed, and with a flexible rated product?
- Check movement joints in floors and walls that form compartment boundaries.
- Probe a few joints. Firm resistance suggests mineral wool behind the sealant; soft give suggests foam rod. See fire rated sealant.
Structural steel
- Is exposed structural steel protected where the design requires it?
- Is the coating continuous, without bare patches, damage or overspray gaps at connections?
- Has the thickness been measured and recorded? Intumescent coating is applied to a specified dry film thickness.
- Has later work, such as new fixings or welded brackets, damaged the coating?
Our guide to intumescent coatings for structural steel explains why thickness matters.
Recording findings
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Location (floor, grid, room) | So someone can find it again without you |
| Photograph | Proof of what was seen, before and after |
| What is wrong | Open, wrong product, damaged, untraceable |
| Risk level | So the most dangerous gaps are fixed first |
| Recommended fix | The tested system that suits that opening |
National Building Code of India, Part 4 (Bureau of Indian Standards). Telangana State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department. ASTM E814, fire tests of penetration firestop systems. Test standards and rules are revised, so check the current edition for your project. Last reviewed 27 October 2026 by the Simfy Firesys team.
Where we fit, and where we do not
We carry out passive fire audits covering shafts, penetrations, joints, fire door condition and steel protection, with every finding photographed and ranked, and we can carry out the repairs. We do not test or service alarms, sprinklers, hydrants or extinguishers, and we do not issue fire NOCs. Those sit with your active fire contractor and fire consultant. If you want the passive part of your audit done properly, talk to our team.
