SECTOR INSIGHT
Competency, compliance and fire door training
Nicola John, Managing Director of FDM – Training & Development, explores why the future of fire door safety depends on practical, assessed competency across the fire door supply chain.
» EIGHT YEARS ON FROM GRENFELL, the conversation about fire doors has shifted. Not because we have suddenly discovered that fire doors matter, we always knew that, but because the bar for proving competence is rising. Compliance is no longer something that can be assumed, it has to be evidenced.
That shift affects everyone involved in fire door safety, including installers, inspectors, maintainers, landlords, specifiers and Responsible Persons. The question is no longer simply“ have we done enough?” It is“ can we show what we did, why we did it and that it was done by competent people, using the right products, installed in the right way and maintained throughout the life of the building?”
Fragmented competence creates systemic risk
For years, fire door competence has been built in fragments: a classroom course here, an on-the-job briefing there, documents to read and sign. The result is often a well-intentioned but under-supported workforce, where compliance becomes a tick-box exercise and knowledge is siloed across a supply chain that does not always speak the same technical language.
The Grenfell Inquiry reinforced how dangerous this fragmentation can be. Fire doors, the last line of defence in compartmentation, can be compromised by small decisions that seem minor in isolation: a closer that is not adjusted correctly, or a hinge changed without understanding the test evidence behind the door set. None of these look like non-compliance in the moment but in a fire they can be the difference between containment and catastrophe.
Why theory is not enough
Much of the industry’ s training has historically been weighted towards theory rather than practical application. People may understand regulations in principle yet lack confidence when standing in front of a live fire door, with real tolerances, real frames, real hardware and the pressure to complete work quickly.
If standards are to rise, the way competence is built must evolve. Not just through information and attendance, but through practice, decision-making and assessment. Hands-on training environments that reflect real building contexts allow competence to be developed in conditions that mirror onsite risk. At FDM, this thinking informed the creation of a purpose-built Training Academy, and now a second training centre in partnership with the FPA, designed to make competence practical- because the risk is practical.
Competence across the whole lifecycle
A fire door’ s performance is shaped by multiple decisions: specification, procurement, installation, inspection, repair, replacement and record-keeping. When roles are trained in isolation, the industry may achieve pockets of competence but remains systemically vulnerable.
One of the most persistent weaknesses remains maintenance. There is still a
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FEBRUARY 2026
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