In the critical realm of fire safety, fire doors stand as an essential protection and containment during fires, forming a crucial component of a building’s fire safety infrastructure. From their precise installation to meticulous ongoing maintenance and regular inspections, every aspect of a fire door’s lifecycle directly impacts human life, property, and the prevention of irreversible damage. Your team of skilled fire door professionals – responsible for ensuring these life-saving barriers are compliant and functional – is at the heart of this vital work.
However, effectively managing such a specialised, mobile workforce can be incredibly complex. Are you finding yourself lost in paperwork or wasting hours on manual processes? At BORIS Software, we understand the immense pressure and intricate demands of the fire door industry. Our robust workforce management solution is specifically designed to help your business run smarter, cutting through the chaos to deliver seamless operations.
Understanding Workforce Management in the Fire Door Sector
Workforce management (WFM) is a set of processes designed to direct staff members to be in the right places at the right times to reduce risks and maximise productivity. For the fire door industry, this means not only managing timesheets, expenses, holidays, and clock-ins effortlessly but also ensuring that your operatives, whether installing new doors or conducting vital inspections, have the precise skills, documentation, and tools at their fingertips.
Fire doors are purpose-built to maintain fire compartmentation, halting the spread of fire and smoke and establishing secure evacuation pathways. Their effectiveness hinges not just on installation, but on rigorous adherence to strict UK guidelines such as the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and compliance with certification standards like BS 476 and BS EN 1634. Fire doors must feature specific components like intumescent seals, self-closing mechanisms, fire-rated hinges, locks, and handles, and correct gap clearance. This necessitates a workforce management system that supports specialised skills, ensures safety, and streamlines field operations.
The Unique Challenges for Fire Door Workforces
Managing professionals dedicated to fire door compliance comes with distinct complexities:
• Rigorous Compliance & Certification: Every fire door in the UK must undergo rigorous testing to adhere to either BS 476 or BS EN 1634, providing assurance of their reliability. Operatives need instant access to these standards and certification details.
• Precision Installation & Maintenance: Effective fire door installation demands precision and adherence to manufacturer instructions and standards like BS 8214. Incorrect fitting or non-compliant hardware can render a certified door ineffective.
• Detailed Inspection & Reporting: Regular inspections by qualified technicians are essential. A comprehensive fire door inspection checklist needs to be followed, assessing the door’s condition, frame, hinges, seals, and hardware. This requires meticulous on-site data capture.
• Training & Qualifications: Ensuring all field workers have up-to-date training records and certifications to carry out highly specialised works. Managers must be able to identify employees with the required qualifications.
• Field Safety & Lone Worker Support: Operatives often work on site, sometimes alone. Ensuring their safety and maintaining communication is paramount.
• Administrative Burden: Manual processes for timesheets, expenses, holiday requests, and managing paperwork for a mobile workforce can be a significant drain on time and resources.
Empowering Your Fire Door Workforce with BORIS Software
BORIS offers a comprehensive workforce management solution that simplifies every step for fire door businesses, helping you record, report, and review the costs, performance, and productivity of your business and teams.
• Streamlined Operations & Efficiency: BORIS cuts through manual processes, potentially saving you over 10 hours a week and reducing costs by over 20%. It achieves this by automating scheduling, job tracking, and report generation, streamlining your operations.
• Intelligent Job Deployment & Resource Planning: The BORIS scheduler helps you optimise productivity by allowing you to allocate the required people and resources to complete the job and deploy works via the app. This ensures the right, qualified fire door specialist is dispatched to the correct location efficiently.
• Real-Time Data Capture & Reporting: Fire door operatives can record their work directly in the BORIS app, which is instantly uploaded to a host portal.
◦ You can create bespoke form templates for detailed fire door inspections, incorporating the fire door inspection checklist items.
◦ Features like photo capture, date & GPS logging, and signature capture provide comprehensive site documentation for compliance and proof of work. This is crucial for verifying fire-rated doors which are certified for up to four hours of fire protection and need to be compliant with UK law.
◦ Remote workers can instantly submit expense claims via the BORIS app, eliminating lost receipts and saving administration time for both operatives and finance teams.
• Enhanced Safety & Compliance:
◦ Centralised document storage means fire door professionals have all important information to hand. This includes crucial details on UK fire door regulations (BS 476, BS EN 1634, BS 8214), product specifications, and installation guidelines for components like intumescent seals and self-closing mechanisms.
◦ GPS tracking is used to monitor the safety of lone workers and identify their location should communication be lost.
◦ Managers can use BORIS mobile forms to deliver and record toolbox talks to reinforce safe working procedures if issues are noted on site.
◦ BORIS includes compliance tracking and reporting tools to ensure your business consistently meets industry regulations.
• Rapid Onboarding & Training Management: Expedite new employee induction by replacing paperwork with digital forms within the app, including signature capture. Training records can be uploaded to BORIS, enabling managers to identify employees with the necessary qualifications (e.g., for working with FD30, FD60, FD120 fire-rated doors) and allowing field teams to access their certificates on site if needed.
• Instant Communication: News bulletins and notifications, such as Health, Safety, and Environment (SHE) alerts, can be distributed via the BORIS app to instantly communicate important updates to your entire workforce.
BORIS is accessible on iOS, Android, and web browsers, making it seamless to use anytime, anywhere. It’s designed for every role in business operations, from Operations Managers and Compliance Specialists to Field Workers and HR Professionals.
A testament to its efficacy, Bradford Royal Infirmary NHS reported that the BORIS system saved them significant time on fire risk assessments, reducing a 5-day task to just 1 day. This demonstrates BORIS’s capacity to streamline crucial fire safety compliance processes within complex organisations.
Ready to Bolster Your Fire Door Operations?
Don’t let manual processes and administrative hurdles compromise your fire safety commitments. With BORIS Software, you can enhance team safety, boost productivity, ensure compliance, and streamline every aspect of your fire door workforce management.
Ready to see how BORIS can transform your fire door operations? You can book a free demo today to explore how our system can simplify every step, from tracking your teams to ensuring the flawless installation, maintenance, and inspection of vital fire doors.