What is BM TRADA?

 

BM TRADA is the international gold standard, independent accreditation for best practice material testing, inspection, and certification for products used in the fire and building industry.

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Incorporated into the Element Group (the market leader for carrying out all of the best practice benchmark solutions above), BM TRADA’s main goal is to ensure all materials, products and processes test, inspected and certified for fire safety solutions partners such as Protest ES Ltd are always safe, good quality and compliant with all relevant standards and industry regulations.

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When are fire doors required for businesses?

 

Within BM TRADA, the innovative ‘Q-Mark’ system is used as a benchmark for fire door standards are in place to rigorously check all building and construction products even further. As such, if these products are recognised as meeting all BM TRADA requirements, they will by definition also be up to Q Mark standards – although separate formal certification applies for the Q Mark itself to be applied to an installation.

 

Critically, the BM TRADA scheme is known as a third party certification scheme. Other schemes tend to be what is known as voluntary certification schemes like FDIS and FIRAS which are generally unregulated and tend to provide more ambiguous guidance which does not require project-specific approval. These schemes mostly offer one-off courses that ‘pass’ an installer for installations, but do not then go on to check those installations for quality or compliance.

 

What BM TRADA certification means for Protest ES Ltd clients

 

Our Director, Gary Buchan, is BM TRADA accredited to certify fire doors on installation, maintenance and fire stopping. BM TRADA audit Gary and check his processes, and we have to provide a full certificate and have to collate a file on each installation to ensure compatibility of all materials and separate parts. We also have to ensure that the global assessment of each product covers the product for use in that particular installation. 

 

This means that all Protest ES Ltd fire door installations are in turn BM TRADA certified (and therefore up to Q Mark standards). This covers all Fire doors, additional materials used, and the processes when installed. 

 

At Protest, we can install a full range of fire doors to BM TRADA standards – we also offer a full fire risk assessment service to help you identify risks and create a full fire safety plan for your premises to ensure your door layout is effective and compliant.