Frequently Asked Questions

Our name is somewhat due to our history and ‘journey’. The company, which was formed in 1994, was originally Fire Delay Contractors. It was re-named Golden Thread Fire Delay in November 2022 following the acquisition of Golden Thread Fire Ltd and subsequent transition into an Employee Owned Trust.  Formed in 2018, Golden Thread Fire was created to deliver practical and cost-effective but robust fire compliance solutions for clients, with a focus on critical life safety buildings.

The introduction of the term ‘a golden thread of information’ for buildings was a concept and recommendation by Dame Judith Hackitt in her Grenfell Tower Fire investigative report, ‘Building a Safer Future’, published in 2018, to support duty-holders in designing, constructing, managing and maintaining their higher-risk buildings holistically in a ‘suitable and sufficient’ state of compliance.

In terms of fire doors and other structural fire separation elements, it can be defined as an accurate, linked record of their specification, fire test data, certification and any other information required to ensure traceability; providing evidence that they have been installed to comply with Regulation 7 of the Building Regulations and can be maintained to comply with Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations and Articles 17 and 38 of the Fire Safety Order.

It is one of the key requirements of the Building Safety Act 2022, to ensure that duty holders identify, understand, manage, and mitigate building safety risks throughout a higher-risk building’s life-cycle and those responsible for building safety must now retain a ‘golden thread of information.’

The purpose of the golden thread is to have the right information in order to understand the building and the steps needed to keep both the building and the people living in it safe.

It is intended to hold the information that those responsible for the building require, to:

• show that the completed building and any later building work meets the requirements of applicable building regulations
• identify, understand, manage, and mitigate building safety risks, to prevent or reduce the severity of the consequences of fire spread or structural collapse throughout a building’s life-cycle

Having a golden thread means that those people responsible, will have easily accessible, reliable, up to date and accurate information. Without this information, it is very difficult to manage buildings safely, because the golden thread content is the information a duty holder needs to enable them to both fulfil and demonstrate that they are carrying out their legal duties.

It involves keeping a digital record of crucial building information – starting from the design phase and continuing throughout the building’s life-cycle. The government has decided that the golden thread of a building’s information must be stored digitally, but this can be on multiple systems.

The golden thread comprises two parts: building work, and maintenance. This ensures that any modifications or enhancements to the building are accurately documented and enables building owners to proactively identify potential risks or hazards and take corrective action.

The important bit is that those who are responsible for the building know where up-to-date information is and can give access to the people who need it. This includes anyone responsible for maintaining or working on the building and other relevant groups, such as residents and emergency responders.

We ensure that documentation to comply with Regulation 38 is robust and complete at handover as the culmination of an holistic QA process. This potentially includes being involved at the design stage to ensure that all installations will be underwritten by a fire-tested detail. As a guide, irrespective of what structural elements have been installed, the golden thread of information that we provide typically includes:

• A detailed description of the agreed and completed scope of works.
• As-built drawings, updated as necessary to accurately reflect what has been inspected and signed off at handover.
• Product data sheets, including COSHH data and test certificates.
• Installation reports.
• Certification of works with a list of any caveats or other limitations.
• Any agreed Warranties or Guarantees applicable to the work.

All installations as standard are detailed on an electronic logging system which highlights all the information required to conform with our third-party accreditation requirements. Each installation is provided with a unique reference or ‘pin’ number marked up on the fire strategy drawing. This reference is fed back into the schedule to provide complete traceability from design, installation to maintenance.

Which in turn completes the Golden Thread!

There are currently 4 ‘signed off’ Reference Documents available both in electronic and hard copy format. These are:

• RD1-2 Fire Door Inspections in Healthcare Buildings
• RD2-1 Fire Damper, Firestopping and Cavity Barrier Inspections in Healthcare Buildings
• RD3-1 Fire Door Inspections in Residential Buildings
• RD7-1 Fire Door Inspections in University & College Buildings

There are a number of others currently in the pipeline and this page will be updated on a regular basis accordingly.

(as told by Alan Oliver the Reference Documents Editor and director of GTFD)

The Grenfell Tower fire was in June 2017, and the following year Dame Judith Hackitt published her report ‘Building a Safer Future’ giving her views on why it had occurred and what needed to change to ensure that such a tragedy wouldn’t happen again. I was particularly impressed, and inspired by this comment:

“At the heart of this required change is a shift of ownership – those who should be the experts in best practice should not be waiting to be told what to do.”

It was in this context that I asked Principal Fire Engineer at NHS Improvement, Mike Ralph, a few months later:

“why is it that the NHS, which is arguably the biggest owner of fire doors in Europe, doesn’t have systems for inspecting them?”

His answer was:

“why don’t you join the National Association of Healthcare Fire Officers (NAHFO) and set up a working group for writing a healthcare fire door inspection paper?”

So that’s what I did – I joined NAHFO in January 2019, quickly formed a working group of willing volunteers and embarked on writing the paper. Issue 1 was 5,298 words and had 14 pages, but by the time of the 10th and final issue in August 2020 it had grown to 34 pages and contained 13,602 words, mainly due to a robust peer review process and some marvellous contributions from the London Fire Brigade, BRE, Aviva, the ASFP, NFCC and others.

During the review process, quite a few people had suggested that due to the number of words it was a bit ‘dry’ for a wider audience to read and that some images would make it more palatable and user friendly, so the next stage was to turn the Paper into a Reference Document. A final version was signed off in January 2021 and the rest is history!

According to a random ‘Google’ definition, an inspection indicates careful examination or scrutiny, whereas a check means to inspect, examine, or look at appraisingly or appreciatively …. which indicates that the words can be somewhat interchangeable and whatever difference in meaning may be quite subtle!

But in general terms, a ‘check’ tends to be something that can be done quite quickly and doesn’t need a great deal of expertise, for example you’d ‘check’ if you’d left the light on in the bathroom – and it wouldn’t need much expertise to do so; you wouldn’t use the word ‘inspect’ to do so, would you?

In terms of fire doors, the difference between an inspection and a check is the scope of the investigation. Inspections are more thorough and conducted by specialists, who may require a high level of proven competence, whereas one or a number of checks, to comply with the requirements of, say, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations, are relatively quick, and can be carried out by people who do not have to be fire door experts.