Why compartmentation surveys go stale
The usual pattern is a surveyor walks a building, fills in a form, and issues a report as a PDF or a spreadsheet with a few hundred rows and a folder of photographs. Then the remedial work starts, and the report immediately begins to drift away from the building.
- Nobody can find the breach again. "Level 3 riser, above ceiling near lift lobby" made sense to the person who wrote it, standing there, in June.
- The photographs come adrift from the rows. A folder of four hundred images with camera filenames is not evidence, it is a puzzle.
- The status is out of date the moment work starts. The survey says defect. The wall has been sealed. The report still says defect, forever, because nobody reissues a PDF.
- The remedial has no before and after. Once the seal is in and the ceiling is back, the only proof it ever happened is a photograph nobody took.
None of that is the surveyor's fault. It is what happens when the survey output is a document rather than a live register.
The loop a survey should run in
In Assaya a compartmentation survey is not a separate product that hands off to something else. The survey creates the records, and the same records carry on through the remedial work to sign-off.
- Survey. Each breach is dropped as a pin on the current drawing revision, with the element and its fire rating, what is penetrating it, the condition found and photographs. It is recorded as a defect.
- Price and instruct. The register is the schedule of work. You are not retyping a spreadsheet into a quote.
- Remedy. The operative opens the same record on site, sees what the surveyor saw, and records the seal: the product, the tested detail it belongs to, dimensions, before, during and after photographs, and their own name.
- Sign off. The record moves from defect to complete, with the whole history kept - who surveyed it, who sealed it, what changed and when.
The output at the end is an evidence pack per block or per area, rendered from the register rather than assembled by hand in the last week of the job.
What the record has to carry to be worth anything
Compartmentation evidence gets read by people who were not there: a fire engineer, a building control body, a client's consultant, an insurer. The test is whether a stranger can satisfy themselves without ringing you.
- A location a stranger can find - a pin on the drawing, not a sentence.
- The element and the rating it has to achieve - which wall or floor, and to what standard.
- The services actually passing through it, including the ones that make a standard detail inapplicable.
- The tested detail the seal was installed to, referenced, not described.
- Before, during and after photographs, because after is the only one the building will ever show you again.
- Who installed it and when, captured at the work rather than typed up later.
- A history that cannot be quietly rewritten. Every change in Assaya is kept and hash-chained, so a reviewer can see what was amended and when.
Surveying and installing are the same register
Plenty of firms do both, and most tools make you choose. Assaya treats a survey and an installation as the same kind of record at different stages, which is why the loop above works. Every trade in the app has a survey or inspection work type alongside its installation ones.
It also means a survey that finds fire doors, dampers and cavity barriers as well as penetration seals does not need three systems. Twelve fire protection trades run against the same drawings, and each is a switch in your console - on or off per company, so a survey-only firm sees a survey-shaped app.
Where the duty comes from
Compartmentation is not a standard you comply with directly. The requirement is B3 of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010 - internal fire spread, including the subdivision of buildings into compartments. Approved Document B is the statutory guidance on how to satisfy it, not the law itself, which is a distinction worth keeping straight in front of a fire engineer.
The record-keeping duty at the end of construction is regulation 38 of the same regulations: fire safety information has to be handed to the responsible person at completion. For higher-risk buildings there is a continuing obligation to keep that information current under the Building Safety Act 2022 and the associated information regulations - the golden thread. Our golden thread guide sets out what that means for a fire protection contractor in practice.
For existing occupied buildings, the duty to assess and manage fire risk sits with the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which is usually what triggers a compartmentation survey in the first place.
What it costs
The whole price list is published. No demo call to find out the number, and no per-pin, per-drawing or per-record charge - which matters on surveys more than anywhere else, because a survey is thousands of records by definition and a per-record price punishes thoroughness. Client observers are free, so the consultant reviewing your work does not cost you a seat.
See fire-stopping records captured on site, pinned to the drawing and locked to a tamper-evident history - with the whole price list published and no demo to sit through first.
What is a fire compartmentation survey?
An inspection of the walls and floors that divide a building into fire compartments, to find where that separation has been breached - unsealed service penetrations, missing or damaged cavity barriers, gaps above ceilings and in risers, poor or absent fire stopping. It produces a schedule of defects with locations, ratings and photographs, which then drives remedial work.
What should a compartmentation survey report contain?
Enough for somebody who was not there to act on it: each breach in a location that can be found again, ideally a pin on a drawing; the element and the fire rating it has to achieve; the services passing through; the condition found; photographs tied to that specific record; and a status that stays current as remedial work happens rather than freezing on the day the PDF was issued.
Can the same system handle the survey and the remedial work?
In Assaya, yes, and that is the point. The survey creates the records as defects; the operative doing the remedial opens the same record, sees what the surveyor saw, and records the seal against it with its tested detail and before, during and after photographs. Nothing is retyped and nothing is handed off.
Does compartmentation survey software need to work offline?
Yes. Surveys happen in risers, plant rooms, ceiling voids and stair cores, which is exactly where phones lose signal. If the whole record including photographs cannot capture on the device and sync later, surveyors fall back to paper and a camera roll. Test any tool in airplane mode before buying it.
Which regulations does compartmentation sit under?
The requirement is B3 of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010, with Approved Document B as the statutory guidance on meeting it. Fire safety information is handed over under regulation 38, and higher-risk buildings carry a continuing golden thread duty under the Building Safety Act 2022. In occupied buildings the responsible person's duties come from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
What does compartmentation survey software cost?
Assaya publishes its full price list at assaya.co.uk/pricing.html with no demo call first, and charges no per-pin, per-drawing or per-record fees. Client observers are free and solo mode is free, with records held on your own device.
This page is general information about record-keeping for compartmentation surveys and remedial work, not legal or fire engineering advice. Confirm the requirements for a specific building with a competent person.