First, what does not apply here
If you have read anything about fire-stopping records in the last few years, you have probably read about the “golden thread”. That is a United Kingdom concept. It comes from the Hackitt review and was given statutory force by the Building Safety Act 2022, and it has no force in the Republic of Ireland.
We build in the UK and we sell here too, so it would be easy for us to wave the same flag at an Irish contractor and hope nobody checked. Your job is not governed by it. What governs your job is BCAR — and BCAR asks for something quite specific.
The rule that decides whether the building can open
The Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2014 — S.I. No. 9 of 2014 — inserted Article 20F, which says:
“A Certificate of Compliance on Completion shall be submitted to a building control authority and relevant particulars thereof shall be included on the register … before works or a building to which Part II or Part IIIA applies may be opened, occupied or used.”
That is the whole commercial weight of this. Until the certificate is registered, the building does not open. Article 20F(3)(c) requires it to be accompanied by the Inspection Plan as implemented by the Assigned Certifier in accordance with the Code of Practice.
Where fire stopping sits inside it
The certificate carries an Annex — a table of the plans, calculations, specifications, ancillary certificates and particulars used for the purpose of construction and demonstrating compliance with the requirements of the Second Schedule to the Building Regulations.
Part B of that Second Schedule is Fire Safety. Compartmentation is how a building delivers it, and fire stopping is how compartmentation survives every service that punches through it. That is the thread from your day’s work to the certificate that lets the building open.
What an ancillary certificate actually is
The Code of Practice for Inspecting and Certifying Buildings and Works (2016) defines it as:
“a certificate other than a statutory certificate of compliance … given by a competent person to confirm compliance of elements of the building”
The Code puts two duties on the people who give them: provide the ancillary certificates when required by the Assigned Certifier and Design Certifier, and maintain records of inspection. It puts a duty on the Builder to maintain records, and it names the builder, sub-contractors, suppliers and manufacturers as the sources those certificates come from.
Being straight about the limits: whether your fire-stopping package is certified on a particular job is set by the Assigned Certifier’s inspection plan for that job, not by a blanket rule that catches every contract. Nobody can honestly tell you that you must issue one on every project. What is certain is that when your works are on that plan, the certificate you sign is only worth the record standing behind it.
A word of caution about the 2024 amendment
You may be told that the 2024 Part B amendment now covers fire stopping. It does not, and we would rather lose the argument than win it dishonestly.
S.I. No. 108 of 2024 inserted requirement B12, in force from 1 May 2025. It requires sufficient information on the active fire safety systems installed to be given to the building owner. Technical Guidance Document B (2024) sets out what that means: a fire detection and alarm system, an emergency lighting system, a sprinkler system, a smoke control system, and the like. Passive fire protection and fire stopping are not in its scope.
Several Irish industry articles say otherwise. If a supplier quotes B12 at you as a reason to buy fire-stopping software, check it yourself — and ask what else they have not checked.
And after the building is occupied
The Fire Services Act 1981, section 18(2), places a continuing duty on whoever controls the premises:
“It shall be the duty of every person having control over premises to which this section applies to take all reasonable measures to guard against the outbreak of fire on such premises, and to ensure as far as is reasonably practicable the safety of persons on the premises in the event of an outbreak of fire.”
That duty runs for the life of the building, long after your van has left. It is why a record that dies in a WhatsApp thread is worth so much less than one that can still be produced, and read, in eight years’ time — by someone who has never met you.
What a record has to be able to show
Strip away the paperwork language and a competent Assigned Certifier is asking a short list of questions about every penetration you sealed:
- Which penetration, and exactly where in the building
- What system went in, whose product, and to what tested detail
- Who installed it, and when
- What it looked like before, during and after — because once it is closed up, nobody can see it again
- Whether anyone has quietly changed the record since
The last one is the one most systems cannot answer.
If you work both sides of the Irish Sea
Plenty of Irish fire-stopping contractors work on British jobs, and plenty of British ones work in Ireland. The seal is the same seal. The photograph is the same photograph. The install is the same install. What changes is the regime asking for the evidence, and the name it gives the paperwork.
On a Dublin job your record feeds an ancillary certificate and the Assigned Certifier’s inspection plan. On a higher-risk building in England the same record feeds the golden thread under the Building Safety Act. Neither regime cares what your software is called — both care whether you can produce, years later, an accurate account of what went in, who put it there, and proof that nobody has quietly rewritten it since.
So you should not be keeping two systems, or entering the same job twice because it crossed a border. What travels is the record: the reference, the position on the drawing, the product and tested detail, the installer, the date, the photographs, and the tamper-evident chain that binds them. What differs is only the handover it feeds. Assaya keeps one record and lets you produce either — and the same is true for a European job, where the local duty differs again but the evidence a competent inspector wants does not.
Where Assaya comes in
Assaya is built by a fire-stopping contractor for the people doing the work. Your crew photographs each seal on site as it goes in — on a phone, with no signal needed, because plant rooms and basements rarely have any. Each record carries its reference, its position on the drawing, and its time.
Every record is then written into a hash-chained register: each entry seals the one before it, so if anything is altered afterwards the chain breaks and says so. When the Assigned Certifier or the client asks, you hand over a read-only register and an evidence pack — and they can check it without taking your word for anything.
That is the whole idea. Not a claim that we make you compliant — we cannot, and any supplier who says they can is selling you something that does not exist. Compliance is your competence and your workmanship. What we do is make it provable.
Buying from Ireland
We supply Irish businesses on a business-to-business basis. Enter your VAT number at checkout and the supply falls outside UK VAT under the reverse charge, so you account for VAT in Ireland in the normal way. Prices are shown in pounds sterling. Your records are held on UK infrastructure — set out in full on our trust page — and you can export everything you hold at any time, at no charge.
Rockfirepro Ltd is a passive fire protection contractor registered in England & Wales (company 16969024). We are a contractor first, which is why the app works the way a site works.
Card or Direct Debit, no call and no demo. A real person is on the other end if you want one.