CONDOS & APARTMENTS

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

Fire Codes state that the owner or the owner's agent is responsible for compliance with the code. A recent legal case confirmed that owners are also responsible for ensuring that companies and people they hire are qualified to perform the work they have been hired to do.

"Owners" must do their due diligence! Any company and/or person you hire to complete your fire safety plan or service your fire protection or life safety systems must be qualified. A list of questions to ask the company you are considering hiring to prepare your fire safety plan is provided at the end of the FAQs about Fire Safety Plans.

Qualified contractors are required to inspect, test, and maintain fire protection and life safety systems.

Fire Safety Plans in Residential Occupancies

Canadian Fire Codes require a fire safety plan in all residential occupancies with more than ten occupants. If you have any questions regarding fire safety plans, I've prepared a list of frequently asked questions for fire safety plans.

Condo boards and building owners are often tempted to prepare fire safety plans themselves or hire anyone to complete the fire safety plan. Before drafting a fire safety plan, review this link to FAQs about Fire Safety Plans. Also, consider if you have the in-house expertise and experience to prepare the fire safety plan. Consider how you plan on training the fire wardens (supervisory staff). Finally, you should also consult with your insurance company to determine if there are any issues in preparing a fire safety plan for the building.

Several jurisdictions have guidelines for preparing fire safety plans on their websites. There are many templates available online; however, most are incomplete. Here is a link to the more appropriate guidelines.

Implementing Your Fire Safety Plan

Consider how you will implement the fire safety plan. Having a written fire safety plan is the first step. Implementing the fire safety plan is the most important step. A downloadable fire safety plan implementation guide will be available soon. Check out my 9-step process for implementing your fire safety plan here.

High Rise Buildings

In general, a condominium or apartment building is considered a high rise building if it has a residential floor level more than 18 m above the street level. Typically this is a building of more than 6 floors above the street level. There are additional requirements for these high buildings.

The fire plan for high buildings must include:

Information on the training of supervisory staff in the use of the voice communication system,
The procedures for the use of elevators,
Information on the action to be taken by supervisory staff in initiating any smoke control or other fire emergency systems installed in a building in the event of fire until the fire department arrives,
Instructions to the supervisory staff and fire department for the operation of the smoke control and other fire emergency systems,
The procedures established to facilitate fire department access to the building and fire location within the building,
The test procedures described in Subsections 7.3.2. to 7.3.15., as appropriate to the fire safety measure being used, in addition to those required by Sections 7.1. and 7.2., unless otherwise specified in the fire safety plan.

Top 5 FIRE CODE Deficiencies in Condos

Fire Safety Plans & Fire Warden Training

Failure to maintain a current fire safety plan. Condos with an occupant load of more than 10 people are required to have a fire safety plan. The fire safety plan is required to meet the requirements of Section 2.8 of the Saskatchewan Fire Code. In addition to providing a fire safety plan, the fire safety plan must be implemented. This is commonly overlooked. Click here for a 9 step process that I developed to help property owners and managers implement their fire safety plan. A downloadable guide is coming soon. Contact me for more details on the guide and how to implement your fire safety plan.

Fire safety plans are required to be reviewed and updated annually and when there are changes to the building, systems, or people. If you have any questions about fire safety plans, check out the FAQs about Fire Safety Plans.

Fire safety plan box

Documentation

Failure to maintain current records of tests for the fire protection and life safety systems. Many owners contract their fire protection service providers to perform an annual inspection. However, there are various other inspection, testing, and maintenance requirements for various systems, i.e. sprinklers, fire alarms, monitoring, etc. Contact me to discuss what other inspections, tests, and maintenance are required.

Owners must also understand that they are responsible for maintaining the initial acceptance/verification documents for the lifetime of the building or system. In addition, the inspection, testing, and maintenance must be retained so that at least the current and immediately preceding records are available. No record can be destroyed within 2 years of being prepared.

Fire Safety Documents

Fire Doors & Fire Dampers

Failure to maintain closures. Closures are a defined term and include fire doors, fire shutters, fire dampers, wired glass, and glass blocks, as well as their frames, and all attached hardware.

If you replace or install new hardware on a fire door, the hardware must be approved for use on a rated fire door.

There are specific requirements for inspecting, testing, and maintaining closures. For more information on fire dampers, smoke dampers and combination smoke/fire dampers, here is an in-depth review of the Canadian requirements.

Fire Damper

Fire Stopping

Failure to maintain fire separations. Fire separations are used to separate areas of the building, called compartmentation. These individual compartments are intended to keep smoke and fire in the compartment or to prevent smoke and fire from entering the compartment.

Holes in fire separations for building services, such as pipes, ducts, cables and conduit are required to be provided with listed fire stopping systems. The fire stopping system is a listed product and must installed following the manufacturer's instructions. The fire stopping is intended to prevent the passage of smoke and fire from one fire compartment to another. Take a look at the Basic Guide to Fire Stopping Systems in Canada.

Missing Fire Stopping

Integrated Systems Testing

Failure to ensure fire protection and life safety systems have been tested following CAN/ULC-S1001, Standard for the Integrated Systems Testing of Fire Protection and Life Safety Systems. There may be many integrations between the fire protection and life safety systems within a building. The level of integration of these systems varies depending on the systems installed in the building. During the annual inspection and testing of the fire alarm system, the fire alarm technician does not confirm that the integrations function. They only test the fire alarm system functioning. The building owner or Condo Board is responsible for ensuring that the fire protection and life safety systems undergo integrated testing in conformance with ULC-S1001. Here is a primer on CAN/ULC-S1001, Connecting the Safety Dots.

Image courtesy of NFPA.

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