Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Running a warehouse or manufacturing facility isn’t easy.
Every day, you’re expected to keep product moving in, around, and out the door. Faster. Safer. With fewer problems and zero incidents.
That’s a lot to carry. It can feel like an impossible ask, but we’re here to help make it possible.
On this show, we dig into the real challenges happening on the floor and at the loading dock. Each episode, you’ll hear from industry experts, operators, and problem-solvers who share practical ways to improve quality, boost productivity, and keep facilities running smoothly.
Our goal is simple. Share new ways to tackle challenges that never seem to end so your people and your product get in, around, and out the door safely. You ready to clock in?
Scott Smith (00:00):
The two huge mistakes I made, I left my door open. Smoke is pouring all throughout the upstairs and even working its way down to you at that point. And then I did not contact 911 immediately. I actually called our grandfather who lived the next street over. So the fire could have been a lot less of a hit to the house. I mean, the whole house wasn't destroyed, but the upstairs was, I mean, totaled. So I learned a lot about fire prevention from that.
Mike Smith (00:33):
Clocking in, the podcast for people who keep products moving in and out of industrial facilities every day. I'm your host, Mike Smith, director of product at Robert Dietrick Company. All right, well welcome to the Clocking In Podcast brought to you by the Robert Dietrick Company. I'm your host, Mike Smith. I'd like to welcome our guest today, Scott Smith. It's good to be with you.
Scott Smith (00:59):
It's good to be here, Mike.
Mike Smith (01:00):
Scott, you've been with RDC for over 10 years. You've been a service technician just like me. You've served as a service manager, and now you serve on our sales team. So you've got a lot of tenure, a lot of experience, a lot to contribute on the topic today, which is a topic that honestly doesn't get enough attention sometimes. You have doors in your facility that exist strictly for the purpose of people going in and out of them. They go up and down all day. Their function is to allow people through. But there's another kind of door in your facility that only exists for one reason. And ultimately it's to save lives. It's to protect lives and property, and that's fire doors. Hopefully you'll never actually need a fire door, but the truth is you do have to have them and when you need them, failure isn't an option.
(01:56):
So that's what we're going to be talking about today. I do want to start out by having a little discussion that may bring a little more cred for both of us to this subject, but I want to address something that's really standing out probably to me and you, but maybe not to our listeners and we can't bury the lead. We have to let people know we are brothers. We are brothers.
Scott Smith (02:20):
Identical twins, I may say.
Mike Smith (02:23):
Yes. We don't mean that figuratively. We're not brothers in arms. We're not brothers from another mother.
Scott Smith (02:29):
Same mother.
Mike Smith (02:30):
We are literally brothers.
Scott Smith (02:32):
Yeah.
Mike Smith (02:32):
Did you ever think growing up goofing around when you were mean to me?
Scott Smith (02:36):
Yeah. Yeah, it was me that was mean to you. Yes.
Mike Smith (02:38):
That we'd be doing a podcast together someday?
Scott Smith (02:42):
I would've been surprised to have heard the word podcast back then,
Mike Smith (02:46):
Not to date ourselves, but that was quite a while ago.
Scott Smith (02:48):
Remember the world pre-internet.
Mike Smith (02:50):
Not only are we brothers, but we have literally been through the fire together. How old were we when the fire happened?
Scott Smith (03:00):
I want to say I was about 11 or 12, so you would've been 14, 15.
Mike Smith (03:05):
Okay. So that probably makes sense because that means I would've been a little closer or been a teenager. And if you know teenagers, they have the ability to sleep - Through
Scott Smith (03:14):
Anything.
Mike Smith (03:15):
Through anything.
Scott Smith (03:16):
I have a teenager.
Mike Smith (03:17):
I still have that superpower. I can pretty much sleep as long as I want through anything I want. It's quite amazing. I remember you and I grew up, how shall we say, lacking some of the things that a lot of people have.
(03:31):
And my bedroom was in this weird corner room of our house. It was almost like a closet, and you had to pass through my room to go upstairs. And your room was upstairs. Our mom and our stepdad's room was upstairs. And anyway, long story short, I'm laying there asleep. I hear some commotion, but again, I'm in that phase where you're like, "I might sleep through this, I might not." And all of a sudden there's so much noise in commotion. I kind of open my eyes and I roll over and I look at the staircase and here's the scene. I see you. I can't remember what you were wearing. Swimming goggles. You had your swimming goggles on. You had a tea pitcher. And I thought to myself right away, I was like, "He must be really thirsty for tea in the middle of the night because he's carrying the whole tea picture." But then I noticed there was water in it.
(04:20):
And then to make it a little funnier, you were being followed by our dalmatian, Mikaja.
Scott Smith (04:24):
Mikaja.
Mike Smith (04:25):
And you're running up the stairs and I thought either I had something weird to eat before I went to bed or something weird's going on. I'm having a dream, whatever. Well, then when it happened two or three more times, I was like, "Oh, something's happening." And then I smelled it. I smelled smoke. I didn't feel any heat or anything, but then I heard our mom and our stepdad wake up. They were coming down the stairs covered in soot. Black smoke began to roll and I quickly realized, there's a fire.
Scott Smith (04:54):
You covered the whole thing. The big thing I did was panic immediately. I mean, I woke up, whole room's engulfed. So if I could say the two huge mistakes I made, I left my door open. Smoke is pouring all throughout the upstairs and even working its way down to you at that point. And then I did not contact 911 immediately. I actually called our grandfather who lived the next street over. So the fire could have been a lot less of a hit to the house. I mean, the whole house wasn't destroyed, but the upstairs was, I mean, totaled. So I learned a lot about fire prevention from that. You remember that very accurately.
Mike Smith (05:35):
Yeah. So here we are now, who knew that we would both be sitting here on a podcast talking about industrial fire doors? And we probably learned more than we realized back then. Maybe it influenced why we are where we are today. I don't know.
Scott Smith (05:49):
I think it did.
Mike Smith (05:51):
So let's start with this. Let's get into a definition. Tell us what is the ultimate goal of a fire door?
Scott Smith (05:59):
So a fire door is just like a lot of other doors. You'll see rolling steel, shutters. You could have sliding doors. There's a lot of different types, but they're configured with the ability to self-close when given some kind of input. So that could be a fusible link, a device telling it to close, but it's a door that's going to close itself in the event of a fire.
Mike Smith (06:24):
And the goal is to stop?
Scott Smith (06:25):
Spread of smoke and fire throughout a facility. Give emergency services time to show up and combat.
Mike Smith (06:31):
Yes. And that's really the only point of it. It's not meant to really prevent the fire. When one happens, it's going to hopefully stop. And sometimes people don't realize smoke is what really does the damage. Your sprinkler system, hopefully, if you have one, is going to kick in. It's probably going to put out the fire. First, responders are going to get there and maybe put out the fire. It's the smoke that damages your product. If you have medicine, whatever your process is. A lot of times it's almost more important to stop the smoke than the fire because the fire's going to get put out. It's the smoke that might do the damage. So that's a great working definition and ultimately a goal of what a fire door does. You already mentioned some of the types of common fire doors, but go through those again. What are the most common types of fire doors that we would see in facilities?
Scott Smith (07:21):
Number one would be a rolling steel door. That's going to be on your larger openings. Could be for usually forklift traffic. There are smaller ones that can go over pedestrian doors.
Mike Smith (07:33):
Rolling steel.
Scott Smith (07:34):
You're going to have sliding doors. Those are a common configuration. You could have doors that are just smoke screen only. They're not going to stop a fire, just limit the smoke passage. There's a lot of different types out there that I probably haven't even seen.
Mike Smith (07:49):
Yeah. I mean, even on stages, there's huge smoke curtains that come down. Pretty impressive. So when do you need a fire door? When would you need one?
Scott Smith (08:00):
I think a lot of times that's in new construction. They're going to have that specced out all the way back at the engineer and architecture level.
Mike Smith (08:08):
Basically smart people
Scott Smith (08:10):
Decide where
Mike Smith (08:11):
To put them.
Scott Smith (08:12):
Design these things. A lot of times insurance policies, if that's determined that it needs to be part of your insurance safety in your facility. And then I think a lot of people have them out there also just because it's great protection for the people in your facility. I mean, just to care about your workers is enough of a reason to have them.
Mike Smith (08:35):
Anywhere there's a firewall, anywhere a really smart person decided, "Hey, here's a firewall, you're going to have doors on those openings."
Scott Smith (08:42):
A lot of places might have chemical rooms. Some companies are going to have a product that is naturally flammable or explosive. I mean, you probably would hope those would be all throughout the facility, but almost every industrial facility is going to have somewhere that has a heavy chemical storage area. There's even self-contained boxes that chemicals are stored in that are fire door entrances to them. There's a lot of different places you'll see these.
Mike Smith (09:11):
Another interesting place you see fire doors is on an MFL wall. And this is probably something that a lot of people don't know about. The industry has a lot of acronyms where you're like, "Man, how do I keep track of all these?" But an MFL wall, MFL. And sometimes in an industrial facility, the value of product or whatever on either side of the opening of that wall is so high, it could be billions of dollars. And no one insurance carrier can insure it all. So sometimes a facility will have an MFL wall in their facility and an insurance entity or conglomerate will say, "Hey, we can underwrite the value of one side of this opening, but we need to put an MFL wall here because we have got to stop the spread of this fire. We can't insure both sides of the opening." And sometimes you'll see some really special stuff happening on MFL walls.
(10:06):
That's another area you see them. But ultimately, your engineering team, fire marshals, really smart people, like we keep saying, will decide where they go. I think by now we're starting to establish the fact that this whole subject is pretty technical and there's a lot of code compliance and things that we have to follow. Talk to me about what governing bodies or what entities or what resources do we look to to tell us how to install a fire door, how to drop test a fire door, and how to do all things fire doors? What do we follow?
Scott Smith (10:39):
So every manufacturer's going to have their own standards. They're going to generally be pretty uniform, but there's variances from one to the next. So they've got their rules for this is how our door mounts, this is how our door operates. Then you're going to go to NFPA 80, which is federal code. It's an agency that applies to the industry that they oftentimes will refer you back to the manufacturer to follow their standard. But they're kind of the big governing body if I could say that that's the number one place we'd start with. And then there's even local code like here in Indiana, you've got the IBC, which generally defaults back to NFPA a lot too. So NFPA and manufacturers are probably the biggest place that we're going to be going to.
Mike Smith (11:33):
Those are our Bible.
(11:35):
And hopefully we take it very seriously. We are strict adherers to the code, both the manufacturer's manual and NFPA 80. We take those very seriously. Hopefully everyone in this space follows those guidelines very seriously. Several other things I want to ask you about, but the next thing is when you walk up to a fire door and you look at the bottom bar, you're going to see a series of tags. I know those tags are important. You know those tags are important, but talk to our listeners about what do those tags mean? There's multiple tags on the bottom bar. Tell us a little bit about those.
Scott Smith (12:11):
So you're going to have manufacturer identification. That's either going to be a serial number, a door number, or you may have model information, but at a minimum, some kind of unique identifier for that door with the manufacturer. Then you're going to have a rating from a listing company. So that's either going to be UL for Underwriters Laboratories. That's going to be FM for Factory Mutual. You could have Warnock Hersey, WHI number. That's going to identify it as a fire door. And that's a kind of different animal than just identifying it as a door with the manufacturer.
Mike Smith (12:46):
And then those have to be there. Talk to me a little more in depth about if I've got a door that has an FM tag on it. Those are stricter standards, right?
Scott Smith (12:57):
FM typically would have some extras on it, like a baffle under the hood that might help with smoke rollover when the door's closed. They can't be welded to the jam. Just a few extra rules, but they're all going to have that minimum baseline that an FP80 would set forth that the manufacturers are using to kind of configure doors.
Mike Smith (13:19):
This is so interesting to me. I would love to witness one of these tests someday, but talk to me about how they achieve those labels. What has to happen in a lab far, far away?
Scott Smith (13:29):
They actively simulate what these doors are rated to stop. I almost envision it like a crash test dummy in an auto manufacturer where they're going to put that poor thing through every worst case scenario they possibly can and it's going to get stressed. It's going to get tested. It's going to get broke. I think they test them until they break is the whole point because every door has an allotted time that it can last and it's supposed to match the firewall in the facility or exceed it. So in order to guarantee that it can do that, you've got to put it through worst case scenarios. So they're subjecting them to -
Mike Smith (14:13):
Actual
Scott Smith (14:14):
Fire. As intense a fire as they possibly can.
Mike Smith (14:16):
I want our listeners to know that because you see this fire door on your wall, you have a company like us come in or another fire door, service provider come in and test the door, note deficiencies. You wondered yourself, "Man, why are they being so technical?" Well, just to get that little tag put on the door saying, "I'm a fire door. I'm going to work." They had to go through testing. And during this testing, they get it glowing red, glowing white even. It's to the point of melting and possibly even failure. And they test for flame passage in this lab. Can flame get around or through it? They test for smoke passage, operational integrity. Is it going to drop when fire and heat come to it in a fuse link melts? They even hit it with a cold hose stream. Why do they do that?
(15:03):
Well, when lifesaving personnel come into a building and there's a fire and they have to get through a fire door that's closed, maybe there's people on the other side of it. Maybe there's something on the other side they got to get to, or maybe they're trapped and they got to get out. They will hit that thing with a fire hose sometimes. And when cold water hits something glowing white, what happens?
Scott Smith (15:23):
It's massive reaction, chemical reaction. It's like Fantastic Four. Never go supernova.
Mike Smith (15:29):
Or a T1000. Terminator two, man. At the end, he gets all blasted up and he's hanging over the ladle for the steel and he can't recover. Just split wide open. Dude, when cold water hits something hot, it contracts. And you've got to make sure that that thing stays on the wall or the people that are in front of it, if it were to come off the wall, falls right on them and kills them. People don't realize that. These codes have been written because these accidents have happened. People going in to save people's lives have lost their lives because fire doors were not installed correctly, and that's why we have the codes we do. You already mentioned this, but they get put through that testing to make sure that they stay on the wall as long as the wall survives as well. Whatever the wall is rated for, the door needs to survive the same amount of time.
(16:20):
And I just want to echo that and make sure people really understand that. There's actually a whole section of code written, I think NFPA 252, that actually tells a lab like UL, like FM, how to conduct one of these tests. It's very serious. It's very, very important. Talk to me about certifications. Obviously, based on what we've talked about up to this point, you don't want just anybody going out and working on your fire doors. When it comes time to install a new one, when it comes time to drop test one, you don't want Larry who's been in your maintenance department for one year going out to work on a fire door. You want someone who knows what they're doing. And there's actually some mandates about who can and can't work on fire doors. So let's talk about install first because this is so interesting. Do you need to be a certified, trained installer if you're installing a brand new fire door?
(17:17):
And if, yes or no? And if no, why not?
Scott Smith (17:21):
You don't need to be, which I still don't fully understand.
Mike Smith (17:25):
I know.
Scott Smith (17:26):
Technically, you only need to be trained and certified to test the door. But the way that we feel about it is if you are going to test a door and be checking it for all these code -
Mike Smith (17:42):
Deficiencies.
Scott Smith (17:43):
Deficiencies and adherence to the code, then you would hope you would want somebody that understood all those to be installing it so that it's ready to go and never going to be an issue for you.
Mike Smith (17:54):
Now, why does an NFPA 80 say that you don't have to be certified to install? What's with the door technically that should guide someone through installing it? It's the manual, right? That's the technicality. And then they say when you go to drop test it a year later, and hopefully every single year after that, you might not have the manual, which is why you need someone certified and trained. So there actually is a section of NFPA 80. It happened in the 2022 edition where it became a mandate for someone to be certified and trained to drop test doors annually. That's very, very important. As we just stated a minute ago, it wasn't a mandate up until that point, but the industry started to experience enough issues. Maybe people got hurt, killed, whatever with fire door installations and drop testing that they made it a mandate. So moving forward after 2022, please remember if you have someone in there working on your fire doors, drop testing, we would even recommend installing.
(18:56):
They need to be trained and certified. Talk to me about some of the common problems that happen or things that you see when you don't have someone trained and certified installing and drop testing your doors.
Scott Smith (19:06):
Probably one of the biggest issues is you will find out once you do have somebody that understands the code and knows what they're looking for, they're going to have a laundry list of problems. And you're going to be very surprised because you thought everything was fine. If you've been having it tested, you're going to have a lot of reports that probably show, yeah, everything's great. Nothing's wrong. And then RDC comes in and says, "Man, you failed six different places and you're going to be a little shocked by that." That's kind of a scenario that happens very often for us. You may not know you have a problem. That's what's going to happen when you don't know who's really doing or what they're testing or how they're testing.
Mike Smith (19:50):
So you might have mounting issues. Talk to me about quickly some of the mounting issues you might see
Scott Smith (19:56):
From
Mike Smith (19:56):
Someone inexperienced.
Scott Smith (19:58):
Most doors have rolling steel doors are going to have slots. So where that hardware is in the slot, is it the correct hardware? Is it using the washers that the manufacturer designates got something in every single hole? That's a pretty common thing to look up in there where you can't really see from the ground and oh, it's missing some of the anchors it's supposed to have. Are all the detectors in the correct location, whether they're fusible links or smoke heads? There's a lot of rules that we're going to check that might not be getting checked by other entities.
Mike Smith (20:34):
And again, I just want to reiterate, why is this so important? Like we said, lifesaving personnel have to come in in a fire and put their lives in danger to get people out. People that are trapped in buildings waiting on that lifesaving personnel to come get them are relying on the doors to work. They may be hiding behind one. They may be trapped in a room where they're safe for the moment. You have got to make sure that your fire doors are mounted according to the code, according to how the manufacturer's manual says, NFPA 80 says. And the problem that exists all over the nation, maybe even all over the world is like fire doors last a long time. 20, 30 years, maybe they could. Sometimes not, but they do have a long life cycle sometimes if installed properly and maintained and kept up with.
(21:22):
And something we see here, especially in the Midwest is for years, a lot of companies were out there just slinging fire doors up just like it was a rolling steel door, not really realizing all the code and compliance that has to go into the install. And then you have companies like us who really follow that strictly come in and like you said, point out the deficiencies and it's not really our opinion here. This is how it should have been installed from the get-go. And you don't want to find out the hard way when you have a fire and maybe you had loss of property or loss of life and insurance now steps in and says, "All right, let me see what's wrong." I don't want to incriminate anyone, but their goal is to step in and see if there's any deficiencies that you had so they know whether they truly have to pay out a claim or not.
(22:10):
And if they come in and they're, "Man, this door is not mounted correctly. None of these doors are installed right. No one's even been drop testing them. Show me your records. Show me that you've been maintaining them." There's a good chance they may negate a claim and you're stuck with the bill.That's the importance of all this.
Scott Smith (22:27):
It's almost like a warranty process with your insurance company. You have specific pieces of equipment in that facility that you have to maintain for that insurance policy to be in full effect. So it's a very serious deal. And I think a lot of people, like you said, in the industry, just didn't quite understand how many rules there were with fire doors. And even RDC has been learning over the years and improving and we've made mistakes and we go back and make them right. We've been just like everyone else. And as the code has changed, we've been adapting and improving with it.
Mike Smith (23:07):
Talk to me about activation of a door in the event of a fire. There's an industry minimum, like what we would call manual activation, and there's a best option, which is what we would call automatic activation. Which do I want? What are the pros and cons of each? Can you talk me through manual versus automatic closure of a fire door?
Scott Smith (23:29):
So manual is going to be a cable linkage with fusible links in there, and those fusible links are going to melt at a specific temperature. It's usually 165 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's going to require the room to get to a certain ambient temperature. And that's why there's code for where they need to be mounted within so many inches of the ceiling, six to 12 inches of the ceiling, right at the door opening. Anywhere that heat is going to be at its highest point sooner than other areas. So they're going to work, but you're going to have probably some smoke passage on the way to getting to that activation heat. So you can also have either a release box or an operator on the door that is going to be triggered by smoke heads, or you could have it be tied into your fire system, your fire panel, where it's going to automatically ping those doors to close as soon as it's detected anywhere.
(24:25):
That is going to prevent probably hopefully a lot of smoke from different areas. You're going to get those door closed and those openings sealed to where maybe smoke doesn't even reach most of the building or is contained to just the problem area.
Mike Smith (24:41):
Yeah. So manual activation, good, acceptable. It's going to work. Feel good about it, but if you really want doors to drop quicker and as fast as possible, which we would encourage, maybe have a release box or an operator that can accept local heat detectors and smoke detectors so that the door drops really fast in the event of a fire. So that's manual versus automatic closure. You can have both. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's something good to talk about. Let's move on to what is perhaps the most important part of the life cycle of a fire door, which is once it's been installed for a year, you now have to drop test it for the first time. And this is something you have to do every year, maybe more than once a year. So what do you check for and do on a drop test? You could ultimately divide it into two categories and there's a lot we could cover here, but talk to me about what a drop test looks like.
Scott Smith (25:40):
So typically I'm going to walk up to a door. I'm going to visually inspect everything. I'm going to see, does it follow all these codes? Is it mounted right? Is all the hardware there? Is everything look the way it's supposed to look? Then I'm going to initiate an actual drop test and depending on whether it's manual or automatic closing, that's going to look a little different. Manual, I should be testing from the furthest length back, releasing the door there, observing that it falls at a certain rate, closes completely. Did the governor slow it down like it was supposed to?
Mike Smith (26:17):
Talk to me about that. Why is that important? We've all seen Indiana Jones, right? You got the scene where Indiana's having to slide under a door and -
Scott Smith (26:25):
Reach back through and put
Mike Smith (26:27):
That hat. Why do you want a door to close slowly or at a certain speed?
Scott Smith (26:30):
If you have people in a panic fleeing the building and going through these, you want there to be at least a chance for them to pass through and not get injured. You
Mike Smith (26:44):
Don't want it to be like a guillotine coming
Scott Smith (26:46):
Down. I've seen doors free fall multiple times. They can even release too quickly and bind up on themselves and not drop. They could hit the ground, bounce back, slat separation. Now that door's no longer containing smoke and fire like it was designed to. It needs to fall at that speed because that's how it fell when it was tested. That's what guarantees it stays closed and has that hour rating. So
Mike Smith (27:12):
You do the visual inspection, you drop test it, you're checking for speed, you're checking that everything. I mean, a fire door's a giant mousetrap, right? Everything's got to work and drop out. Then you drop test it again a second time. Why do you do that? Why does code dictate that you do that?
Scott Smith (27:27):
It specifically states in the code that that's to ensure you're resetting it correctly.
Mike Smith (27:32):
You test yourself.
Scott Smith (27:33):
Yeah, you're making sure you didn't make a mistake when resetting that door. That'd be one of the worst things I can think of to test the door. Hey, everything works great, and then you didn't reset it correctly. And then a fire happens and it doesn't drop. So you're making sure that the person that is making sure it works knows what they're
Mike Smith (27:54):
Doing.
Scott Smith (27:54):
Yes.
Mike Smith (27:54):
How often do you drop test a door?
Scott Smith (27:57):
At least annually. You can do it more often. There's no maximum, but there is a minimum, at least annually.
Mike Smith (28:05):
I guess an instance where you would want to drop test more than once a year would be maybe if you had a super flammable critical room, you might say, "I want to drop test that once a quarter or once every six months." You could have insurance dictating. If you're underwritten by Factory Mutual, FM, they may say, "Hey, you've got an MFL wall here like we talked about a minute ago. We're going to ask that you drop test that twice a year in order for us to carry you on our insurance. There's a lot of reasons why you may do it more than annually, but yeah, at a minimum, it's got to be done annually.
Scott Smith (28:39):
I think it's probably there's a lot of scenarios. Maybe you had something done with your fire system. Didn't touch the doors, but they're tied into the doors. Maybe it's a good idea to go ahead and test everything and make sure those doors are going to work right, your relays are going to work right, nothing changed. Maybe it's not something you're aware of.
Mike Smith (28:58):
Maybe you're doing construction in your building and a subcontractor comes down on your door and dents the hood or something and you just want to call and make sure everything works. You don't want to wait until your annual inspection next year. Those are all good reasons why you might drop test more than once a year. We're getting close to the end here. A couple more points to talk about. It's a problem out in the industry. There are a lot of people out there that claim they do fire door installations and drop testing. We have followed a lot of these people on drop tests. RDC has. And we've found that people are out there, for lack of a better term, pencil whipping inspections. We can tell when we go out and follow someone that a door has never been drop tested. They've never actually put a door through the paces of releasing linkage, watching the dropout mechanisms work, the governor work, all the things.
(29:54):
It's very obvious that they're just walking up to it, getting their notepad out and saying, "Yeah, Okay, pass. And even from a visual standpoint, you can see that they haven't been properly doing a drop test. What are some signs that would be happening?
Scott Smith (30:12):
You can tell when linkage is not going to release or something's already in a bind right out of the get-go. Even without testing it, a lot of times you can tell, "Hey, this door's never been released." You can see the components have never been touched. You can see that stuff's never been opened up or accessed. It's
Mike Smith (30:31):
Got two inches of dust on it. That might be an indicator. No one's dropped it.
Scott Smith (30:36):
There's no updated date label on the door itself. That door is required to be labeled that it was dropped on X date the next year. So it happens a lot. We hear customers say, "Yeah, I've had these doors tested and we were told everything was great." And then unfortunately we got to tell them there's a lot of issues here and to get in compliance, it's going to take these steps. And it's more common than it should be, but it surprised me how common it is. A lot of companies just think this is not basic preventative maintenance. There's this whole governing body of information for how these doors have to be installed and maintained. So a lot of companies just don't realize how much is involved with these. Yeah.
Mike Smith (31:24):
And this is going to be one of our takeaways here in a minute as we close up, but a word of caution to our listeners, please, please know the process that your fire door service provider is taking to test your doors. Go out and watch them every now and then. Make sure they're physically up in a lift or on a ladder safely. Actually drop testing your door. Make sure they do it twice. Make sure they're putting the door through the paces that it's supposed to go through to have an actual drop test.
Scott Smith (31:53):
You really should have somebody witnessing the drop tests when they're being tested. Yeah,
Mike Smith (32:00):
It's true.
Scott Smith (32:00):
The forms that we use do have a space for that. So if you can't observe them every single time, if there's a hundred doors there, you can't stand there for every single one of them, but it's a really good idea for you to see how your doors are going to act.
Mike Smith (32:18):
An owner's representative has to sign off on it. Someone there in that facility is going to put their signature on a drop test form saying, "Hey, yeah, I agree. This door was tested properly. I agree with what was noted." And you're putting your name on there as well, along with us or whoever your fire provider is. So it's very, very important. Make sure they're not out there pencil whipping. This is fire, this is safety. It's lifesaving equipment. Make sure it's being done right.
Scott Smith (32:44):
If you're not signing a form, you're probably not having drop tests done right.
Mike Smith (32:49):
True. Word. Last item before we get into some takeaways, talk to me about record keeping. There's even code, believe it or not, about record keeping. You got to have proof that you've been doing drop tests. Like we said a minute ago, an insurance carrier could come in, a fire marshal could come in, anything could happen. Some governing agency could come in, OSHA maybe even, and say, "Hey, we'd like to see your drop test records. We want to see proof that that was installed or drop tested by a certified technician or company." And there's even mandates on what medium it has to be on. It has to be able to survive the length of the door assembly. How do people want to maintain records? What's the best way? And what's something that makes RDC a little bit unique in that area?
Scott Smith (33:35):
We used to use standalone forms and it was a lot, which kept track of everything great and we kept everything on hand, but now we've actually incorporated into RDC Digital. We're going to put a label on the door itself. You're going to have information right there at every one of your doors. We're going to fill out a service report that is asset tagged in our system. So you're going to have service reports showing this. Then you're going to get a fire door drop test for us. We're going to sign that, you're going to sign that. That is your NFPA 80 record keeping that this door was tested for all these things, met all these criteria. Then you can even access all of that reporting in RDC Digital, even if you don't have the report that was sent to you from each round of drop testing.
(34:24):
So it's going to be pretty hard for you to not have access to records if RDC's drop test in your doors.
Mike Smith (34:31):
Yeah. If you can't remember where in the world in your email inbox the last round of drop test was, never fear if you're a PM customer with RDC, you always have RDC Digital to fall back on. You log in, all of the service report history is right there. If you had to prove to a fire marshal that drop tests were conducted, you could log into digital, see it all by date order. It's very organized and those records will be retained forever for the life of the assembly and beyond. True
Scott Smith (34:59):
Infinity and beyond.
Mike Smith (35:03):
Yeah. All right, Scott, this has been a great conversation. I hope we've educated people a little bit on fire doors, the importance of them, some of the nuances and things that maybe people aren't thinking about. It's time for you and I to clock out. It's going to be time for our listeners to clock in, so to speak. What are some takeaways that we can leave our listeners with? How can they go out and make sure that they're testing doors properly, that they've got a good program in place?
Scott Smith (35:30):
I'd walk out and actually look at all your doors. Don't just trust whatever your last documented record of them was, but see that there's a dated inspection sticker on there. Take a look at the door itself. Do I see any damage? Do I see anything that just seems off about it? I'd probably be really double checking on the next round of drop tests. What is that process that your service provider is using? Make them give you an overview like we're doing here. What am I looking at? What are you doing to test the door? What's that thing over there? Understand more. Don't just trust me, bro. And then probably the last thing is if you don't have anybody testing those doors or you don't even know if you have fire doors in your facility, reach out and figure that out with your maintenance personnel, your insurance company, know what is in your facility.
(36:27):
And that does happen. There are doors that people didn't even know they had fire doors in their facility. So maybe have a list of them and start building that infrastructure.
Mike Smith (36:38):
Good advice. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to leave our listeners with some info after the show. In our show notes, we'll have a copy of our drop test form for reference so people can kind of take a look at what a good drop test consists of. We'll put resources in the show notes back to our website that further explains some of the firedoor offerings we have. And yeah, just to piggyback on your last recommendation there, get familiar with what your program looks like. Know what's being done out there no matter who you're using or who your firedoor service provider is. There's a lot of good ones out there. We're one of them, but get to know their process, make sure it's being done correctly. You won't regret it when the time comes if you were to ever need a fire door.
(37:21):
Scotty, it was good to be with you today. Glad you could join us and thanks for being on the show with us.
Scott Smith (37:27):
I'm glad you got to see me, Mike.
Mike Smith (37:29):
Brothers don't shake hands. Brothers got a hug. Thank you for listening to Clocking In, brought to you by Robert Dietrick Company. If this was helpful to you, share this episode with someone else who could benefit from it. Don't forget to follow the show. And if you want more insights like this via email, go to rd-co.com.