Body corporate and strata

Fire Doors Brisbane — firedoorsbrisbane.com.au — arranges these inspections with a QBCC-licensed contractor across Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, Redlands and the Gold Coast.

Who holds the duty

In a community titles scheme the body corporate is the occupier of the common property, so the fire door obligation for corridors, stairwells, lobbies and plant rooms sits with it — in practice, with the committee and whoever manages the scheme.

Apartment entry doors are usually fire doors and usually common property, which is the point most often argued about. Establish it before the inspection, not during.

Doing it once, properly

A residential tower can have several hundred fire doors. Inspected ad hoc they generate a mess of partial reports and no usable history.

A scheduled whole-building programme produces one document for the scheme, one set of tags, and a defect list the committee can actually price and act on.

Access is the hard part, not the doors

Where apartment entry doors are in scope, the inspection needs access, and that means notice, scheduling and repeat visits for the ones nobody was home for.

It is worth planning as a building exercise rather than a trade booking. It is also the main reason quotes vary so much between buildings of the same size.