IN Brief:
- Passive Fire Knowledge Group has published three free guidance documents on common specification errors.
- The documents cover active fire curtains, smoke curtains, fire barriers, and cavity barriers.
- The guidance is intended to reduce ambiguity in passive fire protection specification and design coordination.
Passive Fire Knowledge Group has published three free guidance documents addressing recurring specification errors in built environment fire protection.
The documents focus on confusion around active fire curtains, smoke curtains, fire barriers, and cavity barriers. They have been released as Knowledge Shares to help specifiers, designers, contractors, installers, and inspection teams avoid misunderstandings that can weaken fire strategy and compliance.
Two of the documents deal with active fire curtains. One addresses confusion between smoke-leakage-classified active fire curtains and simple smoke curtains, while another covers the difference between insulation and radiation classifications.
The third document examines confusion between fire barriers and cavity barriers. Although some products may be capable of performing more than one function, their suitability depends on tested or certified performance, installation context, surrounding construction, and project-specific details.
The group says the term “smoke and fire curtains” can create ambiguity because smoke curtains and smoke-leakage-classified active fire curtains are not interchangeable. Smoke curtains control and direct smoke towards smoke-control systems, while smoke-leakage-classified active fire curtains are tested to fire-resistance standards.
The guidance also addresses misunderstandings around insulation and radiation performance in active fire curtains. These classifications affect how systems are selected, specified, and justified, particularly where project teams rely on incomplete terminology or older product assumptions.
Specification accuracy has become more important as fire-safety design faces closer scrutiny. Changes to Approved Document B, higher-risk building control processes, second-stair requirements, evacuation lift proposals, façade remediation, and gateway approvals have all raised expectations around design evidence and product selection.
Passive fire protection is particularly vulnerable to coordination failures. Curtain systems, barriers, stopping, cavity closures, penetrations, structural steelwork, services, façades, ceilings, and linings often sit across multiple design packages. Where responsibilities are unclear, errors may not become visible until procurement, installation, inspection, or occupation.
Tested and certified details are increasingly central to compliance. Generic product descriptions are not enough where performance depends on installation method, substrate, orientation, fixing, deflection, surrounding construction, or interface with other systems. A correctly specified product can still fail to deliver the intended protection if installed outside its tested arrangement.
Design teams also need to guard against inappropriate substitutions. Passive fire products can look similar while carrying different classifications, evidence bases, or approved uses. A substitution made to resolve availability, cost, or programme pressure can alter the fire strategy if it is not checked against the required performance.
Contractors can use the guidance to challenge unclear specifications earlier. Ambiguity around fire curtains, smoke curtains, barriers, and cavity barriers should be resolved before procurement and installation. Late clarification can affect cost, lead times, design responsibility, programme, and inspection sign-off.
Manufacturers and specialist installers are also likely to welcome clearer terminology. Where project teams use products imprecisely, responsibility for correcting the specification can fall into a grey area between designer, contractor, supplier, and installer. Clearer language reduces the room for assumptions and improves the quality of technical review.
The documents arrive in a market where accountability is tightening across design, installation, and maintenance. Fire protection failures rarely emerge from one decision alone; they usually follow a chain of small gaps in terminology, responsibility, coordination, installation, and verification.
Reducing ambiguity at specification stage is one of the more practical ways to break that chain. Clearer terminology will not remove every fire-safety risk, but it gives project teams a stronger starting point before products are procured and installed into buildings that must perform for decades.
