Fire Door Survey Costs: What Inspections Include and Charge

What the per-door fee buys

• Inspection scope per door: certification evidence hunt (labels/plugs per the identification guide), gaps measured and recorded (the tolerance discipline), seals condition, hinges/furniture, closer function, glazing checks, leaf/frame damage — the checking guide's method, instrumented and documented
• Photographic record per defect (and per door on full-evidence formats) — the dispute-ending, funding-justifying asset
• Condition grading: compliant / remedial (with task specificity — seals, closer, gaps per the remedials menu) / replace (with reasons) — the triage that turns surveys into programmes
• Report formats: door schedules with unique references (floor plans keyed), regulation-mapped outputs (quarterly/annual check compliance for blocks per the flats rules), and golden-thread-ready data for safety cases
• Access choreography: communal sweeps unaccompanied; flat entrance doors by appointment cycles (the best-endeavours documentation the regulations expect when access fails)

Pricing shapes and what moves them

The market's honest bands: volume residential programmes (50–200 doors) £10–£20/door; mixed commercial estates £15–£30/door; small premises via minimum charges £150–£300/visit; flat-entrance appointment cycles carry liaison premiums vs communal-only sweeps. Movers: evidence depth (defect-photo surveys vs every-door photographic records), report sophistication (basic schedules vs safety-case-formatted data), access reality (appointment failure rates on flat doors — the regulations' best-endeavours grind), and travel/scale economics. Cheap-survey warnings mirror every inspection trade: drive-by counts producing remedial quotes (the survey as sales funnel — independence matters; our reports price remedials separately and stand alone), and tick-sheets without photographs (evidence-free findings help nobody at enforcement time).

Surveys into programmes: the value chain

A survey's worth is what it enables: prioritised remedial schedules (criticality-ranked per the communal triage logic — stair doors before cupboard doors), budget-grade costings (repair-vs-replace economics per door feeding the funding conversations the replacement guides map), compliance-regime activation (the quarterly/annual check baseline for blocks — survey as year-zero, checks as rhythm thereafter; we train clipboard-holders per the checking guide or run the rounds ourselves), and defence-grade records (enforcement and insurer conversations transformed by dated photographic evidence). Bundling sense: door surveys pair naturally with compartmentation/fire-stopping surveys (same risers, same access — the passive-fire whole-system view) and feed compliance packages where blocks want one calendar. First question for any block without current door records: when's the survey? — everything else in fire-door land builds on it.