Annual Fire Inspection finds new problems where none existed before

This is not uncommon – certifiers are no longer employed by government bodies, but are private companies, being paid by the body requesting the certification. There is an unfortunate tendency to find whatever best suits the body paying for the job – or some certifiers will strictly follow the law and provide a complete report. And also the laws are sometimes unclear and two competent certifiers will come to different conclusions because they have different interpretations of the law.

From your description, I’d guess that having the same company certify the fire doors as installed them was a mistake. On fire doors, there must be a “tag” or compliance plate, fixed to the door – it’s normally on the edge of the door near the hinges. A missing or hidden (ie, painted over) plate means the door needs to be re-certified (expensive) or replaced (expensive). Sometimes the doors are provided with the right tag, but after installation, the owners corporation has them painted to match the building’s décor – and painters often don’t realise the compliance plates must never be hidden. If that’s happened, then a razor blade to very carefully scrape the paint off the tag might be a good thing to try (as long as it doesn’t damage the printing on the plate or make it seem to have been tampered with.)

The rules about locating the smoke detectors are complicated and open to different interpretations. In our building smoke detectors that were installed by a reputable fire safety company were faulted at a later inspection – the interpretation of the rules had changed – the government had cracked down on the rules, because of injuries and coroner’s reports. It happens. The main thing with fire regulations is safety – better to comply strictly than to regret the corner cutting when you are choking in a smoke filled apartment…

The practical approach is to have another, second,  company do a compliance check, and to provide a written report to the owners corporation. I’d be concerned that the existing report does not detail the problems, and perhaps you should request the company that produced the report to put all the problems in writing. If they were the ones that did the work to install the doors and alarms, then there may be a reason why they are reluctant to do this? Anyway a second opinion should resolve  or clarify the issues, and then you need to resolve them. If the original company is negligent then consult a lawyer about taking action against them. But if the painting of the doors was a separate task, then the strata committee that allowed the fire doors to be wrongly painted would be a fault. And the rules about locating smoke detectors (and the right type allowed) seems to have been tightened up in recent times, so that may just be that it’s something you need to live with.

I wonder how effective the law/suggestion to strata managers and fire safety companies would be that the “finder of problems” cannot be the “fixer of problems found”.

Given that most Strata Companies now have some files on their websites – it would make sense to insist that all reports are kept there.