Fire Door Safety Week 2016: new app to cut risks of injury and fines

 Fire Door Safety week - from September 26 to October 2 - aims to raise awareness of the critical role of fire doors, drawing attention to specific issues such as poor installation, maintenance and management. It encourages building owners and users to check the operation and condition of their fire doors. 

As part of Fire Door Safety Week a new smartphone app, Lodgic, has been made available to facility managers to check that fire doors are attended and unlocked at times when the building is accessed by the public. 

The Lodgic app can be downloaded by staff on site and features a tour programme with a pre-set activity log; a message and alarm prompts the user to go to and then secure or unlock each fire door on site at a pre-set time, which can be varied with weekly opening hours.

At the Lodgic control centre at Redditch, the software system remotely monitors the activity that is logged on each app. There is an automatic alert if each scheduled activity is not completed at a pre-set time; a series of warning prompts are sent to the user on site, then the Lodgic manager is alerted and will phone the user immediately on site. If there is no response, there is a pre-agreed escalation path of an incident, which can include contacting senior managers in the user organisation.

The scanning of each barcode is time stamped, with the physical location recorded from the smartphone’s GPS system – so that there is a record for the company and the fire inspection authority that activity was completed on time for each door on a tour.

“Many sites fail to manage multiple fire doors consistently across several sites; locking times vary and you’re reliant on a staff member to remember. The app gives the site manager - and senior management - the reassurance that all fire doors are under control at every site, at all times,” says Simon Chapman, of Lodge Service, who operate the Lodgic app and control centre service.