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Durasteel can be used to build protective barriers around essential equipment. The barriers can be moved or altered to allow easier access if maintena

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In the early days of the operation of Tom Bell-Wright’s testing consultancy, a client brought in a steel door and said it would hold back a fire for four hours.

The qualities of the door had to be put to the test, to achieve the required fire rating. The test was set up, with the doors built into a gas powered furnace. Once the fire began, the door lasted just 11 minutes, somewhat short of its four hour target.

“They had completely underestimated what was required,” said Tom Bell-Wright, who acts both as CEO and chief technical officer. “It was not the steel that failed, but the seals around the windows and lock.”

Once the fire penetrated the window and lock area, the door’s integrity was destroyed and the rest was history. The underestimation is important: people’s ideas of what will work in a fire count for nothing until they’ve been put to the test.

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Bell-Wright’s operation is formally accredited for fire testing through the Emirates National Accreditation Service (ENAS), plus the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS). When the ENAS accreditation was awarded late last year, Bell-Wright’s hope was that the presence of the testing furnace would make it easier for those in construction to comply with regulations.

Speaking at the time the Minister of Environment and Water and chairman of the Emirates Standardisation and Metrology Authority (ESMA), Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad, said: “Accreditation of this laboratory provides confidence in the market and further enhances the infrastructure of quality for assuring safety and conformity of products and services.”

Most consulting work the company does comes through architects, project managers, or directly from developers. The company does façade consulting and curtain wall testing too, but the fire testing side has been busy over recent months, with Bell-Wright believing the testing furnace to have given local manufacturers some added impetus.

“I think it stimulated local manufacturers,” he said. “Before we had the fire testing, a manufacturer would have to send doors to Europe, by providing the testing on site here it becomes much easier for them to get certified.”

While testing is becoming more the norm in the region, Bell-Wright believes some projects still look to save money by waiving tests, whether for fire, façades or curtain walls.

“This is pretty misguided,” he said. “Waiving testing is very short-sighted, but sometimes contractors see testing as an inconvenience.”

“While the big architecture companies set the standards for how this work is done and are hired by developers because they want a certain standard, that’s only a proportion of the jobs in the region.”