"How do I know they're any good?"

A contractor sends you a quote for fire stopping across a residential block. The email signature carries three or four logos. The covering note says the firm is "fully accredited" and "BAFE registered" and "compliant with all current standards." It reads well. But you are the Responsible Person, and if the work is wrong, the exposure is yours, not theirs. So the real question sitting under the quote is simple: how do you actually know they can do this, and how would you prove you made a reasonable choice if someone asked you to?

That second half matters more than most duty-holders realise. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, competence is no longer something you can take on trust [VERIFY]. You are expected to appoint people who are competent for the work in hand, and to be able to demonstrate that you did. "They seemed to know what they were doing" is not a defence. A paper trail is.

Three things that are not the same

There is a hierarchy of assurance, and the words people use tend to blur it deliberately.

Self-declared competence is a firm telling you it is competent. That is all a lot of "accredited" and "approved" language actually amounts to. Nobody outside the company has checked. It costs nothing to claim and proves nothing.

Trade body membership is a step up, but a smaller one than it sounds. Membership of a recognised trade association can mean the firm has agreed to a code of conduct and paid a subscription. Some bodies do check members; many check far less than the logo implies. Membership tells you a firm exists and cares enough to join. It does not tell you their installations pass inspection.

Independent third-party certification is the one that carries weight. Here a separate certification body has assessed the firm against a defined scheme, checked their processes and their actual work, and — this is the important part — keeps checking. Certification is not a one-off exam. It comes with ongoing surveillance: periodic audits, site visits, and reviews of live jobs. A firm that stops performing loses the certificate. That continuous scrutiny is what makes the certificate mean something.

Scope is as important as the certificate itself

Here is where duty-holders get caught out. A certificate is not a general badge of quality. It certifies a firm for specific activities, within a specific scope.

A contractor might hold third-party certification for the installation of fire doors — and use that certificate to win a fire stopping and penetration sealing contract it is not certified for. The logo on the letterhead is genuine. The scope behind it does not cover the work you are buying. If you never read past the logo, you would never know.

So the existence of a certificate answers less than half the question. What is it for? Does the scope include the exact work you are appointing them to do — fire damper installation, compartmentation, service penetration sealing? A certificate for one discipline is not a certificate for another.

What a certification body actually does

It helps to know what sits behind the badge. A certification body assesses the firm's competence and quality management against the requirements of a named scheme. It then conducts surveillance — returning to inspect completed and in-progress work, checking that standards are held over time, not just on the day of the initial assessment. It defines the scope precisely, so the certificate says what the firm is certified to do and, by implication, what it is not. And it can suspend or withdraw certification if the firm falls short.

That cycle of assessment, surveillance and defined scope is exactly what turns a claim into evidence. It is also why a third-party certified contractor is easier to defend as a "reasonable choice" than one who simply says they are good.

What to ask before you appoint

You do not need to be a fire engineer to vet a contractor properly. Four questions do most of the work:

  • Which scheme are you certified under, and by which certification body? You want a named, independent body — not a self-run "register."
  • What is the scope of your certification? Ask them to confirm it covers the specific work you are appointing them for.
  • What is your certificate number? So you can check it against the certification body's public register yourself.
  • When were you last audited, and what was the outcome? A certified firm will expect this and answer it plainly.

If the answers are vague, or the scope does not match the job, that is your signal to look harder. Keep the answers on file. That record is part of demonstrating you took reasonable steps.

Where we sit

Premier Compliance holds third-party certification through BM Trada, BESA and IFC, and we are happy to confirm the scope of that certification against the specific work you need — because that is exactly the check you should be making of anyone you appoint.

If you are reviewing your passive fire protection arrangements and want to be confident the people doing the work can prove their competence, start with our passive fire protection service, or read what the law actually requires around fire damper testing.