Partitioning and Demountable Systems Insurance

Fire rated partitioning fails in a predictable place, and it is the part nobody can inspect once the ceiling is reinstated.

A fire rated partition has to be continuous to a line of fire resistance, which usually means up through the ceiling void to the soffit, with a properly formed and sealed head detail, correct deflection head where there is structural movement, and service penetrations fire stopped. The failures are familiar: a partition stopped at ceiling level with the void left open above it, a head detail not sealed, a deflection head installed wrongly so it does not maintain integrity, a cavity barrier omitted, and penetrations left unsealed by whoever came afterwards. Each leaves a compartment that does not hold.

So the evidence is the same as in passive fire protection. Install to systems with test evidence for the actual construction, photograph every head detail and penetration before the ceiling goes back with a location reference, issue a record to the main contractor, and refuse to improvise a junction where no tested detail exists. Where a designer's detail has no test evidence, raise it in writing. On a building later surveyed for compartmentation, a partitioning contractor with photographs per location is in a very different position from one without.

Acoustic complaints about partitions are frequently not about the partition, and the argument is winnable only with records.

A partition specified to achieve a sound reduction will do so in a laboratory. In a building, sound travels over it through the ceiling void, under it through a raised floor, through a service penetration, through a shared ventilation duct, around it at a mullion or a window reveal, and through a door that was specified without an acoustic seal. A boardroom that is not private may have a perfectly correct partition and a continuous floor void beneath it. The client experiences a failure of the thing they bought.

So the scope and the flanking paths have to be addressed before building rather than after a complaint. Make clear what the partition will achieve and on what assumptions, identify the flanking paths that need treating and who is treating them, raise in writing where a ceiling void or raised floor is not being closed, and specify doors and glazing consistently with the wall. Where you only install what somebody else specified, keep that specification. A pre-completion sound test on a sensitive room is also worth suggesting rather than discovering a problem at handover.

The immediate claims in this trade are glass, and the cost is time rather than material.

A full height glass partition pane is heavy, awkward, has to be carried into a finished building and lifted into place, frequently with suction lifters in a tight space. Break one in transit, in handling, in installation, or by over tightening a fixing, and the replacement is a bespoke pane with a manufacturing lead time, during which the room is unusable and the fit out cannot complete. Toughened glass also fails spontaneously on rare occasions from an inclusion, which is nobody's workmanship and still somebody's problem.

So the controls are handling and expectation. Access measured before delivery rather than discovered, enough people and proper lifting equipment, protection to floors and finishes on the route, glass stored vertically and supported, fixings torqued rather than tightened, and panes checked for edge damage before installation because a chipped edge is a future failure. Then the commercial side: make the lead time explicit in the programme so a breakage is understood as a delay, and establish who carries a spontaneous toughened glass failure.

Partitioning is a fit out trade, which means it happens in buildings that are working rather than sites that are closed.

Materials come in through a shared entrance and a passenger lift, cutting generates dust, screwing into a floor disturbs the tenant below, and the work happens on a floor where other parts are occupied or where neighbouring tenancies are trading. The realistic claims are dust through a building's ventilation, damage to a lift car or common parts, a floor or finish scratched on the route, a sprinkler head knocked during ceiling work, and a false alarm from cutting dust that evacuates every tenant.

So the controls are the fit out ones and they are the landlord's conditions as much as good practice. Protection to the route and the lift before the first delivery, dust suppression and screening at source, detector isolation agreed with building management before dusty work and reinstated at the end of every shift, delivery routes and hours as the licence specifies rather than as convenient, and photographs of common parts before and after. A false alarm that evacuates a multi let building costs far more than the partition.

Performance failures are the question, not damage. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.