Name: Checkmate Fire
Telephone: +44

Keeping students safe is the priority at Checkmate. Whether you’re a small primary school, a university, or you run a range of large comprehensive schools, built-in fire protection is a fundamental component in ensuring the safety and compliance of your buildings.

Whether we provide a survey or installation works, we know everything we do within a university, college, PBSA (Purpose Build Student Accommodation) and school helps protect the lives of those studying and those shaping the future of the nation's next generation.

In 2020, over a third of our business was delivered within these buildings, and we are proud of the fire safety improvements we are making within the education sector.

A full range of passive fire protection for the education sector

Dedicated to supporting our students and education professionals, our expert operatives have extensive experience working in open environments and on sensitive sites across multiple locations, keeping staff, students and assets safe, while providing safety critical works.

In addition to accommodation areas, we provide services to university common areas, lecture theatres and laboratories. We also provide extensive services to primary and secondary schools UK wide, preventing the devastating effects of the spread of fire and smoke.

Covering all existing, occupied and new buildings, services include:

Challenges of Fire Protection in Education

Working within schools, universities and student occupied areas presents a number of varied and exciting challenges. Fortunately, our management team are adept at ensuring solutions are compliant and delivered both on-time and in budget.

Working, in and around places of study means we often work to deliver to tighter timescales, taking advantage of half-terms and summer breaks, or often adjusting our shift patterns to be out of hours during evenings, outside of the school day.

Passive fire challenges in education buildings can be widespread. Fire doors, in often well populated areas, require constant vigilance around maintenance – we are finding buildings with more frequent, planned maintenance are extending the asset life-cycle of doors.

Our priority throughout works is to provide a safe working environment for our employees and the users of the buildings. Following the CheckSafe code, our safety ethos is more than a health and safety policy, it is a culture.

graduation hats being thrown in the air.

Checkmate was awarded a contract to undertake the remediation of fire stopping in a number of academic buildings at the University of Hull. The works were undertaken in a professional manner and within the required time frame. We would have no hesitation in recommending them to others!

Ian Hughes, Fire Safety Officer on University of Hull

Fire Stopping in Schools, Colleges and Universities

Modern day education takes place across an array of property types. Universities, colleges and schools range from heritage, listed building, to modern, cutting edge design, to temporary classroom environments. All need passive fire protection, maintaining compartments and fire doors to limit the spread of fire, smoke and toxic gases in the event of a fire.

Heritage buildings require close attention to detail; often finding the right balance between fire strategy, active fire measures and the need to passively protect sensitive areas can be difficult. Checkmate encourage collaboration to develop the best solutions in these important areas.

Temporary buildings are commonly missed from passive fire works, however, in many instances, temporary often becomes semi-permanent - especially in education when facing challenging budgets. As a result, it is just as important that works are undertaken in these areas.

Modern education buildings benefit from increased natural light, which drives demand for increased internal glazed partitions. Now, it is more important than ever to ensure open spaces and glazed partitioned units remain fire resistant. Checkmate Fire will ensure that your building benefits from an adequate passive fire protection system whether you require standard or glazed walls.

Checkmate work with building stakeholders to develop the right solutions

A Checkmate Fire specialist carrying out maintenance work on some pipes.

for each building, with the right care and exceptional quality standards. Moreover, all of our work is backed up by intense audits to ensure quality and standard of work.

Extensive 3rd Party Accredited Expertise

Understanding the importance of education - at every level - we deliver full turnkey solutions to ensure your buildings are compliant and lives are protected, so that students and teachers can contine to feel safe. These methods include comprehensive surveys, compartmentation, and pre planned maintenance, where we take away the risk for fixed-term contracts of 3, 5 or 7 years.

As a founding member of the BRE/LPCB scheme, all of our works are backed up by intense audits and continuous checks by our in-house compliance and assurance team. With a quality driven ethos and right first time approach, we give you full peace of mind that our works are thorough, safe, and compliant.

From fire safety assessment, FRA’s, and detailed survey works, to fire stopping, door replacement and remediation, you can be assured of the exacting 3^rd party accredited standards Checkmate provides to this important sector.