The British Woodworking Federation Group

Fire Door Safety Week scoops prestigious award

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27/07/2015

Fire safety campaign Fire Door Safety Week has won the Digital Campaign of the Year at the prestigious Trade Association Forum Best Practice Awards 2015 which recognise, reward and promote best practice among trade associations.

Fire Door Safety Week is an annual campaign instigated by the British Woodworking Federation, the BWF-CERTIFIRE Fire Door Scheme and the Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS). It aims to raise awareness of the critical importance of fire doors in protecting life and property, drawing attention to specific issues such as poor installation and maintenance, and encouraging building owners and users to check the operation and condition of their fire doors and to report those that aren’t satisfactory.

There are about 3 million new fire doors bought and installed every year in the UK, the vast majority made from timber. Fire doors are often the first line of defence in a fire and their correct specification, maintenance and management can be the difference between life and death for building occupants. However, they remain a significant area of neglect, often the first thing to be downgraded on a specification and mismanaged throughout their service life, propped open, damaged and badly maintained.

Consequently, Fire Door Safety Week seeks to engage and educate people, helping every property owner to understand the correct specification, supply, installation, operation, inspection and maintenance of fire doors.

Among the supporting organisations last year were the Government’s Fire Kills campaign, the Association for Specialist Fire Protection, the Fire Brigades Union, Chief Fire Officers Association and the Fire Industry Association, with added endorsement also coming from the Fire Minister.

Fire Door Safety Week is already receiving a very high level of support for this year’s campaign which runs 14-20 September 2015.

Campaign spokesperson Hannah Mansell, says:

“The impact of all our collaborative work last year, just for a single week, was staggering. The total reach of the campaign in 2014 was 12.5 million people – an increase of 108% on the 2013 campaign. There were 7,500 views of the fire safety video on YouTube, and a similar number of visits to the Fire Door Safety Week website. We had more than 2,600 mentions for Fire Door Safety week on Twitter, creating more than 1.1 million impressions – up seven-fold on the previous year. This is an extraordinary impact for a relatively low budget campaign that just started two years ago, but it gives us real encouragement to push for even better results this year.”

Supporters can download marketing resources for Fire Door Safety Week from an online toolkit, and are encouraged to run events during the week and take to social media to get across the message of fire safety using the hashtag #FireDoorSafetyWeek

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