On paper, your building is divided into fire compartments that hold smoke and flame where they start. Then come decades of recabling, refits and quick fixes. A Gemini AMPM compartmentation survey maps every wall, floor and void against the fire strategy — then turns the findings into a priced, phased remediation programme with records to match.
A compartmentation survey traces your fire lines through the building as built, not as drawn. Surveyors lift ceiling tiles, open riser doors and follow compartment walls up to the soffit, checking that what the fire strategy assumes is actually there. Every breach is photographed, located on plan and graded by severity, so a hole above a protected corridor is not filed next to a cosmetic crack.
For higher-risk buildings, the Building Safety Act 2022 makes this more than good practice. The golden thread requires an accurate, current record of the building and its fire protection — and a record based on optimistic drawings is worse than none, because it looks like evidence. A survey is where the record starts telling the truth. The report you get is costed and prioritised: a budgeting tool, not a shelf document.
A survey without a delivery plan is just bad news, itemised. We turn findings into a phased remediation programme: urgent breaches first, works sequenced around occupied floors, and a fixed scope for each phase so costs do not drift. Because our own FIRAS-approved teams deliver the passive fire works, there is no gap between the people who found the defects and the people who fix them.
To be clear about the distinction: fire stopping is the trade of sealing individual penetrations; compartmentation is the whole-building discipline of making sure the fire lines exist, connect and stay recorded. This service is the second one. Every repair is photographed before and after, referenced against the survey, and handed over in a structured evidence pack — so the next assessment starts from fact, and your golden thread keeps its name.
It is a systematic inspection of the walls, floors, risers and concealed voids that are supposed to divide your building into fire compartments, checking the as-built reality against the fire strategy. Commission one when a fire risk assessment flags doubts, when you take over a building, before refurbishment, or when you need golden-thread records for a higher-risk building. Older buildings that have been recabled and refitted for decades almost always have breaches nobody currently employed knows about.
Fire stopping is the installation trade: sealing individual service penetrations with tested systems. Compartmentation is the building-wide discipline that decides where those seals are needed and proves the fire lines actually work — survey first, then a managed programme of remediation, then records. If you already know exactly which openings need sealing, you need our fire-stopping service. If your real question is whether the building would hold a fire where it started, you need this one. Most clients need the second before the first.
A located, graded and costed defect report mapped to your floor plans; before-and-after photographs of every repair, each with a unique reference; product and tested-detail data for the systems installed; and certificates of conformity from our FIRAS-audited installation. The pack is structured so it can drop into a golden-thread system for a higher-risk building, or simply give your responsible person a defensible answer when someone asks how they know the compartmentation works.
A named engineer, not a call centre, comes back within 24 hours. Tell us the building and what you’re dealing with, and we’ll scope it properly.