Mohn Media, Part of the Bertelsmann Printing Group, is Germany’s largest offset printing company with 9,000 employees and a global turnover of €1.7 billion in 2015. Gütersloh’s 15 hectare printing complex includes three print production and storage buildings dating from the 1950s.
Over the last 30 years, and in the light of recent increased health and safety regulation, Mohn media has installed over 20,000 new detectors, 900 break glasses, and upgraded it private fire brigade.
With the fire detection systems significantly modernised, Maria Heyer-Dombrink, the facilities manager, turned to address the firestop penetrations of the 60 years old complex.
The main challenges that Heyer-Dombrink was looking to address are how to survey, audit and accredit existing and new firestop penetrations in a working complex were new penetrations are continuously added as new print technology, IT and ducting necessitated ad-hoc works.
With most firestop software designed for new build applications, Heyer-Dombrink decided to work with Hilti on the pilot project to test the CFS-DM Firestop Documentation Manager software, which was four years in development.
Hilti’s Firestop Documentation Manager comes with a desktop and mobile app that allow designers, building owners and authorised users to reliably and efficiently document firestop penetrations.
From installation to inspection, all stakeholders can capture information on each penetration by using their smartphone to take pictures, mark locations on fire-rating referenced 2D plans and link this back to each installations’ unique on-site QR coded label. All this information can then be synchronised back to the building’s digital model and can be interrogated to produce compliancy reports for firestop auditing or building inspection purposes.
Heyer-Dombrink’s strategy is to use her in-house operatives as surveyors, such as, when an operative is treating the need for a new penetration, he would then audit existing penetration though that wall or floor. As such, when carrying out new accredited works the operatives also assign a QR code to existing pipes, cable tray or damper penetrations, identifying each by linking its position back to a registered door in the same wall. This locates the opening in space and assigns the fire rating to the wall and thus the installation.
This way, the day-to-day upgrade of the factory becomes the default way of carrying out a firestop survey of the estate without additional labour resources. For each new opening any number of existing ones will need to be identified, coded and checked. 18 months into the process and Mohn Media already identified and upgraded 1,700 existing openings, and Heyer-Dombrink thinks it could end up with as many as 8,000-10,000, especially if Mohn Media decides to extend the scope of surveying and auditing to include items such as fire and riser doors and others. This is because the Documentation Manager can be easily customised to allow other than services penetration fire stopping products and isn’t limited to Hilti products.
This case study is based on the article published by the RIBA Journal in Vol 123 Issue 07, P 54-55 in July 2016. Complete article can be viewed here .
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