On the door
Labels and certification plugs
A label on the leaf edge or top, or a colour-coded plug carrying a traceable reference. Where legible, this is the fastest and strongest route to identity.
Guide
Fire Door Certification & Traceability: Labels, Plugs and Evidence
“No label found” is one of the most common lines on a fire door report, and one of the most misread. This page explains what traceability evidence actually is, what its absence does and does not prove, and how unidentified doors are dealt with sensibly rather than expensively.
What Traceability Means in Practice
Traceability is the ability to link a door on site back to a product with known performance evidence. In the best case that is straightforward: a legible label or plug identifies the manufacturer and reference, and the documentation for that product sets out the construction, the permitted hardware, the seal arrangement and the installation instructions.
In older and much-altered buildings it is rarely that clean. Labels get overpainted during redecoration, removed when a leaf is trimmed, or were never applied. That is why a report finding of this kind is a statement about the evidence available, not a measurement of the door itself.
Where Evidence Usually Comes From
In your records
Handover and purchase documentation
Installation records, product data sheets, delivery notes, O&M files or refurbishment paperwork can identify a batch of doors even where the doors themselves are unmarked.
In the building
Consistency across a batch
Where identified doors and unidentified doors are demonstrably from the same installation, that supports a reasoned position — provided the similarity is genuine rather than assumed.
Care needed
Visual indications
Leaf thickness, edge construction, seal grooves and hardware can support or contradict a proposed identity, but on their own they do not confirm what a door is.
Common trap
Alterations that break the link
A door may be genuinely certificated as supplied and still no longer match that evidence after site trimming, added apertures or incompatible hardware.
Not evidence
Assumption and habit
“It looks like an FD30” is not a finding. Where identity cannot be established we record that honestly rather than closing the item on assumption.
What To Do When Identity Cannot Be Established
The proportionate route depends on the door's role, its condition and what your building strategy requires of it. An unidentified door in sound condition on a lower-risk opening is a different proposition from an unidentified flat entrance door in a communal escape route.
Where evidence cannot be assembled, the realistic options are a competent assessment of what is there, upgrading or repairing where the construction is known well enough to support it, or replacement with a documented doorset so that the door has evidence from day one. Replacement is often the cleanest outcome on critical openings precisely because it resolves the evidence problem permanently.
- Search existing records before assuming nothing exists
- Check leaf edges and tops for plugs or labels beneath paint
- Treat critical openings — escape routes and flat entrances — as the priority
- Distinguish an unidentified door from a demonstrably defective one
- Where replacement is chosen, keep the supplied documentation with your building file
- Record decisions and reasoning against door references, not just outcomes
How We Work With Traceability Findings
We price and complete the works arising from your report. Where identity is the obstacle, we set out what we can verify, what we cannot, and the repair or replacement options for each door — the same door-by-door approach described in what happens after an inspection and in repair or replacement.
Where new doorsets are supplied, the product documentation forms part of your handover records, and completed items are evidenced through our close-out records. Send us your report or FRA action list and we will price it line by line.
Related Pages
Traceability findings usually sit alongside condition and component work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Doors You Cannot Identify?
Send us your inspection report or FRA action list with any records you hold, and we will price the remedial and replacement options door by door — including the openings where establishing evidence matters most.