Fire safety documentation survey 2026
What do property managers know about their fire documentation?
Findable and Rambøll Brann og sikkerhet asked 50 Norwegian property managers how much they know about the fire documentation for the buildings they manage. Twelve per cent were very confident it was complete and current. Eighty-six per cent had looked for a fire document and failed to find it.
The gap between those two numbers is the finding. Fire documentation is mostly not missing. It exists, somewhere, in a form nobody can retrieve when an inspector, an insurer or a buyer asks for it.
The findings
- 12% were very confident their fire documentation was complete and current
- Twelve per cent of respondents said they were very confident that the fire documentation for the buildings they manage is complete and up to date. The rest were partly confident or not confident.
- 86% had searched for a fire document without finding it
- Almost everyone who answered had looked for a fire document they knew existed and failed to retrieve it. The document is rarely missing outright. It is filed somewhere nobody can find again.
- One in three review their fire documentation less often than every five years
- A third reported that fire documentation is reviewed less often than every five years. Buildings change faster than that. Refurbishment, tenant changes and plant replacement all happen in between.
Method, and what these numbers do not show
The figures come from a survey of 50 Norwegian property managers, run by Findable with Rambøll Brann og sikkerhet, supplemented by input from the webinar Nytteverdi av branndokumentasjon. The full report is published in Norwegian as Brannsikkerhetsrapporten 2026 .
Fifty responses is a small sample, and the survey was run in Norway rather than the UK. The numbers show how one industry rates itself. They are not a measurement of the state of fire documentation in any market, and they should not be quoted as UK figures. What travels is the shape of the problem: retrieval, not absence.
Citation
Fire Safety Documentation Survey 2026, Findable and Rambøll, N=50. Please give the sample size alongside the figure.
Why this matters under the Building Safety Act
The survey was run in Norway, but the duty it bears on is English. The Building Safety Act 2022 requires an Accountable Person to hold building information digitally, keep it current, and produce it on request. A document that exists but cannot be found does not satisfy that duty, because the test is whether the information can be relied on when someone asks for it, not whether a copy exists somewhere in the estate.
That is the same failure the survey measures. The golden thread is a requirement about the accessibility of information, not the existence of files.
Questions about the survey
What is the Findable and Rambøll fire safety documentation survey?
It is a survey of 50 Norwegian property managers, run by Findable with Rambøll Brann og sikkerhet, on how much they know about the fire documentation for the buildings they manage. It was published in 2026 as Brannsikkerhetsrapporten and is supplemented by the webinar Nytteverdi av branndokumentasjon.
How many property managers are confident in their fire documentation?
Twelve per cent of the 50 respondents said they were very confident their fire documentation was complete and up to date. Eighty-six per cent had searched for a fire document without being able to find it.
How often is fire documentation reviewed?
One in three respondents said fire documentation is reviewed less often than every five years, which is slower than most buildings change through refurbishment, tenant changes and plant replacement.
How large was the sample, and does it apply outside Norway?
Fifty respondents, all Norwegian property managers. The sample is small and the survey was not run in the UK, so the figures indicate how one industry rates itself rather than measuring the state of fire documentation in any market. The retrieval problem it describes is not specific to Norwegian regulation, but the numbers should not be presented as UK data.
Can these figures be cited?
Yes. Cite them as the Fire Safety Documentation Survey 2026 by Findable and Rambøll, and give the sample size of 50 alongside the figure. The full report is published in Norwegian as Brannsikkerhetsrapporten 2026.
Check your own buildings
The survey asked people to estimate. A documentation health check reads the folder and reports what is actually there, what is missing, and what has expired.
Take the documentation health check