The Golden Thread in Fire Safety: What Fire and Security Engineers Need to Know
What the golden thread means under the Building Safety Act, how the BSR works, and what fire and security engineers must record, retain and hand over.
See more UK fire & security engineering reference
Practical tools and guidance for fire & security engineers
Free engineering calculators, structured technical guidance and field-focused articles for fire alarms, CCTV, networking, PoE, cabling and life safety systems.
Free to use
UK focused
Built for engineers
From the Fire Secure UK blog
Recent articles
Practical guidance, engineering notes and project updates.
Fire Alarm Earth Faults Explained
A practical look at fire alarm earth faults, including what they are, what commonly causes them, why they can be so difficult to locate, and the strange problems they can create on an addressable loop.
See moreHow RS-485 Actually Works: A Practical Engineer's Guide
A practical look at how RS-485 actually works, from differential signalling and twisted pairs to termination, biasing, bus topology and common-mode voltage. Written for engineers who use RS-485 in the field and want to understand what is really happening on the A and B...
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Popular engineering tools
Quick checks for common design, commissioning and maintenance tasks.
01
Fire alarm batteryStandby capacity, alarm load and derating
02
CCTV storageRetention, bitrate and usable capacity
03
PoE power budgetSwitch load, port limits and spare capacity
04
PoE UPS batteryBackup runtime and battery-bank sizing
05
Voltage dropCable resistance and percentage drop
06
DIP switch addressingBinary, Apollo and Hochiki presets
Structured technical reference
Explore the technical wiki
Clear, connected guidance for systems encountered across the fire and security industry.
Fire alarms
System categories, cause and effect, interfaces and equipment guidance.
Cabling
Containment, support systems, cable types and installation rules.
Networking & PoE
Switches, VLANs, structured cabling, wireless links and power delivery.
Security systems
CCTV, access control and wider electronic security topics.
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Specialist tools and information services developed alongside Fire Secure UK.
Project information
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Construction project, drawing, document-control and issue-management software that keeps site information connected.
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VerifyTech
Standardised technical screening for recruiters and employers, starting with practical fire and security assessments.
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My Golden Thread
Building safety information
My Golden Thread
Independent, plain-English guidance and practical resources for organising and preserving building-safety information.
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About the platform
Frequently asked questions
What is Fire Secure UK?
A practical engineering resource for UK fire, security, CCTV, networking and life safety systems.
Who is it for?
Engineers, designers, commissioning engineers, technicians and others working with life safety systems.
Are the resources free?
Yes. The engineering tools, technical wiki and articles are currently free to use.
Do the calculators replace design verification?
No. Always check critical results against applicable standards, project requirements, manufacturer documentation and site measurements.