Wilson Carpark, Newmarket
Intumescent Fire Protection Reinstatement

Cleaning the soot off a fire-damaged carpark is one job. Rebuilding the passive fire protection that the fire destroyed is a different one entirely, and it was this second, more specialised task that defined the intumescent stage of the TPW Wilson Carpark reinstatement in Newmarket. Fire had stripped and compromised the carpark’s existing intumescent coatings, reducing the fire resistance of the structural steel, and reopening the carpark meant the steel needed to be brought back to its specified fire performance, not just given a coating that looked the part.

With the steel members and cable trays fully blast cleaned beforehand, BlastOff applied intumescent fire-proofing to the structural steel to rebuild that performance, checking the applied thickness by DFT measurement as the coating went on rather than assuming coverage from a visual check alone. This intumescent work sat within the wider reinstatement across the carpark, which also included protective topcoats, asphalt restoration and line marking, but it was treated as its own verified stage because passive fire protection carries a different level of accountability to a standard repaint. Where the existing system had been lost to fire damage, the structural steel now carries a fire protection coating confirmed to the specified thickness, which is what let the carpark reopen with its passive fire protection genuinely restored rather than presumed.

For owners of carparks, rail infrastructure or commercial buildings where fire has damaged existing intumescent systems, the priority should be confirming the fire engineer’s specification and required coating build before work starts, and insisting on measured verification such as DFT readings rather than relying on appearance to judge whether the system has been properly reinstated. A carpark or building that looks freshly painted can still be carrying an under-thickness intumescent system underneath, which is exactly the gap that documented DFT checks are there to close.