Most passive fire protection failures aren't discovered in a fire. They're discovered in an audit years after installation, when nobody remembers who signed off on the spec.
That's the nature of passive fire protection: it's designed to work automatically, without activation, which also means it's easy to under-inspect once it's behind a wall or up in the steelwork. Structural steel beams, cabling ducts, penetrations all of it needs the right material applied correctly the first time, because retrofitting a non-compliant system later is far more disruptive than getting it right during construction.
McElligotts has built its passive fire protection work around that reality. Spray-on coatings for structural steel, ducting and cabling protection, vermiculite sprays, and intumescent paints get applied by teams trained and certified on the latest methods and because fire regulations vary by state, each state team works to local code rather than a one-size-fits-all national spec.
The distinction that trips people up: passive systems contain and slow a fire automatically; active systems (sprinklers, alarms) need to trigger. A building needs both, but passive protection is the layer that's already failed if it wasn't installed properly there's no second chance to activate it correctly.
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