FRAEW Assessments

An appraisal of the fire risk posed by a building's external wall system

A FRAEW — Fire Risk Appraisal of External Wall — is a technical assessment of the fire risk from a residential building's external wall construction, carried out under PAS 9980:2022.

The assessment examines the cladding system, insulation, substrate, cavity barriers, fire stopping, balconies, and attachments. It assigns a risk rating that determines whether an EWS1 form can be completed and at which category.

FRAEW assessments are the mechanism through which the fire safety of thousands of residential buildings affected by the cladding crisis are being assessed, enabling mortgage lending to resume and remediation decisions to be made on a sound engineering basis.