What does your company need from a fire door inspector?
Start with the work, not the resume. A fire door inspector hire is a service-line decision: you are adding door assemblies to inspection routes your company already runs, and the person you put on them produces written records of what they find.
The demand side is documented. Intertek, which runs the door-inspector program in partnership with DHI, notes that NFPA 80-2007 introduced annual fire door inspections, and NFPA listed 2025 as the current edition of the standard when our research read it in October 2026.
Hospitals are where the requirement is written into a survey tag. Federal hospital Conditions of Participation (42 CFR 482.41) incorporate the 2012 edition of the NFPA 101 Life Safety Code, and CMS surveys hospitals against it. CMS's K761 survey tag expects fire door assemblies to be inspected and tested annually per NFPA 80, by individuals who understand door operating components, with written records available for review.
Decide the scope of the line before you write the ad. Doors alone are one business; doors plus dampers and firestop widen it. For fire dampers, NFPA's published schedule (NFPA 80 Chapter 19, per NFPA) is inspection and testing one year after acceptance testing and then every 4 years — every 6 years in hospitals — and NFPA 105 sets the same schedule for smoke dampers.
ASTM E2174 and E2393 are the standard practices for inspecting installed firestop and joint systems — adjacent lines on the same routes if you want them.
So the requirement in one sentence: a person who can walk a door assembly, document what they find, and explain it to a facility manager or an AHJ. The career guide to what a fire door inspector does describes the day to day from the tech's side; the rest of this page stays on yours.
Looking to hire? Post your fire door inspector role on FireProtectionHires and reach people who already work in fire protection.
Post a Fire Door Inspector Job →What license, NICET level or certification should a fire door inspector have?
Licensing is set state by state, and sometimes city by city, and this page keeps to what our research verified: the industry credentials. Never assume a license or a credential travels — confirm what your state fire marshal or licensing authority requires where you run routes before the requirement goes in an ad or an offer letter.
The credential to look for on a resume is DHI's Certified Fire & Egress Door Assembly Inspector (CFDAI). The Door and Hardware Institute administers the exam inside its DAI600 course at DHI events; the exam costs $550 and is included in the course price, and a retake costs $300.
Maintenance is part of the credential. Keeping CFDAI current takes 30 hours of continuing education — 5 of them in NFPA code-update classes — plus a renewal application and payment, and holders of FDAIs awarded before January 2014 must pass courses CE1401 and CE1701 to convert to CFDAI.
The training route behind the letters is a partnership. DHI teaches the Fire and Egress Door Assembly Inspection class (DAI 600), after which students can enroll in Intertek's (Warnock Hersey) Certified Fire Door Inspector program, which is open to all interested parties. DHI positions the CFDAI around performing and documenting inspections and communicating with owners and AHJs, and FDAI holders who elect not to join the certification program may still use their FDAI credential — so ask what stands behind the letters on a resume.
One question our research cannot settle: whether NFPA 80 itself requires the person doing the inspection to hold a certification. The standard's text was not part of what we verified, so put the requirement question to the AHJs you work under and to the contracts you sign, rather than to this page.
On NICET: a candidate's card names its own program, not a door specialty. NICET's Fire Protection/Building Systems group listed six programs as of October 2026: Fire Alarm Systems, Inspection and Testing of Fire Alarm Systems, Water-Based Systems Layout, Inspection and Testing of Water-Based Systems, Special Hazards Systems and In-Building Public Safety Communications. None of them is a door-assembly program. Judge door-inspection capability on door credentials and door experience, and if a contract or an AHJ names a credential for the work, get the exact name before you screen on it.
Confirm every licensing and credential requirement with your state fire marshal or licensing authority, and with the AHJs you work under, before it goes in a job ad or an offer letter.
How much should you pay a fire door inspector?
BLS publishes no wage line for fire door inspectors. The rough proxy our research carries is installation, maintenance, and repair workers, all other (SOC 49-9099), an occupation of 176,300 workers nationwide. In May 2025 the national median was $23.67 per hour ($49,230 per year), with the 10th percentile at $36,080 and the 90th percentile at $77,040.
Treat those figures as a frame, not a floor. It is BLS's "all other" bucket for installation, maintenance and repair work, and it does not isolate door inspection, so budget from your own market, your credential requirements and what the route bills.
One benchmark to avoid: the May 2025 BLS OEWS $75,920 median for fire inspectors and investigators (SOC 33-2021) is the municipal and AHJ occupation — a different job with a different employer base — not a contractor-side inspection tech.
Certification economics will come up in the conversation: the exam sits inside the DAI600 course price, a retake costs $300, and keeping the credential current takes 30 hours of CE plus a renewal application and payment. Decide before the interview whether the shop or the tech carries those costs — it is a retention lever we come back to below.
On incentive pay, our research found no primary source for commission or bonus norms in this trade, so design the mix around route quality and documentation instead of copying a chart neither of us can cite.
Where do you find fire door inspector candidates?
Work two pools at once: people already credentialed for door work, and adjacent field hands you put through the course yourself. One pool buys experience; the other builds it.
The credentialed pool is mappable. DHI administers the CFDAI exam inside the DAI600 course at DHI events, and Intertek's Certified Fire Door Inspector program is open to all interested parties — so ask every candidate which program their card came from, because the answer tells you the training behind it.
The adjacent pool is closer than it looks. Extinguisher, suppression and ITM techs already work customer routes and write up what they find, and door inspection layers a credential onto a route you are already staffing. Candidates who have spent years around door operating components bring the component fluency CMS's survey tag expects inspectors to have.
If you sell into healthcare, fish where the enforcement is: hospitals surveyed under CMS's K761 tag need annual, documented door inspections, so facility-engineering teams and the service companies already inside those buildings are worth mapping.
Write the ad with a pay range in it. Among the states our research verified: New York requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges in job ads. California requires the pay scale in postings for employers with 15 or more employees, and Illinois requires the pay scale and benefits at the same 15-employee threshold. Massachusetts has required wage ranges from employers with 25 or more employees since October 29, 2025. The list is not complete, so confirm your state's rule with your state labor agency.
Then post where fire protection people already look. See what fire door inspector candidates see on the job board, read where to post the job for channel-by-channel choices, and keep hiring for your fire protection company open for the pay, training and retention pieces around the posting.
How do you screen and test a fire door inspector?
Screen in three passes: the credential, the documentation habits, and the legal frame around testing. The first two tell you who can do the work; the third keeps the process lawful.
Credential pass: ask to see the card and the training behind it — DHI's CFDAI, an older FDAI the holder kept without joining the certification program, or Intertek's Certified Fire Door Inspector credential.
Two probes separate depth from card depth. Ask how they handled the conversion rule: FDAIs awarded before January 2014 must pass CE1401 and CE1701 to convert to CFDAI, and a working inspector should know where theirs stands. Then ask what their 30 hours of continuing education has included — the 5 hours of NFPA code-update classes are a window into how current their code knowledge is.
Documentation is the real skills test. CMS's K761 tag expects inspections by individuals who understand door operating components, with written records available for review, so ask candidates to walk you through what they record on an assembly and how they write up a finding a facility manager can act on.
Build the skills test around the records, not around clearance trivia. The current NFPA 80 item list and its measurements are exactly the kind of detail our research will not state without the standard's text, and a quiz built from a blog's checklist tests the blog, not the inspector.
Keep the process lawful. A job ad may not show a preference for, or discourage, applicants based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity), national origin, age 40 or over, disability or genetic information. Under the ADA you may not ask disability-related questions or require medical examinations of applicants until after a conditional job offer.
Any test you require must be necessary and related to the job, and must not exclude people based on protected characteristics. If you buy a written skills test, EEOC's best-practice guidance is to make sure the selection procedure is validated for the position it screens — a vendor's validity documentation helps but does not by itself establish validity for your use.
How long does the hire take and how do you keep them?
Our research found no primary time-to-fill figure for skilled trades, so build the timeline from the steps you control. For a cross-trained hire, the credential step runs through DHI: the exam is administered inside the DAI600 course at DHI events, and a course graduate is then eligible to enroll in Intertek's inspector program. Our research did not establish the course's prerequisites or how often it runs, so confirm both with DHI before you set a start date. For a credentialed hire, the clock is verification — the card, its expiry and the CE record.
Keep inspectors by owning the credential costs. The upkeep bill is 30 hours of CE with 5 hours of NFPA code updates, plus the renewal application and payment. A shop that pays it, schedules the hours on company time and keeps the route busy gives the card — and the tech — a reason to stay.
Editions keep moving: NFPA listed 2025 as the current edition of NFPA 80 when our research read it in October 2026, so code-update hours are a recurring, budgetable line — and the credential gives the tech a next step.
Widen the line and the job grows with it. NFPA's damper schedule — fire dampers inspected and tested one year after acceptance testing, then every 4 years, or every 6 in hospitals — and the ASTM E2174 and E2393 firestop and joint-system practices turn a door route into a broader opening-protectives route. A tech with more billable competence is harder to bid away.
This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Confirm licensing and credential questions with your state fire marshal or licensing authority and the AHJs you work under, and screening and pay questions with the DOL or your employment counsel.