Quinn provides added reassurance

PBM speaks with Quinn Building Products to discover more about the ‘added reassurance’ now on offer from its Quinn Therm insulation brand.

The insulation industry has been no doubt affected by events in recent years, with a growing demand for reassurance that insulation products meet the highest standards. Builders’ merchants are certainly in need of some surety to give them the confidence in recommending insulation products to their customers.

The British Board of Agrément (BBA) has taken steps to address this need for greater certainty with the rollout of its Product Excellence Programme, which puts products through more frequent and stringent testing to ensure the certification criteria is being met on an ongoing basis.

Quinn Therm fully supports this move to a more tightly controlled certification system, immediately enrolling in the Product Excellence Programme, and the brand has just been through the bi-annual audit process with the BBA to verify the integrity of Quinn’s insulation products. BBA Auditors visited the Quinn Therm manufacturing facilities in May 2019 to conduct the audit.

Speaking of the new Programme and Quinn Therm’s involvement, the company’s General Manager, Peadar Maguire said: “We’re fully committed to any measures which give our customers greater confidence in the quality of our products. It’s essential that we as an industry put in place the most robust quality assurance measures and BBA certification has always been acknowledged as the best standard to meet.

“This new Product Excellence Programme comes at a time when there is greater concern among builders’ merchants, specifiers and end users and it is a priority for us to demonstrate the integrity of our products and processes so the industry can trust in the products we’re supplying.”

Peadar continued: “The beauty of the new system is that it verifies that we continue to meet the highest standards on a continual basis, and not just at a single point in time. This transparency certainly gives a greater degree of comfort and trust.”

PEP Audit Process

As part of the Product Excellence Programme Audit Process, BBA Management System Auditors visit the manufacturing facilities to ensure the certified products are being manufactured in line with the agreed quality plan. Whilst on site, the Auditors select a number of product samples at random to undergo physical testing at the BBA Test Centre of Excellence in Watford.

The selection of products and the frequency of testing is dependent on two criteria:

Complexity 1 Products are products which possess fire or structural type characteristics. These products will be tested annually.
Complexity 2 Products are products which DO NOT possess fire or structural type characteristics. These will be tested triennially.

Once the product samples have been selected, they are securely packed by the manufacturer to safeguard against damage in transit, ensuring identifying labels or markings remain intact and shipped to the BBA Test Centre of Excellence in Watford. The product samples then undergo testing to the rigorous BBA standards by an independent and UKAS-approved testing authority.

Once passed, the manufacturer is issued with new BBA product certification which verifies that the tested products have successfully been verified as part of the Product Excellence Programme.

In outlining the BBA’s new Product Excellence Programme and the benefits to the industry, Claire Curtis Thomas, the BBA’s CEO, commented: “Prior to the introduction of this programme, the BBA already had an excellent method of verifying the quality of products. We go out to factories and manufacturing installations twice a year and we have a very thorough audit of both processes and the elements that lead to the final product being produced. So, we were pretty confident that our systems were robust — but the market and the consumer want more than that now.

“They don’t want to just know that the product has been subject to twice a year visits. They want to know that the product itself has actually been physically tested — and this is the purpose of the Product Excellence Programme. We will be physically testing things so that we can say, ‘the product you are purchasing is the one that is being made in this factory now, so you can have confidence in that fact and you can use that product with the confidence of that knowledge’.”

Meeting BBA Certification Standards

Quinn Therm products are required to meet or exceed performance targets in relation to thermal conductivity, core water vapour resistivity and compressive strength in order to achieve and maintain their BBA Certification.

These standards are:

Thermal conductivity: 0.022W/mK
Core water vapour resistivity: 300 MNs/gm
Compressive strength: >150kPa

In addition to the product performance requirements, Quinn Therm has agreed quality control procedures with the BBA which are assessed during the audit process. These documented controls cover every area of the manufacturing process, from the quality control operated over batches of incoming materials, the production process, the management of non-conformities and the checking of equipment to ensure it has been properly tested and calibrated.

Quinn Therm gained its first BBA Certificates in 2005 and has since achieved certification for its full product range with the list of its BBA Certified Products including: