Steve Marr, UK Compliance Director at SIG, has given a “hearty welcome” to the publication this month of a new global framework for regulating construction products.
The Building Products Performance Good Practice Regulatory Framework, produced by a working group of the International Building Quality Centre chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt, aims to improve the regulation, certification and description of construction products.
Steve Marr said: “This is basically what we at SIG Assured have been working towards for the last 11 years. With complex international supply chains there needs to be common ground in how products are tested, certified and marketed.
“The Framework takes expertise from industries around the world and sets out best practice that will be adapted to the legislative framework in each country.”
In the UK this issue is being addressed head-on by Construction Product Information Ltd and its Code for Construction Product Information – an initiative that Dame Hackitt has recognised as part of the “culture change” that she has long called for.
Steve adds: “Construction products combine to create complex structures whose failure can be catastrophic. It is absolutely essential for building safety that those individual products are fit for purpose, compliant and correctly marketed.”
As one of the largest product distributors in the UK construction industry, SIG says it invests heavily in compliance, using its own SIG Assured compliance team to monitor manufacturer information on the products it stocks.
Steve, who alongside his SIG role is also interim CEO of Construction Product Information, concluded: “The goal should be for the industry to reach the point where there is no need for SIG Assured – every manufacturer should be on top of its own compliance and this Framework is one more step along that path.”
