Executive summary

1.1. Following the events surrounding Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 and the subsequent publication of the “Building a Safer Future: Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety” in May 2018, the need to develop a more streamlined approach and greater transparency with regards to the way that construction products are tested, certified, labelled and marketed was identified.

1.2. In December 2018, an implementation plan was published that included the establishment of a Construction Products Standards Committee (the ‘CPSC’). This Committee’s remit will be to provide advice to the Secretary of State on new and existing standards for the testing of construction products, including how the conformity assessment for construction products (including both harmonised and non-harmonised) could be improved.

1.3. In order to support the CPSC’s activities, this research has been commissioned by the MHCLG in order to provide the CPSC with an evidence base for decision-making. The key output was the development of a prioritisation framework which shall be used to help the CPSC identify construction product and test standards it should consider first. This research is also aimed at enabling the CPSC to further to understand the challenges faced by the construction industry with regards to construction products testing, and identify ways forward for the development of new construction product standards for products not sufficiently covered by the current testing regime.

1.4. This report summarises the methods and findings of this research and how the prioritisation tool was developed, from the identification, characterisation and scoring of the standards through to the stakeholder engagement activities and gap analysis of the current system.

Research findings

1.5. It is clear from this work that the large body of standards governing the safety of construction products is an extremely complex ecosystem and, that while the identification of these standards has been quite a substantial task in itself, the challenge of ensuring consistency across all of these standards as per the remit of the CPSC is not going to be a trivial task.

1.6. The analysis of perceived vulnerabilities in the current fire and structural safety standards and testing regime showed that each product category faces its own unique set of challenges in terms standards and testing. The following graph indicates that most product categories face challenges across the range of vulnerabilities, and that improving the testing regime for these products will require a comprehensive and holistic approach to improvement. (see Figure 1 – Risk and Vulnerability Dashboards (Fire and Structural Safety Testing) and Figure 2 – Risks and Vulnerabilities (Fire and Structural Safety Testing).

Figure 1 - Risks and Vulnerabilities Dashboard of the Current Fire Safety Standards and Testing Regime (All Products). Numbers represent the number of responses from the Construction Products Testing Survey.

Figure 2 - Risks and Vulnerabilities Dashboard of the Current Structural Safety Standards and Testing Regime (All Products). Numbers represent the number of responses from the Construction Products Testing Survey.

1.7. In terms of areas that the CPSC need to focus on first, we have identified a number of key standards that the industry has raised issues with, and that pose a high risk in terms of their fire or structural safety aspects:  BS 476 series,  BS 8414 series, BS EN 1154,  BS EN 1155, BS EN 1363 series, BS 5839 series, BS EN 13501 series, BS EN 1366 series, BS EN 1364 series, TGD 019, EN 13830, BS EN 15882 series and BS 9414.

1.8. A gap analysis has been carried out combining findings from all of the research activities for the project and we have identified key standards and vulnerabilities for each family of products as well.

1.9. In terms of gaps in the availability of standards, feedback from the surveys and workshops indicate that the following product families may need standards to be developed:

• For fire safety, there are gaps in the availability of standards for fire stopping, fire sealing and fire protective systems, roof coverings, building kits, structural timber products, laminated glass, and thermal insulation products.
• Issues around the lack of standards for fully investigating reaction to fire, and smoke toxicity, were also raised at the workshops and in the survey.
• For structural safety, there are gaps in the availability of standards for gypsum products and roof coverings.

Recommendations

1.10. A number of product families have also cited the lack of a systems approach to testing as being an issue that needs to be addressed. In particular, a lack of/issues with standards for compartmentation, fire stopping and fire sealing has been cited. We hope that the prioritisation framework and the insights gathered during the course of this project will be useful to the CPSC in terms of clarifying its priorities and building an understanding of the challenges that the construction products industry face in terms of product testing standards.

1.11. We would highly recommend that the prioritisation tool database be maintained for it to retain its usefulness. We have sought to provide as much transparency as possible into how it was developed and structured and hope that after an initial period of discussion that a mechanism can be established for regular updates to be undertaken and for new standards to be regularly added to the database.

1.12. The community of experts we engaged with during the workshops could provide a valuable resource for further discussions on construction product standards specific to certain families of products – we have provided a good overview of the concerns for each product grouping but as we tried to cover as wide a range of products as possible, we believe there to be opportunities for further discussion and engagement with specifically targeted groups of product manufacturers, particularly those manufacturing ‘higher risk’ products, as well as those who are most in need of updated or improved standards.

1.13. Finally, there remain questions about the evidence base for the standards most commonly in use by the industry. The lack of academically rigorous referencing or references to primary scientific research in most of the standards we looked at is the result of the system under which these standards are written, and is largely based on consensus between a diverse group of experts as opposed to commissioned research for the purpose of standards development. We would suggest that this needs to be looked at more closely. Is a consensus between experts sufficient to ensure that our current set of standards considers the most recent academic and industrial research for the testing covered in the standard? Perhaps it is, but even if this is the case, should there be more transparency with regards to the rigour to which the underpinning knowledge and research that is used to make their decisions is referenced in the actual standards. Most official publications have a bibliography or list of references, and it is surprising that published standards are not held to the same level of transparency and scrutiny.