Fire Safe Europe
17 Sept 2019
The European Commission published today a call for tender titled “Finalisation of the European Approach to Assess the Fire Performance of Facades”.
This tender announces the last stage in a process that started at the end of 2016 when the European Commission announced a study to develop a European approach to the Fire Assessment of facades. The report of this study had been published in 2018 and presented two options to go forward. The “Alternative method” which was selected by the majority of Member States, will now be finalised and fine-tuned over two years.
The objective, as stated in the tender, is “to finalise and fine-tune the assessment method developed by the contractor at the previous stage as the ‘alternative method’ so that the method can be directly used for harmonised products standards (in CEN) and for European Assessment Documents (in EOTA) regarding the relevant construction products (kits) within the framework of implementation of Regulation (EU) 305/2011.”
To achieve this, the Contractor, once selected, will have to:
Conduct an inter-laboratory test program to show that the proposed test method can be used as intended, meets regulatory needs and is accepted by the Member States;
Propose a classification with all the necessary criteria and values to be the basis for a Commission’s Delegated Act regarding the classification of the fire performance of facades in line with the provisions of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011, Article 27.
The outcome of the proposed project would be a report including in its annexes:
The finalised assessment method including an estimation of the assessment cost;
A proposal for the corresponding classification of façade products.
The tender will close on November 8, 2019. All the relevant documents, including the technical description of the project, can be found here.
Connected to this tender, RISE organised a webinar on the project to finalise of the European approach to assess the fire performance of facades. The webinar was an opportunity for RISE to present key aspects of the project and give stakeholders a better view of who will do what and of the time frame. The objective of the project is to finalise and fine-tune the assessment method developed in a previous European Commission project to have a European approach to assess the fire performance of facades.
The consortium for this project is composed of:
5 project partners: RISE, BAM, Efectis, EMI and the University of Liège
3 subcontractors: BRE, RISE Norway, EGOLF
The project is divided up into four key tasks:
The theoretical round robin will focus on evaluating whether the descriptions on how to perform the test and the following classification given in the method needs to be further clarified. This phase will involve laboratories which are members of EGOLF, many of which have already expressed interest in participating.
The initial testing phase will aim to determine the sensitivity of the test method to variations of its main parameters and to define the specifications to be imposed on these parameters in order to ensure a robust method. This phase will look at defining the test programme, designing the test rig, performing average tests, analysing the results and updating the assessment method as needed.
The experimental round robin will aim to assess the repeatability and the reproducibility of the proposed method. Tests will be conducted by five different laboratories, both indoors and outdoors.
Finally, the analysis of the results of the experimental program and the round-robin will be conducted to a fine-tune the assessment method and classification scheme.
We have compiled for you the full timeline of the project:
