Putting our facilities to the test: our journey to UKAS ISO 17025 accreditation
Introduction
Product testing is a crucial part of any manufacturer’s work— particularly in construction and especially for those that create and supply life critical products such as passive fire protection. Not only must innovation be guided and verified by robust data, but ongoing quality control testing is key to ensuring every product that comes off the line is ready to perform as expected in the event of a fire.
To meet this need in-house, we invested over £1m to build the Siderise Innovation Centre at our headquarters in Maesteg, South Wales, which has recently been accredited to UKAS ISO/IEC 17025: 2017 - General Requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. To learn more about why we wanted to obtain this accreditation and what our journey entailed, we spoke to our Director of Testing, Chris Mort.
Why did Siderise invest in the design and construction of its own Innovation Centre?
I applied for Siderise Executive Board approval and funding to build our own fire resistance test laboratory less than two years ago. This was in response to an increased demand for required testing and data for projects and product development, as well as a shortfall in available furnace time in the currently established UKAS Accredited Laboratories - with the longer-term goal of making fire performance testing more accessible to our key industry stakeholders.
Eight months later, in March 2023, Rt Hon Mark Drakeford MS, the first Minister of Wales, officially opened the Siderise Innovation centre.
What benefits has the test facility provided since it became operational?
The state-of-the-art facility features a 1.5m3 specialist computer-controlled fire test furnace and data logging equipment, that allows us to test products to any published fire test curve. The software that links to the air and gas valve actuators controlling the furnace was designed so that any test results here should be identical to any of the same done elsewhere in the world.
Having this purpose-built facility available to us has accelerated our research and development programmes in a more secure environment, expanded the scope of use for our existing products, broadened our dataset, and enhanced our bespoke solution offering for more complex or unique projects.
Furthermore, it has given us the opportunity to collaborate with a number of industry stakeholders with unusual applications, ambitious designs or who are wanting to inform future external test plans for new product / system developments.
To date, we’ve carried out over 180 quality assurance, R&D and project-specific tests in the first 18 months of operation and have capacity for 200+ tests annually.
Why did you decide to pursue UKAS Accreditation yourselves?
From the outset, it was always our intention to have the Innovation Centre accredited to this standard to verify that we are operating it to the highest international standard of technical competency, and that the results we are producing are valid.
UKAS Accreditation proves that our fire resistance test laboratory is operated to the stringent requirements for such laboratories, ensuring that when we test that the results are commensurate to that of an external UKAS laboratory, this instils confidence in our own quality process in manufacturing safety critical products.
What did the auditing process involve?
Despite its rigour, the whole process has moved smoothly, from applying for the accreditation in November 2023, with the audit inspection being carried out in January 2024 and the final certification being awarded in July.
We carried out the first tests in the Innovation Centre in January 2023, and over the following 12 months established our own Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that would allow us to apply for UKAS ISO 17025 Accreditation.
The audit in January took three days and involved in-depth scrutiny of the processes and records for quality management training— along with three fire resistance tests witnessed by a UKAS Auditor. These were.
EN 1366-3 Fire resistance tests for service installations - Part 3: Penetration seals
EN 1366-4 Fire resistance tests for service installations - Part 4: Linear joint seals
prEN 1364-6 Fire resistance tests for non-loadbearing elements - Part 6: Open State Cavity Barriers
These were undertaken following the requirements of EN 1363-1&2 General Requirements of Fire Resistance Testing. Each test required a full compliant Fire Resistance Test Report to be authored and audited by UKAS to ensure full compliance with ISO 17025 and the relevant standards associated with the test.
Will Siderise continue to use independent accredited test labs?
Of course. We aren’t in the business of marking our own homework! Third-party certification and accreditation are intrinsic to the Siderise culture, and crucial to our commitment to ‘integrity in all we do”. Verified testing that is reflective of our products’ end use in the ‘as built’ condition is extremely important and provides our customers with the assurance that our solutions are consistently fit-for-purpose and will perform as intended so to that end we will continue to use UKAS & ISO laboratories across the globe.
What does the future hold for the Innovation Centre?
The Innovation Centre will be audited again by UKAS in six months’ time and will then be subject to annual auditing to maintain certification.
For the wider industry, our innovation centre is helping us fuel a virtuous cycle of innovation and improvement as we build a greater collective wisdom.
Separately, we’re continuing to expand the knowledge and experience of our testing team in line with our value ‘Strive for Betterment’. The Centre is staffed by personnel with over 30 years combined experience in fire resistance testing, each being IFE Level3 qualified in Passive Fire Protection. We’ve recently welcomed a trainee technician who will also be progressed though the Siderise Training Program.
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