Part of the brief of Nick Cliffe, former UK director of the one of the leading certification schemes, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), was to establish exactly how CoC is working on the ground between the timber and construction industries. To assist him, we at London timber importer and merchant T Brewer & Co arranged a series of meetings with different construction based companies, starting with a tour of our Clapham site.

Brewers decided to commit to CoC for all of the main certification schemes in 2003 and is in a continual process of extending its selection of certified product. Andy Ray, manager of Brewer’s main Clapham site, said using various schemes helps ensure availability.

“We offer a range of ex-stock items with CoC, and find that it is particularly required for special machined or non-standard products,” he said. “Western red cedar for use as a special cladding section is a classic example and if we were to limit ourselves to just FSC material, we’d struggle. Opening the CoC offer to include CSA and SFI material, endorsed by PEFC, increases availability, improves quality and lowers cost.”

But, he added, even adopting various certification schemes, with some products, it’s still a struggle to get all the timber you need when you need it.

“We’re now seeing an increasing demand for standard timber sections, particularly on constructional softwood, and this is a tricky one for us to deal with in a yard operation,” he continued. “By sticking to one or two specific suppliers it is extremely difficult to achieve and you’re left tracking a mix of certified and uncertified material in the yard. We even have to segregate different schemes and anyone running a merchant yard knows how difficult that is.”

Further complexity is added by the various schemes’ continual changes in their acceptance of mixed sources percentages and recycled quotas. Understanding this aspect requires a great deal of monitoring.

At Brewer’s, as at many companies that conform, there is frustration that they go through all this process only to lose work to unscrupulous traders who just fax copies of their supplier CoC certificates as ‘proof’ of CoC. On this, Mr Cliffe did say the FSC was discussing including a statement on certificates that would prevent the practice.

And while the timber distribution industry struggles with managing the administration of CoC, how do companies further down the line cope and do they even understand what it is really about? That’s what Mr Cliffe came with us to find out and two of the customer visits provided an idea of the typical understanding of CoC.

Pragmatic approach

Crispin & Borst, a division of the Vinci Group, undertakes new build, refurbishment, fit out and maintenance projects throughout the south-east and has opted to use exclusively FSC material backed with CoC certification. The real life practicalities of this have become apparent and, while their intention is to stick with the policy, Crispin & Borst’s buying team has to be pragmatic.

A current site at Granville Place, near Marble Arch, London for the client Portman Estates, is a mixture of refurbishment and new build, requiring a wide variety of timber products.

The site meeting was attended by a large team of Crispin & Borst buyers, together with site manager, Steve McNally, who explained that architects and specifiers still need educating on the issue of CoC. “It’s a client-led market and while they say they want FSC, we’re left to sort it out,” he said. “For example, we had an architect on a project who specified FSC iroko, which we couldn’t get. So we laid out eight samples of different timbers and asked him to identify iroko – he couldn’t.”

Mr Cliffe explained many aspects of the FSC systems. “FSC is a risk management tool and we’re currently piloting project-based schemes so that CoC can be provided right through to the end of a project,” he said.

The buying team was also interested in the government’s Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET) website which advises on which certification schemes it accepts as proof of timber’s legality and sustainability. At this point Mr Cliffe did concede the benefits of considering a wider range of schemes.

CPET boost

“The arrival of CPET has been a real boost to certification and, while we generally do not comment on other schemes, it is important to be realistic,” he said. “There are gaps in the availability of FSC-certified products. Where it’s not available the use of timber from other schemes is better than other materials that are more environmentally harmful.”

Another company we visited, M2 Construction based in south London, is a relatively small business concentrating on joinery work for fitting out prestigious projects. Matthew Checkley, managing director, and Norman Speller, joinery shop manager helped Mr Cliffe appreciate the issues surrounding sub-contracting.

“We’re a joinery broker with our own workshops to produce small elements, while also arranging the main parts of a package through larger workshops, for main contractors and clients in London and the surrounding area,” Mr Checkley explained.

“Architects have picked up on FSC but the contradiction is that they then ask for, say, African mahogany. Where do we find it? FSC has done a great job getting the name across, but we’re left with a problem of sourcing materials.”

“We work on very short lead times,” added Mr Speller. “The other day I needed Douglas fir, which I can get in 48 hours, but FSC material was nearer three weeks.”

Mr Checkley welcomed CPET and the move towards a wider range of schemes. “We have a pretty good idea on CoC but we don’t have certification – we rely on our suppliers to deal with that – so the chain breaks with us,” he said. “Most clients don’t have a clue and even some of the large main contractors who have been ‘hit’ [selected by NGOs for high profile publicity action] still never ask. Their guys on site are dealing with so many things that CoC does not get on the agenda.

“Every project has to have an O&M (Operational and Management) Manual, so why not use that as a part of the control mechanism?”

While this set of meetings is only a brief snapshot of the situation on the ground, it clearly identifies the difference between how CoC is being viewed in three key areas: certification, distribution and material use. How these parties join up their methods to give a cohesive, workable method of providing what each element wants, will probably dictate the future of CoC as a workable tool to ensure legal and sustainable timber reaches the end user cost effectively. n

Feedback from other merchants and importers regarding these issues would be welcomed by FSC through its website, www.fsc-uk.org or by tel: 01686 413916.