The Grenfell Tower disaster has catapulted the fire performance of buildings into the public spotlight. Building materials and techniques are coming under close scrutiny like never before. Wood and wood-based materials will not escape this scrutiny.
It is absolutely critical to the future prospects for timber in construction that the reaction to fire performance qualities of timber components are better understood and that the techniques available to retard the ignition and the spread of flame across are correctly specified and verified as compliant with this specification at the site.
Over the last two to three years the WPA has been campaigning for better implementation of Building Regulations and CPR compliance (fitness for purpose) requirements for flame retardant wood materials – wood panels in particular.
As part of this campaign, WPA has recently entered into a partnership with Local Authority Building Control (LABC) to promote and underpin product knowledge and awareness of flame retardant enhanced wood-based products to LABC staff, building control officers and the designers, developers and contractors who are LABC customers on a nationwide basis.
A range of communication activities are planned over the next two years, including bespoke articles and publications, and online CPDs and videos produced in a WPA and Wood Campus collaboration.
The WPA position on flame retardant treatment for wood is based on a simple premise. The only effective means to achieve the required fire performance standard or CPR compliance for a timber component is to use a proven flame retardant applied by a quality assured factory applied process e.g. Euroclass B for external timber cladding.
The WPA believes that the independent review of Building Regulations relating to fire may well result in changes that affect the use of wood. The WPA wants to see changes that will require greater diligence in the specification and use of flame retardant treatments for wood.
We have responded strongly to this call for reviews for evidence and our submission sets out clearly the proven long-term performance qualities of factory applied flame retardant treatments and requirement for on-site verification of compliance with standards and CPR declarations of performance.
The WPA will take a role in contributing to the development of a Confederation of Timber Industries (CTI) guide to the fire mitigation techniques for wood and wood based materials in 2018.
In the meantime, the WPA has taken the decision to provide its flagship FR specification Manual & Checklist as a free download from the publications section of its website, which also includes an information sheet about the fire performance of external timber cladding in response to a steep increase in enquires in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Materials Health And Preservative Treated Wood Priorities
Material health, indoor air quality and healthy buildings are factors of building design that are assuming increasing relevance in construction design. WPA believes the potential for these matters to adversely affect demand for treated wood cannot be ignored.
The wood protection sector was unable to react positively to these issues due to a lack of supporting technical data and this needed to be corrected.
In July, BRE was commissioned by WPA to implement a project to get to grips with the information gap and make the WPA the top authority on indoor air quality data for treated wood.
Meanwhile, at its annual conference in April, the WPA announced the results of market research carried out in collaboration with the Timber Trade Federation (TTF).
The results highlighted that low levels of understanding about pre-treated wood specification and quality and fitness for purpose characterised the supply chain.
Supply chain knowledge has been a perennial issue in the timber industry and WPA is committed to working with TTF, Wood Campus and other timber trade associations on activities to help address this over the next 12 months.
The WPA Benchmark is a quality assurance scheme designed to confirm that an individual piece of wood has been treated correctly for its end use as specified by British Standard BS 8417.
This is an independent, highly credible, verification of treatment quality and fitness for purpose of an individual product like a fence post and will be further enhanced in 2018 by the introduction of a performance bond.
