The Australasian Certification Authority for Reinforcing and Structural Steels was founded as a not-for-profit, voluntary, third party product certification scheme in 2000 and issued its first certificates of compliance in 2003 to AS/NZS 4671 for steel reinforcing materials.
ACRS now provides additionally certificates of compliance to prestressing steels and structural steels to AS/NZS Standards 4672, 1163, 1594, 3678 and 3679 parts 1 and 2, and also technical approvals to associated specifications.
After recent suggestions from across the construction industry in Australia and New Zealand with regard to further building on the development of the successful ACRS Scheme, ACRS is convening an industry-wide discussion to examine possible options for the future scope and associated rules of operation for ACRS Third Party Product Certification. The current version of ACRS Scheme Rules, Version 10.1, may be downloaded from the ACRS website.
In its first decade ACRS has achieved much, and provides the toolkit for specifiers and users rightly concerned about whether the ongoing production of steel products are checked to comply with Australian and New Zealand Standards. “Don’t Assume your Steel Complies” has become the watchword for compliance, and therefore strengthening ACRS further to provide the necessary checks of compliance is what the industry needs.
ACRS invites comment on how it can build further on this capability, and support the non-compliant building products agenda, with which the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and associated groups are grappling. Does ACRS provide all you need from steel product certification to have confidence in your steel supply? What should ACRS be doing? Or not doing? What steel and related products should ACRS certify, and how?
If you would like to be involved in these discussions, please email ACRS, giving your name, contact details, affiliation and suggestions for any new products, extensions, reductions, amendments, or other changes to the ACRS third party product certification scheme. This is your opportunity to make the ACRS scheme work better for you!
The review process approved by the ACRS Board is as follows: Once interested parties have submitted their ideas the scheme, such as new areas of certification, or suggestions on possible changes to the ACRS Scheme Rules, these together with the proposals received so far, will be discussed in public forum by a new sub-committee to the Audit & Assessment Committee (ACRS awarding body), chaired by Nicholas Hill, who is a current ACRS Director and Executive Committee member, as well as Chief Executive of the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand (BOINZ).
The sub-committee’s reports will be considered by the ACRS Board at meetings in May and August, with a planned completion of the review process and publication of the Audit & Assessment Committee’s findings. If the Board’s decision includes implementation of any changes that might be agreed, then these would likely take effect from 1st January 2017.
We look forward to hearing from you. Please respond by May 31st.
For further details please contact:
The Australasian Certification Authority for Reinforcing and Structural Steels Ltd
Phone: +61 2 9965 7216 | Fax: +61 2 9965 7219
Email: admin@steelcertification.com
www.steelcertification.co.nz
Update shared by General Manager Structural Systems Dr Stephen Hicks