Door Industry Journal - Spring 2016

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 18 THE door industry journal spring 2016 industry news DOOR INDUSTRY COLLABORATES WITH UNIVERSITY We all know our products meet the highest standards, but what are those standards? Depending on the product type, design and specification, we may have come across the ever-present CE Regulations or we may have whiled away the hours poring through The Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations. Or maybe even casually flicked through the essential wisdom of BSEN14351-1 (With the catchy title of “Windows and doors - Product standard, performance characteristics - Part 1: Windows and external pedestrian doorsets without resistance to fire and/or smoke leakage characteristics”). Not forgetting of course, Building Regulations, and why not throw in RIBA requirements while we are at it? We are a highly regulated industry, that seems to be sure. At least that’s what Graham Church of Open Export Technologies www.openexport.org thought when he contacted the DHF office in Tamworth earlier this year. Graham is the MD of Open Export which started life very recently (July 2015) as a response to manufacturers who are just bewildered by the complexity of regulation in their own industries. And it’s not just this country - anyone who has tried to export will know that the regulations in force in the jurisdiction of their chosen product destination can be just as onerous, if not more so. So the idea of Open Export is to bring together all of these protocols into one place and put them into some sort of order that ordinary engineers can understand. Basically, a database. Easy. So far so simple. Well, not quite. You see, this database has got to be big, very big. With lots of detail, tiny detail. And it’s changing, all the time. It’s too much for humans to cope with without some sort of machine help. Enter the budding Alumni of Coventry University. So Graham asked Coventry University to help create this resource. and they responded magnificently by providing a not insignificant number of Computing students to work on the project. The University gets something out of it by exposing their students to a real-world innovation project, and the students get a feather in their cap if they can pull off what is actually quite a complicated bit of computing coding. And of course, if a successful spin-off company results, so much the better. And that is exactly what is happening. And it is being watched with interest by industry and Government. So, to summarise, the students are creating an online database, but crucially, it’s a database without the data. And that’s where our industry comes in. When Graham contacted Michael Skelding, the General Manager of the Door and Hardware Federation in January, he knew that this industry had all the complexity that would test the new database to breaking point. If it works for us, then the chances are, it will work for anyone - that’s the theory anyway. Michael graciously took up the challenge and is now working on behalf of the DHF to liaise with Open Export and Coventry University. Naturally, if representations have to be made to the likes of students, industrialists or politicians, we can count on Michael and Graham to put our case favourably. So what do we get out of it and what do we have to look forward to? If all goes according to plan, we will be the lucky guinea pigs for this new system. By definition, the system will be tailored precisely to our needs - and this is where the collaboration can have a real influence. We get to expose our industry to academia and the government, and have the opportunity to develop connections with both. But best of all, when we test the Beta Release (free of course), we will be using - as far as we know, the only such system in the world. Not only that, but we will get the benefits of using it long before anyone else does. If you want to know more, or want to get involved, you can check out www.openexport.org or contact michael.skelding@dhfonline.org.uk