Door Industry Journal - Winter 2013

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 56 THE door industry journal winter 2013 building hardware ASSA ABLOY SECURITY SOLUTIONS ANNOUNCE FURTHER CPD AVAILABILITY ASSA ABLOY Security Solutions has launched a new RIBA-approved CPD course focusing on Door Closers, demonstrating its continued investment in support of its architect customers. The CPD seminar, entitled ‘Opening Your Eyes to Door Closers: A Guide for Architects’, will cover the function of a door closer, the different types of door closer available, specification considerations, and the relevant standards, regulations and tests. The seminar also draws upon a real-life application, looking at a project recently undertaken by ASSA ABLOY Security Solutions at Heriot-Watt University, where door closers were successfully specified and installed across a large-scale new student residences complex. Suitable for architects working across a variety of sectors - from healthcare and education, to financial and commercial applications - the seminar will inform participants of everything they need to correctly specify door closers, in line with the legislative demands of their building environment. Upon completing the CPD seminar, participants will gain training points towards their yearly requirement, having worked across inclusive design, health & safety and compliance competencies under the RIBA CPD core curriculum. Claire Jones, CPD Co-ordinator for ASSA ABLOY UK, said: “Having an established and successful range of RIBA accredited CPD courses, we are pleased to bring this new addition to our seminar offering. “Whether they’re aiding acoustics, security, fire safety or accessibility, a door closer is a critical part of an overall access system. I hope this opportunity to understand a door closer’s functionality will help our architect customers to stay at the very forefront of doorset specification. “The courses are available at our ASSA ABLOY Training Academy, based in the Midlands, offering easy access and good transport links. For additional flexibility we are able to conduct the seminars on site, or at an Architects’ practice.” For further information or to book a CPD seminar, please contact Claire Jones 01902 364 587 or visit www.assaabloy.co.uk ARGE EXPLAINS EPDS Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are the most effective way for communicating a product’s verifiable and accurate environmental information, and following the introduction of the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR) these are becoming increasingly imperative. EPDs are designed to offer a coherent expression of data throughout the life cycle of a product, but this requires that all underlying information is consistent and comparable. BS EN 15804:2012 provides the framework for ensuring all EPDs of construction and hardware products are derived and presented in a harmonised way. Providing a means for developing EPDs, BS EN 15804:2012 is part of a suite of standards that are intended to assess the sustainability of construction works and define core product category rules (PCR) for Type III environmental declarations. This includes describing which stages of a product’s life cycle are considered in the EPD and how a Life Cycle Inventory, which underlies an EPD, is calculated. Importantly, it also defines the conditions under which hardware products can be compared, which is crucial for specifiers, as well as manufacturers. In practice the information on an EN 15804 compliant product or one with an EPD may look very different. Whilst, the information is fixed by the standard’s requirements its format is not, therefore ARGE’s generic EPDs, which it plans to produce, can be used across a range of applications and support Pan-European markets. EPDs will have some similarities, for example the same 24 environmental indicators that will be consistently laid out in tables using the same 17 life cycle modules. The introduction of EN 15804 and EPDs across Europe, combined with EN 15978, which provides the rules for evaluating and reporting the whole life impact of a building over its lifetime, is crucial for those supplying to and operating in the construction industry. Now that these standards are available together, Europe should be able to adopt a consistent method of measuring and reporting on the impacts of embodied carbon across the construction industry. The development of generic EPDs from ARGE, will be critical in enabling hardware manufacturers in accessing the construction market and remaining competitive in a market increasingly subject to European and international standard ratification. To find out more about ARGE’s EPDs you can engage with ARGE on its website forum at http://arge.org/forum or follow ARGE on Linked In http://www.linkedin.com/company/arge