CCPI: Next steps – Assessment & Verification

In her latest Blog, Amanda Long, CEO of the Considerate Constructors Scheme Ltd explains next steps for the CCPI and setting up an independent assessment and verification process.

Assessment and Verification

The Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI) is a crucial development for the construction product manufacturing sector. Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the revelations that we have all witnessed coming from the Grenfell Inquiry, the imperative to act and support the Code and its implementation is ever stronger. Doing nothing is not an option and what we do needs to stand up to deep and distrustful public scrutiny.

Following an extensive industry-wide consultation period, which ran from 1st February to the 30th April, the CCPI is currently being reviewed by the CPA’s Marketing Integrity Group (MIG) to consider and take into account, where possible, the feedback of individual organisations and trade bodies that contributed to the consultation.

In parallel there has been much work into developing a robust and independent assessment and verification process that underpins the CCPI. This process is essential in order to bring value and assurance to all stakeholders – the industry, the public, Government and other external stakeholders.

To deliver this, the independent not-for-profit organisation ‘Construction Product Information Ltd’ (CPI Ltd), has been set-up by the Considerate Constructors Scheme and will be responsible for administering and managing the CCPI. The role of CPI Ltd will be to guard the Code, to assess and verify registrations and Code compliance, and to manage the Code on an ongoing basis.

Adding real value

Let’s be clear, verified compliance with the CCPI will bring value in itself:

• Independent and robust validation will regain the trust of the public and external stakeholders, setting the market for UK construction products ahead of others.
• Participating companies will fundamentally benefit from getting their house in order – facilitating compliance with anticipated new regulatory requirements and giving specifiers and clients assurance regarding the performance of the construction products they select.
• The focus on the culture, leadership and ethics the CCPI brings builds trust, supporting the environment for healthy challenge within the company regarding product performance, ensuring that product information is reliable and correctly stated.
• As the Building Safety Regulator and Construction Product Regulator get established this is a clear way of the industry showing it is up to the challenge and responding fully to the issues being raised.

Keeping costs down and leveraging existing product assurance

Third-party assurance for business activities is an accepted and necessary business cost and manufacturers have plenty of experience of this. So, it has to be expected that there will be costs associated with third party assessment and verification of compliance with the CCPI. In developing a robust assessment and verification process we are working to keep costs down.

CPI Ltd has been set up as a not-for-profit organisation, we are sharing back office services with other established schemes to reduce costs and generate at scale efficiencies and we will be utilising digital tools where possible to assist in the assessment and verification process as well as using human assessors.

To ensure that we minimize the internal cost of compliance for manufacturers, we are designing our assurance process and tools to share common data across a group of companies, brands and product sets ensuring minimal duplication of data input. We will also be working with industry bodies and trade associations as we create a database of regulation, standards, certification, classification, and codes of practices to automate verification of product set compliance as far as possible.

Timescales

It will be a busy summer for all. CPI Ltd website will be up and running by the end of June and will be taking early expressions of interest. This is for companies who are interested to find out more and signal that they are interested in proving compliance to the CCPI. This does not commit the company to anything at this stage. It is an indication of interest. We do appreciate that companies will need to understand the costs and assessment process in detail before going forward to assessment.

The end-to-end assessment and verification process is currently in development. We will be piloting this during Q3. Following this, information will be provided to confirm costs and the independent assessment and verification process.

We are aiming to have assessments ‘go live’ by the end of the year. It is expected that there will be a launch event nearer the time.

In the interim period, we will also prepare some initial guidance about what to expect from assessments so that companies can make a start on getting themselves ready for assessment later in the year. We expect this to be available for distribution in July.

In the meantime, to register your interest or if you’d like to learn more about the assessment and verification process, register your details here.

Amanda Long

Chief Executive
Construction Product Information Ltd
Considerate Constructors Scheme Ltd
Building a Safer Future Ltd