Independent, and structured to stay that way

How the laboratory started

Two fire engineers left a certification body in 1997 because they had grown uncomfortable with an arrangement where the organisation testing a product also sold the certificate that followed. The laboratory opened the next year in a single hall with one furnace and the single flame cabinet.

The second hall and the vertical furnace came in 2006, the external rig in 2014 after Building Regulations work made full-scale cladding evidence unavoidable. Staff now number twenty-six, of whom eighteen are technical.

What independence costs

We do not certify products, so we cannot sell you the certificate after the test. We do not offer consultancy on reformulation, because advising on a change and then testing the result is the same conflict in a different order. We turn away work where a client asks for an opinion in advance of the data.

All three of those decisions cost revenue. They are also the reason our reports are accepted without argument, which is the entire commercial proposition.

Our people

Eighteen technical staff across two halls: test engineers, specimen preparation, instrumentation and the reporting team. Test engineers are qualified in fire engineering or materials science and are signed off on individual methods rather than on the schedule as a whole.

We list roles rather than names because a test is witnessed, run and reported by different people and signed by the technical manager. The report belongs to the laboratory.