Delivering real difference
Almost 30 years since the Ratings Council was founded to establish the Window Energy Ratings system for the UK, Richard Sellman, managing director of the BFRC, explains how 2025 is shaping up to be one of their most exciting years yet.
Since 1997, the BFRC has played an important role in helping to raise standards across the fenestration industry.
As the main body to deliver quantifiable and understandable performance measurements for windows, we’re proud to say we’ve become the most trusted provider in this area in the UK. Our ratings scheme gave systems houses, manufacturers and installers a way of highlighting a window’s energy performance over and above that required by the Building Regulations, which is recognisable to the homeowner, and which ultimately delivers a marketing advantage.
Now, almost 30 years on, we’re in the process of delivering significant changes across our operation, which will see us build on that heritage to offer the widest range of testing and certification services, all from a new, purpose-built laboratory based in Telford.
Lip service versus reality
One thing that is of fundamental importance to us as we drive forward with our ambitious plans, is that we do not lose sight of what motivates us – our customer service.
It’s not uncommon to hear that a company is customer focused, but how much of that is lip service and how much is reality? As we grow and expand our services, we’ve been thinking long and hard about what being ‘customer focused’ really looks like. Our foundation is the reputation we have for being credible, reliable and knowledgeable; maintaining and building on this is key.
We’re committed to exceeding the high standards our clients have come to expect. We want to move away from that not uncommon customer / supplier relationship, and grow our reputation as a collaborative partner, on hand when needed to make the process of testing and certification easier.
As we expand our service offering with new testing and certification services, each will be underpinned by ‘The BFRC difference’.
The BFRC difference
Founded on a firm set of principles that underpin the way we work, ‘the BFRC difference’ is our commitment to clients, as to what they can expect when working with us:
- To lean into our knowledge and experience
- To be flexible, approachable, efficient and reliable
- To be proactive, professional, transparent, helpful and supportive
- Support ethical best practise and accountability
- Help develop the wider industry knowledge base
Our aim is to offer the UK’s most wide-ranging testing services for windows and doors. In addition, we will be working in collaboration with other testing partners across the UK to make a much smoother process for our clients, being able to offer complete solutions for their testing and certification needs.
We can also offer R&D services to support product development and analytical services to provide greater depth of understanding of product performance. In a tough market and amidst changing legislation, there is a growing expectation to deliver the designed performance in the installed product, and we want to work with the industry to ensure confidence that products will continue to perform throughout their product lifecycle.
We are fully committed to help raise standards across the industry and we believe the introduction of these new certification schemes and testing services will help do just that.
It’s why we’ve made significant investment in our facilities and why we’ll continue to expand and evolve our offering to ensure we simplify certification for everyone. These are the things that set us apart – it’s ‘the BFRC difference’.