UKCA Marking of external fire doors

By Wojciech Brozyna, MD of Aluprof UK.

Over the last few years, conformity with legislation and standards present in Europe have been a prerequisite for producing and selling any goods within the EEA. This included products produced here, in the EEA, or from overseas.

Known as CE Marking, it is applicable equally to the manufacture and sale of a paper clip to more complex fire doors and fire screens.

Since Brexit, the UK has launched its own conformity mark, the UKCA Mark, and all products produced outside or inside the UK, for UK use, must carry this new mark from January 2022.

In Northern Ireland, manufacturers have their own UK(NI) mark, which must be used alongside the CE marking.

The product from the end fabricator must be CE Marked (accepted up to the end of 2021) and/or UKCA Marked. This refers to all the parts that make up the final product from various suppliers such as the framing system, glazing and hardware. This must be declared in one document and, on installation, it is not possible to substitute any part. The product, such as supplied in a firescreen, including doors and glazing, is supplied to site complete in a fabricated form, glazing can be supplied separately on a stillage but must be supplied by the ‘end fabricator’.

The door and sidescreens, or top-lights, must fall within a single overall frame, it is not possible to declare and UKCA Mark a coupled door frame to a side screen or toplight. The company installing the product on-site may be another company that has sourced the product from an end fabricator. It is the manufacturer of the installed product that carries the responsibility for the UKCA Marking by ensuring that the installer follows detailed installation instructions.

The pressure is now on manufacturers to ensure that all their products are all reassessed through UK Approved Bodies before the end of this year if they are continuing to be sold in the UK and carry the UKCA Mark.

From November 1, 2019, all external fire-rated doorsets MUST carry conformity marking, CE and/or UKCA (from the being of 2021), to ensure conformity to both BS EN 14351-1:2006+A2:2016 and BS EN 16034:2014.

BS EN 16034 (Pedestrian doorsets, industrial, commercial, garage doors and openable windows) cannot be used on its own for CE and/or UKCA marking purposes as it must be used in conjunction with BS EN 14351-1.

External pedestrian doorsets can include sidescreens as long as they are not coupled. The required characteristics are then raised on the DoP (Declaration of Performance) by the end fabricator based on the ITT data supplied by the systems company and the fabricator’s own CoCoP (Certificate of Constancy of Performance).

A UK-approved body then has to assess the fabricator to AVCP System Level 1 and only then can the UKCA Mark be attached to the product.

As a result of these imposed regulations, BS 476: Parts 20 and 22 can no longer be used as fire test evidence to CE and/or UKCA Mark an external fire rated doorset.

While BS EN 16034 was first published in October 2014, it didn’t become a harmonised standard available for use as CE mark evidence until November 1, 2016. As with all new standards, there is a co-existence period in which current standards run alongside the new standard, which lasted for three years ending on the November 1, 2019.

As for internal fire rated doorsets and screens we still wait for the BS EN 14351-2 (Product standard, performance characteristics; internal pedestrian doorsets) to be cited in the Official Journal of European Union (OJEU), which was expected to be published in November/December 2019. This means that it is currently not possible to CE and/or UKCA Mark internal fire rated doorsets and screens until the harmonisation of this standard occurs.

Products can still be tested to achieve stated performance and covered by third party means such as Certifire.

As aluminium remains the most widely specified material for commercial windows, doors and curtain wall, it should come as no surprise that, as a leading European systems company, Aluprof offers a comprehensive range of fire rated systems. Visit aluprof.co.uk for more details.