The BBA is a well-known and respected certification body which, through its testing, inspection and approvals activity, has been supporting innovation in the construction products industry for more than 50 years.

Assurance of quality and safety are key to building product specifiers, installers and end-users. But how do you know the product being considered matches its published specification? It’s an issue that has become more critical post-Grenfell and one that the British Board of Agrément – the UK-leading building products certification body – had been considering for some time. Its answer, launched last year, was the ground-breaking Product Excellence Programme (PEP). Here Head of the BBA Testing Unit, Alvaro Enguita-Gonzalez, explores the objective of the programme.

In October, the British Board of Agrément, in conjunction with Local Authority Building Control, launched 100% Hackitt, a joint venture to press the Government to introduce all 53 of Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations. Claire Curtis-Thomas, Chief Executive of the BBA, discusses why the initiative is important and how the industry can get behind it.

The BBA – or British Board of Agrément to give it its full name – has been an established part of the UK construction industry for more than 50 years, with the sole aim of providing specifiers, installers, users, regulators, manufacturers, insurers and the public with the reassurance they require that building products are safe, reliable, fit for purpose and correctly installed, explains Ramona Donnelly, Operations Manager – Engineering at the BBA.

As the construction industry is seeing an increasing shift towards landfill redevelopment, Stephen Oakden, Director at BE Design – the multi-disciplinary architecture and engineering practice – outlines the biggest obstacles faced by developers when constructing on such sites and how to meet environmental challenges with practical and safe solutions.