Blog

It has come to our attention during the process of reviewing reports of recent remote monitoring sessions that the certification of the design of protective barriers is frequently failing to meet the scheme requirements. Approved Certifiers are reminded that they are required to satisfy themselves that adequate details of any pedestrian or vehicle barriers have been prepared and that there are sufficient calculations or other justification to demonstrate their design.

Our favourite blogs to write are always the ones in which we are able to inform you of changes we have made that we believe will make your lives (well, your lives as Certifiers or Certification Coordinators, anyway) significantly easier. That is certainly the case this week!

Our favourite blogs to write are always the ones in which we are able to inform you of changes we have made that we believe will make your lives (well, your lives as Certifiers or Certification Coordinators, anyway) significantly easier. That is certainly the case this week!

We don't want anyone reading the title of this blog to think that we don't enjoy our interactions with SER Scheme members. Additionally, we would always recommend that you contact us if you are unsure of anything. It's just that a fairly hefty proportion of the calls and emails we receive relate to processes that the enquirer did not realise they could solve themselves, rather than having to wait for us to call them back because we were busy dealing with another query.

This blog also looks at processes you may not be aware you can do yourself, concentrating on changing contact, employer and employee details. We will readily accept that it's not the most thrilling stuff you will ever read, but familiarising yourself with these practices will hopefully save you time and effort in the future.

In this week's blog we are going to walk you through the new and significantly improved certification coordinator system.

When we launched the new website in October 2016, several significant changes were made to the way in which Approved Certifiers generate certificates for staged projects. Additionally, the changes that were made to the Schedule 1/Form Q process means that a larger proportion of projects will be staged going forward.

This week we have put together some hints and tips for people that are looking to join the SER Scheme as an Approved Certifier of Design (Building Structures). The advice will be of most use to those that have yet to begin the process, so please pass this to any colleagues that are thinking of applying.

This week's blog is a little different to the norm. We invited an experienced structural engineer and member of SER's Scottish Registration Board to provide some guidance on Typical Reinforcement Details, with a strong emphasis on what constitutes typical.

For this week's blog we thought: what do people appreciate more than others politely pointing out some of the most common mistakes that they make? Quite a lot, admittedly, but we hope you will find the following useful nonetheless.