Performance Criteria
Certifiers shall confirm that the project records are comprehensive, well-presented and meet the scheme requirements.
Background
It is a requirement of the Scheme that Approved Certifiers agree to have their certification activities audited by SER. To facilitate this the Approved Body should ensure that the records relating to the design of the project are maintained in a format which means they can be made available at audit. It is the responsibility of the certifier to see that the records that they use for the purpose of certification are comprehensive and that they are presented in a manner that allows the design methodology to be easily followed.
Guidance
Certifiers are expected to check that the projects records include copies of the drawings (Engineers, Architects and those prepared by other designers) and specifications issued with the warrant application, calculations, test results/component certification, reports, correspondence and other information used to assist them in arriving at their decisions.
Drawings, calculations and specifications shall meet the minimum requirements set down by BSD and SER in their guidance documents.
ICE have published a document ‘Submission of Structural Engineering Data for Approval under Part A1 of the Building Regulations’. IStructE have also published guidance in The Structural Engineer, February 2015. The guidance given in these documents is applicable to the submission of structural designs for certification of in Scotland.
It should be noted that there is no requirement to keep project records as hard copies, although it may be required that certain project records are made available in hard copy at any on-location audit.
SER Guidance Note 11 gives guidelines for Checking the Structural Design of Buildings. The document does not give guidance on how checking should be recorded so that evidence of checking can be demonstrated at audit.
Providing evidence of checking is straightforward where the documents are hand-generated and stored as hard copy. However, many calculations are now prepared using different computer programs and stored digitally. In these situations options include:
- Every page of the document can be printed, checked, annotated and initialled. The hard copy can be saved or scanned and saved in a digital format such as pdf file.
- A digital copy of the document can be checked, annotated and saved.
- A paper or digital copy of the documents may be checked and a record of the check, including comments may be saved in a separate document.
- Providing copies of email correspondence between the checker and the designer.
In all cases it is important that actions and subsequent reviews arising from comments are recorded.
Examples of Major Non-conformances
Absence of or grossly inadequate records
Examples of Improvement Issues
Insufficient, inadequate or poorly presented records.
March 2022
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