THEY WHO TEST SLEEP WELL
The results of the tests of stone are a useful tool in many situations. Their purpose is your own safety. They can be useful when making a deal with a client or in case of a lawsuit. You can check the quality of material from the supplier. They can also verify the condition of the machinery. The tests are, finally, also a prerequisite tool for correct making out of the Declaration of Performance.
For instance, if you are a construction company that supplies material for a large construction site, or you have a large contract, then, as the owner of the company, you surely know, what the Declaration of Performance is. In the case of other constructs, the investors encounter this document still quite rarely. This does not mean, of course, that this document is not necessary.
Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of The European Parliament and of the Council, effective from 2013, declares that the Declaration should be made by anybody who supplies stone for the construction market. Material such as cobble stones, paving slabs, kerbs, cladding stone, staircase slabs, floor slabs, modular slabs or masonry stone. All the products that can influence the safety of the construction when they are used. DoP should be delivered to the customer together with the product. It can be in a paper or electronic form.
There are also exceptions from the obligation of DoP providing. In such cases: the product is a one-piece product or a product not produced in serial production; it is made directly on the construction site where it is going to be installed, it is made in traditional craftworking methods or it meets the requirements of heritage conservation.
The Declaration, as the name suggests, includes information declared by the producer who declares there that his product meets certain norms and was made in compliance with certain rules and principles. In the case of masonry products, there are particular norms for concrete products that are delivered to construction sites – e.g. kerbs, slabs for road surfaces, floor and staircase slabs, paving stones etc.
The norms describe parameters that the product needs to have. These are parameters of quality concerning the treatment and parameters concerning material the product is made from. The quality of treatment concerns the precision of size, surface evenness, or the tolerance of unevenness. Normally, it is assessed with metric tools (measuring devices and sliding scales). On the other hand, the quality of material is also assessed based on its physical and mechanical parameters, such as ultimate tension and flexural strength, pull out strength of the anchor bolts, abrasion and frost resistance, and other connected parameters, such as porosity, absorption, and capillary absorption. It is normal that the material suppliers (a mine or an importer) commissions the necessary tests at their own expenses.
The buyer should, therefore, together with the delivered stone, receive a set of tests based on the purpose of the delivered material. But, as is often the case in fact, the things often take a different course than we expect. There can be, for example, suddenly a need (or a necessity) to do new tests on the stone. That could happen for different reasons. The reason could be doubts concerning the quality of purchased material. There could be a dispute with the supplier, a dispute on many levels, including a law dispute. There could be an accident, health injury or death of an employee or a client.
Source: Kurier kamieniarski
Author: Paweł Szambelan | Published: 28. 7. 2021
