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Dubai fire testing laboratory approved by global safety company.
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| 1 Nov 2011 |
The UAE-based building assembly testing laboratory, Thomas Bell-Wright International Consultants, announced today that it has been qualified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) as a subcontractor laboratory for fire testing of fire rated doors and dampers according to UL standards.
“Manufacturers seeking UL approval for such products can now have the testing performed locally in Dubai, instead of sending them to UL’s Northbrook, Illinois testing facility or another UL subcontractor laboratory abroad. UL manages the entire testing and certification process through one of their local India or Middle East offices which can be found on www.UL.com. Certification based on testing, is a requirement for obtaining Product Approval from the Civil Defence in the UAE and other jurisdictions,” said Tom Bell-Wright, founder and CEO of Thomas Bell-Wright International Consultants, “and we are glad now to be able to provide local support for those companies and organizations that require UL certification.”
Established in the US in 1894, UL is a global independent safety science company offering expertise across five key strategic businesses including product safety. Globally, manufacturers now produce over 66,000 different UL certified products and the UL symbol appears on more than 20 billion products.
“We are particularly proud to have been qualified by such an internationally-renowned and respected organization as UL, which now has over 1,400 current safety standards and reaches out to 1.5 billion consumers worldwide,” said Bell-Wright.
“Under a system called ‘Accreditation’, laboratories are required to operate a quality management system in accordance with the ISO 17025 standard (similar to ISO 9000 for manufacturers). The standard regulates control of documents, procedures, calibrations, internal audits, records, reports and so on. We are accredited by UKAS to conduct fire testing under approximately 25 international standards.
Jean-Philippe Kayl and Tom Bell-Wright (seated) making the grade with their fire testing furnace.
“Complying with UL’s requirements is very similar. UL has been testing and writing safety standards for almost 100 years providing a high level of consistency in testing and quality engineering judgement in the certification process. It is not easy to become an approved subcontractor laboratory for UL, or indeed to maintain that approval. We see ourselves as a catalyst for growth in the manufacturing sectors of the GCC and India by being able to provide testing locally under the auspices of such internationally recognized organizations.”
“We were always confident that we would make the grade,” said Jean-Philippe Kayl, Fire Testing Manager.
Apart from conformity to UL10c and UL10b for doors, and UL555 for dampers (fire and hose stream only), Kayl also announced that the laboratory in Dubai is currently working to expand the UL relationship to include Reaction to Fire testing to ASTM E84 and UL723 in the Steiner Tunnel apparatus.
“These tests measure flame spread and smoke generation for materials such as wall coverings, ceiling tiles, flooring etc., in support of the new UAE Life Safety Code and the recently adopted IBC (International Building Code) and will shortly be added to the list of tests accepted by UL and UKAS. These test are quite different from and use different equipment than the Resistance to Fire testing in the vertical furnace,” he said.
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