The Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards has given stakeholders in the construction sector a 60-day moratorium for the enforcement of a building standard on the use of cold-formed steel.
The moratorium on TTS 598:2019 – cold-formed steel framing members for structural applications – specification (first revision) began on August 26 and will end on October 25. Enforcement will begin on October 26.
Rodney Ramnath, manager, certification division of TTBS, announced the moratorium during a virtual stakeholders meeting on August 25 that included manufacturers, distributors, hardware owners and other interested parties. The meeting was held to discuss the requirements of the standard, as well as provide details on TTBS’ enforcement regime for it.
Following the moratorium all materials used within TT must comply with the specifications set out in the national compulsory standard. Stakeholders must get product certification and licensing from TTBS’ certification division to show compliance.
The standard specifies requirements for cold-formed steel framing members for use in structural applications such as in the framing of roofs and walls. Included are requirements for the steel sheet, sectional parameters, member characteristics, sampling, testing, labelling and compliance.
The standard applies to cold-formed steel framing members manufactured from steel sheets, zinc or aluminium-zinc alloy coated by the hot-dip method and of base metal thickness from one mm to three mm. This standard does not apply to decking sheets. Structural elements for which cold-formed framing members are used include wall elements such as girts, studs and runners, and roof elements such as purlins and truss chords.
Enforcement of the standard is intended to protect the consumer against danger to health or safety, and ensure acceptable quality of the products. The product certification and licensing programme will include audits of the manufacturers’ production and quality systems, as well as surveillance, label inspections and testing of the products, which are to be done on a continual periodic basis.
During the consultation, TTBS executive director Derek Luk Pat thanked stakeholders for their participation and added that the enforcement of compulsory standards is part of the bureau’s mandate under the Standards Act No 18 of 1997 as the national standards and quality certifying body, and is aligned to TTBS’ national standardisation strategy.
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