Annu­al Meet­ing of IBU Ver­i­fiers in Berlin

On 2 March 2017, IBU host­ed all of the ver­i­fiers appoint­ed by the Advi­so­ry Coun­cil at the annu­al ver­i­fi­er meet­ing in Berlin. The pri­ma­ry aim of the one-day meet­ing was to clar­i­fy cur­rent ques­tions con­cern­ing the EPD ver­i­fi­ca­tion process and to ensure har­mon­i­sa­tion of ver­i­fi­ca­tion practices.

Verifizierermeeting IBU 2017Among the train­ing top­ics was an expla­na­tion of Advi­so­ry Coun­cil deci­sions regard­ing PCRs A and B, which had been imple­ment­ed since the last ver­i­fi­er meet­ing, the check­list for updat­ing EPDs that are about to expire, and the data qual­i­ty of LCI data sets. Oth­er top­ics includ­ed the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of EPD tools and the imple­men­ta­tion of peer-to-peer reviews, in which ver­i­fiers com­pare each other’s ver­i­fi­ca­tion practices.

The annu­al ver­i­fi­er meet­ing serves as pro­fes­sion­al train­ing (in the con­text of gen­er­al pro­gramme guid­ance) for the IBU audi­tors, in order to guar­an­tee uni­form prac­tices and a high lev­el of qual­i­ty in the EPD ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.

At present, 20 experts from sci­ence, stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, and test­ing insti­tutes in Ger­many, Swe­den, Italy, Switzer­land, France, and the UK have been appoint­ed by the IBU as inde­pen­dent third par­ties. This is an indi­ca­tion of the con­tin­u­ing high demand from build­ing prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers for EPDs, which allow their data to be ver­i­fied and pub­lished by the IBU.

The ver­i­fi­ca­tion, entail­ing review of the EPD and the under­ly­ing cal­cu­la­tions, and car­ried out by inde­pen­dent third par­ties, is a pre­req­ui­site for every EPD pub­lished by the IBU. The ver­i­fiers are select­ed at the IBU home office for EPD projects that align with their areas of exper­tise. They are respon­si­ble for the scrupu­lous review of the indi­vid­ual EPD doc­u­ments. In addi­tion, they ensure com­pli­ance with deci­sions tak­en by the Advi­so­ry Board. Their inde­pen­dence assures their neu­tral­i­ty with regard to the EPD own­ers. This ensures that IBU EPDs meet the require­ments set forth in the ISO Stan­dard 14025, which calls for inde­pen­dent third-par­ty verifications.

The inde­pen­dent ver­i­fiers are experts in the life cycle assess­ments of build­ing prod­ucts. They exam­ine the EPDs sub­mit­ted by man­u­fac­tur­ers for plau­si­bil­i­ty, con­sis­ten­cy, and com­plete­ness, as well as for the trans­paren­cy of the cal­cu­la­tions and data pro­vid­ed. They then gen­er­ate a ver­i­fi­ca­tion report, which is sub­mit­ted to the IBU.