PerformWOOD · Performance standards for wood in construction - delivering customer service life needs

The project objective is to kick-start the development of new standards to enable the service life specification of wood and wood based materials for construction. This is critical to ensure the future sustainable use of European forests, to ensure customers of wood products get satisfactory and reliable products and to provide supplementary evidence for life cycle evaluations of construction products. This supporting action will utilise the wealth of research data that exists to analyse material test standards (CEN TC38) for their ability to inform on service life and performance. Historical field data will be reanalysed to extract more information on performance and this will be brought alongside service life expectation information gathered from various user groups. It will connect the material resistance with the moisture risk to inform on service life expectations. The task objectives included:Confirming material resistance measureConfirming a moisture risk measureInterpreting field test results with respect to early decay and predicting the service lifeReviewing present test protocols (EN 599) – is updating necessary?Proposing improved test methods (mainly field tests) and possible new testsProviding a draft interface standard that considers service lifeThe outcome will begin to focus on delivery of reliable products into the hands of specifiers and users of wood products to ensure the future growth of low carbon construction systems made form wood.