About the scheme
Good products.
Honest answers.
The scheme was founded by Richard Bate, who has spent more than 25 years working in the testing, assessment and certification of fenestration products.
Richard has worked in, founded and owned UKAS-accredited testing and certification organisations, giving him experience across the full process — from working as a test technician in a laboratory, through to running certification schemes, leading testing/certification organisations and many years of assessing how products perform and how the resulting evidence is presented to the market.
This new venture has grown directly from that experience.
Why the scheme exists
Over the years, Richard has seen first-hand how difficult it can be to make meaningful comparisons between products. Performance figures can be generated using different methodologies, different assumptions and different approaches to testing and simulation. To a customer, however, those figures can sometimes appear directly comparable when they are not.
At the same time, good products can lose out to products with stronger marketing. Manufacturers should be able to promote the performance of their products. But customers, specifiers and industry professionals should also be able to understand the evidence behind those claims and make meaningful comparisons.
That is the problem this scheme was created to address
Remove the guesswork
The aim is simple: to make product performance easier to understand and compare.
Rather than relying solely on manufacturer claims, the scheme looks at the evidence behind those claims and applies a consistent approach to assessing performance.
The objective isn’t to make products look better. It is to establish what the available evidence actually demonstrates.
That means looking beyond a headline figure and considering how the result was produced, what methodology was used and whether the information provides a meaningful basis for comparison.
Evidence before claims
The principle behind the scheme is straightforward:
Performance claims should be supported by appropriate evidence, assessed using a consistent and transparent approach, and presented in a way that allows meaningful comparisons to be made.
We don’t believe customers should simply accept a manufacturer’s claims because they are confidently presented.
But equally, customers shouldn’t be expected to simply trust another badge or logo.
The scheme has to earn that trust.
That means being transparent about how products are assessed, what evidence is required and how performance information is evaluated.
Our role is not to tell customers which products to buy. It is to provide better information on which to base that decision.
25 years of testing and certification
Richard’s career has been focused on understanding how products perform, how that performance is tested and how the resulting evidence can be used to support credible assessment and certification.
From working hands-on as a test technician, through to founding and running testing and certification organisations and certification schemes, that experience has provided an understanding of the challenges that exist at every stage of the process.
That experience is at the heart of this scheme.
The new venture brings that knowledge into a process designed to provide greater clarity, consistency and confidence when assessing fenestration product performance.
Good products deserve to be judged on evidence
The industry has no shortage of performance claims.
What is often harder to find is clarity about the evidence behind them.
This scheme exists to help close that gap — giving manufacturers an opportunity to demonstrate the performance of their products, while giving customers and specifiers a clearer basis on which to compare them.
Good products deserve to be judged on evidence — not simply on how well they are marketed.
What we are
- An independent verification scheme for rooflights and roof windows
- A defined set of requirements, applied consistently
- A public directory of verified products
- A testing capability that can come to your site
What we are not
- A trade association
- A manufacturer, supplier or specifier of rooflights
- A building control body — a certificate is evidence, not approval
- A scheme where taking part is enough to get a badge
Start a conversation
Get in touch
If you make rooflights or roof windows and are interested in the scheme, we are happy to hear from you.