Mark of quality?

Used correctly, CE marking gives an assurance that manufactured products conform with the relevant European Directive in areas such as system design, performance and quality control, so any suggestion that this may not always be the case is a serious issue for all reputable installers.

To qualify for CE marking, it is sometimes necessary for manufacturers to submit their products for third-party approval, but there is evidence that this does not always happen. It leads to a situation where, in effect, the CE mark proves only that the manufacturer has made a declaration of conformance. Such unverified statements may, of course, be accurate but they are clearly open to question and the lack of certainty threatens to negate the whole purpose of having the mark in the first place.

BSIA manufacturers strongly support the CE standard but are growing increasingly concerned that it is too easy for equipment to be ‘certified’ without passing the relevant tests. Proper testing obviously has cost implications, so price may be one useful clue.

If the cost of a product seems too good to be true, it may well be. An installer who is tempted to increase competitiveness in this way could be risking serious consequences for his or her long-term reputation.

The consequences of poor standards obviously include low performance levels and malfunctions but faulty equipment could ultimately endanger lives by preventing the transmission of a fire alarm signal, for example.

Quite apart from the potential human tragedy, the legal and financial implications for installers could be severe. And on an operational level, installers should consider the potential long-term cost and disruption of having to revisit customers to repair or replace faulty equipment.

So what should the CE mark mean and what can installers do to protect themselves and their customers?

What does it mean?
All electrical products sold in the EU are subject to a relevant European Directive and a CE marking is a legal requirement. The marking is intended to protect consumers, which includes intermediaries like installers, by providing an assurance that the product meets common standards.

If a manufacturer’s unverified claims are accepted, the robustness of their testing procedures and indeed their trustworthiness become key issues. In practice, there are question marks over how thoroughly the process is conducted and installers should ask serious questions about what checks have been made to ensure that equipment works properly and safely.

The CE mark has become so familiar that many people ignore it and few know what it means. CE is often taken to stand for ‘Certificat Europeanne’ but even this is uncertain and there does not appear to be an official statement on the subject. A number of European Directives created by the European Parliament to standardise the way products are approved and made available to consumers specify the need for a CE Mark.

The whole system is based on trust and this is potentially its flaw because there is a big money-saving incentive to bend the rules

They operate on the principle that products meeting the relevant requirements are not subject to multiple national testing, thereby removing the burden of testing in every EU country where they are sold. The directives cover a range or products from medical equipment to toys. The two of most concern to manufacturers of electronic and electrical products are the Low Voltage Directive (LVD) and the Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive (EMC). The LVD deals with electrical safety, whilst the EMC covers electrical interference.

Where do the problems arise?
The questions over the validity of CE marks arise from another aspect of the European Parliament’s efforts to reduce the burden and cost of testing. In order to do this, the Parliament has given full responsibility for testing to manufacturers themselves, as opposed to a ‘policing’ organisation. The effect of this is that each manufacturer is required, based on knowledge of their own product, to decide which of the CE marking directives apply.

They can seek help with the decision from experts such as electrical test houses but the responsibility is their own. The next step is to decide what testing is necessary to meet the ‘essential requirements’ of the relevant directive. Once they have done so, and the testing is complete, the manufacturer signs a Declaration of Conformity, asserting that the equipment complies with the requirements.

The whole system is therefore based on trust and this is potentially its fundamental flaw because there is a big money-saving incentive to bend the rules.

Compliance with CE standards involves both in-house and external costs that some manufacturers may try to avoid. Although the safety test equipment required for most mains powered devices used by the alarm industry is generally available in any normal R & D department, the expertise and complete understanding of the directive may not be.

A more transparent process is to have products independently tested – and doing so obviously costs money. The costs increase significantly in relation to EMC testing, where the alarm industry is required to meet the EN50130-4 EMC Immunity standard. EN50130-4 applies to every type of alarm equipment and every installation environment, from residential to major industrial premises.

It is a difficult standard to meet, given that alarm products are in plastic not metal boxes, use unshielded rather than shielded cases and that the cables can be hundreds of feet in length. In these circumstances, designing a compliant product requires: EMC trained engineers, relatively expensive good quality components (including sensors with internal protective systems to add to the system’s EMC immunity), experienced printed circuit board (PCB) designers (who know how to minimise the PCB tracks in sensitive parts of the circuitry), as well as EMC components to bypass or block attacking interference.

Finally, the product has to be tested. None of this comes cheap. EMC test equipment, in particu-lar, represents a very significant investment for something that is used only for a small proportion of the financial year. Consequently, the average R & D department does not possess it. It is possible to conduct some pre-compliance EMC testing in-house but it tends to be quite broad-brush in nature and results are not always reliable.

The only alternative in most cases is to employ the services of a test house, which is another expensive proposition. In the UK, for example, a test house will generally charge between £600 - £1,000 per day and in order to meet the ‘essential requirements’ even a simple detector has to pass several tests, some of which can take a whole day to complete.

The test house process goes on for days, at £600 to £1000 per day – It's not difficult to see why an untrustworthy manufacturer might want to avoid it

In practice, your ‘simple’ detector will spend a week at the test house, much longer than that if it fails any of the tests. But if that is a costly business, it pales into insignificance compared to the work required by control panels, where EMC testing involves subjecting a mass of cables that normally operate at 12 volts to a long series of 500 and 1,000 Volt spikes in order to guard against voltages induced from external sources.

This process goes on for days, again at £600 – £1,000 per day. In short, it is not difficult to find plenty of reasons why an untrustworthy manufacturer might want to avoid proper CE design and testing methods.

So what should installers look for?
Perhaps the most important factor to remember is that low priced goods do not always mean best price in the long term.

Never simply assume that all CE-trademarked products are of the same quality; they are not. Installers should not be afraid to ask questions of the manufacturer.

Have they submitted the product for testing, where and with what result?

Do they have design and quality systems in place to ensure that products perform to the same high standard? A cheap alarm product with a CE Mark indicates that you should exercise caution. Can you be sure that the manufacturer has included the likely in-house and external costs of meeting the ‘essential requirements’ in their price?

In short, have they designed their product correctly and carried out all of the necessary testing? The EMC immunity standard exists to provide good quality products that resist and reduce false alarms. Buying non-compliant products is therefore false economy, dangerous to your reputation and potentially harmful to end-users.

* The British Security Industry Association is the trade association covering all aspects of the professional security industry in the UK. Its 550+ members provide over 70 per cent of security products and services and ‘adhere to strict quality standards’. For more information see www.bsia.co.uk, or tel: 01905 21464, info@bsia.co.uk