FAQs

CE Marking

I want to sell an existing building second hand, do I need to CE mark it?

The CE mark is applied to a 'new' product when it leaves the factory gate. Existing products already in use cannot be CE marked retrospectively, even if they are moved from one site to another. Furthermore, the CE mark does not apply to the whole building, only to the products used to construct it, e.g. the steel frames, so it is meaningless to talk about CE marking the building. If the steel members were salvaged from an existing building and then modified in some way by a fabricator before being re-sold, they could then be considered to be 'new', so may require a CE mark.

My steel frames required modification on site due to poor fabrication and the fabricator is using this as an excuse for not supplying a CE mark.

The fabricated steelwork used to construct the frames should have been CE marked to EN 1090-1 before leaving the fabricator’s yard. Whatever happens to that steelwork on site is irrelevant. It should not have left the fabrication yard without a CE mark and, if it did, the company selling it was breaking the law. If the fabrication was of such poor standard that the building did not meet the requirements of EN 1090, this does not excuse the lack of a CE mark, although it possibly explains it.

Can I replace damaged members in an existing building without replacing the whole building? The frame manufacturer has told me that he needs to replace everything to comply with CE marking rules.

As noted above, the CE mark applies to the frames and not the whole building, so it is perfectly acceptable to supply new CE marked steelwork to repair or refurbish an existing building. There is no need to demolish and replace perfectly good steelwork in order to comply with the regulations. Site works are excluded from the CE marking process, so the erection of the new steel members along with any on-site fabrication (e.g. welding new cleats to an existing rafter) are not covered by the CE mark.

I would like to take down my frames, have them refurbished off site and then re-erected. Do they need a CE mark?

Products are only CE marked when they are placed on the market so a fabricator could take down the frames, refurbish and then re-erect them on the original site them without needing to apply a CE mark.