The ability to digitally trace the movement and critical data relating to building products will be an important part of ensuring that materials which are used in construction throughout Australia are safe and appropriate for their intended use, an industry summit has head.

In a keynote address to the Building Products Assurance Sumit hosted by Master Builders Association of Victoria last month, Diane Johnson, General Manger – Advocacy and Policy at the Master Builders Association of Queensland, launched the Traceability and Digitalisation of Building Product Information Implementation Guide for the Australian Construction Industry.

Published by the National Building Products Coalition, the document aims to guide efforts to implement digital systems that allow individual products to be traced throughout the supply chain (see below).

According to Johnson, traceability involves the ability to trace the history, application, location or source or a material or product either backward or forward throughout its supply chain.

This includes the stages of product development, testing and certification through to production and manufacture, supply and install on building sites, building operation and maintenance and eventual building or material recycling or reuse.

Two types of data are important:

• transaction data, which tracks the mechanics of a product’s location at any point in time along with its historical movement through the supply chain and any changes which have occurred as the product has moved through the supply chain; and
• product attribute data, which provides important information about the product which is available to participants as it moves throughout the supply chain. This could include, for example: manufacturer and supplier details, statement of application and intended uses, testing details and certificates, manufacturer conformity declarations and evidence (e.g. conformity certificates), any limitations or conditions of use, guidance and instructions for installation and maintenance, ESG related information (e.g. carbon/recycled content etc.) and several other details (see p32 and 33 of guide).

A digital traceability system involves the use of technology in order to make this happen. This will most likely involve barcodes, QR codes or chips.

“Traceability is about the ability to trace the history, application, location, source of the building material, both backwards and forwards through the supply chain,” Johnson said.

“And here I’m talking about the whole supply chain. So from the product manufacturing supply – that’s as a product’s being developed, as you get that testing and certification, developed and manufactured – and then supplied to building practitioners or handed over to the client side of the industry … and then to reuse.”

Whilst much of the need for traceability focuses on product safety and compliance, Johnson says that drivers behind efforts to enable traceability stem largely from environmental, social and governance (ESG) related considerations.

This is occurring as large organisations face increasing pressure for transparency on environmental and human rights performance (e.g. modern slavery etc.) along with increasing regulatory scrutiny around greenwashing.

In construction specifically, there is increasing regulatory focus on embodied carbon – carbon emissions which are associated with the materials and construction processes that go into buildings. In June, the Building Ministers Meeting agreed to ask the Australian Building Codes Board to investigate how to incorporate and fund the inclusion of a future minimum standard for embodied carbon into the 2028 edition of the National Construction Code (NCC 2028). The ability to trace individual products through the supply chain will be essential if the industry is to demonstrate compliance with new requirements should they eventuate.

Already companies such as Lendlease are imposing embodied carbon requirements upon their supply chains. Those wishing to be part of supply chains for such firms will require traceability and visibility in order to demonstrate the carbon credentials of their offering.

On the compliance side, the ability to trace products through the supply chain is critical in order to fulfill information requirements as part of building product safety laws that were introduced in Queensland in 2017 (similar laws have been legislated in NSW but are yet to come into effect) as well as contractual requirements that may apply to building projects.

Beyond that, Johnson says that improved traceability will deliver benefits across the building product supply chain.

These include:

• greater ability for manufacturers and suppliers to identify effective processes and areas for efficiency gain as well as to more easily coordinate product recalls when necessary
• greater ability to identify (and prevent use of) counterfeit goods
• opportunities for high-quality manufacturers and suppliers to derive greater competitive advantage by demonstrating product efficacy though transparent data and information as it flows through the supply line
• opportunities for builders and building practitioners to derive greater efficiency as products move through the supply chain and to more effectively manage risk associated with compliance and contractual obligations relating to suitable product use
• facilitation of innovation by providing building practitioners with greater confidence to adopt new and innovative products supported by transparent data and information
• benefits for product certification and compliance providers through greater value of certification and improved reputation of certifiers by ensuring that certificates being referenced are current and genuine and by enabling greater efficiency in service provision
• overall benefits for government, regulators and society through better building quality and safety, greater productivity and improved social and environmental performance from the built environment sector.

(source: Traceability and Digitalisation of Building Product Information – Implementation Guide for the Australian Construction Industry, National Building Products Coalition, July 2024)

Johnson’s comments came amid the launch of the aforementioned guide.

The guide was published by the National Building Products Coalition – an industry alliance which came together to help advance the implementation of the National Building Product Assurance Framework that was published by the Australian Building Codes Board in 2021.

The Assurance Framework was prepared in response to a recommendation in the landmark Building Confidence Report published in 2018 that the Building Ministers Forum (now called the Building Ministers Meeting) agree to establish a compulsory system of product certification for high-risk building products.

The guide aims to assist both building practitioners and manufacturers and suppliers of building products to implement digital systems to enable the traceability with regard to building products throughout the building product supply chain.

It aims to guide implementation of such systems to ensure that reliable and accurate data is available regarding the history, movement, location and key attributes of building products.

The guide outlines core elements of information which are needed by various participants (see examples mentioned above).

It also outlines a number of traceability ‘protocols’, which aim to lead industry participants toward a share understanding of core building blocks which underpin any traceability system.

These cover shared principles, common data conventions, common data templates, verification credentials/trust ‘anchors’ and industry data tools such as BIM.

The guide also comes as new mandatory traceability requirements are expected to be introduced as part of proposed building product safety reforms which are understood to have the support of building ministers.

As reported on Sourceable last month, a range of recommendations are part of an as-yet unpublished report regarding the regulation of building product quality and safety.

Whilst the report has not yet been publicly released, its main proposals are understood to have the support of building ministers.

In terms of traceability, the reforms will see changes to evidence of suitability requirements so as to require all new building products to be traced throughout the supply chain.

Exactly how this will occur will be determined by a standard that will need to be developed.

However, it is likely that traceability identifiers will be placed onto products and products will be able to be traced throughout the supply chain using barcodes, QR codes or chips.

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