This Big Interview feature sees our Editor, Roshini Bains, discuss the complex world of roofing with James Talman, CEO of the National Federation of Roofing Contractors.
Could you provide me with some background into the association?
NFRC (National Federation of Roofing Contractors) is a membership association and has been established for 130 years this year. Over that time, it’s grown to become the largest and most influential roofing trade association in the UK. We are all about promoting quality contractors, quality workmanship and quality products—if you like, the roofing industry’s quality assurance stamp!
NFRC also owns NFRC Competent Person Scheme (CPS) which certifies roofing companies to sign off their retrofit roofing works without the need to involve a building control officer.
How does your association support its members?
We have a fantastic team who ensure our members have easy-to-understand, accessible technical standards and guidance documents for all roofing types and work. This helps ensure contractor members are up to date on current best practice, changes to roof standards, working conditions, health and safety, and so on.
Members also have the option of being part of several specialist technical committees (by roofing discipline) which provide conduits for knowledge to be shared, best practice to be established and then communicated out to the rest of the membership network. NFRC also provides business advice, particularly to SMEs (who form a large percentage of our membership), supports skills development and career progression within the sector and helps facilitate best in class training opportunities. Our focus is always on providing practical support to emphasise the professionalism of our members.
We are very active in contributing and challenging government policies. This has been particularly busy over the past few years concerning topics such as building safety, post-Brexit regulations, Net Zero and all the impacts of COVID-19 from initially providing guidance and support to enable members to trade whilst others were locked down, to the consequential challenges of material and labour shortages compounded by rapid price inflation.
It is essential that property owners and developers are aware of our standards and want to employ our members. Being a member of NFRC means being audited and complying with our code of practice. Building owners and designers will shortly be able to access our technical guidance to aid their procurement and selection of a contractor.
How integral is your association in the housing sector?
Very much so. We have a special housing group which consists of contractor members who are key partners to major developers alongside our supplier and merchant members. Through this group and our analysis member surveys, we are working closely on the implementation of the Future Homes Standard in England and equivalent programmes in the devolved nations.
We are also very active contributors to the domestic housing retrofit market. As mentioned at the start of the interview, we have over 500 contractors who are authorised to release building control certificates on completing their work. These businesses are regularly audited by our team of independent inspectors. We are also in the final stages of being accredited to deliver PAS 2030 certification for domestic energy efficiency measures.
Read more of the latest developments in our new edition: May 2022 Issue Form – Show Home Magazine (yourshow-home.com)
Media contact
Roshini Bains,
Editor, Showhome Magazine
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: [email protected]
