STI is now qualified as a UL Certified Technical Evaluator under UL’s Technical Developer Program (TEDP)! To get there, all our Engineering Services staff in North America and Internationally, responsible for issuing Engineering Judgments, had to pass the UL TEDP exams. UL then audited our processes to verify compliance with the program. Now that we are in, UL will continue to audit us to ensure that we are adhering to our policies and management system.
Being part of this program should help with the acceptance of EJs by Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs) since they should now have greater confidence that EJs are being issued based on appropriate testing, on sound Engineering principles, to the IFC guidelines, and that they will pass the stated ratings if fire tested. The hope is that this will cut down on the additional requirements that AHJs often impose and reduce the number of AHJs that entirely refuse to accept EJs.
So how do we prove compliance? Easy! Since we are now qualified, we are listed on UL’s Product iQ®. You can get there by following this link: UL Product iQ (ulprospector.com). Once on the page, you will see a list of icons under the “IQ PLUS SEARCH TOOLS” heading, as shown in Figure 1.
Click the “Authorized Service Providers” icon to expand that list and select the circled link as illustrated in Figure 2.
The STI file number is R41254, so we are listed first on the page. Next, click on the top link for our listing, as described in Figure 3.
This will open our listing which is shown in Figure 4. This can be printed and sent out to anyone that requires evidence of compliance.
Figure 4
You will notice that we are approved to issue EJs for Through Penetrations, Joints & Curtain Wall (Perimeter Fire Containment) and to North American and European test standards. Depending on where the projects are in the world, we will continue to issue EJs referring to the most appropriate test standards since most of the world accepts either or both test standards.
I will continue to send updates in future editions of The Burn Newsletter, as we move along with this program.
Additional information is available on UL’s website which you can access by following this link: Technical Evaluation Developer Program | UL Solutions.
This article, by Julio Lopez, CFPS, Director of Engineering Services, originally appeared in the Spring Wrap-Up 2024 edition of The Burn.