Dr Andrew Wheeler recently presented to NATA’s (Australia’s leading national accreditation body) Accreditation Matters conference on Digital Verification. The conference discussed the digital certification revolution – how technology was advancing accessible, verifiable product and certification information.

As paper-based compliance certificates can be faked, digital certification brings more robust trust to the certification of products like steel.

Digital verification globally

There has been international progress around supply chain traceability, including via UN/CEFACT interoperability standards, W3C, GS1 and other initiatives.

In practice, this requires companies to issue data regarding the products they are selling. This data is shared digitally and would include credentials of compliance. The credentials would include certificates of compliance or even ESG credentials. The companies would digitally share these credentials at the point of transaction (when selling or delivery product). While the companies would have the flexibility to share only the data that they wish, any issued credentials would be verified through an independent “trust anchor”.

ACRS role in steel certification

ACRS certification is necessary for a variety of reasons. Non-conforming steel is a major issue in supply chain. Fake or non-compliant steel test certificates are common in the industry and on the increase in Australia and New Zealand, where significant qualities of steel are imported. In addition, there is often inadequate product traceability.

Non-conforming steel poses significant risks for all parties. It increases structural and durability risk and end user safety concerns, as well as financial, reputational and legal implications for suppliers and buyers.

While test certificates are required as proof of compliance; they require levels of expertise, additional time for review, and come with the providence and traceability challenges. The ACRS certification and traceability provides the industry confidence in the procurement of compliant steels.

A need for digital solutions

Steel buyers and users need product conformity to ensure public safety; and are being pushed to raise sustainability credentials, and construction productivity. Part of the solution to all these needs is to specify the appropriate levels of product certification and couple it with digital product traceability from source to site.

ACRS Cloud solution offers product certificate verification in a secure digital environment, in an app which can’t be faked or corrupted. It also offers batch certification for enhanced product traceability. ACRS Cloud verifies certification for over 100 suppliers from 25 countries for construction materials supplied to AS, NZS, EN and BS Standards, along with various Government specifications. It benefits parties through the supply chain, from steel producer to fabricator to processor, trader or importer, and on to site. It offers an accelerated, automated, secure and confidential digital certification verification and traceability process that’s open source and system agnostic.

The ACRS Cloud continues to demonstrate its usefulness, with numerous falsified certificates identified over the last 12 months. If relying on ACRS certificates, ensure you have the app to validate the certificates in real time.

Implementation of digital steel certification verification

ACRS Digital certification aligns with the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP). 

The UNTP is divided into two parts. The “core” specification defines the standards such as resolvable identifiers, certifications, digital product passports, and traceability events for highly scalable publishing, discovery, and linking of supply chain data across multiple actors. 

The “trust” specification adds mechanisms to enhance the trust and integrity to the claims made by supply chain actors.

As a Project, ACRS has successfully trialled a third-party app that enable ACRS to demonstrate the value of the UNTP approach. The project demonstrated ACRS system using the UNTP approach has the capability to issue verifiable credentials for its certificates.

These advancements will greatly enhance security certainty and traceability around steel certification to make our built environment safer and more compliant.