The UK’s Certification Authority for Reinforcing Steels (CARES) has joined BRE’s scheme for responsible sourcing.

CARES has become the most recent licensee under the responsible sourcing framework standard for construction products, which is operated by BRE. BES 6001 was first published over seven years ago and seeks to give assurance about the governance and provenance of the constituents of the construction product as well as the environmental and social management and reporting of the organisation itself.

BRE head of responsible sourcing Dr Shamir Ghumra said: “This is a great step forward for responsible sourcing. CARES will join our other licensees (BSI, Lucideon, Intertek and CPC) in offering BES 6001 certification to the market. CARES are becoming a licensee at a time of growth for the standard and in 2016 we will be producing an update to the current version of the standard to better reflect the evolving landscape for construction products with changes in legislation such as the Modern Slavery Act.”

CARES also operates a separate sustainability scheme based on BS 8902 called the Sustainable Constructional Steel (SCS) scheme.   

Lee Brankley, CEO of CARES said: “We are delighted to become a licensee for BES 6001 which broadens our service offering to constructional steel suppliers. We believe that our ability to offer BES 6001 alongside CARES SCS scheme certification will serve the needs of suppliers and users of constructional steel products.”

The BES 6001 standard has grown significantly over the past seven years; certification now covers over 90 organisations and more than 20 different product groups in many countries.