EN 1090 certification arrives attached to almost every tender response for a structural component, and almost every certificate looks convincing. A logo, a notified body, a reference number. The question a procurement team has to answer is narrower than it looks: does this certificate cover the thing we are actually buying, and is it still valid? Both can be settled in about ten minutes, and this article sets out how.
What an EN 1090 certificate actually certifies
The most common misreading is treating the certificate as a statement about the product. It is not. Under EN 1090-1 a notified body audits the manufacturer’s factory production control, the system by which incoming material is traced, welders and procedures are qualified, dimensions are checked and records are kept. What the body issues is a certificate of constancy of performance for that system, within a defined scope.
The practical consequence matters. The certificate says that the factory is capable of producing to a declared performance and of documenting it. It does not say that the specific span quoted to you has been assessed. That step comes later, when the manufacturer issues a declaration of performance for the component and applies the CE marking. The certificate makes the declaration credible; it does not replace it.
Because the audit is of a system rather than a product, certification is not permanent either. The notified body returns for surveillance audits, and the certificate carries a validity period. A certificate that has lapsed is not a formality to be sorted out later: without a valid one, the manufacturer cannot lawfully issue a declaration of performance.
The scope line is the part that matters
Every EN 1090 certificate names a scope, and the scope is where a tender evaluation should start. Three things in it have to match what you are buying.
Material. EN 1090-2 governs the execution of steel structures and EN 1090-3 the execution of aluminium, and the part number printed on the certificate is what tells you which. A fabricator can hold certification for one and not the other. A company certified for steel structures is genuinely certified, and that certificate says nothing at all about its right to CE mark an aluminium bridge. Larger manufacturers often hold two separate certificates with different scopes, which is normal rather than suspicious.
Execution class. The scope names the highest execution class the factory is certified for, from EXC1 to EXC4. For a public footbridge, a viewing platform or any structure carrying crowds, EXC3 is the level a client should expect. A factory certified to EXC2 can produce excellent work and still be unable to sign for the same structure at EXC3, because the gap is in the quality system rather than in the welders’ hands.
Product type. Some certificates are restricted to particular components or product ranges. If the scope describes welded structural elements for buildings and you are procuring a bridge over a railway, that difference is worth a clarification question rather than an assumption.
Verifying the certificate in ten minutes
The checks below can be done by anyone with the tender response and a browser, and they need no engineering background.
- Find the certificate itself rather than a statement about it. A sentence in a company profile saying the firm is certified is not evidence; the scanned certificate is.
- Read the scope against material, execution class and product type as above. This single step resolves most doubts.
- Check the validity date. Certificates lapse, and a lapsed one has to be replaced before award, not after.
- Identify the notified body and its four-digit identification number, then confirm that the body is actually notified for EN 1090. The European Commission maintains a public database of notified bodies, NANDO, which is searchable by number and by standard.
- Look the manufacturer up in a certificate register. Several notified bodies publish issued certificates in public registers such as en1090.net, and individual bodies run their own. A certificate that also appears in a register is one less thing to verify by email.
- Ask for a declaration of performance from a comparable delivered project. This is the strongest single request in the list, because it shows the system has been used rather than merely audited.
The last point sorts a field faster than the others combined. A manufacturer that issues declarations routinely will send one within a day; one that has never issued a declaration will find reasons why it cannot.
ISO 3834 and ISO 9001: what they prove, and what they do not
Tender responses often include several certificates, and it is easy to assume they are interchangeable. They are not, and knowing what each one covers prevents both overestimating a supplier and dismissing a good one unfairly.
EN ISO 3834 sets quality requirements for fusion welding. It comes in levels: comprehensive, standard and elementary. EN 1090 does not write its own welding rules but refers to this standard, and it selects the level from the execution class, so a factory working at EXC3 is operating to the comprehensive level. An ISO 3834 certificate on its own tells you that the welding system is sound; it does not give anyone the right to CE mark a structural component.
ISO 9001 is a general quality management framework. It applies to any organisation in any sector and says nothing specific about welding, about structural work or about construction products. A factory production control system can be built on an ISO 9001 system, but EN 1090-1 requires it to be adapted to its own requirements, so ISO 9001 is a foundation rather than a substitute.
When a supplier offers ISO 9001 in place of an EN 1090 certificate, the right response is a clarification question, not disqualification. A fabricator with a mature ISO 9001 system is usually the one closest to certification, and the honest answer may simply be that certification is in progress. What cannot happen is CE marking a load-bearing component on the strength of ISO 9001 alone.
What arrives with the structure
The certificate is the qualifying document; the delivery package is a separate matter, and it is worth agreeing in writing before signature rather than discovering the gaps at handover. It normally includes the declaration of performance for the component, the CE marking, material certificates, welding documentation, an inspection and test plan, as-built drawings and a maintenance plan with inspection intervals.
This is the documentation the owner lives with for forty or fifty years, and the part that determines how straightforward it will be to assess the structure’s condition later. The checklist of what to require from an aluminium bridge supplier before signature belongs in the tender documents, not in a phone call two weeks before the opening.
Warning signs in a tender response
A few patterns recur often enough to be worth naming. A certificate supplied without its scope page, or with the scope page illegible. A certificate in the name of a parent company or a trading group rather than the plant that will actually fabricate the structure. A notified body that cannot be found in NANDO under EN 1090. An execution class stated in the covering letter but not visible anywhere on the certificate. A validity date that has passed, accompanied by an assurance that renewal is under way.
None of these is proof of bad faith. Certificates get scanned badly, groups do reorganise, renewals do run late. All of them are reasons to ask one precise question before the evaluation meeting rather than after it.
What this looks like in practice
A real certification scope is specific, and a supplier’s certificate list usually has more than one entry. DR VERSLAS holds a factory production control certificate issued by Kiwa for aluminium structural elements and components at execution class EXC3, and a separate certificate for steel elements at EXC2, both under the Construction Products Regulation. Two materials, two classes, two documents: that is the normal shape of a certification scope rather than a complication.
Any supplier of certified aluminium pedestrian bridges or industrial walkways and access platforms should be able to produce the same breakdown without having to look for it, and should be able to name which certificate applies to the structure being quoted.
Before the next evaluation meeting
Checking a certificate properly takes less time than the clarification round it prevents. Read the scope for material, execution class and product type; confirm the validity date; confirm the notified body in NANDO. Three checks, one page of the tender response, and most of the risk in this part of the evaluation disappears.
It is also worth writing the requirement into the tender in the first place, naming the execution class you expect and listing the declaration of performance among the deliverables. The certification scopes held by DR VERSLAS are published in full for exactly that kind of check, and our engineers will review a draft specification against EN 1090-3 and Eurocode 9 before it goes out to the market.