FIS and NBS, the leading specification platform for the construction industry, announced this week that NBS has now formally recognised the FIS Acoustic Verification Scheme within their product selection tool NBS Source.  This change means that specifiers can search for partition and operable wall systems that have been verified through the FIS Acoustic Verification Scheme (AVS), and make verified acoustic claims part of the chosen product specification. 

This update to the NBS system builds on the partnership NBS and FIS announced in August 2020 that is aimed at driving up standards and compliance through information sharing and best practice amongst construction professionals.

The FIS Acoustic Verification Scheme was established to introduce standard methodology and support honest and consistent declaration of acoustic performance for partitions and operable walls. The FIS partnership with NBS means that specifiers will also clearly be able to see which products on NBS Source have AVS certification and which do not.

The FIS Acoustic Verification Scheme was created to enable manufacturers to verify acoustic airborne sound tests against an agreed criterion and a methodology to present these to market in a consistent and transparent manner. The scheme enables best practice and prevents inaccurate or misleading information from undermining the market and responsible manufacturers and suppliers.

Commenting on the latest update, Iain McIlwee, Chief Executive of FIS said:

“It is vital that we make it easy to get it right.  Specifiers have a difficult role in bringing together a huge amount of information and it is easy to get it wrong.  This is compounded by the use of misleading, or in some cases falsified data, that can mean clients end up paying for acoustic performance that is not achieved.  By being able to bring NBS users as much information as possible at specification point is crucial in making the right building choices.”

Phil Simpson, Technical Content Manager, NBS added:

“It is initiatives like this that drew us to working with FIS, who are a real driving force within the industry and use their technical knowledge and work with their community to help drive up standards and support effective specification.  Simply put the Acoustic Verification Scheme helps bring rigour and supports the specifier.  In working with FIS and organisations like them we are ensuring we are including industry best practice in our content and delivering this efficiently and effectively for our specification customers, who in turn can benefit from having the right information at their fingertips.”

Details of the scheme have also been built into the NBS Chorus cloud-based specification writing platform.