FSC Project Certification: The Path to Sustainable Building
Why project certification?
- You have the option to obtain certification for your organisation that applies to any projects you manage on a continual basis. This can reduce costs in the long-term.
- Both you and your clients can rest assured that the material in your projects are responsibly sourced, recycled, or come from well managed forests.
- Your projects and products become more appealing to both investors and users when you show your support for environmentally friendly practices through FSC-certified wood and wood-based products.
- You gain access to new avenues of promotion by using the FSC trademarks on your own projects’ promotional materials.
Who is it for?
Project certification is applicable to organisations managing projects that use forest-based material/products and want to promote and claim them as being FSC-certified.
It can be applied to the production or the renovation of construction or civil engineering projects (e.g. an office building, a condominium of houses, event infrastructure such as concert stages, stand in a trade fair, a timber bridge), individual art or decorative object (e.g. sculpture), or transport vehicles (e.g. maritime vessels) that are made of or contain forest-based materials.
Organisations that are certified according to the project certification standard can issue project statements to identify their projects as being FSC-certified. The standard can be applied by a single organisation for a single project, but it can also be combined with the standard FSC-STD-40-003 enabling its application by participating sites of group and multi-site certificates that manage multiple projects. The organisation may choose to only become certified for the duration of the project (one-time certification) or to retain certification for managing multiple projects (continuous certification that can be renewed every 5 years, allowing the management of multiple projects).
Project certification standards
The objective of the project certification standard is to provide the minimum requirements for the certification of organisations that manage projects to demonstrate that all, or a defined part, of the forest-based materials used in projects originate from well-managed forests, controlled sources, reclaimed materials, or a mixture of these, and that any associated claims are legitimate and accurate.
Steps to certification
Source FSC-certified materials
Source FSC-certified forest products from FSC-certified suppliers.
Get quotes
Contact FSC-accredited certification bodies to request quotes.
Choose a certification body
Submit a certification application to the FSC-accredited certification body of your choice.
Collect supporting documents
Collect the information needed to meet the necessary requirements.
Get your documents validated
Your FSC-accredited certification body validates whether your operation complies with the FSC requirements.
And go!
If you comply with the standards, you will be given an FSC certificate and your certificate details will be added to the FSC certificate database. You will be issued with an FSC certification code (XXX-COC-000000) and a trademark licence code (FSC-C000000) and can use the FSC trademarks to promote and communicate about your FSC-certified projects.