7 minute read
Member Benefit Spotlight
MEMBER BENEFITS: A spotlight on marketing
As a member of the UK’s leading Trade Association for landscape professionals, you can access a range of carefully selected and hand-crafted benefits. From legal expertise to networking opportunities there are many ways to reap the rewards of your membership.
From the 2021 Annual Members’ Satisfaction survey it was evident that marketing and promotion via the Association was a valued member benefit with 88% rating the Landscape News quarterly journal as good or excellent and 87% rating the Who’s Who Directory as good or excellent. In this issue of Landscape News we shine a spotlight on the marketing opportunities available to you and how to make the most of them.
Login to BALI members’ area
Each member organisation is able to login to the ‘MY BALI’ area of the bali.org.uk website and access a range of useful tools, from order forms for branded vehicle stickers to document templates to videos of past webinars. The area is your digital go-to hub to support your every need. The members’ area is where you can also update your company profile details as shown on the website, add projects, testimonials and update copy for inclusion in the Who’s Who printed directory.
See your name in print in Landscape News
The Association’s quarterly journal is distributed both in print and digitally to members and subscribers. It is the perfect place to share news as well as read in-depth features and advertise your company, products and services. If you would like to share editorial for inclusion, please contact Editor Olivia McCullough at olivia.mccullough@bali.org.uk.
Share news and special offers in the e-newsletter
If you have exciting news or special offers that you wish to share with fellow members, then be sure to send your content with a landscape image to Marketing & Communications Officer, Kiran Lehal kiran.lehal@bali.org.uk by 5pm each Tuesday.
Who’s Who directory
The ‘Who’s Who’ directory is an annually printed guide that includes all Association members, the services that they offer, contact details and more. It is a fantastic tool to get your name out amongst the landscaping industry, so be sure to have your entry up to date.
Webinars and Events
Networking and CPD have regularly come highly on members’ wish-list of benefits that they would like to see, so we are delighted to be providing a full and varied schedule of events. Visit bali.org.uk/events to see the latest events and webinars or contact Regional Support Officer Laura Doyle laura.doyle@bali.org.uk if you are interested in hosting a session. Missed a session? Don’t worry, recordings of webinars can be watched back by logging in to your members’ area at bali.org.uk
Social Media
Association members design, construct, supply and maintain the most beautiful and quality landscaping projects around. We would love to share in your journey and showcase your work across our social channels. Be sure to tag us into your social posts so that we can celebrate together in the best that the landscape industry has to offer!
Instagram: @balilandscapeuk Twitter: @BALI_Landscape
Find out more about all the benefits available at bali.org.uk
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Timber Trade Federation members lead move to quality assured treated wood
As stability returns to the timber industry following the turbulent trading conditions of 2021 the need to quality assure preservative treated wood is again concentrating minds. That’s because members of the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) decided in November 2020 to require independent verification of the impregnation process that produces the treated wood they supply and are now working to make this happen.
TTF members account for over 80% of all the wood placed on the UK market. Such a market share comes with responsibilities and taking the lead on treated wood is seen as essential to their customers buying timber that can be trusted.
The key to demand growth
Until now, UK timber traders have shown little appetite to adopt schemes that independently verify treated wood processes and products. Compare that with the USA, Canada and Scandinavia where third-party quality assurance schemes for treated wood have sustained demand for decades it is no small wonder that the members of the TTF now see quality assurance as the key element in the Federation’s Action Plan to build buyer trust and loyalty and grow demand for added value treated wood products.
Other key elements of the TTF Action Plan include communication campaigns to highlight how treated wood should be specified and marketed to reflect its application, indoors or out as well as guidance on installation good practice. With these campaigns ongoing until 2023, TTF members are now increasingly focused on how they comply with their commitment to getting the treated wood they produce or source from others quality certificated by a recognised third party. For many wood treaters the route to treatment process compliance is the WPA BenchmarkTM quality scheme operated by the Wood Protection Association (WPA).
The WPA Benchmark QA Scheme has been operating successfully for over 10 years and includes wood treaters in the UK and overseas. Under this scheme, individual treatment plants and the products are certificated by a third-party verification audit as being compliant with national treatment standards. The early adopters of the scheme say that certification has dramatically improved customer satisfaction ratings and WPA reports a significant rise in applications to join the WPA Benchmark scheme from both TTF members as well as the companies that supply them. The journey to quality certification starts with understanding the principles on which the WPA Benchmark scheme is based and what’s involved in the compliance process.
The principle on which WPA Benchmark operates
The British Standard for preservative impregnated wood is BS 8417. Published as a Code of Practice this standard recommends the minimum preservative penetration and retention (‘R’ values) that must be achieved to ensure a wood product is treated correctly for its intended application to meet the 15, 30 or 60 years desired service life options set out in the standard.
Whilst BS8417 recommends the levels of preservative impregnation that must be achieved, it does not state how these critical ‘minimum requirements’ are to be achieved. In this respect, BS8417 points to the WPA Code of Practice: Industrial Wood Preservation for practical guidance. As such, the basic principle on which the WPA Benchmark QA Scheme operates is that wood treated consistently in accordance with the WPA Code of Practice is a durable material, resistant to biological organisms and will exhibit the minimum penetration and retention requirements set in BS8417 for a given end use and desired service life specification.
The wood treater being audited must be able to demonstrate that a consistent relationship – known as the ‘Safe Relationship’ – exists between the penetration and retention requirements and the more easily measurable parameters of the treatment process, such as preservative concentration and pressure cycle. They must also be able to demonstrate how these parameters are controlled consistently in all subsequent treatment activities.
Treater or treated product option
The WPA Benchmark scheme can be used as either an ‘Approved Products Scheme’ or an ‘Approved Treater Scheme.
Approved Products, or product groups are lines for which the production process has been subject to audit and for which the required penetration and retention of preservative is verified and backed by test results . The Scope of products approved will be recorded on a company’s WPA Benchmark accreditation certificate which can then be used in sales and marketing materials aimed at buyers.
Approved Treaters are those companies operating a treatment plant or plants that have been subject to audit and shown capable of producing Approved Products under the terms of the Benchmark scheme. Not all treated materials produced by an Approved Treater will necessarily be Approved Products, depending on the scope of products submitted for audit and the commercial objectives of the treater.
Detailed information about the WPA Benchmark and guidance on the thirdparty audit process and the evidence that has to be provided is available on request from the WPA.
Pressure treated wood supplied by a member of the TTF will soon come with third-party verification that it has been treated correctly for its end use - particularly important that wood used outdoors is timber that can be trusted. Find out more at thewpa.org.uk
The WPA Benchmark™ quality assurance scheme for preservative treated wood was designed specifically for wood and woodbased materials produced for the UK market. It operates on the basis of treaters achieving compliance with the WPA Code of Practice for Wood Preservation which is the ‘go to’ reference recommended in the British Standard for treated wood - BS8417
