Kazakhstan Introduces Mandatory Certification for 77 Building Products

Kazakhstan has adopted new technical regulations for construction materials. The previous regulation was adopted 13 years earlier and did not address many important issues in detail.

Order No. 435 of the Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan, dated June 9, 2023, approved the technical regulation “On the Safety of Buildings and Structures, Construction Materials and Products.”

The document takes effect six months after its official publication (December 19, 2023).

The technical regulation establishes minimum mandatory safety requirements throughout the life cycle of buildings and structures, construction materials, and products in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

It also establishes rules for identification, procedures and forms of conformity assessment, including when products enter circulation, and requirements and procedures for marking construction materials and products to ensure their free movement within Kazakhstan.

Before the effective date, the earlier technical regulation “Safety Requirements for Buildings and Structures, Construction Materials and Products,” approved by Government Resolution No. 1202 of November 17, 2010, will be repealed.

“The previous document was adopted 13 years ago and did not specify which standardization documents applied, which precise requirements construction materials and products had to meet, which test methods to use, or which products required mandatory certification. Consequently, certain items could avoid mandatory conformity assessment,” the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development noted.

The new technical regulation introduces mandatory certification for 77 types of construction materials and products listed in Annex 4 (gypsum, lime, all types of cement, clinker, bricks, pebbles, gravel, crushed stone, adhesives, putties, paving stones, granite, construction stone, limestone, slate, central heating radiators and their parts, and others).

Mandatory declarations of conformity will apply to 54 types of construction materials and products listed in Annex 5 (marble, travertine, granite, bitumen and asphalt, roof tiles, certain types of bricks, construction glass and glass products, fiberglass, timber and sawn wood, slabs, panels, doors, metal products such as angles, bars, and structures, sand, and others).

Safety requirements for the characteristics (properties) of construction materials and products subject to mandatory conformity assessment are defined in national and interstate product standards listed in Annex 1 of the technical regulation: 210 national standards (ST RK) and 335 interstate standards (GOST), as cited in Annex 2.

Testing and measurement methods for construction materials are expressly specified in 196 ST RK standards and 268 GOST standards listed in Annex 3 of the technical regulation.

The document provides 10 product certification schemes (under the Conformity Assessment Rules) and 6 conformity declaration schemes.

The technical regulation also expressly provides that:

• laboratories, under contract with certification bodies or other applicants, record product testing, research (testing) results, and measurements by photo and/or video;

• certification of cement products is conducted in accordance with Kazakhstan national standard ST RK 3361, “Procedure for Confirming the Conformity of Cement and Portland Cement Clinker”;

• certification of natural stone products is conducted in accordance with Kazakhstan national standard ST RK 3619, “Natural Stone Products. General Specifications.”

source: https://inbusiness.kz