Missions of BNBA

• To make a list of standardisation needs and prepare the programmes,
• To form, animate and gather the standardisation committees,
• To establish standard projects up to their final stage before publishing,
• To revise, if necessary, the previous standards,
• To keep contact not only with the whole joint-trade organisation and industries or related professional branches, but with the concerned partners too.

Actions of BNBA

BNBA attributions consist of:

• Informing professionals on the content and meaning of standards,
• Following, participating, animating the national, European (CEN) or worldwide (ISO) standardisation works,
• Helping to set up the specifications of the Central Committee of the State markets participating to several permanent groups of market studies (Groupes Permanents d'Etudes des Marchés ,GPEM),
• Being on many committees (AFNOR, AIMCC, CNPF, CSTB, General Committee of Building Standardisation DTU, Committee of consumers' security…),
• Participating to the CTBA and AFNOR certification activity, ...which is closely linked with the implementation of standards or normative documents.

BNBA links

BNBA is, on national level, in contact with all the other standardisation offices and, continually, with the French Association of Standardisation AFNOR (l'Association Française de Normalisation). Indeed AFNOR is the only one entitled to launch the “French Public Inquiry” and the “Procédure d'homologation des Normes” (Standardisation Approval Procedure) and is the French member of international organisations of standardisation CEN and ISO . Links also exist with other standardisation organisations, and mainly with BSI ( Great Britain ), DIN ( Germany ), SIS ( Sweden ), UNI ( Italy ), and with the European Committee of Standardisation CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation) ( Brussels ).
BNBA is also in contact with the main European centres of wood and furniture: Belgium (CTIB) - Germany (BAM of Hamburg, testing laboratories for doors and windows of Rosenheim , LGA of Nuremberg (Control institute of furniture) – Great Britain (TRADA, FIRA, BRE) – Netherlands (TNO) - Portugal (CTIMM) - Spain (AITIM, AIDIMA) - Italy (Centro technico del Legno, CATAS)...
Finally, national and international standardisation works imply relations with:

• authorities and mainly: Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Housing and Town planning, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of the Interior, CCE DGIII in Brussels,
• the main French professional organisations of wood and furniture,
• the main European professional organisations related with their line of business, and certain national professional organisations.

BNBA has also privileged contacts with the BIFMA (USA) with whom mutual information agreements on the French and American standards for office furniture have been passed in 1996.