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A Method to Qualify the Impacts of Certifications for Prefabricated Constructions

In the province of Quebec, Canada, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in manufactured timber construction seeking to expand their market must necessarily go beyond the local trade. By exporting their products and manufactured building sections to another country, Quebec manufacturers must deal with significant regulations and certification constraints. The aim of this study is therefore to propose a method to qualify the impacts of these constraints on the export of manufactured buildings to New England in order to create a decision support tool. Since construction regulations vary depending on the location of the project, those relating to Massachusetts were analyzed, as this is currently the main destination for manufactured building sections. Considering the federal and local regulations in effect, a content analysis of the Quality Assurance Manual (QAM) set up by an industry partner and a third-party certifier enabling exports to Massachusetts was performed. In particular, the six-step method proposed by L’Écuyer was exploited for extracting and examining relevant information from regulatory texts. Through this analysis, the importance of quality control was confirmed as a keystone for certification. It also led to a better understanding of the relationships between quality control, the construction process and installation, the design and engineering choices, and the strategy to choose the project.