General information of Type Approval in Finland

The Land Use and Building Act (132/99) allow the Ministry of the Environment to grant type approval, i.e. advance approval of a building product. This approval is binding on the building permit authorities and is granted for a fixed period of time.

Type approval is designed to make building control more straightforward and uniform, and to promote the industrialisation of building production. A type approved product can be used by builders throughout the country without needing to check, for each building site separately, whether it complies with the rules and regulations.

Applying for the type approval is voluntary. This means that the building permit authorities cannot require builders to use a type approved product.

The Ministry of the Environment decides whether it is appropriate to grant type approval. Type approval may be considered unnecessary in the case of products where ordinary calculations, drawings or routine tests are used in planning and in demonstrating compliance, and in the case of products which are not commonly used or where nation-wide approval is otherwise not justified from the point of view of building control.

A construction product with type approval is considered to meet the requirements set for it in so far as the matter has been resolved in the approval process (Land Use and Building Act, section 152). For building permit applications and construction work supervision, it is usually sufficient to present the type approval decision and appendices, together with any documents mentioned in the decision that are needed for carrying out the work on site (such as installation instructions).

Type approval is a national approval system. A type-approved product carries a mark by the Ministry of the Environment (shown below).