The quiet hunt for non-compliant construction equipment at Bauma

Riccardo Viaggi, secretary general of the Committee for European Construction Equipment (CECE), said that his organisation has been co-operating with a task force led by the German mechanical and plant engineers’ association, the VDMA.

Already, the taskforce has found some items of equipment that, while entirely legal to display at Bauma, could not be sold within the European Union because they do not meet one or more compliance standards.

In such cases, it is understood that the taskforce is pointing the issue out to exhibitors and asking them to make it clear that such machines cannot be sold in the region.

The action comes after CECE has developed a new set of five brochures that can be used as compliance checklists to identify non-compliant machinery and equipment.

They are being made available to market surveillance authorities, machinery users, rental companies, and contractors, to raise awareness of the issue.

CECE is also partnering with the European Rental Association (ERA) and the European Construction Industry Federation (FIEC) to spread the word to their members about the brochures.

Additionally, it is partnering with the Administrative Cooperation Group, an official body of the European Union, which gathers all the market surveillance authorities at European level.

Viaggi said that checks by port and customs authorities, who have responsibility for blocking non-compliant machines at the borders, have a strong focus on other products like toys but have so far lacked knowledge on what to look out for in off-highway equipment.

“We have already presented the idea of making these brochures available to the Administrative Cooperation Group and market surveillance authorities. They recognise that they do not know all the products that they should be checking. [We can offer them] a checklist like the ones we have produced to help them in spotting non-compliance on machines like excavators or loaders,” Viaggi said.

On the initiative to check compliance of machines during Bauma, he added, “We are part of a VDMA task force at Bauma – a group of colleagues are taking tours inside the hall and in the outdoor areas to check for non-compliant machines. We are not going to make too much noise about specific cases, but I can tell you that some non-compliant machines have been spotted already. These actions will continue throughout the week and we are also partnering with machinery user groups.”

CECE’s newly developed brochures will be available online on its website soon.