The British Board of Agrement, which operates the Highways Authorities Product Approval Scheme (HAPAS), has announced the completion of the Technical Guideline setting out how Highway paints will be assessed under the requirements of the Scheme. Previously the Highways Agency (and earlier the Department of Transport) approved paints for highway uses on the basis of Item Numbers in BD 35 (Design Manual for Roads and Bridges: Quality Assurance Scheme for Paints and similar protective coatings). These items covered particular polymer types and applications, and the Highways Agency introduced new items to cover new paint types as they became available, and withdrew others as they became obsolescent.

With the increasing pace of change in the paint industry, as it has developed new products and adapted existing products in response to concerns about air quality, worker safety, toxicity and ozone depletion and to meet new challenges in demanding areas such as in the North Sea oil industry, it became clear a more responsive procedure was necessary, and a HAPAS Specialist Group was set up to prepare a Guideline.

This Group included representatives of the BBA, Highways Agency, County Surveyors' Society, British Constructional Steelwork Association, British Coatings Federation, Corus, network rail and independent experts.

One of the aspirations of the work was to harmonise the requirements of different specifiers for the same service conditions, and Network Rail was invited on to the Group to achieve this.

As the work neared completion the Highways Agency revised BD 35 in May 2005 to require that paints used in highway work should hold a BBA HAPAS Certificate, and the BBA and Highways Agency cooperated to issue 9 HAPAS Certificates covering 101 separate products which had previously been covered by approvals under HA item sheets.

The HAPAS Guideline for the Assessment and Certification of Paints and similar protective coatings has now been completed and approved.

The Guideline introduces the BBA's routine factory surveillance to highway paints, allows the applicant to submit existing data conducted to UKAS standards, defines tests to be conducted on liquid paints, separate components and on the whole system, and requires an exposure trial to be set up and monitored.