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IGMA: Report from the Winter Conference

The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance held its Winter Conference in Austin, Texas, Feb. 4 through 7. As always, there is a great deal of progress to report.

The Certification Committee chaired by Roland Rossman of Garibaldi Glass heard from the Quality Management System task group that Tier I, II, III and IV of the “IGMA Quality Management System for the Fabrication of Insulating Glass Units to the ISO 9001:2008 Standard,” encompassing the quality manual, the procedures, the work instructions and the forms, are now available from the IGMA Publication Store after a successful ballot at the Certification Committee. The task group will now revise the quality manual to the ISO 9001:2015 standard. It is anticipated that this work will be complete by mid-year. This document is a template for a complete ISO-certified quality system tailored for the insulating glass manufacturing industry.

The Emerging Technologies and Innovation Committee chaired by Helen Sanders of Technoform Glass Insulation and David Cooper of Guardian Industries heard that the Material Transparency (formerly the Life Cycle Assessment) task group has redefined its scope to include other activities such as development of Environmental Product Declarations, Health Product Declarations, LEED requirements and other material transparency programs. Discussions during the conference were related to the California Buy Clean Act (AB 262), which will require structural steel, rebar, mineral wool and flat glass to report their Global Warming Potential for government and other construction projects. Vik Ahuja of Thinkstep gave a presentation on AB 262 noting that California’s Department of General Services would be considering including processed glass. A survey will be sent to the members of IGMA and the National Glass Association to determine interest in developing an industry-wide EPD for processed glass. On the window Product Category Rules front, a different survey has been developed by a pan-association group to determine whether the group will work on a new window PCR to replace the existing one.

The Technical Services Committee chaired by Jeff Haberer  of Trulite heard from the IG Cavity Compensation task group that the document “TM-3200-XX” is close to completion and is expected to be balloted to the IGMA Technical Services Committee this year. This technical manual includes generic design alternatives for cavity compensation for insulating glass units and defines conditions that impact the pressure in the IGU cavity. Items included in the document are capillary and breather tubes, one-way valves, desiccant adsorption/desorption, pre‐inflating/pre‐deflating the unit, temperature manipulation during fabrication and the use of bladders.

The PIB Migration task group working jointly with the former GANA Insulating Division (now NGA) reported that “TB-1250, PIB Primary Sealant” has successfully passed all levels of approval and will be forwarded for publication.

The Visual Quality task group reported that, working jointly with the AAMA Glass Materials Council, it has published “A Consumers’ Guide to Understanding Glass Standards” to both the IGMA and American Architectural Manufacturers Association websites.

The Education and Safety Committee chaired by Bill Briese of GED Integrated Solutions decided to schedule a IG Fabricator Workshop workshop Nov. 12 to 14 at Intertek’s Plano, Texas, facilities. Registration will be launched early. The next series in the Leadership Development Program will be launched this spring with three orientation sessions for those who did not register for the first series. An announcement will be made in the next month regarding the program.

Upcoming events

• IGMA Leadership Development Program webinar series: April 2019
• IGMA 2019 Summer Conference: June 17 to 20, Victoria, B.C. (joint with AAMA)
• IG Fabricator Workshop: Nov. 12 to 14, Intertek, Plano, Texas