NMÉ: the national technical assessment

What an NMÉ is

The National Technical Assessment is a document for a given construction product, valid in Hungary only, that forms the basis of the declaration of performance.

It comes up where no valid harmonised European standard exists for the product, or the product deviates significantly from it — light gauge steel wall and floor systems are typical cases.

On the basis of an NMÉ the manufacturer may apply the national conformity marking to the product.

What a technical assessment examines

For a light gauge steel system, typically three things: the build-up, the structure and the fire performance. Let us look at how much practical value each has.

Build-up

It examines whether the construction is technically sound. But somebody is responsible for the build-up anyway: on a smaller project the architect, on a larger one the building-element designer. They have the qualifications and the rules exist.

Structure

During the procedure an earlier design is requested, looked at and checked. But if another designer later does something different, nobody looks at that. So we end up in the same place: you need a good designer who produces a good design and signs it. A thin-walled steel structure has to be designed to the Eurocodes, like every other structure.

Fire

This is the only one with real technical content. The fire resistance rating applies to the whole structure, not to individual boards, so it has to be verified as a system — and for a load-bearing wall there is no system certificate on its own.

The kit problem

The system was originally made for construction kits: solutions where a component can be installed without a separate structural calculation, because the manufacturer’s engineers calculated the parameters once and you work from the catalogue thereafter.

A thin-walled steel frame designed and built on site to a bespoke geometry is not that: every project there is a separate design. Imposing kit logic on it is like demanding a pattern catalogue for a made-to-measure suit.

An NMÉ can be developed further

An existing NMÉ can also be taken forward to an ETA if the manufacturer is thinking of European distribution. That is a longer procedure, but it does not start from zero.

The point

The NMÉ is the product’s document, in the manufacturer’s name. It is not the designer’s or the contractor’s, and it does not replace the design produced for the project.