When no system document is required

The question people ask wrongly

The question is not “does the firm have an NMÉ”. It is whether the house is made from prefabricated panels or from a frame erected on site. Those are different legal categories calling for different verification.

The case of a site-erected frame

Where the structure is not created by prefabrication but by lining a frame erected on site, the official reading is that we are not dealing with lightweight technology.

In that case:

• the contractor uses construction products, whose conformity is verified by their own declarations of performance,
• an NMÉ or ETA cannot be required,
• fire compliance has to be verified by fire design to the Eurocodes, plus the responsible technical manager’s log entry certifying that the work was carried out in accordance with the design.

What to look at in that case

The CE certification of the profile

It verifies that the section was made properly from the coil, so the structural calculation really can work with that cross-section. What the CE marking verifies.

The fire verification

By fire design or simulation carried out for the project, or — where one exists — on the basis of an ETA or NMÉ. Simulation can be commissioned on its own; for a house the cost does not always pay back, for a larger building it does.

The designer’s signature

Everything hangs on it in the end. A document does not replace the design — it only means somebody checked one, once, on an earlier design.

What does not make this route easier

Two things to reckon with:

A stricter reading can also be derived from the text of the legislation, and you will meet it: there are authorities and clients who ask for the system paperwork anyway.

Some banks ask for an NMÉ at lending assessment for a steel-framed house. That is not a legal requirement but the bank’s internal rule — and they will still not lend without it. Settle this before the loan application, because it is hard afterwards.

This is not legal advice

The summary above reflects a September 2026 reading of the legislation cited: decree 54/2014 (XII. 5.) BM (the OTSZ) §13, and government decree 275/2013 (VII. 16.). On a specific project the position of the acting authority and the fire designer governs.