Robert Merry, an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on project management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.

First an apology. It goes to Peter Harrison for not attending the Stone Federation lecture on CE marking this month.

Laptop failure and a new hard drive in January are my only excuses, plus certain woolliness in the memory department as I grow into middle age… gracefully.

For memory loss I have tried drugs – the legal sort, of course – as well as using a note book and all manner of electronic devices ­– Outlook, iPhone, alarms, even good old fashioned year planners on the wall. All to no avail. Some things just don’t stick.

Now where was I?

Ah yes. Secondly, congratulations to Alan Gayle and Barry Hunt for their excellent articles on the bastardisation of the words ‘stone’ and ‘natural’ by those nasty concrete and quartz people.

Marketing is, of course, simply an ability to call a spade a shovel and then get someone to buy it because you have persuaded them it has the added benefit of being able to double as a fork.
(Apologies to Mr AG for the over simplification.)

The fact that 10 geologists couldn’t agree on the true definition of one piece of stone, as Mr BH asserted, is simply a variation of the joke: How many actors does it take to change a light bulb?

The answer is: 10 – one to change the bulb and the other nine to tell him how good he was at it.
You need to be an insecure actor to fully appreciate the joke.

The geological version would be: “How many geologists does it take to identify a piece of stone?”
Answer 10 (or more) – one to identify the stone the other nine (or 900 or 9,000) to disagree.

Well it sort of works.

My first and second points are related – honest.

CE marking comes into effect next year and will be a statutory requirement.
You will not be able to sell stone in this country unless the stone has its unique CE mark.

For those of you who have similar memory problems to me I will repeat that.

IN 2013 YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL STONE IN THIS COUNTRY UNLESS IT IS CE MARKED.

(I find visual aids a real help to remembering stuff.)

But, fear thee not, for in our battle to reclaim the streets of natural stone, CE marking is the answer. It’s going to cost us a lot of pain and money to address the issues of testing stone because while we will try to persuade suppliers to fork out for the cost of it we will end up paying for some of it ourselves.

At the top of the CE documentation, which you will have pinned to your stone, it says the following: Reference Standard: EN 12058 (for example, depending on the product).

Then…

Product (this is the bit where you declare what the product is): “Slabs of Natural Stone for floors and stairs”perhaps, or “Tiles of Natural Stone for...”. Natural stone. Get it? You can’t write ‘natural’ or ‘stone’ at the top of a CE document for concrete or quartz because it would be fibbing and is completely and utterly against the law… Well, it will be from 2013, anyway.

If we are to reclaim those two beautiful words ‘natural’ and ‘stone’, robbed from under our very dusty stone noses, as Mr AG and Mr BH so eloquently explained last month, then CE Marking is the answer.

So write it down somewhere or put it in your electronic calendar, on the wall chart, in Outlook, tell friends, hold a party, rejoice… but don’t forget.

PS: Can someone call me in December to remind me, please.

Thanks.

Robert Merry ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He also delivers training programmes on all aspects of Estimating and Project Management – details and dates on the website www.stoneconsultants.co.uk.

Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 997621 robertmerry@stoneconsultants.co.uk