Due to direct and implied demands from the market and from e.g. the EU Construction Products Directive, the need to supply service life estimates for building products is growing. For several years, a development of Service Life Prediction (SLP) methodologies has been going on, but the awareness of this development has hitherto reached only a very limited extent in the wood sector. For materials whose degradation in service is governed by not only physical factors but also, and in many cases to a dominating degree, by biological mechanisms, acurate service life estimates are particularly difficult. Still, in order to defend and expand the market for wood products in construction in the long run, it is of great importance that durability assessments are transformed and expressed in ways that are truly useful for specifyers and users. More clearly stated: The needs and the interests of the user should be in focus and should be the actual starting point for development of both products and durability assessment methods. An initiative to bring this discussion to the CEN Committee TC 38 “Durability of wood and wood-based products” has led to the formation of a Task Group, which will further look into the possibilities to incorporate SLP methods in European durability standards. This development has been carried into effect by the establishment in 2004 of a Task Force within the COST Action E 37 “Sustainability through new technologies for enhanced wood durability”. The Task Force has made preliminary work, making inventories of methods for testing and assessment, analysing the purposefulness of these methods, and giving some outlines for a future performance-based system of classification of wood products. The Task Force will give a final report of its work later this year.

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