HQE® is a registered trademark. In form, no construction product or building equipment can claim this brand. In substance, the response given by the Alliance HQE-GBC, which holds the total and exclusive operating licenses of the HQE® brand, is as follows: “…There are no ‘HQE’ products/materials.”
Indeed, all products and materials have different environmental, health, technical, and economic characteristics.
It is up to professionals in the field to choose the products/materials with the technical, economic, environmental, and health characteristics that make it possible, by following standard implementation practices and the manufacturer’s instructions, to achieve the level of technical, environmental, and health quality specified for the construction work, within a given budget. This would entail construction product/material manufacturers providing environmental and health characteristics for their products, as they have always done for technical characteristics.
For environmental and health criteria to be taken into account in an unbiased manner when choosing products/materials, it is essential that this environmental and health information meets the same benchmarks to gauge their relevance, reliability and sincerity. This consensual benchmark is standard NF EN 15804 and its national supplement for construction product and NF XP C08-100-1 and PCR edition3 for equipment.
