EN 10204 in practice, and the clause that quietly costs projects weeks
A purchase order that asks for EN 10204 3.2 without naming who signs it, and without a notification period in the ITP, has not bought third-party verification. It has bought an argument at the point of despatch.
Most disputes about material certificates are not really about the certificate. They are about a mismatch between what the purchase order asked for and what the inspection and test plan made possible. By the time anyone notices, the material is made, the heat is gone, and the options are all expensive.
EN 10204 defines the document types. It is a short standard and it is worth being precise about what each type asserts, because the four types are not a quality ranking. They are statements about who inspected what, and how closely that inspection is tied to the item in the crate.
The dividing line runs between types 2.x and types 3.x.
Non-specific inspection means the tests were carried out on material representative of the production process, but not necessarily on the material being supplied. A type 2.2 test report carries a declaration of compliance with the order, together with test results drawn from the general production run. It is a real document making a real claim. It simply is not a claim about your heat.
Specific inspection means the tests were carried out on the material being supplied, traceable to the heat or lot. Both 3.1 and 3.2 are specific inspection documents. This is the distinction that matters when a failure investigation later asks what the material in a particular joint actually was.
Type 3.1 is issued by the manufacturer, and validated by the manufacturer's own authorised inspection representative — someone within the manufacturer's organisation but organisationally independent of the manufacturing department. That independence is the whole point of the type, and it is also the most common misunderstanding: a 3.1 certificate is not a third-party document. Nobody outside the mill has verified anything.
Type 3.2 adds a second validating party: the purchaser's authorised inspection representative, or an officially designated body, depending on what the order specifies. In practice this is where the named inspection agencies appear. The certificate is validated by both the mill's inspection function and that independent party.
That is the entire difference, and it is a difference in witnessing, not in the tests themselves. A 3.2 certificate does not mean more tests were run. It means someone from outside the manufacturer was present, or reviewed the results, and put their name to them.
The failure mode we see most often is not falsification. It is this sequence:
The resolution is always some combination of concession, re-test where re-test is even meaningful, or replacement. All of it lands on the schedule.
Type 3.2 is a coordination requirement disguised as a documentation requirement. Asking for it is a commitment to nominate a party, notify them, and let the manufacturing programme absorb the wait.
A purchase order that will actually produce a 3.2 certificate states four things, not one:
If the project cannot fund an inspector's attendance, that is a legitimate answer — but the honest response is to specify 3.1 and put the effort into reviewing the certificates properly, not to specify 3.2 and discover at despatch that nobody was ever going to attend.
A certificate that satisfies the type still has to satisfy the order. Reviewing one properly means checking, at minimum, that the heat or lot number on the certificate appears on the item; that the material specification and grade match the purchase order and not merely something adjacent to it; that every test the order required is present rather than only the ones the mill runs by default; that the results sit inside the specification limits rather than merely being reported; and that the signatory's role is stated, because a 3.1 signed by a production manager is not a 3.1.
None of this is exotic. It is a checklist, applied every time, by someone whose job it is to apply it — which is the part that tends to be missing when documentation is treated as paperwork that arrives after the real work is done.
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