NMMA to wind up phase one of manufacturer certification program

The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) has recently certified 16 additional US boat manufacturers, and another in Australia, in its "NMMA Certified" program. To date, 270 US and international boat manufacturers have been certified, while another 80 are completing the certification process.

Launched two years ago, the program required all NMMA member boat builders to become certified by model year 2008 or lose their membership status.

All have either complied or are in the process of being certified. "Once we finish with these 80, all NMMA members will be certified as well as many builders that are not members," said Robert Newsome, NMMA director of Engineering Standards. Newsome said that of the 80 builders not meeting the model year 2008 deadline on July 31, a number have recently joined the organization. "About 25 of them have joined in the last few months, and they have a year to become certified," said Newsome. "Another 50 to 55 are awaiting results. Many have had extenuating circumstances, like waiting for a yacht to be completed before it could be certified."

The NMMA Certification program covers more than 30 categories of standards varying by boat type and size. Newsome said that the certification effort has taken a huge amount of time and effort by NMMA staff. "It would be almost impossible to calculate how many man hours go into it," he said. "We have five fulltime staff working on certification and over 10 inspectors. We're certifying about 350 manufacturers and 39 of them are overseas."

Newsome said the inspection staff continues to grow. "The demand for certification is increasing exponentially, particularly overseas," he said. "As a result, we have two inspectors in the European Union, one in Australia, and we're training one in New Zealand and another in the EU. We are also planning to set up an inspector in Asia, based out of Thailand."

The demand for inspection will increase, said Newsome, since participation in the program requires annual inspections of all manufacturers. "There's no down-sizing," he said. "We're going to continue to grow from here on out. The demand for certification is higher every day."