Licensing and Quality Control

The OLMA’s principal activity is in providing its members with a system of lumber quality control ensuring market access within North America, Europe and Asia.

As an accredited agency of the Canadian Lumber Standards Accreditation Board (CLSAB) and the American Lumber Standard Committee, Inc. (ALSC), the OLMA is empowered to undertake four specific functions:

• to supervise the grading of structural softwood lumber, machine stress rated (MSR) lumber, and finger-joined (Fj) lumber
• to train and licence individual people to classify lumber in accordance with recognized grading rules;
• to authorize individual manufacturing facilities to mark pieces of lumber with the OLMA facsimile stamp attesting to the quality of each piece; and
• to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers of lumber products bearing the OLMA mark.

The OLMA lumber grading staff conduct periodic surveillance audits of member facilities’ production for adherence to the quality of manufacture. Regular reports are made to the CLSAB or ALSC, as appropriate.