The Ontario Painting Contractors gAssociation (OPCA) has agreed to adopt MPI’s painting manual and Approved Products list in a move that all agree will help benefit the marketplace by assuring that all across Canada, architects, interior designers, contractors, facility owners, and the paint suppliers who serve them will now operate from a superior frame of reference.

With increasing requirements for lower-VOC, environmentally-safe products that also provide the durability needed by facility owners and architects, OPCA determined that Ontario’s customers are better served by establishing one consistent set of paint systems that are supported by approved products whose performance is verified by third party laboratory testing.

“The winner here is the customer,” says OPCA’s Andrew Sefton. Architects, specifiers, and interior designers are very concerned about how regulations will affect what is being specified. Facility owners want to know they’re getting good products applied with quality workmanship. Now, we’ll have one consistent reference across the country that clearly defines quality painting practice, and architects can reference a paint standard safe in the knowledge that the listed products have third-party verification that they meet the exact same performance standards.”

“The adoption in Ontario completes the circle,” says MPI’s Barry Law. “The Canadian government, the US government, and North American architects, designers and specifiers will now all reference the same guides as Ontario and BC.”

The agreement also benefits the industry by establishing consistent quality assurance practices. Law notes “From the Pacific Ocean to the Quebec border, the robust inspection protocols anchored by the MPDA program in BC and now the OPCA Inspection program in Ontario will assure architects and owners of strong, consistent quality assurance at either end, with the Alberta and Manitoba schemes in between. These pioneering programs have a big head start on similar protocols just being developed in the US based on these same MPI manuals.”

The MPI Painting Manual consists of an Architectural (New Painting) Guide as well as a Maintenance Painting Guide, and is available in print for $150 per guide, or via annual on-line subscription for $90 per guide.

For more information or to obtain a copy of the Painting Manual, contact Barry Law of MPI at (888) 674-8937 or by email at bgl@mpi.net or Andrew Sefton of OPCA at 800-461-3630 x 1 by email at andrew.sefton@opcatrusted.ca.