Anchor Products leads SPRI's first standard for rooftop equipment anchors

Scott Carpenter opens the recording from the Savannah River, where a group from Anchor Products stood one vote away from something low-slope roofing has never had. The company is leading a SPRI task force that has written the first consensus standard for evaluating the anchors that hold equipment to a roof, and the draft had reached its final stage. What remained was a vote to send it into canvass, the industry ballot that turns an association document into an American National Standard.

Daniel Blasini, director of technical services and operations at Anchor Products, Justin Smith of Anchor Products and Harley Coleman, the company's East Region sales manager, spoke from SPRI's third quarter conference and education day in a MarketScale Studio segment. Joel Stanley also appears on the recording. SPRI, the group explains on camera, is the single ply roofing industry association, and its work runs from the membrane and accessory manufacturers to how a low-slope roof is built.

In November 2026 the association made it public. On November 3, 2026, Building Enclosure reported that SPRI, which represents sheet membrane and component suppliers to commercial roofing, announced it is establishing a standard of test methods and performance criteria for rooftop equipment securement systems installed on low-slope roof assemblies. Roofing Contractor carried the same announcement on November 4, 2026, and both reports said anyone who wants to take part in the canvass can contact SPRI.

Low-slope roofs are near-flat commercial roofs, and single-ply roofing seals them with one layer of factory-made membrane sheet. Securement means holding a roof-mounted unit in place against the loads that try to move it. Under the procedures on SPRI's standards page, a press release announcing intent to canvass is the step that follows Technical Committee and Board approval, so if the November notice is that release, the draft described in Savannah had cleared its last internal gate.

Sixteen standards and none for the equipment on top

SPRI's library holds 16 ANSI standards, and none evaluates the anchors that hold equipment to a low-slope roof. The 16 is a count of the designations SPRI lists on its standards page, from ADR-1 through WD-1, where the association notes that superseded versions are no longer maintained as American National Standards. The gap is SPRI's own description: in its November 2026 announcement the association said the construction industry lacks a consensus American National Standard specifically addressing the evaluation and performance of rooftop equipment securement systems.

Until it is published, each party on a project judges an anchor by criteria the others do not necessarily share. SPRI's announcement says the standard is meant to end that, by giving one set of criteria for specification, testing and acceptance.

That description is how the draft was built. The task force gathered requirements from technical members across the industry rather than from one manufacturer, and the Anchor Products speakers say the value of SPRI's work is a set of standards that all manufacturers use as the baseline. The speakers also describe SPRI as a body that creates code requirements that influence how a roof is built, which is the role a published securement standard would take on.

What the anchor will be made to survive

The draft will test static and cyclic loading, environmental exposure, corrosion resistance and water-tightness, SPRI said in November 2026. Building Enclosure and Roofing Contractor both reported that list, along with related performance characteristics the association says are needed to keep the attachment secure and the roof intact over the life of the installation. In plain terms, the five headings ask these questions:

• Static loading: can the anchor hold a steady, unmoving load, the weight of the equipment and a constant pull, without yielding.
• Cyclic loading: can it hold when the load is applied and released over and over, the pattern wind and vibration impose across years rather than minutes.
• Environmental exposure: does it keep its capacity after the heat, cold, moisture and ultraviolet light a roof sees.
• Corrosion resistance: do the metal parts keep their strength as they rust or react with the roof materials around them.
• Water-tightness: does the point where the anchor meets the membrane stay sealed, so a secure anchor does not become a leak.

The reason a securement standard needs both halves of that list is the roof itself. An equipment anchor carries load into the roof structure, and to get there it either passes through or bears on the membrane whose only job is to keep water out. An anchor that holds the unit but opens the membrane has failed the roof, and an anchor that stays sealed but loosens under repeated load has failed the equipment.

The test object SPRI names is the assembly rather than the anchor on its own: the announcement speaks of assemblies used to secure roof-mounted equipment, judged for structural capacity, environmental durability, corrosion resistance and weather-tightness together. An assembly is the anchor plus the fasteners, adhesive and membrane it is built into. The trades the Savannah group lists on the task force, adhesive, fastener and roofing manufacturers, are the makers of those parts.

SPRI's announcement does not publish a pull-out load or a wind uplift method; those sit in the draft the canvass list receives. What it does fix is the measure of success, attachment that stays secure and a roof that stays intact across the service life of the installation, so the tests are aimed at years on a roof rather than the day the unit is set.

Why OSHA's anchorage rules do not already cover this

A reasonable objection from a safety desk is that rooftop anchors already have rules. OSHA 1910.140 defines an anchorage as an attachment point for lifelines and lanyards, inside a rule that covers only personal fall protection. The scope paragraph of 29 CFR 1910.140 sets performance, care and use criteria for personal fall protection systems and requires the employer to ensure each system meets them, and its definitions describe an anchorage as a secure point of attachment for equipment such as lifelines, lanyards or deceleration devices.

A deceleration device, in OSHA's definition, is a mechanism that dissipates energy during a fall, and a personal fall arrest system is a harness, an anchorage and a connector that stop an employee falling from a walking-working surface. Every term in the regulation is built around a person on a line.

The voluntary standards share that frame. ASSP, the American Society of Safety Professionals, lists ANSI/ASSP Z359.18, Anchorage Connectors for Active Fall Protection Systems, within a Z359 family it says covers lanyards, harnesses, self-retracting devices, rescue and managed fall protection programs. An anchorage connector in that family is the hardware that joins a worker's line to the structure, so an anchor whose load is a piece of equipment rather than a person falls outside it.

Both families carry the ANSI prefix, and ANSI's approval process is where any overlap between them gets tested. ANSI describes a proposed standard phase, in which the initial proposal is published and any claim of conflict or duplication with an existing American National Standard is assessed, before a draft standard phase of voting, comment resolution and appeals. The securement draft will pass through that check, and the scope SPRI stated in November 2026, systems that secure roof-mounted equipment to low-slope roof assemblies, is what separates it from an anchorage for a lifeline.

That is the task force's answer to the objection. Equipment anchors and fall anchors can share a roof, a deck and a contractor, and the group's point is that the parties who build and approve the roof read the same document. SPRI's November 2026 announcement addresses its standard to designers, contractors, manufacturers and code officials, rather than to the employers OSHA's rule binds.

What a canvass vote starts, and what it does not finish

A task force vote opens the canvass; it does not end the process. A canvass, in SPRI's method, is a ballot sent to a list of interested and affected parties assembled for that one document rather than to a standing committee. SPRI's standards page, which links the association's canvass procedures approved February 4, 2025, lays out the path: a task force creates the document, the Technical Committee and Board of Directors review and approve it, and the approved document goes out for industry approval through the ANSI-accredited canvass SPRI runs.

Before a single ballot goes out, the task force compiles a pre-canvass list of everyone potentially interested in or affected by the standard and defines areas of interest for the document. SPRI then runs a pre-canvass survey to solicit participation, issues a press release inviting anyone the task force did not identify, and ANSI announces the canvass in Standards Action, its published notice of proposed and draft standards.

The ballot itself is where consensus gets tested. According to SPRI's description, the proposed standard goes to the canvass list for a vote, task force members review every negative ballot, meaning a vote against approval, and the volunteer leader or task force responds in writing to each one. A substantial change forces recirculation to the whole list, an unresolved negative must be circulated with all correspondence so any participant can change a vote, and participants must be told of their right to appeal before SPRI sends the closed ballot results to ANSI.

ANSI's own overview counts nine steps to approval, and the canvass covers the middle of them. ANSI, a private nonprofit that accredits standards developers rather than writing standards itself, lists a Project Initiation Notification System filing in Standards Action, which is the public notice that a developer intends to start a standard, then deliberation on that notice, a draft for public comment, consensus body voting, resolution of votes and comments, appeals notification where needed, final submission of evidence of procedural compliance, a Board of Standards Review decision, and publication and maintenance. ANSI notes that some steps run concurrently and that the order can vary with a developer's procedures.

Set against that list, the last stages the Anchor Products speakers describe are the last stages of drafting, with voting, resolution, appeals and the review board still ahead. Neither SPRI nor ANSI publishes a typical elapsed time from task force vote to published standard. What ANSI does set is the bar: a demonstration that consensus was reached and that development followed its Essential Requirements, the rulebook for accredited developers, whose four tests SPRI's page names as openness, balance, consensus and due process.

Where the anchor standard would sit in SPRI's library

SPRI revised VF-1 in 2023 to cover fire design only and sent wind design to other standards. In June 2023 the association published the revision of VF-1, its External Fire Design Standard for Vegetative Roofs, effective April 3, 2023, and said in its notice that the update stripped out requirements not specific to external fire design and directed users to the appropriate standards instead. Where the old text required a root barrier without saying how to test root penetration, the 2023 version references ANSI/SPRI VR-1, and the fire test language now cites both ASTM E108 and UL 790 because the building code references both.

That is the pattern a securement standard would join: a document that owns one subject, cross-references its neighbors and gets cited by others. ANSI describes the standards it approves as voluntary national standards, and SPRI said in the same June 2023 notice that its standards are referenced by designers and by local building code committees and regulatory authorities. On SPRI's account, that citation is how a voluntary document reaches a project: a specification or a code names it, and the designation becomes something an inspector can ask for and a facilities operator can write into an acceptance.

Who is at the table, and the signal to watch

The segment names four manufacturer trades on the task force: roofing, adhesive, fastener and building component. The Anchor Products speakers say the point of having them in one room is a roof system that lasts longer.

The longevity the speakers describe is the same quality SPRI's announcement frames as performance through the service life of the installation, and cyclic loading and environmental exposure are the two criteria written to measure it.

SPRI's canvass invitation runs through the association's email address, according to both November 2026 trade reports, so a manufacturer, contractor or building owner who wants a ballot can ask for one now. The next public marker, under the process SPRI lays out, is ANSI's notice of the canvass in Standards Action. When it appears, the draft the Savannah group described will be the one on the ballot.