A new standards and regulatory manager has joined FIRA, the UK’s leading furniture technology centre. Tristine Hargreaves has joined FIRA's team of experts in technical standards for the furniture industry, representing FIRA at BSI technical committee level. She brings a wealth of experience of the furniture industry, with 11 years working in the manufacturing sector and, more recently, seven years in retail. She will be reporting to Dr Peter Beele, technical development manager for FIRA.

Joining FIRA from her previous position working in the retail sector for Next, Tristine’s role focussed on introduction of product to market in line with the requirements of the General Product Safety Regulations. Tristine has represented the British Retail Consortium (BSC) on the BSI FW/6 flammability technical committee and the Furniture Retail Quality Group on other BSI furniture technical committees.

Prior to that, Tristine’s role as group quality assurance manager for Silentnight enabled her to gain experience of manufacturing techniques, process control and quality assurance in the mattress, furniture and upholstery industry.

Tristine has represented the National Bed Federation (NBF) as technical expert for the industry on several BSI Technical committees, been a member of the National Fillings Association technical committee and has managed the FIRA accredited test laboratory, which gave her experience in testing and standards for flammability, textiles and structural testing of products.