The Ottawa Accord: ACE Challenges the Protective Glazing Industry to Put Evidence Before Claims

September 22, 2026 ians

A call for honesty, accountability and a new standard of integrity in protective glazing.

In December 2024, an investigation published by The Wall Street Journal raised serious questions about protective glazing purchased by school districts — including products whose performance could not be established.

The issue it exposed was not necessarily a failure to meet a standard. It was something more fundamental: the gap between what buyers believe they are purchasing and what the available evidence can actually demonstrate.

For Advanced Coatings Engineering LLC (ACE), this is a challenge the protective glazing industry can no longer afford to ignore.

On September 19, 2026, ACE issued Draft 4 of The Ottawa Accord, a voluntary accord on claims made for protective glazing, and opened it for public comment. The Accord asks the industry to confront a straightforward question:

When a company claims that its product provides protection, what evidence supports that claim — and will that company stand behind it?

ACE is challenging the industry to do more than acknowledge the problem. It is calling on companies to sign the Accord, honour its commitments and help establish a culture in which evidence, transparency and accountability are fundamental to every protective claim.

The problem is not marketing. It is misrepresentation.

Protective glazing is a life-safety product. Yet the person who will one day depend on it is rarely the person who selected or purchased it.

Architects, engineers, school administrators, security consultants and procurement teams must make decisions based on information supplied by manufacturers and distributors. Most buyers cannot independently audit a laboratory, verify a test report or determine whether the test actually addressed the threat they are trying to mitigate.

That places an enormous responsibility on the companies making protective claims.

The Ottawa Accord does not seek to eliminate bold marketing, commercial competition or persuasive salesmanship. It draws a distinction between marketing and evidence.

Companies should be free to promote their products. But when a statement is used to persuade a buyer that a product meets a protective requirement, that statement must be supported by evidence — and the nature of that evidence must be made clear.

A test is not proof of everything. A report is not a universal rating. And a claim does not become true simply because it appears in a brochure, specification or presentation.

The industry must stop asking buyers to trust claims that the evidence cannot support.

Five classes of evidence. No room for ambiguity.

At the heart of the Ottawa Accord is a simple framework: every protective performance claim must identify the class of evidence behind it.

The Accord defines five classes:

CERTIFIED: An accredited laboratory has tested a named assembly and issued a report. The claim identifies the applicable standard, laboratory, report number and date.
CLIENT-QUALIFIED: A purchaser has tested an article against its own requirement. The claim must accurately identify that fact without presenting the purchaser’s data as the seller’s own certification.
IN-HOUSE: The company has conducted its own testing. The build-up, threat, distance, date and result must be disclosed, along with the fact that the test was internal.
FIELD: The product has been installed and in service. The claim identifies the duration of service without converting service history into an unsupported performance rating.
ENGINEERED: The product has been designed using analysis and precedent where no applicable standard exists. The design basis and responsible engineer must be identified, and the result must never be presented as a rating.

And where no testing has been conducted? The Accord requires companies to say so plainly.

This is not an unreasonable demand. It is the minimum information a buyer should have when making a decision about a product intended to provide protection.

A test report is not a blank cheque

One of the most important principles in the Ottawa Accord is that performance belongs to the tested assembly.

A film does not independently inherit the ballistic rating of a glazing system. A laminate does not carry a universal protective rating simply because a similar construction has been tested.

The glazing, applied material, frame and anchorage together constitute the assembly. A result established on one construction cannot simply be transferred to another because the products look similar, share a material or have the same nominal thickness.

The Accord also addresses the misuse of laboratory reports, accreditation marks and test results. Companies must identify what was actually tested, disclose the relevant report and its limitations, and refrain from presenting another party’s test as evidence for their own product without proper authorization and disclosure.

ACE is asking the industry to recognize a basic principle: evidence must follow the product that was tested, not the product a company wishes it had tested.

The question a test asked matters

The distinction between forced-entry resistance and ballistic resistance is another central issue addressed by the Accord.

These are different performance characteristics, established through different test methods.

A forced-entry test asks whether an attacker can create a usable opening. A ballistic test asks whether a projectile is defeated under the specified conditions.

Passing one does not establish the other.
A product may provide meaningful resistance to forced entry without having demonstrated ballistic performance. Equally, a ballistic rating does not establish resistance to sustained tool attack.

For buyers, this distinction can be critical. A school, commercial building or other occupied facility may have specific concerns about armed threats, forced entry, occupant egress or emergency responder access. The evidence presented must address the actual requirement.

The Accord therefore challenges companies to describe test methods accurately, disclose relevant limitations and never imply that a product has demonstrated a capability that was not established by the test.

This is not a criticism of the test methods or the products designed to meet them. It is a demand that the results be represented honestly.

Accountability in an age of synthetic evidence

The Ottawa Accord also addresses a growing challenge: the use of generated and synthetic content in marketing.

As artificial intelligence makes it increasingly easy to create convincing images, documents and video, buyers face new difficulties distinguishing genuine test evidence from fabricated or misleading representations.

The Accord prohibits generating test reports, certificates, laboratory documents, test results and other evidence through generative means. It also establishes disclosure requirements for synthetic presenters and voices, and restrictions on the use of generated imagery to depict products in service, installations or test results.

For ACE, the principle is clear: a life-safety claim must rest on real evidence, not a convincing simulation of evidence.

Trust cannot survive if buyers are left to guess whether what they are seeing actually happened.

ACE is challenging the industry to sign — and to respect the Accord

The Ottawa Accord is not intended to be a code imposed by one manufacturer on its competitors. It is an open invitation to every company that makes a protective claim, regardless of its size, trade or place in the supply chain.

Manufacturers, distributors, dealers, franchisees, installers and specifiers are all included. A company is responsible not only for the claims it originates, but also for the claims it repeats.

Accession is voluntary and without fee, membership dues, licensing requirements or approval by ACE. Any eligible party may sign by executing the Instrument of Accession and publishing a statement that it has done so.

Signatories undertake to:

Bring existing claims and marketing materials into conformity within 90 days of accession.
Produce supporting evidence when requested by a party considering a purchase.
Correct claims that are found to be in breach and notify parties who relied on them.
Name and publish a person accountable for compliance.
Require equivalent conformity from parties marketing their products under another name.

This is not a request for companies to endorse ACE, its products or its commercial interests. The Accord creates no partnership among signatories, confers no product certification and does not restrict legitimate competition.

It asks each company to accept responsibility for its own claims.

And that responsibility must continue after the signature. Signing an accord while continuing to make unsupported claims would defeat its entire purpose.

ACE is challenging the industry not merely to sign The Ottawa Accord, but to respect it — in every proposal, every specification, every website, every sales presentation and every claim made to a buyer.

A voluntary accord with an ambition beyond ACE

The Ottawa Accord is currently a draft, not an adopted standard. No standards body has adopted it, and ACE makes no claim that accession constitutes certification or regulatory approval.

That distinction matters.

ACE has deposited the draft for public comment, with comments closing on December 19, 2026. The objective is to invite scrutiny, improve the text and ultimately submit its substance to a recognized standards body.

ACE does not intend to remain the Accord’s sole author.

A code written by one manufacturer is a marketing document. An accord adopted by a recognized standards body can become a broader industry instrument.

That is the ambition: to create a framework that the industry can examine, challenge, improve and ultimately adopt — one that does not depend on ACE’s commercial interests or the authority of any individual company.

The Accord’s credibility will depend on participation, transparency and a willingness to apply its principles consistently, including when doing so is commercially inconvenient.

The cost of doing nothing is paid by the buyer

When a protective claim is unsupported, the risk does not end with the company that made it.

It travels through the supply chain — to the distributor who repeats it, the engineer who specifies it, the purchasing authority that approves it and, ultimately, the people who depend on the installed product.

The Ottawa Accord seeks to put responsibility where it belongs: on the party making the claim.

It does not promise that every product will prevent every injury or defeat every threat. No honest accord can make that promise. Instead, it establishes a more practical expectation: buyers should be able to understand what a product has demonstrated, what it has not demonstrated and what evidence supports the distinction.

That is a meaningful step toward a more accountable protective glazing industry.

The cost of doing nothing is paid by the buyer

When a protective claim is unsupported, the risk does not end with the company that made it.

The Ottawa Accord seeks to put responsibility where it belongs: on the party making the claim.

That is a meaningful step toward a more accountable protective glazing industry.

The invitation is open. The responsibility is shared.

ACE invites manufacturers, distributors, dealers, installers, specifiers, laboratories, industry organizations and other interested parties to read Draft 4 of The Ottawa Accord and participate in its development.

If you make protective claims, consider signing the Accord. If you specify or purchase protective glazing, consider asking suppliers whether they have signed — and whether their claims meet its requirements.

If you disagree with a provision, submit a comment. If you believe the Accord can be improved, help improve it.

But do not mistake silence for progress.

The protective glazing industry has an opportunity to demonstrate that transparency and accountability are not obstacles to competition, but essential conditions of trust.

ACE is putting the challenge to the industry: Sign The Ottawa Accord. Respect its commitments. Make every protective claim worthy of the confidence placed in it.

Because when protection is the promise, evidence must be the foundation.