For Germans, the acronym TÜV is certainly a household name. It stands for Technischer Überwachungsverein, or Technical Inspection Association in English.
Most ordinary Germans associate the TÜV with the compulsory technical checks their cars usually undergo every two years, with a certificate of roadworthiness glued onto license plates, if the vehicles in question are found to be in good condition.
The TÜV certificate is generally understood to be a symbol of safety and can certainly influence a potential client’s decision to buy a car from the current owner or not.
But checking cars is only a small proportion of what TÜV associations in Germany and abroad do today. They may scrutinize wind mills in Sweden, inspect machinery in Spain or certify a dam in Brazil.
Among the biggest, competing inspection groups nowadays are TÜV Rheinland, TÜV Nord, Dekra and TÜV Süd, the latter in the spotlight right now after a tailings dam recently inspected by it collapsed in Brazil last week, killing hundreds of people.
How it all began
There were also many casualties and disasters during the Industrial Revolution. With a lot of inventions being tried out back in the 19th century, not everything went smoothly, to say the least.
There are ample records of the explosion of a steam boiler at a brewery in Mannheim for instance. The 1865 incident motivated a group of engineers to found a first technical inspection association called DÜV (Steam Boiler Inspection Association). Many similar organizations followed in other places across the nation before they all came together in an umbrella organization in 1873, issuing first standards for construction and maintenance.
Inspectors reached out for more and more areas in the process, including the testing of electrical appliances and elevators.
“On the technical level, state safety supervision was privatized,” Michael Adams told DW. He did extensive research on the TÜV system as a professor at Hamburg University. Adams notes that those associations back then were nonprofit, with the Prussian state paying the engineers decent salaries so that they could work independently.
No matter what structural changes have occurred since then, the TÜV system continues to play a crucial role. “We could all be dead, were it not for the critical work of TÜV inspectors,” Adams insists. “More than ever, there’s a huge demand for independent technical tests and certificates.”
Different landscape
Having said that, there’s no denying the watershed change that happened in the 1990s. With reunited Germany liberalizing the inspection market, former monopolies became a thing of the past.
Regional associations merged into huge entities, employing tens of thousands of people each in Germany and abroad. They log revenues into the billions of euros annually as joint-stock companies.
“There was a time when TÜV was all about technical safety — now it’s also about being profitable in a highly contested global market,” Adams argues. That means trying to land the most lucrative contracts.
Scope of inspections differs widely
What also happens — on a contractual basis — is that only the documentation for a given product may be scrutinized, while material tests are not carried out at all. Newspaper reports highlighted a case involving TÜV Süd, which had certified a new hip replacement on behalf of Austrian producer Falcon Medical.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Bad boilers
The steam engine powered the first industrial revolution. Steam was used in machines, locomotives, food processing and to store energy as pressurized air. But the first steam boilers and pressure tanks were extremely dangerous. The quality of the steel, riveting and welding was nowhere as high as today…
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
An association for labor safety
When a steam boiler exploded in a Mannheim brewery in 1865, Mannheim industrialists founded the first Steam Boiler Revision and Insurance Association. This later became TÜV (Technischer Überwachungsverein, or Technical Inspection Association). Still, explosions routinely leveled factories thereafter. The explosion depicted above occurred in 1881 in Eschweiler near Aachen, killing many workers.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Demand all over the place
In the following years, entrepreneurs founded numerous Steam Boiler Supervision Associations (DÜV) in nearly all towns and regions of Germany. After 1871, member companies could avoid inspections by the federal government. Well into the 20th century, the revision of steam boilers remained one of the primary tasks, since explosions were still common, like here in Nuremberg in 1916.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
DÜV becomes TÜV
As industry further developed, so too did the tasks of the DÜV associations. One of the many new fields of work included safety inspections of motor vehicles. DÜV became TÜV – a more general Technical Inspection Association. Today, most Germans first and foremost think of their frequent car inspections when they hear the brand name TÜV.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Testing the safety of the product
TÜV does not only test the safety of cars that are already licensed. It also conducts test runs to identify weaknesses in the construction. It therefore has testing grounds at crash-site test locations like this one.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Training rescuers
TÜV also works hand in hand with rescue teams and firefighters. Here, TÜV engineers simulate a car crash involving an old East German Trabant car as part of fire crew training. The organization also offers first aid and firefighting training for employees in large companies.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Supervising humans
It’s not just motor vehicles that have to function flawlessly – but the human beings driving them as well. If someone drives recklessly or while intoxicated, police authorities can require him or her to undergo a medical and psychological examination. Those who cannot pass TÜV’s test – popularly called the “idiot test” – will not get their driving license back.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Is there a doctor in the building?
Companies are obliged to care for the wellbeing of their employees, and large firms usually have a company doctor – often with an agreement from TÜV. The medic will administer vaccinations for people going on business travel to dangerous places and is in charge of helping workers who return after a longer medical absences. He or she is also in charge of monitoring workplace security.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Good air, better learning
A classroom has to be safe, too. This TÜV engineer is testing the air for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). They were once used in capacitors of fluorescent lamps, and if the capacitor breaks, the poisonous substance could get into the room. Elsewhere, TÜV also tests for asbestos, an insulation material once used widely and now known to cause cancer in humans.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Fog or smog?
In Germany, there’s a finely meshed network of stations controlling air quality – many operated by a local TÜV. They constantly measure for fine dust, nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides. The collected data is transmitted to state and federal environmental agencies.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
How safe are our products?
Producers of food and medicines are obliged to control and guarantee the safety of their products. And they have to document how they do it. They can therefore hire TÜV experts who utilize a network of TÜV biochemical laboratories to run the tests.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Beware the electricity
Transformers provide you with low currents and can turn DC to AC. But how safe are they? Before a producers can sell transformers on the open market, they will need to have proof that they’ve been tested – like the GS label for “geprüfte Sicherheit” (proven safety). TÜV engineers can issue the label after a successful test.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Will the ropes withstand the storm?
A static engineer controls the quality of ropes securing light masts at the Munich Olympic stadium. TÜV also checks cable cars, industrial facilities or cranes for stability.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
A thrilling rollercoaster
Rides at the fair are a tricky thing: There are strong forces and quick acceleration at work. Here, an engineer tests the connections of a rollercoaster rail. When he gives his green light, the fun can begin.
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150 years of keeping Germans safe – TÜV
Back to the roots!
With all the additional tasks that TÜV has taken up since it’s founding 150 years ago, one thing has not changed: supervising pressure tanks and steam boilers. Today, explosions are nowhere near as common today as they were in 1866.
Author: Fabian Schmidt
A patient later complained about the complications caused by that highly risky hip prosthesis and demanded compensation. But TÜV Süd pointed out it had only been commissioned to check whether the product was in line with EU regulations and norms, meaning it only checked the papers, but was not involved in any material tests.
Another case involved TÜV Rheinland, which had approved faulty breast implants produced with counterfeit silicone and produced by French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP).
In October 2018, France’s highest court did not buy TÜV’s argument that it could not possibly have detected the fraud committed by PIP (using cheaper materials than documented). The judges said TÜV Rheinland’s obligations required it to check the documents on the manufacturer’s raw materials as well as staging surprise visits to PIP. TÜV was ordered to pay a fine.
Who polices the police?
All TÜV associations have liability riders in their statutes. “We shall be liable for damages, irrespective of the legal ground, in the context of fault-based liability, in the event of intent or gross negligence,” says TÜV Süd for instance.
But negligence is hard to prove. It stands to reason that inspection associations have no interest in featuring in scandals like the current one involving the huge mudslide in Brazil. And they assure us time and again that their ethical standards are high, as is their independence. But seeing is believing.
“Where’s the TÜV for the TÜV,” Michael Adams asks. There needs to be some kind of state supervision, he demands, involving random checks of inspections and the withdrawal of licenses for those not up to the mark.
“After all, a similar supervision is in place in the finance sector, where BaFin [Germany’s financial watchdog] keeps an eye on the activities of systemic banks.”
