A standard explanation
What is a standard? Ben Dobbs, Head of Global Standards and Legislation at LEEA provides a basic explanation.
Standards are a vital part of any industry, but are particularly important in the Lifting Industry, so what they are and what they do should not be misunderstood. To answer the basic question: a standard is a document that is voluntary in application and established by all interested parties. It reflects consensus and is approved by a recognized body for common and repeated application.
There are many standardisation bodies in the world – some more global, others specific in terms of regional relevance and scope. The standardisation system that is most relevant globally to LEEA is the ISO/CEN system, which has three levels.
These levels start with national standards, which are developed by the national standardisation bodies. For example, the national standardisation body in the UK is BSI (British Standards Institution), which develops national standards with the prefix BS (British Standard).
Representing the next level are European standards, with the European Norm (EN) prefix. These are developed by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), which comprises 34 member standardisation bodies. They commit to implementing all ENs and to withdraw all conflicting national standards. For example, a BS EN is the British implementation of the EN. In France, the same standard will be NF (Norme Française) EN. These two versions will be exactly the same technically, with the only differences being the written language and the potential addition of national annexes (which are for information purposes only). The 34 CEN members are gathered from all European Union member states and three of the EFTA members: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland. Other member states are United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Turkey and Serbia.
The third level is formed by International standards with the ISO prefix. These are developed the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which comprises 172 national standardisation bodies that are not obligated to adopt them as national standards if they do not have a national equivalent. ISO and CEN signed the Vienna Agreement to develop standards together when possible. That collaborative process results in standards with the EN ISO prefix.
Developing standards
The standards development process usually includes the participation of the interested stakeholders – either directly or through the national standardisation bodies, which decide on a national position after a discussion. The latter is the case of in CEN and ISO. The Technical Committees (TC) comprise delegates that represent the national position, while Working Groups (WG) are formed of experts who participate in their personal technical capacity. Technical Committees are decision bodies, where votes are cast while in the Working Groups and consensus has to be achieved. CEN and ISO have equivalent standards development processes with the following phases:
- New work item (NWI) proposal: a formal proposal is presented to the Technical Committee for approval by delegates. If approved, the work starts. In some cases, work being done before under a preliminary work item.
- Building expert consensus: experts work in the first draft in a Working Group or Sub-Committee (SC).
- Committee Draft (CD) / First Working Draft (FWD): the first draft is sent to the Technical Committee for information.
- Enquiry – DIS (Draft Internation Standard) / prEN: the draft is made publicly available to all national stakeholders for commenting.
- Comment resolution in a Working Group (WG) Sub-Committee (SC): experts discuss the comments received and resolve by consensus.
- Formal Vote (FV) – Final Draft International Standards (FDIS) / FprEN: the delegate in the TC vote the final version of the document. Only editorial changes are allowed after this point. FprEN standards are pre-release drafts of European Standards (ENs) – Fpr stands for ‘Final draft forReview/Voting’ (Formal Vote).
- Publication: CEN and standardisation bodies work on the editing and translation of document before its publication.
The relationship of European standards with European legislation
Some European standards in Europe (and still in the Great Britain), are directly related to specific pieces of legislation. This means that by following a specific clause of the standard, there is presumption of conformity to a specific clause in the relevant piece of legislation. This correspondence between the standard and the legislation is presented in the informed Annex ZA, which can be found at the end of the standard. These special standards are called ‘harmonised standards’ in Europe and ‘designated standards’ in Great Britain.
There a number of key positive advantages in participating in the standardisation process. It enables companies to gain detailed knowledge of standards and this way, anticipate requirements and trend. Participation means they can influence the contents of standards and ensure that their specific needs are considered. Companies can establish contacts with other stakeholders, experts and regulators at both national and international levels. They can also contribute to the development of standards that will ensure increased safety, performance, efficiency and interoperability of products and/or services.
One of the key value added benefits of LEEA membership is that members can access and download global standards as part of their LEEA subscription. This benefit saves members the quite significant cost of buying these standards themselves. For more information, visit leeaint.com
