An insider's view of creating new international engineering standards

Paul Boughton

Within the context of a diminishing role for national standards, Jon Severn discusses the influence of international standardisation with Ronnie Amit, the general secretary and chief executive officer of the International Electrotechnical Commission.

International standards are playing an increasingly important role in engineering, often superseding national standards that have served industry well for, in some cases, decades. Nevertheless, the world of standards is still an imperfect one in which to operate; some standards may be out of date compared with the state-of-the-art, while there are also new technologies evolving so rapidly that engineers have to operate without the benefit of published standards.

Standards are certainly beneficial in that they can guide designers and show them how to implement best practice, but there are people - especially those who revel in creativity - who find them too constraining. It is also unhelpful that standards occasionally overlap, perhaps because they have been developed by different organisations, or because a decision has been taken to alter the scope of certain standards, leaving others trailing in their wake. For example, IEC62061, Safety of machinery, Functional safety of safety-related electrical, electronic and programmable electronic control systems, coexists with ISO13849-1, Safety of machinery, Safety-related parts of control systems, Part 1: General principles for design. There is significant commonality between the two so, not surprisingly, there are people that would like to see these standards combined into one.

The IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) is described as the world's leading organisation preparing and publishing international standards for electrical, electronic and related technologies.

A range of technologies

IEC standards cover a vast range of technologies, from power generation, transmission and distribution to home appliances and office equipment, semiconductors, fibre optics, batteries, solar energy, nanotechnology and marine energy.

The IEC's standards support safety, performance, the environment, electrical energy efficiency and renewable energies.

As a leading player in this field, the IEC has had a central role in the recent trend away from national standards towards international standards. Ronnie Amit, the general secretary and chief executive of the IEC (Fig.1), offers this explanation: "The real driving force behind the trend towards international standards has been the growing importance of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in terms of technical barriers to trade (TBT). The WTO's TBT agreement, which asks its members to look to existing international standards as the basis for national standards or regulations, has underpinned the IEC's position as the leading global organisation responsible for electrotechnical standards and conformity assessment.

As a result, the IEC has grown in recent years from a limited grouping of major economies to more than 150 participating countries. And the really good news is that we are seeing the new countries either sending their experts from industry to participate in the IEC's work, or, at the very least, looking to the IEC's standards library for their own regulatory requirements. We are therefore seeing increasing adoption of IEC standards as national standards or regulations in all regions of the world."

Working together

Given that world trade is such an important reason for the development of international standards - and their subsequent adoption as national standards - it is essential that the three main international standards organisations, namely the IEC, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the United Nations' ITU (International Telecommunication Union), work together closely.

Amit describes how this is achieved: "The IEC has always had excellent co-operation with the two other international standards organisations: the ITU and the ISO - the IEC's younger sister (which is actually a federation of national standards bodies). While there are formal agreements between these bodies, the operational relationship has been enhanced through the World Standards Cooperation (WSC), a regular meeting of the heads of the organisations which looks to promote international standardisation as a common goal.

"We also feature several joint technical groups in technologies overlapping our respective field of speciality - indeed, the shining example of such collaboration was the presentation of an Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to the Joint IEC/ISO/ITU Video Team Standards Committee for its work in high-definition television protocols.

"On another, equally important, level, the IEC has also recently nurtured relationships with the likes of the IEEE, the US-based professional association of electrical engineers.

"A co-operation agreement started in 2002 has recently been enhanced to include joint development of new standards. With many engineers working in both IEC and IEEE groupings, such a rational approach can only mean increased efficiencies and better standards for the industries served.

"Furthermore, we also continue to expand the involvement of relevant industry associations at the technical level through our liaison mechanisms."

The internationalisation of standards is a laudable aim, yet an increase in the number of interested parties can, at times, make it more difficult to achieve a consensus.

Amit acknowledges this, saying: "The IEC work is governed by the IEC/ISO Directives, a set of rules that set out the possible scenarios for the easy and 'difficult' situations. But even then we come across situations where an impasse is met. And it is my job and the job of the relevant IEC management bodies to try to facilitate dialogue and see what can be done, if anything. And this approach has worked on a number of projects over recent years - with perhaps the most notable example being the work of our committee on industrial automation and the IEC fieldbus standards.

"But one still has to remember that the IEC decisions on the development and approval of its standards are on a 'one country, one vote' basis. If the members do not like what is being presented to them, they have the final say."

Standards and innovation

With so many individuals and organisations involved in preparing new or revised standards, users can sometimes feel that the standards cover every last detail, leaving little or no scope for interpretation and, some might say, innovation.

Amit responds by saying: "I believe this highlights a misconception about the role of the 'traditional' consensus-based international standard. In the normal business cycle, the market innovates through the introduction of new technologies and techniques. When the technology has stabilised - that is, the market (meaning the customers, be they government, industry or consumers) has accepted the technology - then the interested stakeholders (primarily the experts from industry) can bring forward proposals to develop the relevant international standard. However, given the fast-moving nature of certain technologies, the IEC is trying to offer the market de facto standards by means of the publicly available specifications that will eventually lead to the 'backbone' of the longer-term, consensus-based standard.

"Unfortunately, it still takes a minimum of several months to go through the required processes (largely the public enquiry stage) to achieve the status of an IEC international standard. What we can do is deliver a de facto industry specification in a couple of months to serve the needs of industry, while the IEC international standard goes through the approval processes."

The publicly available specification (PAS) is a relatively new type of document and is an example of a 'pre-standard' publication.

According to Amit, this type of 'new deliverable' is proving successful: "We are very satisfied with the 'pre-standards' such as the publicly available specifications. We are satisfied because the feedback from industry leaders has been very favourable. These new products have finally shaken off another major misconception of the 'not invented here' syndrome.

"Many of these products come largely 'off-the-shelf' from groupings of industry experts in the technology concerned. More important is that the IEC has been able to deliver in taking many of these 'pre-standards' through the evolution to international standards."

Ongoing developments

Clearly these 'pre-standards' are very useful for fast-developing technologies, but there are mature technologies for which standards change very little from one decade to the next. However, for technologies where there are ongoing developments there is a balance to be struck between long maintenance times for standards - giving industry a stable technological environment in which to operate - and the need to keep standards up to date with the state-of-the-art.

Amit comments: "This is a valid point: some technologies move faster than others. And that is why we leave it to the relevant technical committees' responsible experts from industry to decide on the maintenance review cycle for the standards. But we are also helping to revolutionise standardisation by looking to solutions, such as database standards, to offer industry the means to stay up to date as the standard continues to be developed."

International standardisation is an area where it will never be possible to please everyone all the time, but there is no denying its increasing importance and the positive impact it has had on world trade. Although national standards bodies are not expected to be redundant in the foreseeable future, their role will inevitably shift towards contributing to international standards, rather than developing national standards, especially with regard to engineering and related technologies.

Aharon ('Ronnie') Amit became IEC general secretary on 1st January 1999, having served as IEC deputy general secretary since 1996. He has a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Israel Institute of Technology and attended courses towards a Masters in aeronautical engineering and an MBA at New York University. He also attended Harvard Business School in 1984. From 1971-1994, Ronnie Amit held management positions in the electronics and telecommunication industries in Israel, the USA, the Fiji Islands and the UK.

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