ISO Focus
The Magazine of the International Organization for Standardization
Volume 1, No. 1, January 2004, ISSN 0303-805X
Tyco’s CEO on ISO standards
Securing e-business
Contents
1
Comment Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General
Reaching out
2
World Scene
Highlights of events from around the world
3
ISO Scene
Highlights of news and developments from ISO members
4
Guest View
Edward D. Breen, CEO of Tyco International
6
Main Focus
ISO Focus is published 11 times
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ISSN 1729-8709
Printed in Switzerland
Cover photo : ISO
ISO Focus January 2004
Safety and tall buildings
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Constructing the tall buildings of tomorrow
Vision and management
Fire resistance tests
Fire detection and alarms
Lifts in the emergency evacuation of buildings
Fire and security
Setting performance as a standard
The needs of the insurance industry
The World Trade Center collapse and its implications
for International Standards
• For building as solid as a rock
30 Developments and Initiatives
• Securing E-business
• Paying for standards has real merits
35 New this month
• How consumers can get involved in
standard-making
• ISO standard for the tourism industry
• Protective equipment for ice hockey players
• Publicizing your ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001 certification
37 Next Issue
Highlights of upcoming articles next month
Comment
Reaching out
V
oluntary standards are the
modern way to address the
complexity and the globalization of issues which characterize our
world as it moves in the 21st century.
They crystallize and allow a sharing
of knowledge and good practices, they
support the dissemination of technology whilst, more and more, taking
into account safety, health, environmental and service-related aspects.
“ A magazine remains
a strong vehicle,
easy to consult
and refer to,
to spread the good news
and information .”
The way standards are developed
enables wide participation, based on
transparent processes, and, through
our national members, benefits from
effective dissemination to those that
will be actually applying them. The
need to associate all interested stakeholders and the shift from national
to International Standards makes the
added value of the ISO System particularly relevant to face the challenges
of our times. This has been demonstrated by the success and outcome of
the consultation we have conducted
in the past months in order to fuel
the update of our strategy and the
development of our strategic plan for
the Horizon 2010. ISO will strive to
be a leading platform and partner for
the production of globally and market-relevant International Standards,
covering products, services, conformity assessment and good management
and organizational practices.
One of the issues that emerged
from the consultation as being of
prime importance was that of communication. Indeed, the growing
diversity and size of the community of experts, economic actors and
stakeholders who take part in, or are
affected by, standardization requires
that we improve the way in which we
communicate on the modalities, benefits, rationale, trends and achievements of our collective work. We have
already extended significantly the facets of our widely visited Web site, and
made extensive use of Internet and IT
technologies for supporting and promoting our activities.
But a magazine remains a
strong vehicle, easy to consult and
refer to, to spread the good news and
information. So, we have decided to
renovate ours, with a new name to
underline that we will “ focus ” on key
issues, events and achievements in
and around ISO, international standardization and related matters. We
hope you will enjoy this new magazine, which will indeed talk about all
such matters, as well as carrying contributions from high-level guests and
key actors amongst our stakeholders.
If ISO Focus is primarily destined to
our members, partners and participants in our work, our ambition is to
reach out to a wider audience, since
the general call for and increased use
of International Standards broadens
the circle of those concerned. We
hope thus to better inform on their
development and effectively illustrate
their benefits, thereby gaining stronger support and participation.
determined to continue to improve
and expand our contribution to the
positive outcome of globalization
through providing the International
Standards which reconcile the facilitation of trade with social, economic
and environmental progress. Thank
you all most sincerely. And a very
Happy New Year to you !
Alan Bryden
ISO Secretary-General
As this first issue coincides
with the beginning of the year, I
would like to take the opportunity to
extend my good wishes and thanks
to all those who contribute to the
ISO System, confident that they are
ISO Focus January 2004
1
World Scene
UNIDO and
ISO partnership
Using standardization to
enhance industrial development
and participation in world trade
is the focus of a new partnership
formed by UNIDO and ISO to
assist developing countries and
transition economies.
The partnership was formally
established by the signing of a
memorandum of understanding
(MoU) on 2 December 2003 in
Vienna, Austria, by Carlos
Magariños, Director-General
of UNIDO (United Nations
Industrial Development
Organization), and Alan Bryden,
Secretary-General of ISO.
The MoU aims to make it
easier for developing countries
and economies in transition to
participate in and benefit from
international trade. The first
concrete measures will be the
development of training material on standardization and
related conformity assessment
activities, and awarenessraising through joint workshops
and seminars.
etc. Discussions were on what
global standards would be
required to favour the development of these new technologies. Each organization will
have to review the conclusions
of the workshop (see www.
itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/
telecomauto/program.html).
Consumers International (CI)
has launched a new programme
to examine decision-making
processes in the global market
and ways to increase effective
consumer representation.
The new project will develop
guidelines for better practice,
based on case studies from CI
member experiences in the
WTO, ISO and Codex. These
will be accompanied by a
manual analyzing national
participation in standards
setting.
For more information : www.
consumersinternational.org
ISO has just published a brochure which highlights why it is
so important for consumers to
participate in the standardsmaking process – see page 35.
ISO technical committees ISO/
TC 204, Intelligent transport
systems, and ISO/TC 22, Road
vehicles, are planning to
discuss possible initiatives and
actions with their experts.
Hydrogen technology
According to the US Department of Energy Press Office,
the US Secretary of Energy,
Mr. Spencer Abraham, joined
by Ministers representing 14
countries and the European
Commission, signed on 20
November 2003 an agreement
formally establishing the International Partnership for the
Hydrogen Economy (IPHE).
Wireless communications
Signing of the MoU by Carlos
Magariños (left), DirectorGeneral of UNIDO and Alan
Bryden (right), SecretaryGeneral of ISO.
ITU (International
Telecommunication Union) in
collaboration with ISO and
ETSI (the European
Telecommunication Standards
Institute) organized a workshop in November 2003 offering the automotive and telecommunication industries an
opportunity to exchange ideas
on the future of communication technologies in motor
vehicles.
Consumer representation
A two-year project, announced
at Consumer International’s
17 th World Congress, will
analyze the ways in which
three key global institutions –
the World Trade Organization
(WTO), ISO and Codex
Alimentarius – set the rules
and standards that govern trade
and the role that consumers
play.
2
ISO Focus January 2004
Topics included various IT
systems such as navigation
systems, fleet management
systems, emergency services,
inter-vehicle communication
based on short range radars,
speech recognition, positioning
services, telematics services,
Representatives from Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, the
European Commission (EC),
France, Germany, Iceland,
India, Italy, Japan, Republic of
Korea, Norway, Russia and the
United Kingdom were invited
by the USA to sign the IPHE
as an international mechanism
to coordinate hydrogen research
and hydrogen technology development and deployment.
Mr. Randy Dey, the Chair of
ISO technical committee ISO/
TC 197, Hydrogen technologies, considers that the IPHE
cooperation could help
advance the transition to a
global hydrogen economy,
complementing the work of the
International Energy Agency
(IEA).
Mr. Dey considers that IPHE
could also play a role by facilitating the development of
codes and standards through
international organizations
such as ISO, the International
Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC) and the World Forum for
the Harmonization of Vehicles
Regulations.
Contact Mr. Randy Dey for
more information :
rdey@ccsglobalgroup.com
International Standards
backed at WSIS
The role of International
Standards in contributing to the
development of a global
Information Society has been
recognized by the first phase of
the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS),
held in Geneva, Switzerland on
10 to 12 December 2003.
The acknowledgement is contained within the Declaration
of Principles endorsed by the
Summit, where more than
11 000 participants from 176
countries were represented.
The Declaration aims to
provide a common vision of an
information society’s values,
and will assist governments in
implementing the Summit’s
Plan of Action which builds
on the common vision and
guiding principles of the
Declaration into concrete
action lines, with the view to
helping countries overcome the
digital divide.
ISO, in collaboration with IEC
and ITU-T, has worked to
ensure that in the framework
of the WSIS, the strategic role
of International Standards for
development and trade be
recognized and reflected in the
declaration issued from the
Summit. The WSIS preparation
process is an exemplary case
of cooperation among the three
organizations undertaken under
the auspices of the World
Standards Cooperation.
More information on the
WSIS, including the
Declaration and Plan of
Action, can be found on the
Summit’s Web site,
www.itu.int/wsis
ISO Scene
Welcome, Senegal !
The Assocation Sénégalaise de
Normalisation (ASN) has been
admitted as ISO correspondent
member for Senegal, thereby
becoming ISO’s 148 th member.
Here is its address and details :
21, Lotissement Front de Terre
BP. 4037 DAKAR
Directeur général :
M. Barama Sarr
Tel.
+ 221 827 64 01
Fax
+ 221 827 64 12
E-mail isn@sentoo.sn
Senegal is the westernmost
country on the African continent, bordering with Gambia,
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali
and Mauritania and covering
196 190 km ². Dakar is the
capital city of this country of
10 580 307 inhabitants, divided
administratively into 10
regions. French is the official
language.
ANSI Homeland Security
Standards Panel
The American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) has
established the Homeland
Security Standards Panel
(HSSP) with a mandate to
identify existing consensus
standards or, if none exists,
assist the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and
those sectors requesting assistance to accelerate development
and adoption of consensus
standards critical to homeland
security.
Its initial tasks will be to catalogue, promote, accelerate and
coordinate the development of
standards in Homeland Security
areas including transportation,
biometrics, cyber security, and
interoperability of emergencyresponse equipment. The HSSP
will also identify and communicate to governmental units the
existence of current standards
that can meet identified needs.
ISO Council has asked the
Secretary-General to engage
contacts with relevant international organizations and ISO
members and to make an
inventory/analysis of all existing security-related ISO standards, with a view to assessing
further the needs for
International Standards for
security and the potential for
additional ISO involvement.
A progress report will be
submitted at the next meeting
of ISO Council in March 2004.
More information on HSSP is
available on the ANSI Web
site, www.ansi.org
(MBS), Japan (JSA), and others, have been developing SR
instruments for their jurisdictions. In addition to assisting
organizations within their jurisdictions and demonstrating the
demand for and viability of SR
standards, these national
standards provide practical
experience for the development
of international standards.
Austrian Standards Institute
Web site : www.on-norm.at/
Visit to Slovenia
At the invitation of the
Slovenian Institute for
Standardization (SIST), ISO
member body for Slovenia,
Mr. Alan Bryden talked about
“ Open and global standards
for an inclusive information
society ” at a conference
entitled “SIST – A Part of the
Global Information Society ”
in November 2003.
of the European Committee for
Standardization (CEN) and
World Standards Day 2003.
Mr. Bryden also took part in
the celebrations of the
Institute’s second anniversary,
its admission as full member
Slovenian Institute
of Standardization Web site :
www.sist.si
Mr. Bryden congratulated
Slovenia for its economic and
social performance and the
country’s understanding of the
importance of international
standardization. This was Mr.
Bryden’s first visit to Slovenia
as Secretary-General of ISO.
Austria and Social
Responsibility
The Austrian Standards
Institute (ON), ISO member
for Austria, is developing a
guideline standard on how to
implement Social Responsibility
(SR) in organizations, with the
main emphasis on enterprises.
In the elaboration process several stakeholders are involved,
including those from government, NGOs, labour unions,
the chamber of commerce,
enterprises etc. The document
is planned to be published in
the first quarter of 2004.
Several national standards
bodies, including those for
Israel (SII), Australia (SA), the
United Kingdom (BSI), France
(AFNOR), Spain (AENOR),
Mexico (DGN), Malawi
From left to right: Mr. Carlos Ganopa, Chairman of the Board
of IPQ and President of Eurolab, Mr. Marko Jagodic̆, President
of the Electrotechnical Society of Slovenia, Mr. Bogdan Topic̆,
President of SIST, Mrs. Elisabeth Stampfl-Blaha, Deputy-Managing
Director of ON, Mr. Saso Bovcon, Project Manager & PR responsible person of SIST, Mr. Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General,
Mr. Zeljko Puljic, Information and Communication Services
Director, ISKRATEL , Mrs. Marjetka Strle Vidali, General Director
of SIST and Mr. Jaksa Topic, Director General of DZNM.
ISO Focus January 2004
3
Guest View
Edward D. Breen
E
ISO Focus : Mr. Breen, before we turn
our focus to your views on International
Standards, would you please briefly
describe the major businesses of Tyco
International ?
Edward D. Breen : Tyco is a diversified manufacturing and service
company. It is the the world’s largest
manufacturer, installer and provider of
fire protection systems and electronic
security services, as well as the world’s
largest manufacturer and servicer of
electrical and electronic components,
and the world’s largest manufacturer
of specialty valves. Tyco also holds
strong leadership positions in disposable medical products, plastics and
adhesives. Tyco operates in more than
100 countries and had fiscal 2003 revenues from continuing operations of
approximately USD 37 billion.
ISO Focus : How effective are
International Standards in driving
your worldwide business ?
4
ISO Focus January 2004
product costs. The higher costs are
caused by having to make sometimes
minor modifications to products to
satisfy local requirements. More often
than not, these modifications result in
no obvious benefit to our customers.
They become simply another way of
achieving the same objective.
The development and use of
International Standards offers a way
to overcome the inefficiencies created
by parochial standards. It permits Tyco
to achieve better economies of scale in
manufacturing and to deliver a more
consistent product with lower production variations.
TYCO International
dward D. Breen has been
Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer of Tyco International
Ltd. since July 2002. Prior to joining Tyco, Mr. Breen was President
and Chief Operating Officer of
Motorola from January 2002 to July
2002 ; Executive Vice President and
President of Motorola’s Networks
Sector from January 2001 to January
2002 ; Executive Vice President and
President of Motorola’s Broadband
Communication Sector from January
2000 to January 2001 ; Chairman,
President and Chief Executive
Officer of General Instrument
Corporation (“ GI ”) from December
1997 to January 2000 ; and, prior to
December 1997, President of GI’s
Broadband Networks Group.
Mr. Breen also serves as a director
of McLeod USA Incorporated – a
communications company that delivers local, long distance and Internet
services for homes and businesses.
Edward D. Breen : All of our business
operations function under an umbrella
of standards. We have to comply
with industry, national, regional and
International Standards for both product safety and environmental requirements. Particular industries, such as
fire safety and medical products, have
a long history of product, installation and maintenance standards. A
wide variety of standards have been
developed over time to help fulfill
community needs for the minimum
requirements of products.
“ ISO standards have
the opportunity to draw
on the best ideas from
around the world. ”
As an international corporation, we
have been effective in dealing with the
multitude of standards. However, the
increasing globalization of the world
economy means that consumers are
now paying the cost of a fragmented
approach through delayed product
introductions and sometimes higher
ISO Focus : Environment, quality or
social responsibility have become
major catch phrases in more and more
organizations. How are quality and
environmental management handled
within your company ?
Edward D. Breen : Quality management systems are a core principle for
Tyco. In areas such as medical products, an effective quality system is
crucial to our ability to track our entire
development, manufacturing and distribution processes. At the same time, our
activities must be environmentally sustainable. Our long-term future is tied to
our ability to not only produce products
that meet the needs of our customers,
but that are also sympathetic to the environment. We believe that this is consistent with the goals of our customers.
ISO Focus : We understand that the
Tyco Fire & Security, for example,
has over 150 people participating in
350 standards committees around the
world. Can you please comment on
the benefits of participation in the ISO
standards-making process ?
Edward D. Breen : Tyco has a strong
and long-standing commitment to
standards development. The development of International Standards and
their acceptance as an alternative to
local standards is an important com-
TYCO International
“ We need to have
standards against which
our customers can
benchmark us.”
petitive mechanism. Suddenly, local
manufacturers can become exporters.
That fosters competition and keeps
all parts of our business focused on
improving our products and processes.
For Tyco, participation in the development of ISO standards enables us to
bring our technical experts together
with experts from other countries. We
get the chance to discuss and develop
new product requirements. Far from
being a watered-down compromise,
ISO standards have the opportunity to
draw on the best ideas from around the
world.
We also like to foster competition
and do not want local standards to
be a way of tilting the playing field
or restricting fair and vigorous competition. Where industries have used
technical barriers or regulations to try
to limit competition or restrict entry
into the market, these efforts have historically failed. Either market growth
becomes restricted or substitutes are
developed by more innovative com-
TYCO International
petitors. An open, competitive market
expands an industry and prevents
industry participants from becoming
lazy cost maximizers. New competitors and attention to cost control are
good for our customers and good for
our business in the long term.
ISO Focus : What new international
standards would Tyco like to see coming out of ISO ? Are there areas for
which Tyco would like to see more or
different ISO standards ?
Edward D. Breen : Apart from the
ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series, ISO
standards have traditionally focused
on equipment requirements. These
will remain important, but standards
for services will become increasingly
important as trade in services is further
globalized. Whether it be standards
for corporate governance, accounting
or software development, we need
to have standards against which our
customers can benchmark us. These
standards will also be important as
governments move to liberalize trade
in services and ISO can put in place an
international framework to support this
liberalization.
ISO Focus January 2004
5
Main Focus
Safety
and tall
buildings
6
ISO Focus January 2004
F
ire safety affects us all. For
many years, buildings have
been designed and built according
to an established set of rules intended
to meet any and all circumstances.
However, due to the ever-increasing
costs and the increasing height and
density of modern construction, buildings are beginning to be designed with
more consideration given to how the
pieces work together as a whole. For
instance, the fire resistance of one part
of a construction may not necessarily
need to be as great as others.
ISO realized this and began
working on new sets of rules and
standards in the early 1990’s. The
World Trade Center attack served to
put the spotlight on this work and
bring the attention of those not normally associated with these types of
concerns. Questions concerning the
level of robustness to which buildings should be designed have been
raised and discussed since shortly
after the event. For many issues, there
is a definite relationship between cost
and effectiveness. Should we design
buildings to withstand a severe impact
which may be of very low probability
of occurring ? Probably not. However,
should we design routes and methods
of getting people out of buildings
which have experienced a catastrophic
event ? Of course we should.
This issue of ISO Focus presents
many of the ideas and projects being
worked on across a wide spectrum of
ISO technical committees and other
groups involved in this work. Fire safety engineering, including construction
details, detection and alarm systems,
extinguishment systems, egress routes
and others, is increasingly being used
in the design of public buildings.
Liaison between and within the many
technical committees and other groups
involved in this work is critical if satisfactory solutions are to be developed
with efficiency and within a reasonable
amount of time.
It is hoped then, that this ISO
Focus will serve two purposes : to give
the layman an overview of the work
being done by ISO in the area of fire
safety ; and to help familiarize mem-
bers of the various internal groups with
the progress being made by those in
related fields. Perhaps the reader will
be surprised at the number of different
industries involved in the development
of a safer future. Remember, fire safety
is a concern common to all nations that
build multiple-storey public buildings.
The solutions will be most efficiently
found by a global approach with input
from as many nations as possible. ISO
is in a unique position to supply this
service.
Constructing
the tall
buildings
of tomorrow
By Dr. Wim Bakens, Secretary
General, CIB, and member of
ISO TMB TAG 8, Building
C
IB – the International Council
for Research and Innovation
in Building and Construction 1)
– was one of the two international
co-sponsors of the international conference “ Strategies for Performance
in the Aftermath of the World Trade
Center ” that took place in October
2003 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Over 200 experts from all over
the world discussed issues related to
the safety of tall buildings, with a
focus on questions such as :
• Should such buildings indeed be
made safer ? Should especially
fire safety and structural safety be
enhanced and should the respective
national and international codes
and standards be re-written to
include substantially higher safety
requirements ?
• To what extent can the proper
management of such buildings in
general and the management of
behaviour of its occupants and others (like firefighters) in emergency
situations contribute to enhancing
safety ?
• What new technologies (and design
concepts) are being developed that
may contribute to enhancing safety
situations ?
1) CIB is an association with members from
all over the world who are involved in the
programming, funding, execution, transfer and
application of building and construction related
research and technology development. CIB
aims for enhancing international information
exchange and cooperation between its members
and other stakeholders. Its head office is in the
Netherlands. Information on CIB can be found
at www.cibworld.nl.
Kuala Lumpur Petronas Towers
• Which national programmes have
been developed and implemented
since 9/11 and what outcomes are
available or will be in the near
future ?
My very simplified and somewhat personal version of some of the
conclusions from the many discussions
between experts that took place at this
conference, is this :
• A multitude of technologies (and
design concepts) that, if applied,
enable substantially improved safety in buildings is already available.
Actually applying such technologies in many cases will require
extra investment. In addition there
is always the need for developing
new safety-enhancing technologies
that are more cost-effective.
• There is the need for codes and
standards, but also for design and
engineering guidelines, in which
aspects of especially fire and structural safety engineering are integrated, as opposed to, for example,
separate codes for fire engineering
and for structural engineering that
may encompass sometimes conflicting requirements.
ISO Focus January 2004
7
Main Focus
• A major problem for decisionmakers on such extra investments
concerns the proper definition
of safety requirements and the
methodology to measure whether
design and construction concepts fulfill such requirements.
This assumes that the so-called performance approach in building and
construction, that provides a consistent methodology for the definition and measurement of building
performance requirements, may
offer a solution to this problem.
• There is a need for a worldwide,
publicly accessible system that
provides experts with information
on the different aspects of safety
in tall buildings, including, for
example, information on codes
and standards, best practices, new
technologies and design concepts,
products, etc.
How CIB helps promote
safety
CIB is looking how best to contribute to solving the problem of safety
in tall buildings in response to these
conclusions.
CIB initiated and facilitated
the Tall Buildings Summit in April
2002 in London, at which high-level
representatives of main stakeholders
concerning the issue of safety in tall
buildings came to an agreement on the
main issues to be addressed and on a
framework for doing so in the international R&D environment. In conjunction with the conference in Kuala
Lumpur, a second such Tall Buildings
Summit took place. The outcome of
these summits will give guidance to
national and international research
funding and programming organizations. CIB is studying involvement
in a possible next international Tall
Buildings Conference on safety in tall
buildings.
In 2001 CIB established the
CIB Task Group on Tall Buildings
with Associate Prof. Dr. Faridah
Shafii of the University of Malaysia
as its Coordinator, with the objective of, among others, providing an
8
ISO Focus January 2004
international forum for the exchange
of experiences and information on
planning, design, construction, operation and management of tall buildings
and initiating agendas for international
research.
The topics covered include :
• Fire Engineering – fire safety ;
systems on mass evacuation of
high density areas ; smoke egression
• Structural Engineering – impacts
of massive fire and blast on structural integrity ; performance-based
issues ; design for robustness ; strategies to improve building performance during life threatening incidents
• Planning and Design – vertical
transportation and integrated building controls ; integration of planning and design for safety of occupants and security of buildings and
their infrastructure
• Management – impacts on facilities and assets ; safety and risk
assessment on buildings ; quality
assurance and insurance and reinsurance
• Standards and Regulations –
impacts of new regulatory systems
upon future designs and construction ; developments of guidance
documents
“ Safety in tall buildings
is not a national issue
in one or a few countries
only, it is a worldwide
issue.”
In addition to CIB’s Task Group
on Tall Buildings – that has a more
integral approach to all aspects that
are especially relevant to tall buildings
– there are about 60 other CIB commissions that focus on defined issues.
Two justify special mentioning in this
context:
• TG43 on Megacities, that amongst
others addresses the positioning of
tall buildings in urban environment
and its impact ;
• W014 on Fire, that addresses
issues related to fire engineering
in buildings in general and that has
much to offer to dealing with fire
safety and risk issues in the context
of design, construction and management of tall buildings.
A multi-disciplinary
and multi-stakeholders
approach
Some CIB Member organizations who are especially active in this
area, including the National Institute
for Standards and Technology, (NIST),
and the Council for Tall Buildings and
Urban Habitat, and second international co-sponsor of the Tall Buildings
Conference in Kuala Lumpur, have
begun discussions aiming at the development of a worldwide and public
accessible Tall Buildings Information
System. It is envisaged that in the first
half of 2004, the first announcement
on the availability of such system can
be made.
Enhancing the safety situation
in buildings in general and in tall
buildings in particular requires a multi-
About the author
Wim Bakens
is Secretary
General, The
International
Council on
Research and
Innovation in
Building and
Construction
(CIB),
headquartered
in Rotterdam,
The Netherlands. CIB’s mission is
to simulate and facilitate international
exchange and collaboration in areas
concerning building and construction.
Dr. Bakens’ professional background is in
Architectural Engineering and in Research
and Management Consultancy in the
building and construction sector.
tee and indeed for
the fire safety community more generally. The ISO Technical Management
Board (TMB) had just given the technical committee a new title and with
it substantially greater responsibilities.
The change was necessary to address
the needs for standards production in
support of the emerging discipline
known as Fire Safety Engineering.
The title was changed from “ Fire Tests
on building materials components and
structures,” which it had been since
1961, to simply “ Fire safety ”.
Vision and
management
By Prof. Geoff Cox, Fire
Division, Building Research
Establishment, United Kingdom,
former Chair, ISO/TC 92, Fire
Safety, from 1995 to 2003
F
ire is an ever-present threat
whether we realize it or not.
When we relax at home on our
sofas, for example, we are most likely
sitting on materials that have locked
within their chemical bonds enough
energy to power 1 000 “ electric fire ”
space heaters. What makes them comfortable to sit on and warm to the touch
can also make them easy to ignite. All
it needs is for the stored chemical
energy to be unlocked by a smouldering cigarette or a dropped match. The
heat and momentum developed from
such a fire are awesome, causing the
possibility of a life-threatening situation to develop very rapidly.
The discipline of fire
safety engineering
Since it is very difficult to eliminate the prospect of fire completely,
standards are needed to ensure that the
products we use are safe and that, if
they do become involved in fire, they
perform in an acceptable fashion.
There are two technical committees within ISO that are devoted
solely to fire ; TC 21, Equipment for
fire protection and fire fighting, and
the TC I formerly chaired, TC 92, Fire
Safety. There are many others which
also have a fire interest. These include,
for example, TC 8, Ships and marine
technology, TC 38, Textiles, TC 61,
Plastics and TC 136, Furniture. TC
21’s scope complements TC 92’s,
concentrating on fire detection and
suppression systems rather than on the
phenomenon of fire itself.
When I took over the chair of
ISO/TC 92 in 1995 it was a time of
considerable change for the commit-
BRE
disciplinary and multi-stakeholders
approach, in which the research and
academic community is to play an
important and pro-active role. It is
hoped that CIB can make a contribution to achieving and optimization of
such role.
This will help achieve an
optimal international cooperation on
research and technology development
in support of enhancing safety in buildings, such that unnecessary duplication
of stand-alone work in different countries can be prevented, because if there
is one thing we all learned in the Tall
Building Conference in Kuala Lumpur,
it is that safety in tall buildings is not a
national issue in one or a few countries
only, it is a worldwide issue.
Safety
and tall
buildings
The use of Fire Safety Engineering in
airport terminal design to demonstrate
that sufficient time is available for
passengers to evacuate to a place of
safety in the event of a “ design fire.”
A new, more scientific, approach to providing fire safety had
been evolving from the successes of
many years of research. This had been
given particular impetus by the worldwide trend to performance-based regulatory reform, particularly in the construction sector.
Regulatory bodies are
big “ customers ”
Because of the seriousness of
product failure, dominant amongst the
“ customers ” for fire safety standards
are the regulatory bodies of various
kinds. These range from the international regulators such as IMO (the
International Maritime Organization)
who use ISO fire standards directly
through to national government building regulators who often use them in
some modified form.
The more flexible approach to
regulatory control recasts the requireISO Focus January 2004
9
Main Focus
In the developed world,
fire tragically claims each
year the lives of between
ten and twenty people for
ever y million of its population. The economic costs
are enormous, with direct
property losses amounting
typically to around 0,2 %
GDP. When this is added
to the consequential losses resulting from fire (e.g.
lost sales, equipment hire,
overtime working etc.) and
the costs of the emergency
ser vices, fire insurance
and fire protection provision, the total approaches
1 % of GDP annually.
ments of regulations in functional
rather than prescriptive form, allowing
a variety of alternative solutions to be
found which satisfy the requirements.
Much more freedom is provided to
engineer a solution that will meet or
surpass the requirements of the regulation. A properly engineered solution should be able to provide safe,
cost-effective and hopefully aesthetic
design.
It was clear that new standards would be needed to support Fire
Safety Engineering but it was also
obvious that any new standards would
have a much greater relevance to just
the “ tests ” or the “ buildings ” of the
TC’s original title. Tests only form
part of the new portfolio of standards
required, and engineering practice has
a utility for any form of structure, say,
ships or aircraft.
A decision was needed as to
whether there should be a new TC
devoted solely to the engineered
approach or whether, as was the
TMB’s final decision, it should
become a constituent part of an existing TC. Most of the experts and advocates of the engineering approach
already resided in TC 92, and so it
was decided to confirm the addition
10
ISO Focus January 2004
of a new “ Fire Safety Engineering
Subcommittee to TC 92 ”.
The need to review
the strategy
As a result of the change, TC
92 exploited the opportunity to “ take
stock ”. We appointed a “ Groupe des
Sages ” to undertake a thorough review
of our way forward to include widespread consultation on our successes
and failures to date, on the market
needs for our work and the impact on
our aims and objectives.
This was extremely valuable,
leading us to anticipate the more business-like approaches to standardswriting now required of all technical
committees. And, very prescient as
it has turned out in the wake of the
World Trade Center collapse, to begin
the process of development of new
approaches to standardization in support of fire engineering.
Before I discuss this further,
some background is needed on the
work of the TC, which perhaps is
different from many TC’s in that it is
genuinely “ horizontal,” impinging on
nearly every aspect of human endeavour. It does not address any particular
product family or range, instead it
focuses on the performance of those
aspects of any product or procedure
that has a bearing on fire safety.
Following the recommendations
of our Groupe des Sages, we restructured the TC, keeping four subcommittees but ensuring that the concerns of
fire safety engineering were central to
our future standards development programme. The four subcommittees are :
Fire Initiation and Growth (SC 1), Fire
Containment (SC 2) and Fire Threat to
People and the Environment (SC 3) in
addition to the one specializing in Fire
Safety Engineering (SC 4).
We also replaced the Chairman’s
Advisory Working Group with a
Technical Programme Management
Group to ensure proactive top-down
management of the TC’s work programme. One of the complaints we
heard during our consultation process
was that we had been too slow and too
often been diverted by “ bottom-up ”
initiatives of individual researchers.
We have introduced a new review
process that places emphasis on both
market need and scientific progress in
any new work item proposals.
This group also takes a coordination role with other international
bodies having a responsibility for
fire e.g. the IEC (the International
Electrotechnical Committee) ; the IMO
(International Maritime Organization),
the International Council for Research
and Innovation in Building and
Construction, the Society for Fire
Protection Engineers, as well as other
ISO TCs.
Tests and the real world
Our traditional standards evaluate, for example, how easy it is to ignite
a product or how much that product
contributes extra “ fuel ” and heat to
an initiating fire once it is involved.
Any extra heat and fuel generated
clearly causes the fire to propagate
much more rapidly than if the product
were simply “ inert ”. Another attribute
that is evaluated by our standard test
methods is the possible failure of structural elements exposed to fire with the
objective of minimizing the possibility
of the collapse of complete structures.
There are also standards that allow the
evaluation of the toxic threat of fire to
both people and the environment.
These standards have served
us very well and continue to do so.
However not all provide the kind of
quantitative data that can be used by
engineers to perform holistic assessments of fire safety allowing them
to weigh alternative fire protection
strategies.
The difficulty with many traditional standardized test methods
for such use is that they only give
information on the performance of the
product ‘ in the test ’ and not ‘ in reality ’. Often they simply supply pass or
fail information only. Such tests are
useful to rank products in the test,
maybe for quality assurance purposes,
but they do not provide quantitative
information that can be used by the
engineer. Furthermore relative ‘ success ’ in the test does not necessarily
ensure relative ‘ success ’ in the ‘ real
world ’ application environment.
The expectation is that with a
new testing approach coupled coupled
to a predictive capability to calculate
both ‘ test ’ and ‘ real world ’ exposure
scenarios, then it should be possible
to assess performance for a full range
of practical possibilities. Of course,
the ‘ real world ’ comes in too many
combinations and variations for all
eventualities to be covered but as in
any other form of engineering design,
appropriate design scenarios can be
identified.
“ Our new review process
emphasizes market needs
and scientific progress. ”
For example, would the ‘real
world’ malevolent event of an aircraft being deliberately flown into a
skyscraper have been anticipated by
building designers before 2001? The
structural engineers who designed the
World Trade Center towers did consider and accommodate the possibility of
an accidental aircraft impact. However
the consequences for fire safety were
not. Instead the well-tried and tested
local building regulatory requirements calling upon traditional fire test
methods were considered adequate. It
Safety
and tall
buildings
is doubtful that
anyone ever considered the possibility
of a fire being started by aviation fuel
simultaneously covering the whole of
one floor plate, let alone several.
With our current knowledge,
not available at the time the World
Trade Center was constructed, we can
design for such an eventuality if we
choose. Whether we should is for a
discussion outside of this article !
The whole issue of the validity
of the fire tests used to appraise the
performance of structural elements in
buildings has come under scrutiny following the collapse of the New York
World Trade Center. My colleague,
Deg Priest, Chairman of TC 92/SC 2,
Fire containment, addresses this issue
specifically in a separate article in this
issue.
Follow our progress
In 1999, the first Fire Safety
Engineering documents were published by our FSE subcommittee (SC
4) as an eight-part Technical Report,
ISO/TR 13387, Parts 1-8. These are
currently being extended and developed as full standards. We are also well
advanced in drafting new “ Standards
for standards ” documents that we will
use to deliver the next generation of
standards that can be used for a full
engineering analysis.
The very difficult task still facing us is the development of new, or the
modification of existing, standardized
fire tests to supply the kind of information required. This will take time
but we have made an important start.
We look to our international partners
to assist us with this. The fire commission of the International Council for
Research and Innovation in Building
and Construction, CIB W014, which
has a remit for pre-normative research,
will be particularly important for this
purpose.
Prior to the collapse of the
World Trade Center towers we might
have expected the innovation to occur
first in our standards for “ flammability ” or toxic potency. However, following the tragic events of 9/11, the oldest
ISO Focus January 2004
11
Main Focus
About the author
Geoff Cox is
urrently Technial Advisor to
he Management
Board of the
Building
Research Estabishment’s Fire
Division. He
etired as Chair
f the Internaional Standards
Technical Committee on Fire Safety
(ISO/TC 92) and as Research Director for
BRE in May 2003. Working at the United
Kingdom Fire Research Station for 30
years on all aspects of fire safety science,
he pioneered the application of computational fluid dynamics to fire problems. He
is currently a Trustee for the International
Association for Fire Safety Science.
Author of over one hundred scientific
papers and three books on fire, he also
hosted the first CIB Global Leaders
Summit on Tall Buildings at BRE in
the United Kingdom in 2002.
OMEGA POINT LABORATORIES
standards in our portfolio which concern “ fire resistance ” (the response of
structures to fire) have been propelled
to the top of our agenda.
Progress with our developments
can be followed on both the ISO Web
site : www.iso.org and the ISO/TC 92
homepage at : www.bre.co.uk/iso.
Fire resistance
tests
By Mr. Deggary N. Priest,
Chair ISO/TC 92/SC 2, Fire
containment (USA)
C
oncerns over the relevance of
the fire exposure contained
in fire resistance test procedures are increasingly being voiced.
However, there is no such thing as
a “ typical ” fire. All are different,
depending upon details such as fire
load, available oxygen, humidity, etc.
When selecting the temperature rise
curve for the “ standard ” fire exposure,
fire professionals chose one that rose
quickly and then slowly increased in
severity until the end of the test. The
intent of ISO 834, Fire-resistance tests
– Elements of building construction, is
to enable the comparison of constructions, with regard to their performance
under very similar fire exposures. The
tests are performed under strict control
of such variables as specimen size,
restraint, loading and other details.
Our answers to
questions on test
methods
Is the test “ highly artificial ” ?
Certainly, while no single fire exposure can reproduce the wide range of
exposures to be expected in accidental
fires, the exposure is based on a wide
variety of full-scale room burns done
approximately 80 years ago. Yes, the
materials of which the typical room
contents are made have changed since
then, as have other details such as win-
12
ISO Focus January 2004
dow size, which dramatically affects
fire ventilation. Most fires, however,
build up much slower than ISO 834 fire
exposure, burn at their maximum and
then begin to die out. ISO 834 exposure however, continues to increase for
as long as the test is continued. This is
really the only way to determine the
response of a fire barrier to an on-going
fire situation. Is it “ artificial ? ” No it is
not. Is it a simulation of the results of
actual full-scale fire scenarios ? Yes,
it is. Does a given fire resistance rating achieved in the test guarantee that
the same assembly will contain a real
fire for the same period of time ? Due
to the randomness of real fires, that
equivalency cannot be assumed.
“ Current test methods
tell us how the assembly
will perform under
the specific conditions
of the test. ”
The impetus for reviewing ISO
834 standard is, as has been previously mentioned, to satisfy the needs
of the professional fire safety engineer
(FSE). Has there been evidence that
the test, as performed up to now is
inadequate ? No, there has not. In fact,
our experience during the last 80 years
has demonstrated a marked decrease in
catastrophic failure of structures constructed in consideration of the fire test
results. The whole drive to change the
way buildings are constructed is based
on the need to engineer the entire structure as a package. It is envisioned that
the FSE calculations will be based upon
properties or characteristics of fire barriers that are derived from one or more
test methods. These tests will exhibit
What do we learn from
current test methods?
Do the current test methods tell
us how an assembly will perform under
all fire conditions ? Obviously not. They
only tell us how that assembly will perform under the specific conditions of
the test. The standard does not attempt
to compare the results of a fire resistance test of a given time period with the
performance of that assembly in a real
fire scenario of the same period. This
is a common misconception among
those with insufficient knowledge in
the use of fire test results. ISO/TR
834-3, Fire-resistance tests – Elements
of construction – Part 3 : Commentary
on test method and test data application, clearly states the relationship
between fire resistance and building
fires. In considering this relationship
it is necessary to understand that the
determination of fire resistance is by
means of a complete test procedure.
When making comparisons with building fires, attention is usually focussed
on the time-temperature curve and its
relation to the temperatures and growth
rates achievable in “ real ” compartment
fires under various fire scenarios.
The test is used to qualify building structures so that they provide the
requisite level of safety in fire. This is
achieved by applying a fire resistance
test result through some code or prescriptive document which will determine the performance needed in a given
situation. Adequacy of the approach is
monitored by practical feedback which
generally means avoidance of an unacceptable failure rate.
The result of the test is stated in
terms of a fire-resistance classification
or rating expressed as a period of time
Fire resistance tests, From top to
bottom : Cable penetrations is a test
where electrical cables penetrate
through a floor assembly with a
pre-qualified fire resistance to determine if the fire penetration seal (the
material that seals around the cables)
has maintained the fire resistance of
the floor ; a fire door, shown here failing, since flaming is not allowed on
the unexposed face ; a wall test ; the
ISMA (Intermediate Scale Multi-story
Apparatus) tests the propensity of curtain walls to spread flame from floor-tofloor on the outside of a tall building.
for which certain
criteria are satisfied.
This period of time represents
a relative ranking of performance and
cannot be related directly to a particular building situation. It is important to
recognize this transformation from an
arbitrary time base to the engineering
performance of buildings in fire, made
through the building codes.
The actual performance achieved
in a fire-resistance test is intimately
connected with the test conditions, the
extent to which the test models the
building, and the criteria applied to
determine failure. A small change in
conditions for failure, particularly with
respect to integrity and thermal insulation, could have a significant effect on
the rating obtained.
In particular, the time recorded
in the fire-resistance test in respect
of these criteria bears no direct
relationship to the failure times in
real fires. This has been recognized
in principle from the inception of the
1
2
test ), ).
Educational issues
to address
OMEGA POINT LABORATORIES
many of the features of the current ISO
834 test method, but with additional
data outputs. This approach would
differ from the current method of predetermining that all fire barriers will be
qualified for a specific fire resistance
rating. So, it is our opinion that the
manner in which results are utilized in
the design of a building will very likely
be different than they are today.
Safety
and tall
buildings
ISO/TC 92/SC 2, Fire containment, has not acknowledged that the
testing method is in need of a complete
overhaul. As our ISO/TC 92 Business
Plan clearly states, the current standards will be reworked to supply input
to the FSE documents, as soon as they
are completed.
These tests also tell us little
about the overall reaction of a complete structure to a fire insult at a concentrated location. They do, however,
allow us to draw a “ line in the sand ”
with regard to the relative fire performance of the items and constructions
tested. This is, essentially, the heart of
the Prescriptive Standards method of
constructing buildings. For instance,
requiring that all fire barriers (walls,
1) Bletzacker, R.W. “ The Role of Research
and Testing in Building Code Regulation ”.
News in Engineering. The Ohio State
University, 1962.
2) BS 476-10:1983, Guide to the Principles
and Application of Fire Testing.
ISO Focus January 2004
13
Main Focus
floors, doors, etc) have a fire endurance rating of two hours. Years of
experience throughout the world have
shown this method to be an effective
approach to fire safety.
The use of prescriptive standards, while being extremely effective,
is also often pessimistic and hence to
a degree, “ overkill.” This can lead to
excessive construction costs. Using
Fire Safety Engineering allows for the
entire structure to be designed in light
of the full breadth of safety requirements (structural, fire loads available,
personnel occupancy, egress, etc.).
These requirements vary from area to
area, and consequently, the amount of
fire resistance required is allowed to
vary also. If the threat of fire exposure is low, then the fire resistance of
barriers and contents can be reduced.
Conversely, if the fire load, personnel
egress needs or structural strength in
a specific area is expected to be high,
then the fire resistance of barriers and
contents will be increased accordingly.
Fire safety engineering is
still in its infancy
We are currently heavily involved
in generating ISO standards that will
describe how FSE is accomplished.
Fire safety engineering is increasingly
being looked to in support of performance-based national regulations in
many countries throughout the world
and ISO/TC 92/SC 4 has generated
ISO/TR 13387, an eight-part technical
report which outlines the fundamental
methodologies. It is anticipated that
this new field of engineering will rely
heavily on computer models, expert
knowledge and past experience with
our current methods. While significant
progress has already been made in this
area, the final standards and technical
reports upon which the new discipline
will rely may not be completed for
another seven to ten years.
When and how the fire resistance standards might be affected by the
advent of FSE is not possible to predict
at this time. First, ISO/TC 92/SC 4 must
develop the goals and methods to use in
order to achieve those goals. Then, the
14
ISO Focus January 2004
subcommittees that monitor and maintain the fire tests will adapt their test
methods to become useful tools in the
FSE environment and supply the necessary information in a common format.
ISO/TC 92/SC 2 has already begun a
critical review of ISO 834 test methodology, including an examination of the
current and possible future parameters
that the test method can supply. We
must be cautious as we move forward
with this issue, since an 80-year-old
database of testing exists, which has not
been shown to be invalid. Hopefully, a
way forward will be determined that
builds and relies on the tremendous
amount of existing information.
About the author
Deggary Priest
holds his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
Chemistry from
California State
University at
Hayward. He is
President and
CEO of Omega
Point Laboratories in Elmendorf, Texas, USA, and is responsible for
the overall testing operations, as well as
designing and fabricating fire testing
equipment for both the company and
clients. He has been involved with fire
testing since 1976, and has designed,
constructed and operated fire test furnaces
for Southwest Research Institute,
Commercial Testing, and Weyerhaeuser
Co. He has also worked as a research
chemist at Standard Research Institute.
He is a member of ASTM Committee
E-5 on Fire Standards, IEEE Power Engineering Society Insulated Conductors
Committee, and ISO/TC 92 subcommittee
SC 2, Fire containment, which he chairs.
From ISO 7010:2003.
Detection and
alarms
By Mr. Peter Parsons,
Chair ISO/TC 21/SC 3, Fire
detection and fire alarm systems
(Australia)
F
ire safety in buildings is increasingly taking an engineering
design approach, rather than the
traditional prescriptive approach,
to deliver the safety objectives of
regulators required to meet community
expectations. With the increasing introduction of performance-based building
codes throughout the world, building
designers and engineers are looking for
innovative and cost-effective methods
of ensuring the safety of building occupants in the event of a fire. A number
of systems act as inputs into the fire
engineering design process, including:
• Fire detection systems – to provide early detection of a fire.
• Remote monitoring of the fire
detection system – to ensure early
intervention by fire fighters.
• Sprinkler systems, portable fire
extinguishers and hose reels – to
suppress and extinguish a fire once
at the flaming stage.
• Lift management systems – to
assist fire fighters to gain access to
the seat of the fire.
• Smoke management systems – to
extract smoke from affected areas
and ensure smoke does not migrate
to unaffected areas.
• Passive systems such as fire isolated egress paths and fire isolated
compartments – to delay the spread
of a fire long enough to permit safe
occupant evacuation or effective
suppression.
The fire detection and alarm system is
a critical life safety system for building
occupants. Early warning smoke and
fire detectors, placed on ceilings, ducts
and other concealed spaces, are often
the first devices to detect a fire. Fire
growth can be so rapid that it is essential to initiate other safety systems to
effectively manage the situation. In a
fire engineering design, the fire detection system may be required to initiate
smoke hazard management systems,
remote monitoring equipment and
building evacuation systems.
Inputs into the fire engineering process
produce a safe building outcome.
Optimizing the
design and engineering
of equipment
There have never been any
international equipment standards
for components of a fire detection
and alarm system. Designers had to
refer to local equipment standards in
a fire safety design. This has meant
that there was a need to understand
the performance characteristics of the
local equipment and adjust design
models and calculations to suit. New
International Standards will set common performance criteria across the
globe. Designers will be able to use
their expertise in all world markets
according to ISO standards. This
will lead to improved understanding
amongst the engineering profession
and to better design tools to optimize
the engineering outcome.
We have worked hard in our
committee and are proud of our
achievements, the results of which
are provided in the following ISO
standards:
Evacuation System
Lift Management
System
Remote Monitoring
Fire Detection
and Alarm System
Fire Engineering
Design
leads to
Fire Suppression
Systems
Smoke Management
System
Passive Fire Systems
ISO Focus January 2004
15
Safe buildings
TYCO International
• Evacuation systems – to alert
building occupants to a fire through
the use of voice messages and other
aural and visual signals, and to
assist with the safe evacuation of
occupants.
Safety
and tall
buildings
Main Focus
ISO 7240-2, Control and indicating
equipment
ISO 7240-4, Power supply equipment
and
Together, equipment complying with these standards forms a minimum fire detection system that can
be used to provide the essential early
fire detection and warning to building occupants. But TC 21/SC 3 has
not stopped there. A new Technical
Report (ISO/TR 7240-14) provides
guidance on the content of fire detection system design, installation and
maintenance standards.
New standards for heat detectors (ISO 7240-5) and smoke alarms
(ISO 12239, Fire detection and fire
alarm systems – Smoke alarms) have
passed their final ballot and are being
prepared for publication. A multisensor detector standard (ISO 7240-15),
incorporating requirements for both a
smoke sensor and a heat sensor is at
the final ballot stage – adding to the
equipment available for an engineer to
use. In addition, drafts covering carbon
monoxide fire detectors (ISO 7240-6)
and manual call points (ISO 7240-11)
are through the DIS (Draft International
Standard) stage. This makes a total of
nine standards published or where
completion is imminent.
Substantial benefits
Let’s take the example of ISO
12239:2003, Fire detection and fire
alarm systems – Smoke alarms, that
provides manufacturers with a common set of functions – along with
requirements, test methods, performance criteria and manufacturer’s
instructions – that are to be provided
on all smoke alarms.
According to the NFPA
(National Fire Protection Association),
15 of every 16 homes in the USA has
at least one smoke alarm and since
becoming available to consumers in
the 1970s, the home fire death rate has
been reduced by half.
However, one of the main difficulties manufacturers face is the
16
ISO Focus January 2004
TYCO International
ISO 7240-7, Point type smoke detectors.
different audible warning signals as
well as the different labelling, connection and battery requirements for
smoke alarms practised in different
countries. These difficulties would be
drastically reduced if smoke alarm
manufacturers could follow one set of
requirements and the criteria accepted
in all markets.
“There have never been
any international
equipment standards
for components of a fire
detection and alarm
system.”
This common set of requirement to enable a manufacturer to manufacture to a single standard, enabling
producers to obtain better economies of
scale and reduce prices to consumers.
They will be able to offer lower prices
if they receive larger orders for similar
types of smoke alarms, and customers
will gain confidence in knowing that
the smoke alarm they own has been
manufactured in accordance with
international best practice.
The requirement to use the
‘evacuate’ signal specified in ISO
8201, Acoustics – Audible emergency
evacuation signal, is an important
adoption in ISO 12239 because it is the
same signal pattern used in a number
of countries to evacuate commercial
buildings. The adoption of the signal
in ISO 12239 means that households
will become used to recognizing the
signal so when they hear the same signal in a commercial building, factory
or shopping centre they will know that
they should immediately evacuate the
premises.
The 1-1-1 objective
Unlike other industries, the fire
detection industry had no international
equipment standards and therefore
countries did not need to consider their
obligations under the World Trade
Organization’s Technical Barriers to
Trade (WTO/TBT) Agreement for
this equipment. With the publication
of International Standards, countries
around the world will be under WTO
Treaty obligations to permit the use
of equipment complying with the new
ISO standards.
These ISO standards and the
WTO/TBT Agreement will help drive
the strategic objective of 1-1-1, that is,
Safety
and tall
buildings
• 1 Standard for fire detection and
alarm system equipment.
• 1 Test to ensure the equipment
conforms to the requirements of
the standard.
• 1 Conformance acceptance system,
where any country can accept the
conformance assessment undertaken in a test laboratory.
The new ISO standards will also
permit the equivalent CEN Committee
(TC 72) to adopt them, with the minor
addition to satisfy the requirements of
the European Construction Products
Directive. The important opportunity for a single International Standard
should not be missed. The benefits
to the community of designs that are
more reliable and have a higher degree
of integrity, will directly result from an
engineering community that is better
educated about the performance characteristics of standardized products.
The benefits for manufacturers to be
able to produce a single product for
the global market will lower production costs. This will feed through the
supply chain to lower the overall costs
of buildings.
About the author
Peter Parsons
(pparsons@
tycoint.com) has
been a delegate
to ISO/TC 21/
SC 3, Fire detection and fire
alarm systems,
since 1997 and
its Chair since
2001. He is also
the Convener of
a number of working groups. He has been
a member of the equivalent Australian
standards committee since 1989 and its
Chair since 1995.
We do work fast !
By Mr. Peter Parsons, Chair ISO/TC 21/SC 3, Fire detection
and fire alarm systems (Australia)
ISO is sometimes criticized by industry and users for taking too long
to develop standards. Sometimes time is required for member countries to become comfortable with technical requirements that may differ
from what currently exists. This is part of the concensus building process. ISO/TC 21/SC 3, Fire detection and alarm systems, has recently
shown that using the information technology tools, such as e-mail, can
speed up the development of new standards. In my capacity as Chair
of ISO/TC 21/SC 3 and convener of WG 10, we have made extensively
use of e-mail to develop a new standard for carbon monoxide fire detectors. We have working group members from Australia, Japan, China,
Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, USA and Mexico. Most of these
countries are in different time zones, and
e-mail was a most efficient method of
communciation and sharing ideas in the development of the
new CO fire detector
standard.
The project
was approved
and a working group
formed in
September
2002. By
May 2003,
a draft went
out for comment and ballot.
I couldn’t be more pleased with
the outcome. I was expecting to hold a meeting to finalize the draft in
September 2003, but now, the draft had virtually completed its fivemonth enquiry period by then! Working group members undertook the
tasks in a dedicated and timely manner. I tried to leave enough time
between rounds to permit the required translations into other languages
and even with that, we produced a draft in only eight months. We had
good discussions and effective sharing of ideas over e-mail and the
whole process only required two telephone calls to finalize some issues
right at the end.
Working electronically can be an effective way to distribute drafts
and obtain comments. If I were to modify the process next time, I would
just say that e-mail is fine, but there is still an issue concerning document control. Next time I would use the ISO Livelink site to store drafts
and collate comments. The risk of losing months of work, or not having
that work available should circumstances change is too high. Using the
Livelink server means that the document trail is secure and can be readily picked up by someone else.
@
ISO Focus January 2004
17
Main Focus
Lifts in
the emergency
evacuation
of buildings
By Mr. Derek Smith, Chair
of ISO/TC 178, Lifts, elevators,
passenger conveyors,
WG 6, Lift installation
(United Kingdom)
“ Lifts know where the
floors are but do not
know if they are safe.”
ISO technical committee ISO/
TC 178, Lifts, elevators, passenger
conveyors, working group WG 6, Lift
installation, is particularly concerned
with the role of lifts during emergencies. This working group is made up of
representatives from 25 countries. The
membership is currently comprised of
lift experts from around the world and
also includes professional firefighters
from Germany, the United Kingdom
and Australia.
It is clearly not the role of ISO
178/WG 6 to determine that a lift
should be used for evacuation. They
do not have the expertise in this specialist field, but they are best suited to
determine what a lift could be capable
of doing if the demand exists.
18
ISO Focus January 2004
OTIS
F
or many years discussion has
taken place over the possible
advantages of using lifts for the
evacuation of buildings during an
emergency.
The September 11 events in
the USA and the subsequent increased
risk of terrorist attack to buildings
has brought this debate to the fore,
not only in the USA but also in many
other countries. There are lots of suggestions regarding what could be done
with building designs to make them
more secure and what role, if any,
could be played by lifts in the evacuation of buildings.
Since ISO technical committee
ISO/TC 92, Fire safety, is concerned
with building issues and subcommittee
SC 4, Fire safety engineering, deals
with building evacuation, we have
established a fruitful liaison with the
intention of exploring in greater depth
the issue of evacuation. It is their present belief that lifts could play a significant role in the evacuation strategy for
some building designs.
What would a lift need to
do in an emergency ?
The task of determining what
a lift could or would need to do in an
emergency situation may not appear at
first sight to be complex, but if persons
are to use lifts how many lifts are
required ? What size do they need to
be ? How do you keep those waiting
for the arrival of a lift calm ? What do
you do if the situation in the building
changes so lifts are no longer a safe
means of exit ? These and many more
questions must be addressed.
If you spend a few minutes to
think of some of the issues, you quickly realize that the problem is complex.
To further compound the situation,
there are many different standards of
building construction used globally
that offer differing levels of protection
to a building’s structure and the lifts
contained in it.
Faced with these issues, the
ISO 178/WG 6 committee considered
how best to analyse the problems in
a logical, unemotional manner. How
could they best determine what is
possible and what needs to be done in
any particular building design ? How
would they determine who should do
what ? How will they best tell those
who must decide if lifts can be used,
what the lift could do ?
After considerable debate, it
became clear that any document produced needed to be a universal tool if
it was to be of use to ISO/TC 92 and
eventually building designers. It would
have to define in some detail the type
of features the lift could be provided
with, and would have to indicate where
special provisions in the building
design would need to be made to allow
the lift to operate in safety.
“ Some 40 key issues
need to be addressed if
lifts are to be considered
for use during building
evacuation.”
It is important to remember
that whilst the risks associated with
using lifts in an evacuation will be
the same everywhere, the solution will
vary greatly. As long as the building
designers could clearly see the risks
to be addressed they would be free to
address these with whatever technique
suited the design best.
Eventually it was decided that
the best way forward was to produce a
chart that would detail all the decisions
that needed to be made if lifts were to
be used in a given emergency.
To give an example, the first
question on the chart would be : what
is the emergency ? Someone must
decide this, and this could be done by
the building management or possibly
by a building management system
that was sensing various aspects of the
buildings environment and structure.
This is not a lift issue, but the building
designer must determine how this decision will be made.
Further into the chart, lift-related decisions appear such as the following. If a lift is travelling and stops
between floors for some reason with
passenger in the lift car, it will need
to be moved to a floor to release them.
This could be done automatically but
what floor should the car be moved to ?
Should it be the nearest floor ? Is the
Safety
and tall
buildings
Safety standards on lifts for firefighters
Firefighter lifts (or elevators) are used by fire service personnel when faced
with the task of firefighting on a floor high above the ground. They are used
to reach the fire quickly and safely, taking with them their equipment, while,
at the same time, protecting the physical safety and lives of the occupants of
the building as well as their own.
An ISO technical report ISO/TR 16765:2003, Comparison of worldwide
safety standards on lifts for firefighers, aims to help standards writers address
the safety requirements of lifts for firefighters.
The technical report provides guidance for writers of standards through a
comparison of national lift (elevator) codes, fire codes and building regulations as they are applied around the world. It is intended to serve as a reference
tool in the development of safety requirements for firefighter lifts (elevators)
in new or revised standards, with a view to gradually merging technical
requirements worldwide.
“ The selected topics covered in ISO/TR 16765 are analyzing the various
firefighting applications across the world related to local regulations and existing standards,” said Mr. Michael Savage, past-convenor ISO/TC 178/WG 6.
“ The technical report also deals with the fire resistance of lift landing doors to
prevent fire entering the lift shaft which can act as a chimney.”
ISO/TR 16765 provides a comparison between the European Committee
for Standardization (CEN) standard for firefighting lifts (EN 81-72) and the
national codes of Australia, United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, China,
Hong Kong, India, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore
and Taiwan.
In the absence of a commonly accepted International Standard for firefighter lifts, ISO/
TR 16765 will
serve as a reference tool for
national standards committees
when
reviewing and revising
individual codes in an
effort to gradually merge technical requirements
worldwide.
“ The benefits of this technical report is
that it forms a
global basis for harmonizing the various existing national codes, which at
present vary in their detail, but not in their ultimate goals. Therefore, the
code makers in each country should be made fully aware that this comparison exists and they should always refer to it when updating either local
national codes or regional area codes,” further noted Mr. Savage.
ISO/TR 16765 is the work of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 178,
Lifts, escalators, passenger conveyors, working group WG 6, Lift installation (classes I,II, III and IV).
ISO Focus January 2004
19
OTIS
Main Focus
nearest floor safe for the passengers in
the lift ?
Equipment and systems
capable of making
decisions
To answer these questions, the building
may need to be provided with equipment and systems capable of making
decisions. Lifts know where the floors
are but do not know if they are safe.
The conditions on a given floor could
be monitored by instruments that
inform a building management system
of its condition. This sounds a good
solution but does it create new risk for
passengers ? Does it really produce an
acceptable solution to the problem ?
“ Each possible
solution identified as a
result of the decision chart
needs to be checked to
see if it is acceptable
and if it creates any
new problems.”
If the building designer can
solve the problem of ensuring the
conditions on the floor are safe, the
lift engineer can solve the problem
of automatically moving the car to
release the trapped passengers.
The committee realized that
each possible solution identified as a
result of the decision chart needs to be
checked to see if it is acceptable and if
it creates any new problems. Solutions
often do.
The perfect tool for this task is
the ISO 14798, Risk assessment methodology. This gives a logical method for
the analysis of risks and determining
the success of any mitigation used to
lower a risk.
The decision chart combined
with the risk assessment provides the
logical approach required to study the
issues. The process is long and as yet
incomplete, but it is thorough and will
result in an unbiased view of the problems and possible solutions.
20
ISO Focus January 2004
To date, the committee has
identified some 40 key issues that will
need to be addressed if lifts are to be
considered for use during building
evacuation.
Each of these is now in the process of being studied to determine the
possible solutions and the effectiveness of these.
ISO/TC 178/WG 6 will continue to develop the decision chart
along with possible solutions for risks
that are identified. From this it will be
clear if lifts could be used to assist
with building evacuation. The results
will be published in an ISO Technical
Report and others will then be able
to use this report to determine if lifts
could and should be used and under
what conditions.
OTIS
About the author
Derek Smith
joined Otis in
the UK in 1963
and after a fiveyear apprenticeship became
a Lift Service
Engineer.
From this he
progressed into
testing and eventually became
the Senior Test Engineer for Otis in the
United Kingdom.
With the introduction of micro-processor
systems, he moved to new technology
training and became United Kingdom
Sales Engineering Manager with responsibility for both New and Modernization
works, then Product Rationalization
manager responsible for rationalising the
UK factory traditional products.
He is currently the Technical Sales
Support Director for Otis UK with
special responsibilities for codes and
regulations. He is chairman of the Lift
and Escalator Industry Association (LEIA)
technical committee, a member of
BSI/MHE / 4, Chairman of CEN / WT 8,
Vandal resistant lifts, UK representative
at CEN / WG I, a member of CEN /
WG 6, Firefighting lifts, CEN/WT 4,
Behaviour of lifts in a fire, CEN / WG 7,
controls, ISO / TC 178 / WG 7,
Control devices and signals for lifts
and service lifts, and Chair of ISO / TC
178 / WG 6, Lift installation (classes I,II,
III and IV) and ISO / TC 178 / WG 4,
Safety standards comparison.
Fire
and security
By Dr. Brian R. Kirby,
Convenor of ISO/TC 92/SC
2/WG 2, Calculation methods
(United Kingdom)
I
n the modern world, fire and security are issues that all too frequently
appear in the news and are invariably linked to some kind of disaster.
Disasters arise due to one of
two actions :
•
An accident.
•
A deliberate act – arson or terrorism.
Both causes of such events
often lead to injury or loss of life, and
damage to the infrastructure and commercial activities.
We can never stop accidents
occurring as they are part of human
nature and we are all fallible, nor are
we able to stop deliberate acts of arson
or terrorism while there is uncertainty
in some parts of the world. However,
we can mitigate against such events
in reducing the impact upon people,
buildings, structures and the environment. This can be achieved through a
greater understanding of the physical
processes that take come into play, and
developing new products, systems and
strategies that improve the resistance
to these events so that they pose a
lesser threat to our everyday lives and
businesses.
Safety
and tall
buildings
For many years, national and
international regulatory authorities
have used the development of standards to set the performance to which
fire safety and security requirements
must adhere. While they have generally served us well, as our requirements are pushed to new limits, either
in response to deliberate or accidental
events, or, the need to accommodate
“ ISO provides a platform
round where engineers,
scientists, product
manufacturers
and regulators debate
the issues.”
ISO Focus January 2004
21
Main Focus
Understand first what
are the ‘weakest links’
greater originality in architectural
design, we have to set our sights in
developing new standards and design
codes that provide us with the tools
to evaluate and engineer solutions to
these problems.
“ Full-scale tests are
very expensive, timeconsuming, usually one-off
experiments.”
During the last few years, significant advances in the steel industry
have been made in understanding
the behaviour of complete structural
frames in fire, and this has come about
by carrying out full-scale tests on real
buildings so that their true performance
can be evaluated. This has not only
led to economies in design but, more
importantly, it has enabled the critical
elements that play a fundamental role
in controlling structural performance
to be identified, with the result that the
safety measures imposed are exact and
focused to where they are needed.
However, full-scale tests are
very expensive, time consuming, usually one-off experiments and, if not
carefully designed, may be limited
in their application. Therefore, while
they serve a purpose in demonstrating
to designers in a practical and, usually,
in a very public manner that certain
engineered solutions really do work,
much of the information that is used in
developing analytical models through
numerical analysis is derived from less
dramatic experimental studies. For
this reason, the steel industry places
great importance in the development
of International Standards that can
address areas of uncertainty or where
there is a need to develop specific tests,
to provide the necessary information
that designers require.
ISO/TC 92 subcommittee SC
2, for example, which deals with
fire containment, is at the forefront
of responding to these challenges.
Through the specialist working groups,
new methodologies in design calculations are being developed for the practising engineer. It is recognized within
22
ISO Focus January 2004
this subcommittee, there is a need to
provide more exact data at elevated
temperatures on the thermo-physical
response of materials and products
used in building construction. New
or better tests standards have to be
developed in order to provide us with
the information that is representative
of the type of conditions that exist in
practice.
“ The steel industry
places great importance
in the development of
International Standards.”
The Tall Buildings conference,
held during October 2003 in Kuala
Lumpur, provided an opportunity to
listen and understand how designers
are now beginning to address fire and
safety issues in landmark structures.
Central to many of the papers presented were the events of 9/11. These
posed questions on how we could plan
and improve life safety and property
protection should such a disaster occur
in the future, not necessarily in a building, as this type of event could easily
occur on a major bridge or within a
roadway or rail tunnel. However, as
yet, we do not have a test that subjects
the fire protection applied to structural
members to impact fatigue in order to
ensure the long-term integrity of the
material to remain intact, and which
will fulfill its function should the need
arise at some point in the future.
After such a major disaster as 9/11, it is
an easy knee jerk reaction to call upon
increased levels of safety. However,
these must be tempered by first understanding what are the ‘weakest links’
in the design process, and to ensure
that effort and resources are geared to
improving those areas rather than giving the illusion of improved safety by
just ‘adding more’.
One of the key messages from
the conference was that, while we can
design better and more robust structures, a greater emphasis has to be made
for escape, search and rescue operations, and no lesser requirement is the
need for tall robust shafts that are able
to restrict the actions of both impact
and fire. To this end, new structural
solutions comprising steel and concrete
sandwich panels, for example, have
been developed that offer opportunities to provide improved life safety for
both the occupants and rescue services.
However, it has been necessary to test
such panels in the standard furnace in a
modified arrangement that can generate
the type and magnitude of the forces
typical of those when placed in-situ.
A key issue that ISO committees
need to recognize is whether the current
methods of testing building products
under a standard furnace-heating regime
are adequate to address some of the
concerns that are now being raised. For
many years, we have been testing structural elements to ISO 834, Fire-resistance tests – Elements of building construction, in isolation. Yet, an important
aspect to the performance of sub-frames,
or total structures, is the behaviour of
the connections. It has always been
assumed that they will perform acceptably in fire, and therefore have generally been given no further consideration.
While research on steel connections has
been carried out on the types of materials and components used, i.e. bolts,
welds and short stub-beam/column
crucifix arrangements, we do not have a
test procedure that enables connections
to be tested as part of a sub-frame where
the interaction with a composite floor is
a necessary part of the system.
Safety
and tall
buildings
These problems and areas
of uncertainty are not unique to one
country and need to be addressed in
the international forum. ISO provides
a platform round which engineers,
scientists, product manufacturers and
even regulators come together to debate
the issues and provide the impetus for
developing new and better standards
or indeed, assist in highlighting areas
where research needs to be directed
either within companies or through
technical institutions.
About the author
Brian Kirby has
been involved
in fire safety
engineering
since 1979 with
primary responsibilities for
research into the
understanding
and the development of design
codes and fire
resistant solutions for steel construction.
He represents the Steel Industry on a
number of national and intenational codes
and standards organizations and is currently convenor of ISO/TC 92/SC 2/WG
2, Calculation methods, which covers the
development of calculation methods for
fire containment.
He has been responsible for managing
several of the major programmes on fullscale fire tests in buildings with the tests
carried out on the eight-storey steel
framed building at Cardington probably
being the most well known.
Brian Kirby is currently manager of Corus
Fire Engineering which is a consultancy
within Corus Group and provides fire
engineering services to architects and
engineers into building design as well as
directing research activities.
Setting
performance as
a standard
By Mr. Sam Francis,
ISO/TC 92/SC 4, Fire safety
engineering, and NFPA 5000,
NFPA Fire Test Committee
(USA)
I
n 1995, years before the collapse
of the World Trade Center towers
caused the construction industry to
review the pertinence of the current
fire resistance testing procedures, ISO
technical committee ISO/TC 92, Fire
Safety, had already begun a carefully
planned shift from prescriptive testing
to a more engineered (performance
based) approach to fire safety. The
title and scope of TC 92 was changed
at that time to recognize the growing
importance of Fire Safety Engineering
(FSE) to all aspects of fire safety.1), 2)
Historically, fire safety engineering has focused on the practice of
designing specific life safety systems
and fire resistance methods to accommodate prescriptive building code
requirements. In the last decade, there
has been a movement toward what has
become know as performance-based
building codes. Internationally, the
1) Prof. Geoff Cox, former Chair, ISO/TC 92,
Fire safety, “ Vision and management ”, p. 11.
2) Deggary N. Priest, Chairman ISO/TC 92/
SC 2, Fire Containment, “ Fire resistance
standards ”, p. 14.
ISO Focus January 2004
23
Main Focus
fire safety engineering community has
both encouraged and participated in
this activity. In its rudimentary forms,
this has meant designing fire protection systems, both active and passive,
to some level of performance as decided in advance by the jurisdictional
authority, the designer and the building owner. The growing sophistication
of this endeavour has moved it another
step. In North America, there is a
movement to “ decouple ” the concept
of height and area construction limits
from the presumptive code limitations
and to treat them as another variable
in the fire safety engineering equation.
Viewing fire resistive
construction globally
Just as the descriptions and testing of barriers to fire vary internationally, so do the limitations on building
construction as a function of type of
construction, use, and occupancy.
Therefore, just like testing of fire resistive construction is being viewed more
globally, the underlying construction
requirements are more frequently
thought of in a similar fashion. Thus,
the concept of limiting a building’s
size as a function of occupancy classification and type of construction
(e.g. non-combustible) or, more prescriptively, by specifying a particular
construction material (e.g. concrete) is
being discarded in favour of a rationale
approach to fire safety. As such, it is a
variable in the overall fire safety evaluation of the building.
The history of such building
code limitations in North America is
short. Toward the end of the 19 th century, building codes began to appear
in large cities such as New York. The
codes were driven by public health
concerns, and were actually rooted in
3) Ira Woolson, Columbia University, NFPA
Journal 1904.
4) David Collins, FAIA, Height and Area
Limits, a New Approach, NFPA Annual
Conference, Atlanta, GA.
5) Birgit Östman, and Daniel Rydholm. Fire
Resistance of Timber Structures – National
Guidelines in European and Some other
Countries, Tratek Rapport P 0212045,
Stockholm, 2002.
24
ISO Focus January 2004
a more puritanical reaction to tenement
buildings with communal sanitary
facilities. Thus, there was no restriction on the structure or its elements,
but rather on facilities and relationships to other buildings. As these cities
grew in size, limits were thought necessary for both light and ventilation.3)
Eventually, the density of construction
led to the development of fire districts
as a concept to protect against conflagration. Part of the concept of a fire
district was a limit on area of a building in order to limit the fuel load that
building represented. Limiting fuel
“ There is an opportunity
for ISO to create direction
for international regulation
of fire safety. ”
load was intended to limit contribution
to conflagration.
In the middle of the 20 th century, many of the concepts of fire
districts were seen to be prescriptive
and based upon arbitrary limits. The
codes developed a set of performanceoriented requirements (e.g. separation
distance between buildings and fire
resistance rating of exterior walls) as
a better method of regulating types
of construction and building size.
Meanwhile, other countries pursued
different rationale to limit types of
construction in response to various
calamities which befell them.
Two recent events have caused
the fire safety engineering community
to focus on these issues again. First,
the American Institute of Architects
(AIA) has called the limits to height or
area of a building based upon its type
of construction as arbitrary and capri-
cious.4) The position of AIA is that
prescriptive building codes adequately
protect building occupants by features
such as number of exits and travel distance. Further, neighbouring structures
are protected from conflagration by
limiting distances between buildings.
Second, Tratek, Swedish Institute for
Wood Technology Research, published a report in which they observe
“ Fire resistance is also measured and
expressed in a similar way all over the
world 5). An International Standard (ISO
834, Fire-resistance tests – Elements of
building construction) has been used
for a long time.” The report further
observes that there are differences
in regulations and in fire experience
in countries around the world. The
Institute set out to study the limitations imposed by various countries on
wood structures as a function of size.
It is clear that there is much room for
harmonization of requirements. It is
also clear that Fire Safety Engineering
must devote specific attention to the
materials of the structure as well as the
materials of the various components
and barriers within the building.
Standardization of the
engineering approach and
performance evaluation
Given that this is a need, there
is an opportunity for ISO to create
direction for international regulation
of fire safety. The concept of limiting building height or area in order to
improve its fire safety is without basis
or sound scientific rationale. Risk
analysis may demonstrate acceptable
levels of performance with structures
of sizes not previously attempted
under various codes. Likewise, analysis may show that certain combinations of construction and occupancies
are oversized. The risk approach needs
to be quantifiable, so that performance results in one country may be
reviewed and applied to an analysis in
another country. It is in this area that
an International Standard is desirable.
Standardization of the engineering
approach and performance evaluation
would allow the broadest application
of experience globally and would
facilitate other International Standards
to enable the development of other
building construction concepts.
Each material has specific properties which limit its use as a construction material. High strength concrete
has shown a propensity to spall, steel
softens, and wood looses cross section
due to charring, when exposed to fire.
Wood structures have limitations on
the height of the structure, based upon
the inherent physical properties of the
material and its response to various
loads. Structural engineers have accepted this concept and made it part of their
design process. Over time, many other
characteristics have been ascribed to
the inherent limits of the materials. For
example, the limit on height of a building to ensure adequate light and ventilation to all occupied levels has become
a fire safety issue for many because
the resulting fire safety performance
was acceptable. Standardization internationally will contribute to making
performance work.
About the author
Sam Francis
is a Regional
Manager of
the American
Forest and Paper
Association.
He is a CABO
certified building official, and
has nearly 20
years of experience as a building code official. He also served on the
Ohio Construction Industry Certification
Board, and the National Construction
Code Inspector Certification Program
Test Preparation committee. He has
taught extensively on subjects related to
codes and code development throughout
the United States and Canada. He is the
author of numerous articles and publications on various building regulation
subjects.
The needs of
the insurance
industry
By Mr. Terry Day, Convenor
ISO/TC 92/SC 2, working
group WG 4, Ventilation ducts
and fire dampers, and Member
of BSI Loss Prevention Council
(United Kingdom)
Safety
and tall
buildings
Clearly, the
financial exposure of a large multistorey building or a large industrial
complex requires significant risk analysis and certainly such buildings that
are only built to minimum standards
do not represent an attractive risk to
insurers.
It is probably true at the present
moment that there are too many different technical organizations as well as
individual groups of insurers formulating their own rules and specifications.
ISO standards offer a potential way of
creating common standards, but this is
A
s the insurance
industry is a
global based
industry, the need for
fire protection products and fire safety
engineering to adopt
common specification and procedures
is vital across the
whole world.
The importance of the protection
of the business, as
well as the substantial loss of life after
the tragedy of 9/11,
has clearly focused
the fire protection
industry on reducing
the risks. The status
of such an event has OMEGA POINT LABORATORIES
changed from highly
only achievable if the needs of insurimprobable to probable.
ers are adequately taken into account.
Representatives of insurers need to be
encouraged to participate in appropriThe need for a global
ate ISO groups so that any formulated
strategy
strategy includes their needs.
More attention needs to be
A global based strategy is
taken in what circumstances a fire
vital, combining the needs to protect
protection system will fail to perform
property as well as life. In respect to
adequately its intended function under
fire safety, ISO/TC 92 is well placed
a number of adverse scenarios. These
to lead. However, the needs of the
need to be identified and used in fire
insurers must be taken into account.
safety engineering standards currently
This is because they have vitally
being developed. Clearly, based on
important experience of the use and
the experience of insurers, fire testing
(sometimes) abuse of fire protection
on its own cannot provided sufficient
systems and often poor standards of
evidence without further investigafire safety management in many comtions. These will include such factors
mercial and industrial buildings.
as resistance to impact, durability and
ISO Focus January 2004
25
Main Focus
defining more precisely any limitations
on the end use applications. Whilst to
some extent, such factors are already
being considered in some countries,
these often tend to consider normal
events and not abnormal events.
More guidance is needed on
how designers of buildings can design
for abnormal events and this could be
a vital contribution for the appropriate
ISO committees.
Potential targeted
areas for standardized
guidance
It is worth noting that ISO/TC 92 is
already trying to ensure that its broad
range of fire tests generate data that
can be used by the fire engineering
community. It is important that the
protection of the business and property
protection is as much part of the strategy as is life safety aspects.
Some potential targeted areas
for standardized guidance could be :
• Provide guidance on preventing
collapse of tall buildings by ensuring adequate facilities for load
transfer and sufficient built-in
redundancy.
• Consider effects of structural fire
protection systems when exposed
to impact loading and rapid temperature rises and higher temperatures than provided for in standard
furnace testing. The effect of the
cooling down phase of a fire could
also usefully be covered.
• Investigate the best ways of containing fire and smoke to one area
for the full duration of a fire.
• Provide suitable information to
designers on how to minimize the
risk of a serious fire causing substantial damage to the business.
• Look at the best ways of reducing
the damage to the building fabric
and contents of smoke and its
potential corrosive damage to critical electronic equipment.
• Prepare guidance on dealing with
specific processes used in industry
26
ISO Focus January 2004
About the author
to ensure adequate guidance if
available across the world.
• Prepare a definitive guidance on
fire safety management so that the
risk of a fire starting in the first
place in commercial and industrial
premises can be minimized. Such a
standard could be specified directly
by insurers as a pre-condition of
providing cover.
Although there is clearly a need
to look critically at current testing procedures and regulatory requirements,
the potential importance of fire safety
engineering concepts to property and
business protection cannot be overemphasized. These techniques, whilst
still needing considerable development
in some areas, provide the best opportunity to look at the risk in a specific
building and to make the most appropriate choice to minimize the overall
risk. This is not really possible when
adopting a more prescriptive approach
that does not consider the nature and
risk in a specific building.
ISO has a vital role to play in
extending the data on product performance and information from actual
fires to reduce the significant financial
losses caused by large fires.
The views given in this article
are my own and do not necessarily
represent the views of individual insurance companies.
Terry Day is
a Chartered
Builder and an
incorporated
engineer in the
United Kingdom.
He originally
trained as a
mechanical engineer and has
been involved in
fire protection for over 30 years.
He joined the staff of the Fire Research
Station in 1968 and after six years joined
the Agrément Board where he worked
for three years. In 1976 he commenced
work with the Fire Insurers Research
and Testing Organisation which in 1985
became part of the Loss Prevention
Council.
His main area of expertise is in the field
of passive fire protection and its interface
with other methods of fire protection,
particularly automatic sprinklers and
smoke extraction. His work has included
testing of building products and constructions, research, product certification,
consultancy, preparation of standards and
production of Codes.
He is Associate Director at FRS, the fire
division of BRE, and acts as a consultant
to insurers for the further development
of the LPC Design Guide for the Fire
Protection of Buildings.
He is convenor of BSI and CEN committees as well as ISO/TC 92/SC2/WG 4.
Fire development
The World
Trade Center
collapse and its
implications for
International
Standards
F
ollowing the September 11,
2001, attacks on New York
City’s World Trade Center (WTC),
a team of civil, structural, and fire
protection engineers was deployed to
study the performance of buildings at
the site. This article, drawn from the
team’s preliminary report1), presents
some of the study’s findings and
the implications these may have for
International Standards development.
World Trade Center
Towers
(WTC 1 and WTC 2)
The structural design of the
two main towers consisted of closely
spaced 1 016 mm exterior columns
connected to each other with deep
spandrel plates. The columns and
spandrel plates were prefabricated
into panels that together formed a
load-bearing tube, stiff both laterally
and vertically. Interior cores, formed
by larger, more widely spaced steel
columns, housed elevator shafts and
stairwells. Floor slabs were lightweight concrete over steel decking,
supported by a robust and redundant
system of trusses.
KEYSTONE/AP Photo/Aurora/Robert Clark
By Dr. W. Gene Corley, Senior
Vice President of Construction
Technology Laboratories, Inc.,
Skokie, Ill. (USA), and leader
of the FEMA and SEI/ASCE
Building Performance Study
Team for the World Trade
Center, Chair of ISO/TC 71,
Concrete.
The aircraft that struck the twin
towers each carried about 37 850 liters
of fuel at the time of impact. As no
flame was evident immediately upon
impact, the fuel likely was distributed in a flammable cloud throughout
the impact area. Its ignition caused
a rapid rise in pressure, then the
expulsion of fireballs into shafts and
through openings.
Safety
and tall
buildings
high as 1 100 º C
(2 000 º F) in some areas, and 800 º C
(1 500 º F ) in others. Air to support
the fire was supplied mainly through
openings torn in the building by aircraft impact and fireballs.
“ The fire that weakened
structural members
and connections
eventually brought down
the towers.”
Structural response
to fire loading
Aircraft impact degraded the
strength of the structure and its ability to withstand additional loading.
Although the specific steps are uncertain, the following fire effects likely
contributed :
• Impact force, fireballs, and debris
compromised spray-applied fire
protection on structural members.
• Loads transferred from damaged
structural elements put columns
under elevated stresses.
• Debris that fell through partially
collapsed floor areas increased
loads on floor framing.
These fireballs did not explode
or generate a shock wave, and thus
did not in themselves cause structural
damage. Calculations show they did,
however, burn 3 785 to 11 360 liters
of jet fuel quickly. The remaining
fuel appears to have burned off within
minutes, generating enough heat to
ignite virtually all the combustible
materials on the impacted floors and
within the planes.
Computer modelling suggests
that the fire energy output for each
tower peaked at 3-5 trillion BTU/hr
(1-1.5 gigawatts) – similar to the
power output of a commercial generating station. Temperatures reached as
• Fire-heated floor framing and
slabs expanded, developing additional stresses. Resulting stress
that exceeded the capacity of some
members or connections could
have initiated a series of failures.
• Increased temperatures may have
caused floor slabs and support
framing to lose rigidity and sag.
This could have caused end connections to fail and allow supported
floors to collapse onto the floors
below.
1) Corley, W.G., et al., “ World Trade
Center Building Performance Study : Data
Collection, Preliminary Observations, and
Recommendations,” Federal Emergency
Management Agency Mitigation Directorate,
FEMA 403, Washington, D.C., May 2002.
ISO Focus January 2004
27
Main Focus
• Increased temperature of column
steel would reduce the columns’
yield strength, modulus of elasticity and critical buckling strength,
potentially initiating buckling. This
most likely affected the failure of
the interior core columns.
Progression of collapse
The findings : more
from fire than from
impact effects
• The towers survived the impact of
the aircraft.
• The fire that weakened structural
members and connections eventually brought down the towers.
• The redundancy and robustness of
the structural system helped keep
the towers standing.
Once the collapse began, potential energy stored in the upper part of
the structure during construction was
rapidly converted into kinetic energy.
Collapsing floors above accelerated and impacted on the floors below,
causing an immediate, progressive
series of floor failures, each punching in turn onto the floor below. The
process of collapse was essentially the
same for both towers 1 and 2.
WTC 7, a 47-story office building that was part of the WTC complex,
collapsed at 17:20 on September 11,
2001, causing no known casualties.
The performance of WTC 7 is significant, because the collapse appears
to be due primarily to fire, rather than
any impact damage from the collapsing towers. Before this event, the
fire-induced collapse of large, fireprotected steel buildings was virtually
unknown.
Little is known about the ignition and development of the fires, but
they are presumed to have started from
burning debris. Smoke appeared at
several locations in the building soon
after WTC 1 collapsed.
Expansion of floor slabs and framing
results in outward deflection of columns
and potential overload.
Probable collapse
sequence
WTC and International
Standards
The collapse began on the east
side of WTC 7 on the interior, as the
east penthouse disappeared into the
building. Next, the west penthouse
disappeared, and a fault or “ kink ”
developed on the east half of WTC
7. The collapse then began at the
lower floor levels, and the building
completely collapsed to the ground.
Collapse appears to have begun inside
at the lower levels and progressed up,
as the fault extended from the lower
levels to the top.
The knowledge that the collapse of WTC buildings resulted more
from fire than from impact effects
on structural members points up the
importance of examining and improving fire safety standards. Standards
that apply to construction materials, to
structural components, and to design
features such as exit stairways need
to be reevaluated. They also should
be international in scope. The World
Trade Center was advanced for its
time, in that most of its structural steel
28
ISO Focus January 2004
was manufactured in Japan, then fabricated into structural members in the
USA. All work was done to very high
standards.
Today, almost 40 years later,
global distribution of construction
materials is common. Building owners and occupants throughout the
world need assurance that materials
conform to high standards of quality
and safety, regardless of where they
are produced.
• Transfer trusses like those in WTC
7 need special consideration.
• The fire resistance of connections
is important and needs further
study to predict their behaviour
under overload conditions.
• Relate fire-protection measures to
potential fire loads.
• Consider potential impact in the
placement and design of exit stairways.
About the author
W. Gene Corley,
Chair of ISO/TC
71, Concrete, is
currently Senior
Vice President,
Construction
Technology Laboratories, Inc.,
Stokie, Illinois.
Dr. Corley is an
active member
of the National
Academy of Engineering, an Honorary
member of ASCE, and member of several other engineering societies. He is
past President of the National Council of
Structural Engineers Associations and past
Chairman of the ASCE Council on Forensic Engineering. Dr. Corley was Principal
investigator for the ASCE and FEMA on
the investigation of the Oklahoma City
Bombing and has done investigations of
earthquake damage in several parts of the
world. Currently, Dr. Corley is heading the
ASCE Building Performance Study Team
for the investigation of the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon.
For building
as solid
as a rock
T
he safety of buildings as well as
other infrastructures such as large
dams, tunnels, bridges, roads,
excavations, embankments and slopes
relies on the accurate description of
rock found above and below the construction.
ISO is helping to ensure the
safety of these infrastructures and their
users by developing an International
Standard that will help engineers accurately identify rock mass and material
as well as the potential engineering
problems they pose.
ISO 14689-1:2003, Geotechnical
investigation and testing – Identification and classification of rock – Part 1:
Identification and description, brings
together in one glossary-type document the physical and chemical properties of rock material designed for use
The example of what not
to do. When the Tower
of Pisa was started in
1173, it was to be at a
height of 55,863 meters
the tallest building in
Italy, even in Europe.
The tower was built
on ground consisting
of clay, fine sand, and
shells, and soon after its
beginnings, the tower’s
lean was perceptible. In
2001, specialists found
the solution to slowly
remove soil from the
north side of the tower’s
foundation so that it
would right itself. As the
sandy soil is removed,
the ground compresses
and the clay firms,
giving a stronger
foundation.
Safety
and tall
buildings
by engineers with
limited geological knowledge.
Based on international practice,
the standard identifies and describes
rock material and mass on the basis
of mineralogical composition, genetic
aspects, structure, grain size, discontinuities and other parameters. It also
provides rules for the description of
various other characteristics as well as
for their designation.
“ The correct identification and
description of rock is an essential part
of the geotechnical investigation,” says
Dr. Volker Eitner, Secretary of the
subcommittee that developed the new
standard. “ The correct identification
and description of the physical and
chemical properties of rock are the
fundamental basis for the design of
buildings. If the rock was not identified and described correctly, the safety
of these buildings and structures may
be endangered and therefore the lives
of many people as well.”
In addition to its use by engineers, ISO 14689-1 will be of value
to consultant geologists, construction
companies, ground investigation enterprises as well as testing and building
authorities.
The development of part 2 of
ISO 14689 is underway which will
cover requirements for the electronic
exchange of data on identification
and description of rock. The technical specification, ISO/TS 14689-2,
Geotechnical investigation and testing – Part 2 : Electronic exchange of
data on identification and description
of rock, will provide a data exchange
format (XML) that facilitates the data
exchange independently of the hardware or software system used.
The standard is the work of
ISO technical committee ISO/TC
182, Geotechnics, subcommittee SC
1, Geotechnical investigation and
testing.
ISO Focus January 2004
29
Developments and Initiatives
Securing e-business
By Mr. Ted Humphreys 1), Dr.
Marijke De Soete 2) and Prof.
Chris Mitchell 3)
T
here are many risks that may
happen in an e-business world,
including fraudulent transactions,
user accounting and validation errors,
and deliberate or accidental mistakes
in identifying citizens, customers and
business partners. These and other
risks can have a significant financial
impact on citizens using the Internet
for on-line shopping, and on businesses exchanging legally binding
documents or making payments and
transactions electronically.
We previously wrote about
some of the security issues arising
in the conduct of e-business, and
the technologies that exist to address
these issues. That article 4) discussed
a management framework for establishing trust for e-business. This current article takes this a stage further by
looking at some of the security standards being implemented in various
e-business technologies to help ensure
business confidence in the e-business
world. These standards are designed
to help counter the risks mentioned
above and thereby engender long-term
success and trust in e-business.
Enter the world of
cryptographic techniques
Cryptographic methods and
techniques can be used in a range of
different ways, such as protecting the
integrity and guaranteeing the origin of
an electronic document, preventing the
originator of an electronic document
from repudiating it (non-repudiation),
or verifying the identity of a communicating party. These are all key
issues in e-business, and it is vitally
important for all parties involved in
e-business to have trusted and interoperable techniques that can secure and
protect e-business services. Therefore
having access to standardized security
30
ISO Focus January 2004
techniques should be of considerable
significance to businesses worldwide.
In recent years, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27,
IT Security techniques, have developed
standards which cover a wide range of
cryptographic techniques designed
specifically to address e-business concerns, and this article focuses on two
fundamental security mechanisms,
namely authentication and digital
signatures.
Authenticating users
and devices
Entity authentication mechanisms are fundamental to the establishment of secure communications
between two parties; for example the
industry protocols SSL/TLS, used by
many Web browser applications, are
based on an entity authentication mechanism. Also, NIST (National Institute
of Standards and Technology), which
produces standards for US Government
use, has recently produced a Federal
Information Processing Standard
(FIPS Pub 195) based on ISO/IEC
9798-3, containing two entity authentication mechanisms based on the use
of digital signatures.
“ New standards provide
vital building blocks
for signing e-business
transactions.”
ISO/IEC 9798, Entity authentication, is a five-part standard that
specifies mechanisms that can be used
to corroborate that an entity is the one
that is claimed. An entity to be authenticated proves its identity by demonstrating its knowledge of a secret. The
mechanisms involve exchanges of
information between entities (e.g.,
users, computers or communications
devices) and, where required, exchanges with a trusted third party. The individual messages exchanged between
parties are protected using crypto-
graphic techniques, but successful
authentication also requires proof of
the timeliness of messages, to prevent
a malicious party simply replaying
old messages to impersonate a user.
Thus the messages also incorporate
techniques for establishing message
freshness, e.g., timestamps or random
challenges and responses.
Part 1 of ISO/IEC 9798 provides a general model for entity authentication and Parts 2-5 of this standard
specify mechanisms based on different
types of cryptographic techniques,
including digital signatures, encryption and Message Authentication
Codes (MACs). Separate standards
exist for each of these types of techniques, and the standards for signatures,
of particular relevance to e-business,
are discussed later in this article.
Digitally signed
information
A digital signature in the electronic world (e.g., in an exchange of
payment information) provides the
same kind of characteristics that are
expected from a handwritten signature in the paper-based world. It is
applicable to providing authentication
of the signer, integrity of the information being signed and non-repudiation
of the transaction. Digital signatures
are being used for the protection of
patient records in healthcare systems,
for electronic payments, exchange of
information via Web browser, filing tax
records and other legal documents, online shopping and card transactions.
Digital signature capabilities
are being embedded in mobile phones, mobile computing devices, smart
cards and other IC cards, Web browsers and many other technologies and
applications. Therefore several digital
signature schemes have been developed and standardized to offer a range
of implementation options to take
account of application and technology
variants and constraints: length/size
of message/document to be signed,
storage and transmission limitations/
capacity, speed of signing and verification, and performance.
@
ISO/IEC 9796, Digital signature schemes giving message recovery,
is a three-part standard, which specifies
digital signature mechanisms giving
partial or total message recovery,
aiming at reducing storage and transmission overhead. The second part of
this standard (covering schemes based
on the difficulty of the integer factorization problem) specifies three digital
signature techniques for messages of
any length. The third part (covering
schemes based on the difficulty of
the discrete logarithm problem) specifies a further two signature methods.
Schemes from this standard are specifically designed to minimize the
data overhead of using signatures, and
hence are designed for application in
constrained environments, where storage space and/or communications bandwidth may be very limited. Examples
of application domains include smart
cards and personal mobile devices.
ISO/IEC 14888, Digital signatures with appendix, is a three-part
standard: a general model which provides a description of the signature
and verification processes of a digital
scheme they are implementing. ISO/
IEC 10118, Hash-functions, is a fourpart standard specifying cryptographic
hash-functions designed to efficiently
compute short hash-codes, e.g. of 20
bytes, as a function of arbitrary length
messages. These hash-functions have
the one-way property, i.e. given a possible short hash-code it is computationally infeasible to find a message that,
when input to the hash-function, gives
this hash-code as output. ISO/IEC
10118 provides a wide range of hashfunctions, using a variety of different
computational techniques.
Application-specific
standards
signature with appendix, and two
further parts each based on a specific
type of digital signature mechanisms
with respect to the distribution of verification keys. In Part 2 : Identity-based
signature mechanisms, the verification
key is a public function of the signer’s
identity, while in Part 3 : Certificatebased signature mechanisms the verification key cannot be computed from
the signer’s identity but the verifier
obtains it by some other means, e.g.,
by retrieving it from a certificate. In
summary ISO/IEC 14888 offers a complete range of signature mechanisms
designed for general application.
At this point it is also important to mention hash-functions, i.e.
functions mapping messages to short
fixed-length blocks of bits called
hash-codes.These functions are a vital
component in almost every practical
digital signature scheme, including all
those standardized in ISO/IEC 9796,
Digital signature schemes giving message recovery, and ISO/IEC 14888,
and therefore developers of applications and software must also choose
a hash-function for the signature
The generic signature techniques defined in ISO/IEC 9796
and ISO/IEC 14888 are of importance in a broad range of application
domains, and it is intended that these
standardized techniques are used as
building blocks in the development
of application-specific standards. For
example, the ISO/TC 68, Banking,
securities and other financial services, defines security standards for the
financial industry, which are based
on the generic security standards,
1) Mr. Ted Humphreys
is Convenor of ISO/IEC
JTC 1/SC 27/WG 1,
Requirements, security
services and guidelines.
2) Dr. Marijke De Soete (MasterCard Int.)
is Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27/WG 2,
Security techniques and mechanisms.
3) Prof. Chris Mitchell (Royal Holloway,
University of London) is editor of ISO/IEC
FCD 18033-1, Information technology
– Security techniques– Encryption algorithms
– Part 1: General and ISO/IEC 9798-6,
Information technology -- Security techniques
-- Entity authentication -- Part 6: Mechanisms
based on manual data transfer.
4) Mr. Ted Humphreys, ‘Trust in E-biz’. ISO
Bulletin, January 2003
5) A joint specification, orginally developed
by Europay, MasterCard and Visa, and now
administered by EMVCo, LLC, which ensures
global interoperability for smart card payments
by defining all interactions that take place
between a smart card and a chip terminal.
These specifications are available from the
EMVCo website www.emvco.com
ISO Focus January 2004
31
Developments and Initiatives
mentioned above. Also ISO/IEC JTC
1/SC 17 refers to these standards for
application in smart cards (e.g., within
ISO/IEC 7816, Identification cards
–Integrated circuit(s) cards with contacts – Part 5 : Numbering system and
registration procedure for application
identifier). The financial industry standard for chip card-based debit/credit
transactions (known as the EMV specifications 5) uses a digital signature
technique taken from ISO/IEC 97962 (a scheme optimized to minimize
storage requirements in the card and
bandwidth in the transmissions) and
a hash-function from ISO/IEC 101183, Information technology – Security
techniques – Hash-functions – Part 3:
Dedicated hash-functions.
Increasing needs
for protection
As more business is now being
carried out electronically, the need to
protect the information a company
processes electronically continues to
increase. The standards mentioned
above provide some of the vital building blocks for signing e-business
transactions. The ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC
27 current development programme is
set to shape an even better future for
protecting e-business worldwide. This
includes some newer techniques that
can be used for authentication/digital
signatures. A multipart standard, ISO/
IEC 15964, Cryptographic techniques
based on elliptic curves, provides further digital signature schemes in parts
2 and 4. Their different performance
characteristics make them of particular
interest in specific environments using,
for instance, contactless technology.
Work has also started on the standardization of security requirements
for “ cryptographic engines ” and,
indeed, a new standard on Security
requirements for security modules is
underway and will be based on FIPS
(Federal Information Processing
Standard) 140-2.
32
ISO Focus January 2004
Paying for standards has
By Mr. Keith Moyes,
International Commercial
Policy Manager, BSI (United
Kingdom)
S
tandards are crucial. They support legislation, promote trade,
create common understanding,
reduce costs, accelerate product development, save money and can even
save lives. With so much at stake,
we should do everything we can to
promote their widest use. Paying for
standards restricts their use. Standards
should be free !
That is an argument the ISO
community has been hearing for
years : from governments, academics,
companies that have invested heavily
in standards development and from
many standards users. It has real merit,
but I want to argue for retaining the
current system in which standards
work is largely funded through sales
of standards.
We should avoid false alternatives. There are no free
standards, just as there
are no free laws
or regula-
tions. Someone,
somewhere, is paying for these documents to
be written and disseminated. It
might be a small group of companies
paying large fees to be members of a
consortium, or the taxpayer paying for
a parliament and its supporting admin-
istration. It is just a question of who is
paying and how. In the ISO community, it is the purchasers of standards who
pay, but we can all envisage alternative
models that would allow standards to
be freely accessible. These are not just
theoretical; there are successful precedents in existence right now, so why
doesn’t ISO follow them ?
Partly, it is a question of history.
ISO has developed according to a different business model and it would be
difficult to change now, but that is not a
compelling reason for maintaining the
status quo. Many necessary changes
are difficult, but that is no reason to
avoid making them. However, I believe
that the ISO model has evolved and
persisted because it has real advantages that are often overlooked.
“ International Standards
have a unique status
because they embody
core ISO values.”
There are many standards that
are widely used, but International
Standards have a unique status because
they embody certain core ISO values.
They are consensual, open, transparent, balanced and voluntary. The funding system that has evolved is the one
that is most consistent with the preservation of these values.
real merits
Twelve angry men ?
Consensus is difficult to explain and
even more difficult to achieve. It is
what a jury does in a trial. A jury is
instructed to bring in a unanimous
verdict. If they fail, the judge might
accept a ten-to-two majority or order a
re-trial. It is sometimes hard for juries
to reach a consensus, but there are only
12 people involved, so agreement can
usually be achieved fairly quickly. It
is tempting to ask: “Why not make
standards that way? Put 12 experts in
a room and tell them not to come out
until they have reached agreement.
That wouldn’t take three years and it
would be a lot cheaper.” You would
have a consensus, but it would only
be the consensus of 12 people, not an
International Standard. What would be
missing are the values of openness,
transparency and balance.
Openness and transparency
require that all concerned countries can
participate in the development process
and all the different interests can input
and comment, with the assurance that
their comments will be properly considered. Balance means reconciling
the needs and priorities of different
countries, large and small companies,
legislators, academics, users, consumers and the general public. Experts on a
standards committee are just the tip of
the iceberg. Behind them is a network
of national mirror committees
each of whose members
are in liaison
with the various interest groups that
they represent. This worldwide network has to be supported by an infrastructure, both centrally in ISO and at
the national level by the ISO members.
That infrastructure is relatively expensive to maintain.
In principle, there are two
approaches to funding it. You could
pay for the work to be done and make
the standards free, or you can pay for
the standards and make participation
free. In practice, these are to some
extent complementary, but paying for
standards is the main source of revenue
for most standards bodies and is a keystone of the ISO system as a whole.
Preserving the value
of openness,
transparency and balance
There are several ways that
the work can be directly funded. The
most common is through government
grants, either as a general support to
the standards body or by contracts to
fund specific areas of work. This is
still important in many countries, but
the worldwide trend is to reduce this
sort of funding. That is no bad thing,
because it helps preserve the independence of standards making and the market responsiveness of ISO.
Some standards bodies have
a membership system that provides
some “ seed corn ” finance, but these
schemes are generally linked to spe-
“ Passing on
the development costs
– Who is to pay ? ”
cific commercial benefits for the members and are primarily intended to help
standards bodies maintain links with
their customers. They rarely make a
substantial net contribution to standards development.
“ If a standard brings
about real benefit the cost
will be insignificant.”
Another possibility would be
private or commercial sponsorship,
but if this happened on any substantial
scale it would be reasonable for the
sponsors to expect real influence on
the work programme, the priorities
and policies of the bodies they were
funding and perhaps on the content
of the standards in which they were
particularly interested. This influence
would compromise the ISO values
that are the defining characteristics of
International Standards.
The most obvious alternative
to sponsorship would be to charge a
fee to sit on a committee. This fee
would cover direct costs and make
a contribution to overheads. This
approach is legitimate for certain
types of standards, and this possibility is recognized in the
ISO Workshop process, but
if used generally it would
inevitably discourage
participation from
experts that do
not have
the support of
large organizations
behind them, to the detriment of formal standards
making. Alternative funding could
be found for these sorts of representatives, or there could be rules under
which participation fees were waived,
but the billing could get complex and
ISO Focus January 2004
33
Developments and Initiatives
the system easily become daunting for
many people whose contribution is
necessary to the integrity of the ISO
process.
By default, we are left with
the second approach : paying for the
standards rather than the process.
Fortunately, it has real merits. Firstly,
it removes the financial barrier to participation and this is especially important for small companies, academia,
consumers and other representatives
of the interests of society at large. In
many countries, the national standards
body actually provides financial assistance, training and support to enable the
effective participation of these sorts of
representatives and this is paid for out
of their sales revenue.
The many beneficiaries
of good and timely
standards
It has benefits for larger organizations as well. Inevitably, they provide many of the experts and take on
the greatest share of the work and this
represents a significant cost to them.
They do not make this investment
out of charity : they are also the main
beneficiaries of standardization and it
is vital to them that the right standards
are developed and their experience and
expertise is called upon. But although
they may be the main beneficiaries,
they are by no means the only beneficiaries. All standards users benefit,
whether or not they were involved in
the drafting, and so do their customers
and society at large. With the benefit
being spread this widely, it is appropriate that the infrastructure costs are also
widely spread. Funding standards bodies through sales of standards achieves
this. Ultimately, these costs are borne
by anyone that wishes to benefit from
standards by actually using them.
This funding model also
allows a better balance in the whole
ISO work programme. The importance of a standard is not directly
linked to the amount of funding it can
attract. Many standards are of vital
importance to a small group of users,
or perhaps to a minority of countries
34
ISO Focus January 2004
that are not in a position to take on the
full costs of developing the standards
that would most immediately benefit their economies. In any funding
model based on direct funding of
the work there would be a tendency
“ Standards will be used
because they are
useful, not because
they are free.”
for these interests to be under-represented and the overall balance of the
ISO programme to be skewed towards
those areas where funding was easiest to obtain. Funding through sales
of standards involves considerable
cross-subsidy, with best sellers helping to pay for other less remunerative but equally important standards.
It divorces priority from funding
and allows ISO to maintain a work
programme that serves a very wide
constituency of industry sectors and
national and regional interests.
Freedom of choice
Finally, standards are voluntary.
If you want to use them, you pay. If
you don’t want to use them then you
don’t pay. Laws and regulations are
mandatory and so is paying for them.
With International Standards it is up
to you. Of course, standards are not
cheap, because of the highly inclusive
nature of the process by which they are
agreed. But the value of a standard is
not the number of pages or words its
contains, it is the benefit it brings. It is
the value of the contract it helps you
secure, the export market it opens up
to your products, the costs it saves, or
the reduction in your risk and liability
it brings about.
I do not believe that paying
for standards restricts their use. If a
standard brings about real benefit the
cost will be insignificant. If it doesn’t,
then it probably should have been written differently in the first place. And
that is probably the greatest benefit
of the current ISO business model. It
acts as a litmus test for the standards
themselves. You know you have got a
standard right when people with absolute freedom of choice are willing to
pay good money for it.
That is the merit of the ISO
system.
About the author
Keith Moyes has
had 28 years of
experience in the
standards world.
After studying
Economics and
Economic
History, Keith
Moyes worked as
a librarian before
joining the sales
department of
BSI and subsequently the membership
department, working mainly in membership promotion to become Manager of the
Membership Department. He later took
over BSI’s Information Department
(which included the Library and a large
part of customer services). As Marketing
Manager he had responsibility for BSI’s
pricing and licensing policy. He then took
up his current position of Manager of
Commercial Policy, representing BSI in
all the commercial policy areas in CEN/
CENELEC and ISO/IEC, working closely
with these bodies in the elaboration of
their own commercial policies.
He has made numerous presentations on
various aspects of ISO activities and
policies, most recently on the issues
of free standards and on the importance
of asserting and protecting ISO copyright.
New this month
How consumers
can get involved in
standards-making
A
new brochure that gives advice
to consumers on how they can
get involved in standards-making – whether nationally, regionally or
internationally – aims to raise awareness of the benefits of standards and
the need to participate in their development.
Standards are an integral element of consumer protection. They
contribute to making life simpler and
to increasing the reliability, safety
and effectiveness of the goods and
services we use. From instructions for
video recorders to safety requirements
for cookers, standardization allows
consumers to have confidence in the
quality of the products and services
they purchase.
The brochure, Your voice matters – Why consumers need to participate in standards-making…and how
to get involved, will serve to educate
and encourage consumer participation
in the standardization process as well
as to increase their awareness of the
value of voluntary standards. It outlines the basic principles and benefits
of consumer participation, including
how standards themselves benefit
from consumers’ input. The brochure
was developed by ISO’s Committee on
consumer policy (COPOLCO).
“ The potential benefits of consumers’ input into standards development are not always understood, and
in fact are often underestimated,” said
Dana Kissinger-Matray, Secretary of
COPOLCO, ISO Central Secretariat.
“ This brochure is designed to fill a
gap left by existing publications for
basic introductory material on what
standardization is, what advantages it
has, and how to get involved – seen
from the consumer’s viewpoint.”
The brochure provides examples of standards where consumers
have made a difference and the personal experiences of several consumer
representatives. Relevant Web sites
together with educational and information resources for consumer representatives are also referenced.
The full text of the document is
freely available on our Web site –
www.iso.org (see http://www.iso.org/
iso/en/prods-services/otherpubs/
Consumerquestions.html). The paper
version of the brochure can be ordered
free (for small quantities – postage and
handling are charged on larger orders)
from the ISO Central Secretariat
(sales@iso.org).
ISO 18513:2003, Tourism services – Hotels and other types of tourism accommodation – Terminology,
is a dictionary of core terms for the
tourist industry, meaning that when
one person uses a term, the others
anywhere in the world know exactly
what is being descibed and what they
can expect.
ISO 18513 can serve as a reference for the explanations given in
travel brochures or in automatic booking systems ; in business-to-business
communications ; in definitions given
in tourist statistics ; for consumer
advisory services, to avoid misunderstandings when tourist offers are provided ; and for interpretation in legal
conflicts.
Protective
equipment for ice
hockey players
ISO standard
for the tourism
industry
T
he first ISO International Standard
directly relating to tourist services
will go much of the way to solving
the problem of ambiguity, confusion
and misunderstanding of terms used in
the tourist industry by providing a reference basis for the industry.
I
ce hockey players, goalkeepers and
referees risk head and face injuries
every time they step onto the ice.
ISO 10256:2003, Head and
face protection for use in ice hockey, is
expected to reduce the frequency and
severity of injuries to the head and face
without comprising the form or appeal
of the game.
The new standard, which has
received support from the International
Ice Hockey Federation, specifies performance requirements and test methods for helmet and face protectors. It
ISO Focus January 2004
35
New this month
is intended help manufacturers design
equipment capable of protecting players, goalkeepers and referees by distributing and dampening the force of
impact and preventing the penetration
of objects.
“ The benefits of the new
standard will be twofold,” says Kevin
MacKenzie, Secretary of the subcommittee that developed the new standard.
“ First, the manufacturers and users will
no longer have to deal with several different standards, all of which sought
to do the same thing. Second, this
standard, developed by an international
panel of experts, ‘ sets the bar ’ since it
is based on new investigations, ideas
and theories for further improving head
and face protection for ice hockey.”
According to the CSA (Canadian Standards Association), sports
of all kinds carry a risk of serious eye
injury or blindness, but with proper
protection, virtually all sports eye injuries are preventable. For example, in
the 1974-1975 season – before minor
ice hockey players were required to
wear facemasks – there were 258 eye
injuries, including 43 blinded eyes,
whereas in the 2001-2002 season, only
4 eye injuries, including 2 blinded eyes
were reported.
ISO 10256 provides performance characteristics for the construction, shock absorption, puck-impact
resistance, penetration, retention-system properties, field of vision, marking and information of head and face
protectors.
ISO 10256:2003, which replaces
ISO 10256:1996 and ISO 10257:1996
and the European standard EN 967:
1997, Head protectors for ice hockey
players, represents ice hockey’s best
practice for head and face protectors.
The new standard is aimed
for use by manufacturers, conformity assessment agencies, users and ice
hockey associations – both national
and international.
The new standard is the work of
ISO technical committee ISO/TC 83,
Sports and recreational equipment,
subcommittee SC 5, Ice hockey equipment and facilities.
36
ISO Focus January 2004
Publicizing your
ISO 9001:2000
and ISO 14001
certifications
I
SO has issued strict new guidelines
to assist organizations in publicizing certifications to the ISO 9001:
2000 quality management system and
ISO 14001 environmental management
system standards.
The guidelines, Publicizing
your ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001
certification, are intended to help
organizations apply good practice
when publicizing, communicating and
promoting their certifications to stakeholders including staff, customers and
business partners, and to the general
public.
The release of the guidelines
was timed to coincide with the 15
December 2003 deadline marking the
end of the three-year period given for
organizations to make the transition
from certificates of conformity to the
1994 versions of ISO 9001, ISO 9002
and ISO 9003 to the single standard
that has replaced all three – ISO 9001:
2000.
Certificates to the 1994 versions are no longer recognized as valid
by the national accreditation bodies
that make up the IAF (International
Accreditation Forum) and lose their
accredited status. The deadline and
transition were agreed on by ISO and
the IAF and announced prior to ISO’s
publication of ISO 9001:2000 on 15
December 2000.
ISO’s guidelines insist upon
reference to the full designation of ISO
9001:2000 (and not just “ISO 9001”)
in order to avoid any possibility of
confusion between certification to the
now only valid version and to the older
standard.
Among traps that ISO’s guidelines will help organizations to avoid are
the misuse of ISO’s logo and name in
connection with certification. In fact,
ISO itself does not audit organizations
and does not issue ISO 9001:2000 or
ISO 14001 certificates. This is carried
out independently of ISO by more
than 750 certification bodies around
the world.
The guidelines also emphasize:
“ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 give
generic requirements for management
systems, not requirements for specific
products or services… ISO 9001:2000
and ISO 14001 certification marks of
conformity are not to be displayed on
products, on product labels, on product
packaging, or in any way that may be
interpreted as denoting product conformity.”
ISO Secretary-General Alan
Bryden commented: “ISO first
published such guidelines in 1993 and
they have been periodically updated
since then to assist users. We know
that we are meeting a market need
because, for example, a draft of the
latest version posted on ISO’s Web
site attracted 44 000 visitors within 21
weeks. ISO not only produces useful
standards – we also do what we can to
facilitate their use.”
Publicizing your ISO 9001:
2000 or ISO 14001 certification is
available in English (ISBN 92-6710385-7) and French (ISBN 92-6720385-1) editions as free downloads
from ISO’s Web site (www.iso.org),
or as a free brochure (for small quantities – postage and handling charged
on larger orders) from ISO Central
Secretariat (sales@iso.org).
Next Issue
Main Focus
Developments and initiatives
Conformity assessment. Experts
Fish in Uganda. A case history illus-
illustrate several aspects of what is
happening under the broad banner of
conformity assessment.
trating how the Ugandan fish industry
managed to regain sales and increase
exports.
Confidence in second hand goods.
Standards exist in many countries,
but, with the onset of globalization, a
need has arisen to address this internationally. To protect consumers
against undue risk to health and safety
that may be inherent with the escalation in trade of second-hand goods,
the feasibility and content of such a
standard is being assessed by a working group within ISO’s committee
for consumer policy.
Launch vehicle and spacecraft
interfaces. The space vehicles com• Streamlining the structure of ISO’s
Committee on conformity assessment (CASCO).
• The paths to developing a coherent
conformity assessment programme.
• How conformity assessment
processes oil the wheels of trade.
• Fundamentals of product certification.
• A day in the life of a peer assessor.
• Management systems standards for
certification bodies.
• Certification services in developing
countries – the advantages of
using nationally based certification
bodies?
• Is self-declaration of conformity an
effective way to conserve consumer
confidence?
• Accreditation bodies – what is their
role?
munity is faced with an increasing
number of launch vehicles agencies.
The article reviews three new ISO
standards that will facilitate the
exchange of technical information
between spacecraft and launch vehicles contractors, minimizing the risk
of errors resulting from misunderstanding.
Mechanical contraceptives. The
world of mechanical condoms is far
from static. The challenge for a technical committee engaged in standardizing mechanical contraceptives is to
keep pace with new materials and
technologies, and to take into account
modern quality assurance techniques.
The Kids’ ISO 14000 Programme.
ISO is backing a Japanese nongovernmental programme that is to
help develop environmental awareness
among children. The Kids’ ISO 14000
programme is built on applying the
ISO 14001 approach in their homes
and communities and building up
networking between the young worldwide to bring the force of collective
action to global environmental issues.
Training the trainers. With a view
to helping developing countries participate more actively in standardization
activities, the approach of having experienced international trainers train
competent local trainers that can pass
on the knowledge to others has gained
considerable acceptance. The experience of Estonia is enlightening.
ISO Focus January 2004
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