Growing up in London in the 1950s I was surrounded by houses built of bricks. It never occurred to me to wonder how so many buildings could be built with everything fitting together so well. Years later, I discovered there was a standard size for all bricks (and other components) that enabled successful construction. It also enabled a wide range of brick bonds to be developed that subtly give character to buildings. Around the same time I learned about development in the Crimean war of the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) thread for screws, bolts and nuts.
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Bricks, Screws, and Management Standards
Standards are good for the economy - and for effective management of risk and safety.
These and other developments led to the founding of the British Standards Institution and other standards organisations and standardisation of products. In New Zealand, local standards started life after the Hawke’s Bay earthquake and the need to develop building bylaws that could be adopted by local authorities. Subsequently the emphasis shifted from standardisation of tangible products to manufacturing procedures and processes through quality management, and then to other aspects of management.
The value of all such standardisation has been researched and shown to increase national GDP (gross domestic product) and international trade.
What does this have to do with risk and safety?
Clearly, if a product has been certified as conforming with an international or national standard it is more likely to do what it is supposed to do. Thus, specifying nuts and bolts as conforming with a standard should mean that they will fit and reliably form part of a maintenance programme. Similarly, specifying that a safety sign conforms with NZS/AS1319 means we know something about its dimensions, colour, graphics and other key design features.
Similar comments can be made about the application of management system standards, management guidelines and technical documents published by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Many readers will be familiar with ISO31000 Risk management: principles and guidelines, first published in 2009, developed originally from AS/NZS4360: 2004. Knowing that such a management standard or guideline has been adopted locally means that it has been exposed for public comment and, by consensus, deemed fit for the local economy.
International and national standards go through a broadly similar development process involving proposing an idea to the local standards organisation, getting approval for its development, working through a series of drafts, publishing a draft for public comment, and then publishing it.
International and Australia/New Zealand standards covering risk management are overseen locally by a joint standards committee, with New Zealand members nominated by the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), the Institution of Professional Engineers (IPENZ) and WorkSafe New Zealand. Similarly, dependability standards are overseen by a joint standards committee with New Zealand members nominated by NZISM, IPENZ and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.
However, since Standards New Zealand was absorbed into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), a requirement that development or adoption of new standards be funded by those who will benefit from them has been introduced. As a result, this process has run into problems. Recently, this has meant that several IEC standards on dependability have not been adopted in New Zealand because no one sector or organisation could be found to fund the necessary work.
For example, revised IEC standards on hazard and operability studies and failure modes and effects analysis have been published by IEC and adopted in Australia but not in New Zealand, because MBIE did not have the necessary $3000 or so in its budget to pay its share of the adoption process managed by Standards Australia.
Should we care?
Many of the dependability standards directly and indirectly influence risk in workplaces, activities and products. Research by the Accident Compensation Corporation and Ministry of Transport shows that the cost of a workplace or on-the-road fatality is in the order of $5 million. Minor injuries are shown to cost up to $20,000. So, funding adoption of such dependability standards might, in the long-term, help reduce incidents resulting in death or injury and their cost.
However, things may get worse
ISO31000 is under review and a revised edition may be published in 2018. No one organisation or sector can be shown to benefit from it – the standard “is not specific to any industry or sector” and can be applied to any type of risk”. Who should pay for its adoption in New Zealand?
ISO 45001 Occupational health and safety management systems has been under development for some years and may be published later this year or in 2018. New Zealand has not been represented either as part of the development of this standard or as an observer. Assuming it is wanted, who should pay for adoption of the standard in New Zealand?
And what of other standards that are peripheral to risk and safety management (eg, ISO9001 and ISO14001)? Who should pay for adoption of such international standards or development of joint Australia New Zealand standards? They surely apply to the whole economy.
This is surely a subject for New Zealand professional bodies to act on. But do they have data about usage of risk-, dependability- and safety-related standards?
Do you use risk- or safety-related standards?
Before you say “no”, pause to think about how products, services and activities are specified or structured. If the answer is “yes”, please take our anonymous survey here so we have some evidence to use to lobby for change of the MBIE policy. The results will be published on the Risk Management Ltd website and freely shared with my standards committee colleagues and professional bodies so they can ask their professional bodies to lobby for change in MBIE policy.