NC State of Business

Earlier this month I attended what is called the ISO Project Committee or PC 242 meetings in Washington, DC. These meetings signaled the start of the development of ISO 50001 – a standard for energy management systems. Although I would say that I have much experience as a user of international management system standards, this is my first involvement in an ISO standard creation.

There were 22 countries represented, and I took my seat in the main conference room surrounded by representatives from France, Denmark, Barbados, and China. We first began a round of formal presentations by many countries stating their positions on what an energy management system should look like. Sometime during the presentations, I somehow thought about comparing this to flavors of “ice cream”. I remember as a kid when I was first taken to the new neighborhood Baskin Robbins store with its famous 31 flavors.

It turns out that when presenters introduced their vision for the structure of ISO 50001, the United States actually had the most unique “flavor”. While the US flavor attempted to include what it thought were key successful ingredients of multiple existing standards, it appeared that many other countries focused on using a single recipe as their foundation.

"Not everyone likes all our flavors, but each flavor is someone's favorite." – Irv Robbins

From there, the first day pretty much became a test of whose flavor is the “correct” one. National delegations began to align themselves with one flavor or another and grandiose statements of support for the “best” flavor were offered. It was all pretty amazing. Heading into dinner on the first day, there was a concern that progress would not be made, and this important meeting of a united nations for an energy standard could yield some new flavor that many countries would not eat.

It is important to note that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has experienced facilitators for these project committees, and we were fortunate to be led by one on this day. During dinner a compromise “recipe” was already being distributed for initial review, and by the beginning of day two we were well on our way to the first working draft of ISO 50001 adopted in principle by the close of our sessions. It is now officially released for comment by the committee…another “taste test”.

See more on PC 242 at the ISO website:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease?refid=Ref1157