Chairman's Peer panel
1 America Square near Tower Bridge was the location for this year’s Committee Chairmen’s gathering on Wednesday 4 November. Over 70 delegates were in attendance, a great turnout given recent financial pressures following the UK’s recession. The new and improved Information Zone showcased BSI products and services, guidance on working with content developers on National Standards, demonstrations of the new online New Proposals for Standards and Information Portal (see article 4 below).
Mike Low, Director of BSI Standards welcomed the Committee Chairmen and gave an update of BSI’s achievements over the last year followed by Shirley Bailey-Wood, Operations Director who spoke about Committee activity and gave an update on International matters.
The keynote speaker was Gideon Richards, Chair of PTI/17 Solid biofuels and PTI/20 Sustainability criteria of biomass. He spoke in detail about the growing needs of providing the UK’s energy from renewable sources and the challenges of combining this with a holistic standards approach.
As in previous years there were plenty of opportunities for networking and a Chairman’s peer panel enabled open discussion. - details below:
Gideon Richards - CEO, Consulting With Purpose Ltd
Gideon had concerns, as he expressed in his plenary presentation, that sustainability and resource utilisation are not thought through clearly. Gideon’s involvement in the development of the CEN TC/383 Sustainability standards for Bio-fuels, the ISO PC/248 Sustainability Criteria for Bio-energy, his discussions in the Global Bio-energy Partnership (an intergovernmental group that came out of the Gleneagles G8 Summit) and seeing the rapid increase of Biomass for Electricity, gives him a clear understanding of the issues facing us and how Standards should play their part.
Gideon spent a few minutes establishing why it is important to develop cohesive standards in this field.
Andrea Beddard - User Services Manager, Information Management Group, ARUP, Chairman British Standards Society OC/34: UK Standards Users Group, President of IFAN the International Standards Users Association
As Chair of the British Standards Society, the UK Standards Users Group and Vice-President of IFAN the International Standards Users Association, Andrea hears a wide variety of standards users' views.
While some users have issues with specific standards, there are many issues that relate to all standards. In an effort to improve standards for the user, Andrea has led an initiative in the IFAN European Group to produce a Guide for Technical Committee Chairman to help them produce more user orientated standards.
Andrea spent a few minutes outlining some of the user issues the Guide highlights.
Mike Gilmore - Senior Partner, The Cabling Partnership and Managing Director, e-Ready Building Chairman BSI TCT7, TCT7/-/1,TCT7/-/3 and Meeting Secretary BSI TCT7/-/2
Convenor CLC TC215 WG1 and Secretary CLC TC215 WG2, Convenor ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 WG3 CITG and IPTG Leader, ETSI Special Task Force 362 - Energy Efficiency and Broadband Deployment Technical Director, Fibreoptic Industry Association
Mike Gilmore has been involved in BSI Committees since 1989 - TCT/7 telecommunications installations requirements and also GEL/86 Fibre Optics.
Mike has spent the last 18 months wrestling with the issue of energy efficiency in relation to ICT infrastructures. ICT infrastructures are certainly a significant and growing consumer of energy but they also offer to act as a controller of energy consumption in other areas. The improvement of the energy efficiency of ICT infrastructures requires standardization in ICT facilities, measurement methods and performance algorithms - but the biggest impacts will be made by organizational changes in areas as diverse as data centres and the lowliest broadband subscriber.
Mike spent a few minutes outlining some of the initiatives including EU Codes of Conduct, standards strategies and actual standards activity already underway.
For a full report about the event including presentation slides contact forum@bsigroup.com.
Return to Winter 2009 Committee e-newsletter
