The gas industry now relies quite significantly on the use of normative documents, for example British Standards and the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers Procedures (IGEM).
The normative documents are used as the foundation for the ACS scheme and provide the basis for many supporting publications. Many organisations responsible for the development of a standard use a similar process to achieve the end product. In the majority of cases the development work is entrusted to a technical committee, formed of ‘industry experts'. But what is an 'expert'? According to Neils Bohr, Danish physicist and Nobel prize winner, an expert 'is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.'
If we look at BSi as an example, their industry experts are normally drawn from volunteers from the industry – Representations are sought from many spheres including: consumer organizations; professional institutions; certification, testing and inspection bodies; educational establishments; research organisations; UK notified bodies; enforcement bodies and government departments.
But does that make them ‘industry experts' – it could be argued that although they may be ‘experts’ in their own field, for example research and development, or appliance manufacturer, they may never have actually done the job, or if they have it may have been many years ago – and of course times change.
The reality of course is that someone has to decide what standard we are going to work to, so a committee of ‘industry experts’ bought together to produce a draft for public comment is probably the best option available. But is it? Just because we have always done it that way it does not mean that we should not at least investigate alternative methods.
Of course we could look at a slightly more radical approach. What if the normative documents became community based documents, using the model of the Wikipedia encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopaedia compiled and updated by many of its users. It is a special type of website, called a wiki that makes the updating process easy. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, constantly making changes, all of which are recorded in article histories .
So imagine a normative document where the users (gas installers etc.) could access the publication on-line and add to, amend or up-date whenever they found practically a better solution, for example? Could it work, or would it be total chaos as pages were changed on a daily or hourly basis? Perhaps the 'experts' could be used to monitor the suggested changes and decide what is acceptable/non acceptable?
Community based normative documents may be a step too far, but possibly it could work for technical publications, such as our own.
Rather than rely on two or three authors and editors to keep track of changes and interpret standards, why not allow the very people who are actually using the documents make the changes and amendments – checked and regulated by all the other members. However, the mechanics of providing full colour charts and diagrams in addition to pure text, does not lend itself to being updated on-line. But perhaps there is some mileage in examining further how we could use the technical expertise of all our members to maintain and improve the technical accuracy and scope of our publications.
Keywords: vipergas vipergas publications expert gas publications
