Did You Know? offers a quick look at the broad scope of activities underway within the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Federation, highlighting the people and initiatives making waves in standardization.
ANSI's Roy Swift Receives 2013 Special Recognition Award from IREC
ANSI member and accredited standards developer the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Inc. (IREC) recently honored Dr. Roy Swift, senior program director of ANSI's Personnel Credentialing Accreditation Programs, for his involvement in the creation of the joint ANSI-IREC program for the accreditation of renewable energy and energy efficiency certificate programs.
Dr. Swift has long been involved in efforts to bolster and expand personnel credentialing, certification, and accreditation activities, along with other workforce-improvement activities. In addition to his work with ANSI, he served as the executive director of the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT) and as the chief of the U.S. Army Medical Specialist Corps in the Army Surgeon General's Office, where he oversaw Army physical therapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, and physician assistants.
The ANSI-IREC joint program that Dr. Swift helped to establish evaluates certificate-awarding schools, colleges, and other institutions against requirements for equipment, curriculum, facilities, administration, and personnel set forth in the IREC Standard 14732: 2013, General Requirements for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Certificate Programs. It began as a pilot program in January 2012 and started accepting general applications in January 2013 [see related story]. To learn more about the ANSI-IREC joint program, visit its official website.
More information about Dr. Swift's award, as well as others bestowed as part of IREC's 2013 3iAwards Ceremony, is available online.
NIST's MEP Establishes Online Collection of Manufacturing Policy and Practice Reports
The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) recently announced the launch of a new website providing access to a range of useful reports and other documents examining issues related to manufacturing practice and policy. MEP is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce(DOC)'s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The documents are organized by relevant topic area, including the current state of manufacturing, best practices, global competitiveness, and more. The website is expected to be an important reference resource for members of the manufacturing community and to trigger increase discussion on topics of importance to the manufacturing sector as a whole. The website is not intended to be a comprehensive source for all such documents and the hosting of a given document does not imply that MEP, NIST, or DOC endorses the views express therein.
To access the new website, visit www.nist.gov/mep/mepreports.cfm. Users wishing to submit relevant documents for possible inclusion in the website may send links or attachments to Gary Yakimov, the MEP's manager of policy and research, at [email protected].
2012 ISO Survey of Certifications Finds Growth in Use of ISO Management Systems Standards
The ISO Survey of Certifications 2012, a publication of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), has found that the number of certifications to ISO management systems has increased from 1,446,130 to 1,504,213 worldwide since 2011.
The findings cover the following ISO standards:
The survey's results also show an increase of 332% in the number of worldwide certifications to ISO 50001 in its second year of availability, with the number of countries where certificates to the standard were issued rising from 28 to 60. This growth was reportedly driven in part by heavy demand in Europe and Southeast Asia.
An executive summary of the 2012 survey and an interactive map of ISO management system certifications worldwide are available online.
SASB Announces Pilot Program on Material Sustainability Issues for Corporate SEC Filings
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), an ANSI organizational member and accredited standards developer, has announced the launch of a new pilot program intended to help participating companies incorporate information on their material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance into documents filed annually with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). During the pilot program, SASB will provide guidance on related standards issues and establish a review process to determine how program participants are progressing.
The program, which is being carried out by SASB in collaboration with Bloomberg and other groups, will include companies in 10 separate sectors, including the healthcare and financial industries, and will run for three years, beginning in the first quarter of 2014. Companies interested in taking part in the pilot program are required to have their chief financial officer and chief sustainability officer participate in the effort, in order to ensure that relevant factors associated with material sustainability are included in the SEC's Form 10-K, a required annual report including a comprehensive look at a given company's financial condition.
For more information on SASB's pilot program, visit its official website.