121 / 234
LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
standardisation programme. The threat became more real when the Chair of ISO/TC
44 stated that, unless these problems were resolved quickly, he would have little choice
but to recommend the termination of IIW’s standards programme.
37
This option was not
a consideration and IIW essentially agreed to make the necessary changes to processing
standards including acceptance of ISO’s insistence on sophisticated criteria for figures used
in ISO/IIW standards and the submission of standards in English to Association Française
de Normalisation (AFNOR) for translation in accordance with ISO’s draft standard rules.
Shackleton was to show a highly competent level of diplomacy at the following ISO/TC
44 meeting, demonstrating IIW’s commitment to improving the processes between the two
organisations. This led to a declaration by Gourmelon, the Chair of ISO/TC 44, that all the
problems that had been raised at the meeting had been resolved and that a positive approach
had been instituted between the two organisations.
38
The year 2000 heralded a new dawn as far as IIW’s status as an
international standardising body was concerned. For the first time, after a
hiatus of almost 10 years since 1991, the third ISO/IIW standard, ISO 6847
Welding consumables – Deposition of a weld metal pad for chemical analysis
,
was published in March 2000, followed two months later by the fourth ISO/
IIW standard ISO 8249
Welding – Determination of Ferrite Number (FN) in
austenitic and duplex ferritic-austenitic Cr-Ni stainless steel weld metals
,
both from C-II, and this time with joint IIW/ISO logos.
Over the next two years a total of 13 standards were subsequently produced, all of
which originated from just two Commissions; C-II with eight standards and C-III with five
standards, many of which had been queuing up since before 1990. There was some progress
on IIW’s request for reforms to ISO Resolution 19/1984 but these were of little significance
and only amounted to changes for updating the voting times for ballots and little else under
the new ISO Resolution 42/1999. The most important result, as far as IIW was concerned,
was the agreement in 2001 of the Coordination Committee of its proposal to revise the
coordination procedures to add Technical Reports (TR) and Technical Specifications (TS)
to the suite of options available for IIW for the publishing of documents through ISO.
39
The
potential for doing so was considered to provide a new route for audiences to benefit from
the knowledge within IIW. In keeping with this, Shackleton was elected as Chair of the SC-
STAND for a second term of three years in tandem with Ziegenfuss, both of whom managed
capably with patience and good judgement all the precise details and minutiae involved in
their dealings with both ISO/TC 44 and CEN/TC 121.
The breakthrough with ‘cohabitation’ standards did bring with it a greater degree
of trust with CEN/TC 121 which finally joined the Coordination Committee as a full
member along with ISO and IIW in August 2006. At this time Shackleton as Chair of SC-
STAND, Mr Frédéric Lobinger (France) as Chair of ISO/TC 44 and Prof. Dr-Ing. Detlef