IIW History 1990-2015

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

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