IIW History 1990-2015

being prepared by 10 different working units’. 52 When his final term of office expired, after 14 consecutive years as Chair at the end of 2012, Shackleton was replaced by Mr Mathias Lundin (Sweden). Lundin’s initial bedding-in period was relatively quiet from a technical

point of viewandhad the backingof some highly competent members of WG-STAND including Vice-Chair Mr Kin- ichi Matsuyama (Japan), Mr Dave Fink (USA), Ing. Henk Bodt (The Netherlands), Mr Robert Shaw (USA), Mr Jérôme Dietsch (France), as well as Kotecki, Davis and Ziegenfuss. This was to change markedly at the ISO/TC 44 plenary meeting in Tokyo, held over two days during July 2014, whenGermany suggested moving standards just published from Route II to Route I on the basis that the latter did not have target dates, which was considered an advantage for standards that required considerably more research before publication. 53 At this meeting there was an undocumented discussion followed by a resolution proposing to cancel the Route II option for IIW and to transfer all IIW Route II documents to Route I. 54 This was the very antithesis to what IIW had fought for from its earliest days leading up to the approval of IIW as an international standardising body in accordance with ISO resolution 19/1984. Despite the absence of key participants, including Mr Frédéric Lobinger, Chair of ISO/TC 44, Lundin, Chair of WG-STAND and Swedish delegate to the committee, the resolution of ISO/TC 44 (Tokyo 13/2014) was approved unanimously with no dissenting voices. 55 The means of doing this was of great concern since

Robert Shaw

Henk Bodt

it presented the most serious challenge to IIW’s status as a standardising body. Shackleton did say later that apparently the UK was aware that such a discussion would take place even though nothing was raised before the meeting and neither was it on the agenda. His brief was to transfer all Route II standards to Route I but not to end the agreement. 56 Kotecki immediately sprang to the defence of IIW in a letter to Lobinger as soon as he was aware of the resolution and the outcome that Route II would be cancelled and IIW be retained as a pre-standardising body only, developing Route I drafts as appropriate. 57 In his letter he noted that considerable trust had been built up over the previous 15 years between

LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS