Jul 26, 2016

New Directions for Standards Development

SPRING and ASTM have been MOU partners since 2003, and SPRING has made reference to numerous ASTM standards, including ones for the biomedical and chemicals industries, and general engineering and safety.

Now, a new SPRING committee on services will consider potential standards for the hotel, food and retail sectors. SPRING anticipates that standards will help these service sectors grow and address manpower and cost challenges. For example, standardized storage pallet sizes could increase food delivery efficiency, and better deployment of interoperable RFID chips in hotel linen could help speed up operational work. Through its memorandum of understanding with ASTM, Singapore's Standards, Productivity and Innovation Board, known as SPRING Singapore, will also be able to reference a number of ASTM standards related to services such as sustainable meetings and environmental site assessment.

Bernice Tay heads one of four teams in SPRING's Standards Division. She reports that her organization believes in a multi-stakeholder, consensus-based approach to standards development based on a public-private partnership. A government body, SPRING has an industry-led Standards Council that sets national standardization direction. Standards experts who participate in the development process represent government, industry, academia, associations and more.

Tay participated in the 2014 ASTM Standards Expert Program. Tay says, "The [Standards Expert] intensive program was a great way to gain firsthand insight into ASTM standards development principles, policies and processes, and to learn from key officers at ASTM and other external agencies." She particularly appreciated learning about the technology that allows stakeholders to drive standards development. Tay plans to review the ASTM approach with her fellow staff members and adopt some of these best practices in Singapore's standards development process where appropriate.