The IFAN Board unanimously decided to bestow the Georges Garel Award upon Mr. Evgueni Patrikeev, IFAN Secretary from 1997-2009, in recognition of his dedicated and outstanding contribution to the activities of IFAN.

  

Ross Wraight, IFAN President, presented Mr. Patrikeev with the Georges Garel Award certificate and IFAN gold pin as a symbol of this recognition during the 36th IFAN Members Assembly held in Berlin, Germany on 27-28 October 2009.

The International Federation of Standards Users (IFAN) held its 36th Members’ Assembly in Berlin, Germany on 27 and 28 October 2009. Some 35 participants from nine countries attended, representing national members from standards user organizations and corporate members from both industrial and commercial sectors.

The Members' Assembly included presentations from Rob Steele, Secretary-General of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Ernst-Peter Ziethen, Director International of Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) who is also the Vice President Technical of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), and Holk Traschewski, President of Ausschuss Normenpraxis (ANP), the IFAN national member for Germany.

Other highlights of the Assembly were presentations by Steve Mutkoski, Senior Standards Strategist, Microsoft Corporation, Doron Tamir, Director-General of Standards Institution of Israel (SII), and Markus Reigl, Head Corporate Standardization and Regulation, Siemens AG.

The Members' Assembly was presented reports from Ross Wraight, IFAN President, and from its working and project groups. The IFAN budget for 2010 was approved and the IFAN Treasurer, Thomas Laemmle was elected to carry out another term in office.

The slides of all presentations are given in the section IFAN conferences, workshops, open sessions on the IFAN Web site.

Some photos were taken during the Members' Assembly and related events. They are available to the participants via the following links:

-36th IFAN Members' Assembly 1

-36th IFAN Members' Assembly 2

-36th IFAN Members' Assembly 3

-Informal Dinner 26 October 2009

-Spree River Cruise 27 October 2009

The photos are username and password protected.

The next triennial IFAN international conference, to be held in 2010 in conjunction with the 37th Members’ Assembly, will take place in Indonesia, kindly hosted by the national IFAN member, Masyarakat Standardisasi Indonesia (MASTAN), together with Badan Standardisasi Nasional (BSN).

China’s IFAN member, the Chinese Association for Standardization (CAS), held its fourth annual "IFAN in China" workshop on the subject of "Social Responsibility and Product Quality" on 18-19 June 2009 in Shenzhen. Nearly 200 participants at this dual-language workshop received excellent presentations from Schneider Electric (Mr. Jialin Du, Standardization Director), ABB (Ms. Zhongdan Wang, President), Siemens (Dr. Xu Bin) and the Shenzhen Jiada Hi-Tech Industrial Development Company (Dr. Tan Liang, Technical Director), all focused on their organizational programs dealing with sustainability, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Mr. Liu Fei of ASTM International’s China office also made a presentation on the worldwide standardization efforts of ASTM and its role in sustainability standards.

In addition to his salutary opening remarks and a most thorough and comprehensive summarization at the end of the conference, Mr. Ross Wraight, President of IFAN, delivered an informative and comprehensive speech on Geneva-based IFAN as a worldwide organization promoting the interests of the users of standards and the benefits of membership, tying in the opportunities presented by the current economic turmoil such as the ability to raise the awareness of the potential for standards to be used as trade barriers. Mr. David Felinski, IFAN Vice President, presented on the current status of the development of the ISO 26000 guidance standard on social responsibility, a topic that prompted so many questions from the interested Chinese that the time allotted for the presentation had to be doubled. This workshop occurred soon after the May 2009 ISO Work Group meeting in Quebec City, at which time the Chinese delegation voiced strong opposition to several elements of the standard.

Keynote remarks were made by Mr. Ma Lin-cong, Vice President and Secretary General of CAS, and closing remarks were made by Dr. Wang Ming, Head of the South Mountain District Government (which includes Shenzhen City). Ms. Laura Stone, Chief of the Macroeconomic and Financial Policy Unit of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, presented a succinct, informative and easy to understand talk on the current global economic crisis, including her prognosis and the two things needed to facilitate economic recovery — restoring consumer confidence and rejecting protectionism.

IFAN plans to continue working with China to sponsor future workshops on these topics, which are of great interest to the Chinese industrial community.

We are pleased to announce that Association pour la Promotion de la Métrologie et la Normalisation en République Démocratique du Congo (APROMEN) has joined IFAN as a developing national member. For the description of the organization, please see its Web site at www.apromenrdc.com. Contact details are available for IFAN members only.

IFAN is delighted to announce the election of Mr. Ross Wraight, an Australian, as its next President. Ross starts his three-year term of office on 1 January following the completion of a six-year term by Mr. Neil Reeve from Shell. Mr. Reeve, who stays on the IFAN Board, as Immediate Past President, said that Ross’s reforms and leadership in the standards world and elsewhere had been truly remarkable. He is very well-known in the industry and brings a very diverse background across financial, professional, health and industrial services to the role. He has been a CEO of several organizations and will bring a new perspective and energy to IFAN.

Ross has a strong background in standardization and conformity assessment and, in ISO, was the Chairman of the Technical Management Board and a member of Council. He was Group CEO of Standards Australia and CEO of SAI Global. For more information, please click here.

Messages from the in-coming and out-going Presidents are available through the below links:

- Message from Mr. Neil Reeve

- Message from Mr. Ross Wraight

CEN published a new document entitled Hands on standardization-A starters guide to standardization for experts in CEN technical bodies. This guide outlines, in a simplified way and with plain language, how the European standardization process works and what needs to be taken into account when drafting standards. This document may be useful, notably for the experts and observers that are participating in European standardization for the first time, but also for those standards users who need a short description of the CEN system.

To facilitate access to information on standards, regulations, accreditation and certification, IFAN has created a portal of links to the respective sources of information. Please see the "Search for" links in the left column of this page.

ISO has recently improved the search mechanism of the WSSN, World Standards Services Network. Previously, the WSSN search function was limited to information given on the site. The new search arrangement expanded the ability of searching information through all sites listed on the WSSN. The WSSN search is currently the only mechanism in the world which provides a search through Web sites of almost all international, regional and/or national standards bodies.

In August 2007, IFAN invited all persons wishing to express their artistic vision of the importance and benefits of standards and standardization to take part in the first IFAN international contest by preparing a poster depicting the theme "Standards make the world go round". 15 posters were received from 8 participants from Germany, Colombia, Botswana, China, France and Netherlands. The posters are available for viewing here.

At its meeting held in Geneva on 2-3 April 2008, the IFAN Board decided on the winners of the IFAN contest. The winners are:

1st place: Ms. Patricia Dind (Germany) for poster 1

2nd place: Ms. Dagmar Aben (Netherlands) for poster 15

3rd place: Mr. Luigi Principi (France) for poster 11

The IFAN Board expresses its gratitude and thanks to all participants in the contest for their time and efforts in preparing their pieces of art and congratulations to the winners.