STANDARDS
BSI GROUP
38


Setting The Standards
In Road Safety		  


John Lennox, Head of Transportation, BSI Group and a Director of Roadsafe




John Lennox
This standard has significantly improved safety for roadside recovery operators and the public
Standards can come in many forms, from private company standards through industry specifications to formal British, European or International standards. At BSI we cater for all of the above. The needs of the transport industry in particular call for rapid standards development to ensure that safety and best practice guidance keep up to speed with the fast moving environment that we all work in. In response to this BSI has developed the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) to ensure that industry has a standards solution that can be applied as easily to a product, service or skill set requirement, as it can to a safety management system or process. Put simply, a PAS is a fast track standard, flexible and agile enough to meet the needs of modern industry.

How does it work?
Our work with the Survive Group can perhaps explain how this form of standard setting works out in practical terms and can have a positive impact on Road Safety. The Survive Group is a partnership between the motoring industry, motoring services organizations, the Police Service and Government. It aims to improve the safety of roadside breakdown and recovery operators’ employees, their customers and members of the public stopped on hard shoulders and high-speed dual carriageways.

Roadside breakdown and recovery is a dangerous business. This tells the story of PAS 43 – the result of close cooperation throughout the industry. PAS 43 - Safe working of vehicle breakdown and recovery operators - covers the key issues surrounding breakdown and recovery safety, from staff training to vehicle equipment levels. Building on its own initial report into roadside safety, Survive decided that it needed a common set of standards to reinforce and standardize safe working practices for roadside recovery operators and their customers.


Recognizing the need for standards
Having undertaken a programme of research, Survive produced a report including 14 key recommendations for safety. Among them was this one:-

• A standard should be developed to give guidance on working on the hard shoulder. Consideration should be given to extending this internationally.

The members of the Survive working group, established to implement this recommendation, realized that in order to gain the widest possible acceptance for its recommendations, it needed a higher profile and the credibility that could only come from the BSI name. The recommendations in their report fell into three categories: some could simply be implemented without further work; some needed the Government to act first; and some needed industry consensus on particular issues, vehicle conspicuity, for example.

By developing a common set of standards for the industry, the group hoped it could achieve the necessary consensus. Having seen operatives killed while working on the hard shoulder and on high-speed dual carriageways, the industry was anxious that the common set of standards should be completed as soon as possible. To achieve this aim, BSI recommended that the industry create and adopt a Publicly Available Specification (PAS). This would be an intellectually robust document, produced to the same levels of editorial rigour as a full British Standard, but ready for publication in less than six months.


From draft through consultation to publication
The sponsor group would contribute its technical knowledge of operating situations, procedures, equipment and strategies, and BSI would offer its technical expertise in standardization and knowledge management processes and give this standard the profile it deserves.

We constantly interface at all levels with industry, government and consumers
In particular, BSI could provide advice and the technical skills needed to draft a watertight standard; including how to avoid ambiguity, how to strike an appropriate balance between mandatory and advisory recommendations, and how to ensure that the standard could be easily implemented. Every member of the Survive group made a contribution, either financial (the costs of the PAS were met by the AA, the RAC and Green Flag) or in terms of time, space or other resources. A steering group was set up, whose purpose was to agree the work to be carried out by a working group. This group met regularly, and by sticking to best practice in team-working and project management, achieved its goal – a first draft – within the timeframe agreed. ‘Using what we call "the methodical approach", we agreed a common process to deliver the project to an agreed timescale,’ commented Chris Bielby, Head of Quality and Standards, British Gas. Chris, who chaired the steering group, was very impressed with their keen focus and, specifically, the effectiveness of the process management within BSI.

Consensus and contracts: embedding the PAS
Having agreed a draft, drawing on source documents including various existing British Standards, the Survive report itself and ACPO’s contractual guidelines, the working group needed to ensure that the industry was behind the PAS. ‘A key challenge was to get buy-in from the whole industry,’ said Trevor Dean, Head of Quality Standards, the AA.

The consultation process, crucial to the development of any standard, including a PAS, resulted in wide acceptance of the draft and its recommendations, a crucial achievement and one seen by David Bizley, Technical Director of the RAC, as ‘a remarkably smooth process.’ The PAS was launched in March 2002. The next key milestone was to ensure that individual breakdown and recovery operators – known as garage agents for the big roadside recovery organizations – signed up to the Standard. The AA, RAC and Green Flag have adopted this as a minimum requirement, and their unity sent a very strong signal to the industry. ‘BSI’s experience in standards, and their brand, enabled Survive to move swiftly towards its objective of a publicly recognized standard that would ensure safe working for vehicle breakdown and recovery operators.’ stated David Bizley, Technical Director, RAC.

What lies further down the road?
Looking to the future, the PAS will be reviewed by the sponsor group in the light of the small percentage of issues that remained unresolved – vehicle conspicuity being one of them – as new research becomes available. That process has already begun, with a view to publishing an updated Standard in 2004. There is the further option of taking the next logical step of migrating the PAS to a full British Standard. But for now, there is agreement that it has contributed to safer working conditions.

It has significantly improved safety for roadside breakdown and recovery operatives and for members of the public who, through no fault of their own, could find themselves stuck in one of the most dangerous places to be in your car: stationary on a motorway or dual carriageway.

BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body, is committed to making Transport safer and better for everyone and lead the world in advocating and implementing best practice. We constantly interface at all levels with industry, government and consumers – resulting in the development of standards, be they national or international, sector or company specific, that are relevant to the needs of industry, increase efficiency and have a positive impact on Safety, Business and Society.

John Lennox can be contacted on +44 (0)20 8996 7342 or
via email: John.Lennox@bsi-global.com.


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