Next BS 8888 now scheduled for 2011

Been very remiss with postings recently. Somewhat shocked to see the last one was on 1st July! My only excuse is that I was away for half of July, and spent the other half doing some major updates to training course material (lots and lots of new diagrams, which always take ages to get right).

Anyway, we had a meeting last week of the BSI committee looking after BS 8888 with a view to getting preparation of the next revision (then scheduled for October 2010) underway.

We had a useful review of the current edition, and are making plans to restructure the content (to make the information more accessible), add more diagrams and illustrations, and to cull the annexes, which now make up almost 75% of the document. These annexes have been added over a period of time, with intention of providing additional explanation and useful background information, but they are getting a bit out of hand. Some will stay, and may even be extended, but some will be incorporated into the main body of the standard, and some are no longer necessary and can be removed altogether.

We then turned our attention to a number of forthcoming ISO standards and amendments, which I have already mentioned on previous posts. These are bringing through some significant changes and additions to the system of technical specification. The justification for the next revision of BS 8888 lies in providing coverage of the changes and developments that these new standards and amendments will bring.

- ISO 1101 amendment 1 is bringing in the additional annotation elements required for fully annotating 3D CAD models.

- ISO 1101 amendment 2 is introducing additional symbols, bringing in some new, and rather technical functionality to geometrical tolerancing.

- ISO 5459 is a complete overhaul of the definitions and rules for datums.

- ISO 14405 is a new standard on linear sizes, which will replace ISO 8015.

In each case, we reviewed the timetable for the new document - how many comment, discussion, amendment and voting stages each has still to go through, and the likely timescale for that to take place. Our conclusion was that there is a faint chance of ISO 1101 amendment 1 being ready for inclusion in a 2010 revision of BS 8888, but that none of the other will see the light of day before 2011 at the earliest.

While we could bring out a 2010 revision of BS 8888 with tweaks, adjustments and improvements, there is no technical justification for a revision of the standard until these new technical changes and developments can be included. I am pleased to say that we have decided to delay a revision of BS 8888 provisionally to 2011. Pleased, because I have wanted all along to make BS 8888 a more stable standard that changes less frequently.

Our decision has also been influenced by the fact that some of these future developments are still fairly contentious, and have a rocky road ahead of them before they are finalised. In several cases, the new standards are introducing new possibilities and symbology to address very specialized and rarefied applications, and they run the constant risk of making the whole system horribly complicated in order to address issues which are of largely academic interest.

The UK representatives on the ISO committees have always sought to avoid unnecessary complexity, and to take a pragmatic, working engineer's approach to these new developments, but we don't always manage to get our own way. Amid the complexities, however, there is also much genuinely useful work taking place. Some of these new standards are now clearly defining rules and principles that have previously often been implied rather than stated, and rarely properly understood. Our challenge is to introduce these in a way that is practical and useable for industry at large.

In just over 4 weeks I shall be going to Texas for the next ISO TC213 conference (having finally managed to find some affordable flights), and will report back on how things develop there.