Articles

Application of standards  25.01.2020 14:10

Our world bit by bit came to consideration that if any product is manufactured, any service is rendered, the product and the service shall meet defined specific requirements. Therefore, standards came to our world. It is a multi-level system of documents defining requirements to products, works and specific types of activity, including, for example, quality management system at a company or occupational safety system.

Now there are many standards of different levels: international, regional, industrial, company standards, etc. The following international standards are well known: standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as well as the following standards of interstate formations:

• EN (European standards)
• GOST (interstate standards developed by Interstate Council for standardization, metrology and certification within CIS (pay attention to the fact that GOST are standards issued by Gosstandart of USSR and standards issued by the Interstate Council for standardization, metrology and certification; and GOST R are standards issued by Gosstandart of the Russian Federation)
• ECMA (standards of European Computer Manufacturers Association).

In the Russian Federation standardization and application of standards are defined in Federal Law “On Technical Regulation”. The law states that international standard is not applied in Russia directly; it only may be a basis for development of a national standard. At the same time a national standard developed on the basis of an international standard may copy the original text in full or include separate provisions not specified in the international standard or cancel some requirements of the international standard. Therefore an international standard may be applied only in case it is issued as a national standard (for example GOST R).

Occupational Safety Standards System takes a special place among Russian national standards. It defines rules, means and methods of occupational safety. Standards included in Occupational Safety Standards System define requirements to conditions in industrial shops, safety clothes, organization of occupational safety trainings, etc.

The Federal Law “On Technical Regulation” defines that obligatory requirements to products, works and services shall be established by technical regulations and national standards are documents for voluntary application. In fact, additions are attached to the technical regulations. The additions are lists of sets of rules, national standards, and in case of observing of them on voluntary basis meeting of technical regulation obligations is achieved. That is why the standards included in the lists are obligatory for observance.

Technical regulations are developed on different levels either. They can be approved within Eurasian Economic Union (Customs Union), for example Technical Regulations on machine and equipment safety, on pressurized equipment safety. They can be approved by a federal law in established order, for example the Federal Law “Technical Regulation on Fire Safety Requirements”. They can be approved by Enactment of the Russian Federation Government, etc.

The Federal Law “On Technical Regulation” defines that technical regulations establish minimum requirements ensuring the following:

• Radiation safety
• Biological safety
• Explosion safety
• Mechanical safety
• Fire safety
• Safety of products (technical items applied at dangerous industrial objects)
• Thermal safety
• Chemical safety
• Electrical safety
• Radiation safety for population
• Electromagnetic compatibility as a part of ensuring of safety for instruments and equipment
• Other safety types

Technical regulations set assessment of conformance for products, works and services with requirements of technical regulations. At the same time conformance confirmation may be voluntary and obligatory and in two forms: declaration of conformance and certificate of conformance. Pay attention to the fact that technical regulations set minimal required veterinary and sanitary requirements and phytosanitary requirements to some products.

Reforms in technical regulation system in the Russian Federation came to a result that construction norms and rules (SNiP) were replaced by sets of rules (SP) i.e. actualized revisions of SNiPs. Furthermore, separate agencies carry out their own reforms in technical regulation, for example, Safety rules issued by Rostechnadzor (Gosgortechnadzor; the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision) are replaced by Federal norms and rules in the field of industrial safety.

Therefore, standardization system in Russia has the following structure: its top level is technical regulations which are obligatory for application, its medium level is set of rules (SP) and national standards which observance on voluntary basis ensures meeting of requirements of technical regulations (i.e. the standards are obligatory for application in fact), and its bottom level is other national standards which are documents for voluntary application.

Practically as Russian companies collaborate with a lot of foreign companies, we have to do with many standards which application is outside of acting norms and rules on technical regulation. Among these standards we can emphasize the following:

• ASTM (standards of American Society for Testing and Materials)
• API (standards of American Petroleum Institute)
• ASME (standards of American Society of Mechanical Engineers)
• ANSI (standards of American National Standards Institute)
• NACE (standards of National Association of Corrosion Engineers)
• NFPA (standards of National Fire Protection Association)
• W3C (standards of World Wide Web Consortium, they define requirements to HTTP protocol, hypertext markup language HTML, uniform resource locator URL, extensible markup language XML, etc.
• DIN (standards of Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V.)
• BSI (standards of British Standards Institution)
• JISC (standards of Japanese Industrial Standards Committee)

 If you order products from foreign countries, you may receive products with certificates or inspection certificates confirming conformance of the products with the abovementioned standards. For example, if you order metal products from Germany, you may receive products meeting requirements of DIN standard, and if you order equipment from Japan, it will meet requirements of JISC standard. Such standards define specific requirements for products and it may differ from Russian GOST or the products may not be regulated by Russian national standards. If the products are subject to technical regulations, you shall confirm its conformance with requirements of the technical regulations; otherwise the products cannot pass customs clearance. List of TN VED codes (codes of Foreign Economic Activity Commodity Nomenclature) of products which conformance with technical regulations requirements shall be confirmed for customs clearance is defined in established order. You can find the list free of charge.

W3C standards (standards of World Wide Web Consortium) take a special place among standards listed above. They define operation of World Wide Web (Internet). They include sufficient set of requirements to data transfer protocols, HTML language which is a key language for site construction and view of sites in browsers, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) used for addition of design elements to sites and for structuring of data position in the sites and other requirements defining Internet operation.