Day 3 of the ISO meetings on Firefighters PPE focused entirely on ISO 11999-3. This standard is for firefighters PPE for structural firefighting and continues the work on this document that began at the last meeting in Japan.
Prior to Japan over 250 comments (60 pages) were received on the draft document and only a small proportion were able to be discussed in Japan. Today the remaining comments have all been dealt with and a resolution to move the revised document onto the next stage was agreed.
The next stage will allow more comments both of a technical and editorial nature and it’s expected that a significant number of comments will be received as reaching consensus on this document is proving very difficult.
The current document has two levels of protection and allows, as an outcome of a risk assessment’ fire services to specify either the higher or lower level. The problems arise as the mandate for this revision was to only have a singular level. Thus we have almost a 50/50 split of those that wish to keep the lower level and those in favour of the higher level.
The challenge for the next round of meetings will be to see if we can find a mid-level as a compromise in which each group is comfortable that they can still utilise the document and it be sent to its final stage before publication.
One element of good news is that the UK’s request to add a performance requirement against molten metal splash was agreed and will be inserted in the new standard.
More to follow tomorrow.