Achievements and Opportunities

Achievements

Standards development

This past year has seen Standards New Zealand develop and publish 159 new standards. Of these, 122 (77%) were direct or modified adoptions of international standards – an efficient approach that directly draws on international good practice to apply standards where they are a good fit for local application(2). Another 31 standards were jointly developed with Standards Australia, strengthening cross-Tasman trade, market access efficiency and economic relations.

2 Standards and Accreditation Act 2015: Section 13. In undertaking its functions under section 12(1)(d), (e), and (f), the Board must have regard to whether the proposed standard or modification is based (in whole or in part) on any other national or international standard or any draft standard; and whether the proposed standard is, or the standard as amended by the modification would be, compatible with other national or international standards. The board must ensure that New Zealand standards do not unnecessarily duplicate the standards development work of other national or international standards organisations; and where a proposed New Zealand standard is based on an international standard, there are good reasons for any differences between the New Zealand standard and the international standard.

Supporting New Zealand’s climate change action

Standards New Zealand made a significant contribution this past year in the areas of renewable energies and energy efficiency by developing and publishing various publicly available specifications, standards and reports relating to EV technology, future national hydrogen integration, energy efficiency of electrical appliances and residential housing.

International participation

Standards New Zealand participated in and contributed to international standards and conformance systems and activities, representing New Zealand and our interests on several occasions at various international forums and general assemblies, including the ISO general assembly in Abu Dhabi in September 2022, the IEC general meeting in San Francisco in October 2022, and the Pacific Area Standards Congress and Pacific Islands Standards Committee meetings in May and June 2023.

Collections

In collaboration with industry, Standards New Zealand has packaged sets of standards for subscription, aligned to professions and sectors. This will help users find standards more efficiently and promote standards that are relevant to many different types of businesses. These include, but are not limited to, quality management, environmental management, building and construction, workplace health and safety, structural engineering, and plumbing.

IT essentials - Protect business data with information security management systems and international good practice.

Quality management essentials - Support your business practice with robust systems underpinned by quality management standards.

Environment management essentials - Benefit your business and improve your impact on the environment. Suitable for any business type.

Ultimate building and construction collection - Over 700 NZS and joint AS/NZS standards Incorporating the needs of multiple industries working across construction.

Engineering essentials - Supporting a range of structural design needs, developed with Engineering New Zealand.

Plumbers essentials - The basics every plumber, gasfitter and drainlayer needs. PVC and polyethylene pipe systems, and plumbing and drainage parts covering glossary of terms, water services, sanitary, stormwater drainage and heated water systems.

Gasfitters essentials - Covers installation and equipment, audits, detection and safety.

Workplace health and safety essentials - No matter the industry, a safe workplace starts with occupational H&S and risk management standards.

Structural design series (1170) - Covering everything thrown at modern buildings to keep them safe, solid and sound.

Full catalogue (NZS & AS/NZS) - Catering for diverse sectors with nearly 3,500 current New Zealand Standards and joint AS/NZS standards.

90th anniversary

Standards New Zealand celebrated its 90th birthday in July 2022, providing an opportunity to raise our profile and industry’s awareness and understanding of our products and services and their value.

Stakeholder engagement, business development and sector support

Standards New Zealand actively engaged with key industry stakeholders in priority sectors to identify business opportunities and raise industry awareness and understanding of Standards New Zealand, the work we do, and the value it can add. This included:

• a range of sector conferences in the areas of digital technology and building and construction
• participating in online professional development e-learning webinars for aspiring young professionals in the standards and conformance area
• contributing material to a range of industry and sector publications, including our own bi-monthly publication
• engaging with and maintaining supportive working relationships with professional bodies, occupational registration bodies, industry associations and other industry organisations, such as Business New Zealand.

Opportunities

Despite the engagement and profile raising, there remains limited public knowledge or awareness of the importance of standards for New Zealanders. As the national standards body, Standards New Zealand plays a key role in New Zealand’s quality infrastructure and standards and conformance regulatory system and there remains an ongoing need to promote this. Standards have high intrinsic value for New Zealand, helping to assure the quality and safety of New Zealand products and services used both domestically and overseas. Use of standards by New Zealand businesses can improve their efficiency and quality management practices and support trade and economic market access and national prosperity.

Standards are solutions developed by subject matter experts directly involved in their use and agreed by representative consensus. Thus, they can and should be developed and used as solutions to national needs and priorities. Two such priorities where standards can add real value and make a difference to people’s lives are the topical and evolving areas of climate change and the digital economy. The New Zealand government, the public, and industry face significant challenges and uncertainty in these areas – a situation which seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future. By leveraging its role as New Zealand’s national standards body, Standards New Zealand can create more certainty and confidence for all New Zealanders through its climate change and digital economy-related strategic priorities, products and services.

For example, climate change presents an opportunity for Standards New Zealand to demonstrate how it can help the government and industry develop or adopt renewable energies, decarbonise industries, minimise waste and improve climate resilience.

In the area of the digital economy, Standards New Zealand work can directly support efforts by government and industry to adopt these new technologies, in a safe and secure manner, while encouraging innovation and remaining competitive.

Further, Standards New Zealand could increase customer satisfaction and uptake of its products by digitising its catalogue of standards and reducing price barriers by securing increased sponsorship (pre-funding) by government regulators which use these standards in their regulatory systems for compliance outcomes.

Smart home guidelines to help consumers be energy efficient

New Zealand benefits by reduced emissions and cost savings for consumers

As the number of electric vehicles and related infrastructure grows, there will be even greater demand for energy at peak times. Homes that integrate smart technology can help reduce energy use and emissions and take pressure off our national electricity grid. A publicly available specification (PAS), SNZ PAS 6012:2022 Smart home guidelines, is one of a suite of documents sponsored for free access by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) as part of its Energy Efficient Homes Strategy.

The guide provides consumers, suppliers and retailers with general smart home information and introduces the concept of ‘demand flexibility’ and an overview of what smart home technology and a home energy management system (HEMS) is. With the system doing the thinking for us to accommodate our daily energy using behaviours, it can reduce energy when not needed and save on subsequent emissions for a better New Zealand, reduced energy bills and peak energy demand times managed more efficiently.

The case for digitisation of standards

With digitalised delivery in more accessible formats, New Zealand standards will be easier to use, more effectively meeting customer needs. As a result, standards use may also increase, improving both good standards practice in New Zealand, regulatory compliance across a range of sectors and increased levels of customer satisfaction with Standards New Zealand.

Over several years, we have developed a clear plan to digitising our standards. We are now ready to operationalise the plan, but it comes with a funding challenge.

The international standards landscape is increasingly taking advantage of the benefits of digital workflows and outputs.

Evolution of standards

• Paper - Standards available in paper. No machine interactions available.
• Open digital format - Read and search on screen.
• XML - Machine readable document. Structured content of standard documents. Content can be processed by software.
• Machine readable content - Semantic enrichment of content for selective access. Receive content of multiple standards for a given purpose.
• Machine interpretable content - Self learning analysis and validation cycles. Information modelling that expresses content and relation between elements.
• Individually - Standards as a service. Provides dynamic deliverables that can adapt to user needs.
• Future extensions

Standards New Zealand currently only offers XML and paper options.

Currently, the Standards New Zealand website sells hard copies and PDFs. To meet customer needs, we want to be able to sell access to browser-based digital editions (web editions). Web editions can be read on more device types and are particularly well suited to being read on smart phones and tablets (devices less suited to PDFs). They are also more accessible generally, working with screen readers for the visually impaired and making it easy for readers to enlarge text and zoom into the details of images, as well as make digital notes. Having standards as code also helps digital providers create helpful tools for standards users (for example, apps incorporating standards content) and interoperability with software products like CAD and BIM. Customers, industry associations, government regulators and, notably, commissioners of standards development are now asking for digital editions.

Being now clear on both what we want and the market appetite for it, we are engaging with industry and government agencies that would benefit from digitised standards to source the required investment. Enquiry, proposals and discussions are ongoing.