Commission a standard
Commissioning a standard provides benefits, not just to the commissioner but to industries as a whole.
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A standard first needs to be commissioned in order to start the process for its development. This demonstrates that there is considerable interest in adopting an acceptable, workable, and practical solution for a certain purpose.
Anyone in New Zealand can commission the development of a standard as long as they can provide the necessary requirements and funding. In the past, standards have been commissioned by a wide range of private and public organisations, including industry bodies and government departments.
We develop standards using the same trusted, transparent and consensus-based approaches used by leading international standards bodies.
How to commission a standard
If you are interested in commissioning a new standard, email us with your contact details, a brief description of what you are aiming to achieve, and whether you have support from any industry organisations.
Email the Standards Development team
Once we receive your email, a member of our Standards Development team will be in touch to discuss various options and solutions. This includes whether or not a standard would be the best option for your situation, or if any similar standards already exist.
If you wish to proceed after our initial discussion, we will provide you with a project commissioning brief that you must complete and submit. This is a document that outlines the rationale for the creation of a New Zealand standard. It describes the financial, environmental, and social impact of its development, and identifies how key stakeholders may be impacted. The information provided as part of a brief will help create a business case for the development of that standard.
Once we receive your completed brief, we will assess the information you have provided and provide estimates of time and cost. If you are happy to proceed, we will then collate this information into a project proposal and submit this for review by the New Zealand Standards Approval Board.
Please refer to our standards development process for more details on how a commissioned standard is developed and published.
Why commission a standard?
Sometimes products, services and industries will need consistent solutions that address particular issues, resolve problems, provide a means of compliance with legislation, or support trading opportunities. Standards are good for this purpose because they are:
- independent, balanced, and consensus driven
- represented by a cross section of industries who use or are impacted by the standard
- widely accepted, workable, and practical solutions
- often based on international standards, which provide a common language to trade more effectively
- internationally recognised, efficient, and effective.
Commissioning a standard can help you and your organisation:
- Achieve industry goals. Commissioning a standard allows organisations to reach certain objectives and take advantage of opportunities within their industry.
- Reduce compliance costs. An organisation’s involvement with a new standard means that industry partners are more likely to accept the new standard, which in turn reduces compliance costs for everyone.
- Respond quickly to change. Standards can be developed and published more quickly than the time needed for legislation to change. In a world where the rapid development of new technology means that products and services are constantly changing, standards offer a responsive and flexible solution.
Why commission? The benefits of funding standards [PDF, 2.6 MB]
Partnered development
We follow a partnered development model, which allows us to work collaboratively with commissioners to update and create new important standards for New Zealanders. This model provides flexible and affordable ‘partnering’ options for working with us and developing standards.
If a commissioning organisation is able and willing to contribute resources to a project, the partnered development model provides an option to share project management tasks with us. This allows new or updated standards to be developed at a substantially lower cost. At the same time, this also provides benefits to that organisation in the form of our internationally-aligned process and expert-led services – including independent oversight and guardianship of that standard for its lifetime.
The partnered development model has been popular with organisations that look to work collaboratively with us to develop New Zealand standards, while reducing their costs. This model has successfully produced several standards, including the Ministry of Health’s Ngā Paerewa health standard and New Zealand’s Dairy herd testing standard.
Ministry of Health’s Ngā Paerewa health standard
New Zealand’s Dairy herd testing standard
If we can help you solve your industry needs with standardisation – whether it can be developed in partnership with us, or with our full project management – please get in touch with us.