World Standards Day
14 October1999
BUILDING ON STANDARDS
Mr. Mathias Funfschilling, President of IEC, Mr. Giacomo Elias, President
of ISO, Mr. Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of ITU
This year, the World Standards Day theme highlights the importance of
International Standards in the construction industry, which has been one
of the basic human activities throughout the thousands of years of human
progress.
There will never be a standard for beautiful design, but to lay the foundations for an intelligent museum or a sophisticated city infrastructure, standards need to be shared and applied on a practical daily basis by the many professionals. These range from designers, architects, civil engineers to manufacturers, regulators and contractors all the way to the companies who spend billions on construction goods and related services each year. The relevant standards range from the more obvious building standards to those covering telecommunications, electrical installations, electronics, networking and the associated safety standards.
When a Japanese construction company following Canadian plans builds a factory in Chile, everybody understands the need for totally transparent, universally comprehensible technical standards. Each professional organization involved in the supply of material and components from mechanical equipment to electrical systems relies on these "tools" that International Standards represent.
If, today, 100 building professionals were to come together from all over the world to build a tunnel, they would virtually take for granted the effectiveness of standardization that provides the building blocks for the work, without hampering individual design or imposing unwanted features on the finished product. As in electronic commerce or any other technology sphere, standardization is at its best when it is international. The technical agreements developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) supply the foundations needed for different products and services, no matter where they are produced.
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