The second branch meeting of the year was held on 27 April at the Rosen UK facility in Gosforth. The well attended meeting included David David Mobbs (chairman London branch) and the President of Institute of Corrosion, Sarah Vasey.
Malcolm Morris, Technical Support Manager Sherwin Williams, presented an in depth technical review of ISO standards and detailed the process that is undertaken in various levels of standards’ committees – local, national and international. ISO committees can be split down into, Technical committees – TC’s, Sub committees – SC’s and Working Groups – WG’s. However there are also other groups which can influence the development of standards namely, IPPIC – International Paint & Printing Ink committee and CEPE – European Confederation of Paint and Ink Manufacturers. In particular, Malcolm updated the audience on the current changes to the ISO 12944-6 standard with regard to updating the performance requirements for the various environments.
Many members of the audience were unaware that there were so many steps to go through to get modifications made to standards, and the description of the current process was very informative. There were numerous questions from the audience relating to the correlation of anticorrosive testing in the laboratory with actual field data. There were definite concerns that there was indeed no correlation and therefore how could the data be relied upon. It became very evident that the key to understanding the performance of coating was still looking at ‘track record’ of coatings in a particular environment. The comments from the meeting really showed what an emotive topic this is, and how much it matters to get these standards right.
