External Standards and Regulations Management Process

[Pmarszal]

Hello,

Does anyone have any good and reliable processes that they could share for managing external standards and regulations? Our current process needs improvement and am looking for tips and other reliable processes I could leverage.

Thanks in advance.

 

[indubioush]

How does your current process need improvement? What is the problem?

 

[Pmarszal]

How does your current process need improvement? What is the problem?

So our process works such as:

Annually we review the standards and regulations we comply with and identify if a new revision was released. We issue a GAP Analysis Form to Subject Matter Expert (SME) and give them ~1 month to perform GAP analysis, however we have issues with individuals starting GAP Analysis on standards and regulations because its a time consuming task that sometimes can take an hour or a whole week.

Once the GAP analysis is completed, we implement any actions needed. Once implemented the index gets updated to document that we comply with the standards newest revision.

I guess our struggle is timeliness of reviews because its such a involved task and requires SME to really put in lots of time. SMEs are typically high level management that stuggles to keep up with the amount of GAP Analysis requests.

 

[indubioush]

Okay, here are some options for you considering that I don't know all the details of your process:

• Purchase redlined versions of standards to speed the process along.
• Delegate the comparison of the old and new version to someone at a lower level who is detail oriented. They can document the content changes without making determinations as to whether new testing is warranted, etc. Then that gap analysis goes to the SME to determine necessary actions.
• Review whether your gap analysis template requires you to record unnecessary information.
• Sign up for a standards tracker service such as TechStreet. This way you will know when a standard has revised. This should give you more time to do a gap analysis rather that doing an annual review and assigning gap analyses at that time.
• Determine if the SME's really need to determine actions for the gap analysis or if they can instead review the gap analysis and a lower level engineer determines actions.

 

[Pmarszal]

Okay, here are some options for you considering that I don't know all the details of your process:

• Purchase redlined versions of standards to speed the process along.
• Delegate the comparison of the old and new version to someone at a lower level who is detail oriented. They can document the content changes without making determinations as to whether new testing is warranted, etc. Then that gap analysis goes to the SME to determine necessary actions.
• Review whether your gap analysis template requires you to record unnecessary information.
• Sign up for a standards tracker service such as TechStreet. This way you will know when a standard has revised. This should give you more time to do a gap analysis rather that doing an annual review and assigning gap analyses at that time.
• Determine if the SME's really need to determine actions for the gap analysis or if they can instead review the gap analysis and a lower level engineer determines actions.

Great suggestions and will incorporate many of the things you have suggested.

Do you have a good resource for purchasing redlined versions of the standard? I don't seem to find those on current approved standards vendor we use?

Thanks!

 

[indubioush]

Unfortunately, redlined versions are not always available. Here are some places that I have purchased standards, and sometimes, redlined versions are available from them. You could also contact them and see if having a standards subscription would provide you additional benefit.

ANSI Webstore

 

[indubioush]

Techstreet -Technical Information Superstore

 

[indubioush]

IHS Markit Standards Store | Engineering & Technical Information

 

[indubioush]

https://infostore.saiglobal.com/en-us/

Sorry for the multiple posts. Elsmar will only let me add one link per post.

 

[Ajit Basrur]

Also BSOL - www.bsol.bsigroup.com