Review and analysis of external standards - When to buy a new standard

[lindal]

I did a search, but did not find anything which addressed this issue.

I am performing our regular review of our external standards. One of the standards we use was revised recently, but there is a note on the Global website that the document was reapproved (REAP). There is no indication that the standard was revised.

Should I just buy the standard, read it and return it if there are not significant changes?

My question is: what is the best way to assess whether a revision of a standard should be purchased if you know you will continue to use the information in the standard.

We always buy a new standard when there is a major change (which we usually know about through word of mouth), if the service indicates that errata were corrected, if the standard was withdrawn, or was superceded by another standard. But what if you have no idea whether there were any significant changes, or if the standard was just reapproved?



Thanks in advance for your input,

Linda

 

[Wes Bucey]

No anxiety required

FWIW: "reapproved" means no changes were made.
This designation comes about on documents that are created with a mandated "review" based on time. The review determines if modification is necessary; if not, the document is marked "reapproved" to indicate it went through its mandatory review.

To be on the safe side, your documents, procedures, etc. which refer to outside Standards should not refer to them by specific revision number, but should indicate "most recent approved version."

You won't have to purchase another copy of the "reapproved" Standard to compare, but you ought to modify your own documents to allow for adding a new revision of the Standard (when it comes) without having to modify your own documents for every revision of an outside Standard.

You might also mark your current copy of the Standard in question with the "reapproved notice and date."

 

[lindal]

Thanks

Thank you Wes!

We have a note about the "most current version" in our external standard procedure and in our technical file approval coversheet, so no worries there.

I added the recommended note to the affected standard and in the file name of the electronic copy.


L