New Standards

Posted: Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Category: ISO Training

Who can forget the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, quite possibly the world’s worst industrial and environmental disaster of all time? It killed 11 workers and cost untold billions in damages. It also galvanized the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to develop an action plan on international standards to aid the oil-and-gas industry in preventing disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

This plan comes up with two broad-stroke actions: it provides an inventory of existing standards that have an impact on a disaster like Deepwater; and it proposes a program for the design of new standards or improvement of existing ones.

The inventory incorporates 71 existing standards and related documents from ISO or other organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API). The program, for its part, puts on the table 31 standards or related documents for ISO, the API, or other bodies to develop or update.

While these new standards are being finalized, the ones already in place or are being implemented across multiple industries in America, but especially in Texas with its huge petroleum industry, have taken on renewed urgency. Standards such as the ISO 14001, which covers the “environmental management” aspects of the ISO 14000 family of standards, act as a company’s first line of defence against natural and manmade disasters.

ISOCampus.com, a leading provider of online ISO training courses, offers ISO 14001 Training, as well as

ISO 22000 Training, ISO 9001 Training, OHSAS 18001 Training, and the ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Training.